Would you open your Bibles to
the 32nd chapter of Jeremiah. We'll begin reading at the 36th
verse. You are saying about this city,
now this is God speaking. He says, you are saying about
this city by the sword, famine, and plague, it will be handed
over to the king of Babylon. But this is what the Lord, the
God of Israel says. I will surely gather them from
all the lands where I banished them in my furious anger and
great wrath. I will bring them back to this
place and let them live in safety. They will be my people and I
will be their God. I will give them singleness of
heart and action so that they will always fear me for their
own good and the good of their children after them. I will make
an everlasting covenant with them. I will never stop doing
good to them and I will inspire them to fear me so that they
will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them
good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my
heart and soul. This is what the Lord says, as
I have brought all this great calamity on this people, So I
will give them all the prosperity that I have promised them." Would
you open your Bibles to the first chapter of the book of 1 John?
I know that's not what's written in the bulletin, but Friday morning
I started to write an article that I just thought, well, I
was reading and a little concept came to my mind and I thought,
I'll dash out something real quick here and post it up on
Facebook. And I started dashing out and it just got longer and
longer and longer and I said, well, I'll use this for a radio
broadcast. So I kept going and I thought,
well, no, we'll use this for Sunday morning, before I put
it on the radio. But this morning, I wasn't as
excited about that message as I was before, and more importantly,
I came over here without any of that paperwork. But I take
all things as from God. I do the best I can to keep track
of what I'm doing and remember things from day to day, but if
the Lord uses my absent-mindedness to accomplish His purpose, that's
okay. And I began to think, well then, what shall I preach on?
Shall I try to remember what I wrote? Then this text of scripture
came to mind and it did excite my thoughts and my heart. So
I have some confidence that all this was to bring us to this
scripture this morning for our good. Beginning in verse 5 of
1 John chapter 1, this is the message we have heard from Him
and declare to you. God is light, in Him there is
no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship
with Him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the
truth. But if we walk in the light as
he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood
of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to
be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us
our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim
we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar, And this Word
has no place in our lives. My dear children, I write this
to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have
One who pleads or who speaks to the Father in our defense,
Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. I want to speak this morning
on the subject of a faithful God and a righteous forgiveness. says if we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just or righteous to forgive our sins and purify
us from all iniquity. Now the gospel of God is in full
agreement with the character of God. In fact, The gospel is
actually the fullest declaration of God. Because the gospel of
God is called the gospel concerning His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Later on in that same chapter,
Romans 1, it calls the gospel the gospel of Christ. And Christ
is called the express image of God's person. Now, the gospel
is a message concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the exact
representation, the perfect image of God. Therefore, we must conclude
that the gospel is the fullest declaration of God to men. If you want to know God, the
only way you're ever gonna really learn about him is to learn his
gospel. Now this truth both corrects
us and encourages us. It corrects us if we find ourselves
following after the gospel that denies some aspect of God's character. For example, the gospel of free
willism that says that God is trying to save everybody and
he made salvation possible for everybody through the Lord Jesus
Christ and now he's done all he can and it's left up to men
to decide whether or not they want to have God's salvation.
Now that's what most people who call themselves Christians believe.
However, that is an utter denial of one of the essential characters
of God, his sovereignty and his power. That he can do whatever
he wants to do, but more than this, he does everything he wants
to do. Nebuchadnezzar learned about
this aspect of God in a rather difficult way, but after God
gave him that seven-year lesson, Nebuchadnezzar said that after
this time, when my sanity returned to me, I praised and extolled
the Most High God, who does as He wills in the armies of heaven
and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay
His hand or challenge Him or question what He does. Paul says
that God works all things according to the counsel of His own will. They said to the psalmist, where
is your God? He says, our God's in the heavens.
He's done everything that pleased Him. So this idea that God wants
to save everybody, but He's leaving it up to the will of man, denies
the absolute sovereignty and the omnipotent power of God. So it can't be true, can it?
God is not going to deny any aspect of His character when
He saves a sinner. It shall all be done in full
agreement. There are those who set forth
a gospel that says a man can be saved one day and lost the
next. It says that he can call upon
the name of the Lord for salvation and then before he dies he'll
do something that disannulls that salvation. And yet this
denies two important aspects of God. Number one, it denies
his omnipotence as though God isn't up to saving a stubborn
rebel. As if God has power to save only those who really don't
need much salvation in the first place. It also denies God's faithfulness,
who has promised, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. It cannot be that a man shall
call upon the name of the Lord and then, in the end, be lost. Can't happen, because God's faithful.
Faithful to his promises. Faithful to all his commitments.
Moreover, it is written, he that began a good work in you will
bring it to perfection till the day of Christ. God doesn't fail,
not in his word, not in his power, not in his purpose, not in his
promises. So it corrects us. If we find
ourselves believing a gospel that denies some essential character
of God, then we're believing the wrong gospel. The gospel
presents no conflict in God. Rather, the gospel is a resolution
of the conflict between his righteous nature and his gracious purpose. You see, for a man to change
his mind, there has to be a conflict in his mind, right? You think
one way, and you make a decision and a purpose, and you start
to follow that purpose, but then new information that comes in,
there's a conflict in your mind, and you resolve it by taking
a new direction. But there are no such conflicts
in God. There is no change in his nature.
There is no change in his knowledge. He knows everything. It's not
like he has to adjust his plan because new information came
to light that he didn't know about ahead of time. So, he's essentially unchangeable. He has no reason to make a change.
Therefore, we realize there is no conflict in God. God's not
upset. God does not remain unresolved. Rather, through the gospel, he
has resolved the conflict between his justice, which cries out
for our condemnation, and his mercy, which cries out for our
salvation. Now that would be a conflict
apart from the gospel, wouldn't it? If in mercy God wanted to
do us good, but in justice he felt compelled to bring us under
judgment, that would be a conflict in God. But the gospel resolves
that conflict by satisfying both of these aspects of God's nature. And then this truth that the
gospel is the fullest expression of God's nature, it encourages
us in this. And you think on this now. If
the gospel is the fullest and perfect revelation of God and
all his characters, what does that say to us? That every attribute
of God stands behind the promise of salvation in Christ Jesus. And that in saving us, God has
engaged every aspect of his being. There's no part of God which
stands opposed to our salvation. We who believe, we can be assured
of this, there's not anything in God which is saying, now just
a minute here, maybe and maybe not. None of that in God. But with his whole being and
every aspect of his being, in every characteristic of him,
is fully engaged to bring his elect unto salvation. In fact,
there's not even any part of his being that is uninvolved. You can say, well, yeah, maybe
there's nothing opposed to it, but there's some aspects that
are just kind of neutral about it. No. God is absolutely determined
to save his people and is bringing his whole self to bear in that
work. Would you go with me back to
Jeremiah 32, where we read that scripture earlier? Now this regards Israel, and
God said he was going to send them away into captivity, and
that sounds like everything's coming to nothing. Like all the
promises of God to the Jews in the past are being disannulled
now, that they have sinned in such a way that God will never
recover them, they send away all their privilege as the national
people of God. And so the Lord says in verse
36 to Jeremiah, you're saying about this city by the sword,
famine, and plague, it will be handed over to the King of Babylon.
And you know something, in saying that, Jeremiah was right. Jeremiah's
right. However, this is what the Lord,
the God of Israel says. I will surely gather them from
all the lands where I banished them in my furious anger and
great wrath. I will bring them back to this
place and let them live in safety." Now notice the firmness of that
statement. He says, I will surely gather
them. Yes, I'm going to scatter them.
in a time of discipline, in a time of my anger, in a time of my
wrath, I am going to scatter them into the nations, but I'm
going to bring them back, surely. And then this, and if your heart
is anything like mine, let me not say heart, let me say your
mind, the whole, that whole collection of thoughts that we have, both
believing and unbelieving thoughts, because we have both, don't we?
You confess to that, you've got thoughts of faith and thoughts
of unbelief, both. And they swirl around there and
they keep us confused. And part of this is that maybe
God's determination to save is not enough for such a sinner
as we are, that we can finally bring Him to a place of frustration
in which He says, alright, I've had it, that's all, it's done,
it's over, I'm not going to have anything to do with it. He has
sinned too much. He has sinned too often. He has
sinned too badly. It's over. But notice what the
Lord says, and I'll tell you the sins that these people were
guilty of, why they had gone worshiping false gods. They had
offered their children. Now think of it, their children
in a brutal sacrifice to these gods. And what does God say? Verse 41. I will rejoice in doing
them good. This is verse 41. He doesn't
even begrudgingly save. Here's a bunch of people who
had spit in the face of his goodness. He had chosen the nation Israel.
He had blessed them with all kinds of things. He had sent
prophets to them. He gave them His law. He gave
them the worship of the temple. He put a couple of good kings
over them. And what did they do in return?
They followed after bad kings. And they followed after false
prophets. They ignored the worship that He set up for them. Went,
as the Bible says, a-whoring after other gods. They sacrificed
their children. And God doesn't even say, OK,
I said I'd save them, and I guess I'm going to have to. He says,
I will rejoice in doing them good. Now we count it virtuous
for a man to even begrudgingly do good for his enemies. Don't
we? But look at God. He rejoices
in it. He's happy to do them good. He
says, I will assuredly plant them in this land with all my
heart and soul." It's as though the Lord said,
or another way that he could have said, with every fiber of
my being, I am engaged to fulfill all my promise to them with joy. I don't know about you, but that's
good news to me. Child of God, think of this.
You aren't one-tenth so determined to be saved as God is to save
you. You think that you want your
salvation? God wants it more. You have never
yet, with your entire being, sought the Lord for His salvation.
And yet with His entire being, He has sought you and bought
you and brought you to Himself. And with His entire being, He's
keeping you. And with His entire heart and
soul, He will plant you in His presence without fault and full
of joy. What else could you say? What
can you add to that? How can you make that better?
How can you exalt God and the gospel any more than that? And what greater comfort could
you find for your troubled soul? He goes on to say this in verse
42, Jeremiah 32, this is what the Lord says, as I have brought
all this great calamity on this people, so I will give them all
the prosperity I have promised them. Now with great power, with
a sovereign decree, he sent them into captivity. And his whole being was engaged
in that. His justice called out for their punishment. And He sent them away. And He
says, but in the self-same spirit and energy and determination
that I did that, I will bring them back. Now that applies to
us. There was a time when we were
without God and without hope in the world. And when we heard
about God, we saw all of His attributes opposed to us. He is truth. And that means He
knows about us. About the real us. Not the false
us that we present to everybody else. He's all-knowing. He's all-powerful. If He is determined
to destroy us, what can we do about it? Nothing. He is sovereign. He's put all
these things in His own hands. It's not been given to us to
make any changes in it. He is just and righteous, and
we are sinful, and we know it. And so we see all the attributes
of God, like so many like a great army arrayed against us to destroy
us. But then the gospel of Christ
is interjected into that and we see that by the work of the
Lord Jesus Christ, all these attributes which at one time
were designed for our destruction, or were used and set forth in
our destruction, are now set forth for our salvation. He is
truth and faithful. And therefore, his promises are
trustworthy. He is sovereign. And his determination
to save shall come to pass. He's omnipotent. Why, no stubbornness
on my part's gonna be able to stop him who can do anything. Do you see this? Everything about
God, because of the gospel. Everything about God. is engaged
to save those whose trust is in Him. He is a faithful God, a righteous
God, and we have a faithful and righteous salvation. Let's go
back to 1 John 1. We have in verse 9 here a wonderful
blessing. to be forgiven of our sins and
purified from all unrighteousness. Now, this is a blessing only
to those who have some kind of understanding and appreciation
for just how sinful they are, and have some kind of appreciation
for how holy and just God is. Now if I thought my sins weren't
much, it wouldn't mean much for me to be forgiven of them. Do you remember that woman that
came and anointed the Lord's feet? I believe the one that
wiped his feet with her hair and was crying and all that.
There was a Pharisee in the same room and he was thinking to himself,
well, if this Jesus fellow were really a prophet, he'd know that
this woman is a notably sinful woman and he wouldn't let this
woman touch him. And our Lord knew his thoughts
and said, if a man owed $10 to someone, to his master and his
master forgave him. And then there was another. that
owed $1,000 and he went to his creditor, not his master, his
creditor, and his creditor said, I freely forgive the debt. He
said, now which one of those men's gonna love the creditor
more? And the Pharisee said, well, the one to whom much had
been forgiven. who had a great debt that was
cleared. The greater debt being cleared resulted in a greater
love and greater appreciation. And the Lord went on to say,
and I believe the man's name was Simon, he says, Simon, I
came into this house, you didn't even so much as wash my feet,
which was the common courtesy of the day. A guest comes in
your house, either you or if you're rich enough to have servants,
one of your servants got some water and he took off his sandals
and washed his feet from the dirt the walk. He says, you didn't even wash
my feet. You didn't give me a kiss of
welcome when I came in the door. But this woman has not stopped
kissing my feet and washing them with her tears since she came
in. And that's because her sins were
many. But even though they are many,
they are forgiven. So she appreciates it a lot. And when we read about the forgiveness
of sins and being cleansed and purified from all righteousness,
how great that blessing appears to us when we begin to think
about the enormous load of our guilt and sin. We are not those
who have committed merely slight offenses against God. We're guilty
of great things, great sins. Not only this, we have not sinned
against one who is of little consequence in the matter of
things. Now I hope that we have enough of the sense of respect
for our fellow man that if we were to sin against him, it wouldn't
matter whether he was somebody of great influence and power
or if he's a nobody in town. We'd have equal concern that
we had sinned against another man. But the fact of the matter
is, the more powerful a person is, the more concerned we become
about our sins against them. Why? Because they can do something
about it. I mean, you go and you insult
some homeless guy living under the bridge, what's he going to
do about it? He might hurl a couple of curse
words at you as you go by, but that's a limit of what he can
do. But now, you get yourself on
the wrong side of the President of the United States, he might
be able to do something about it. Friends, our sins have put us
on the wrong side of God. How appreciative we are when
we can fully lay hold of the truth that indeed He has forgiven
our sins. Great sins against a great God. Freely forgiven. What a blessing. So forgiven are we that we have
been purified from all righteousness, that God in his manner of forgiveness
is not one who forgives only in the sense that he will not
punish, but still when he sees us, he remembers and calls to
mind the offense. Now we've probably all forgiven
in that way at some time or another, because we're not perfect in
this matter of forgiveness, are we? I mean, somebody does wrong
to us and they feel bad about it, and they come and they say
to us, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that, that was an awful
thing to do, will you forgive me? And we're still stirred up
by what they did, we're still offended. Virtue if we have any of that
our virtue kind of takes over we realize we ought to forgive
them We ought to be merciful to our fellow man, and so we
say all right I forgive you but from that day forward every time
we see that person. What do we think of? We think
of what they did to us, and it stirs up some resentment in us
You know forgiveness like God forgives is almost impossible
for us He says of his forgiveness their sins and iniquities. I
will remember no more I Brother David Pledger commented
on that scripture and says, you know, what we can't seem to forget,
God refuses to remember. Oh, our sins, they swirl around
in our mind and they keep coming back up, you know. We shove them
under the water and think they're gone, we put them under the blood
and think they're gone, and indeed they are gone in the sight of
God, but somehow or another they come back to us. over and over
and over again, and not just the memory of them, the actual
commission of them, and yet God says this, I forgive you, and
I have purified you from evil. I see you not as one who has
sinned, but I have passed over you in punishment. I see you
as one who never sinned. I see you as one who's never
offended me. I see you as one in whom there is no cause of
wrath in me. Brethren, I just said that. I
don't know that I can get my mind wrapped around that. I say
it because it's in the scriptures. God help me believe it. I see myself, at least so far
as my feelings and emotions and conscience is concerned, I see
myself as unfit to live among people. And I'll tell you something,
if you knew me like I know me, you would probably pass the same
judgment. God sees me as someone who's
never sinned. He looks upon me as one who is
purified from all unrighteousness. Far from me having to worry about
God coming against me as sin, I can live in the confidence
that he views me as one who's never sinned. He forgives us
to the point that he sees us as one who is no longer in need
of forgiveness. Now, do you really believe that? Oh, God give us grace to see
that. God give us grace to believe his grace in the same measure
that he gives his grace. What did it say? Where sin did
abound, grace did much more abound. Say preacher I got a lot of sin,
God's got more grace than you have sin. I think it's just fine that you
realize how sinful you are or has at least some understanding.
I think it's just fine that it seems nearly impossible to you
that God would forgive such a one as you. It's good that we would wonder
at God's grace but let's not disbelieve it for he has said
that His grace supersedes even our sin. That's the desired blessing. Here's the condition of it. Now
we may stumble over the idea of there being any conditions
upon receiving God's salvation. And I understand that. We don't
want to think that our salvation is in any way dependent upon
our fulfillment of some requirement. And that's part of our theological
understanding. Yet we must never allow our theology
to bring us into contradiction of what the scriptures say. And
it says right there, very first word in verse nine, if, if. Now you say, how can you fit
if into a scheme of grace? scheme of sovereign grace in
which God is the one who's active because it's he that makes us
fulfill the if. It's God, says Paul, who works
in you to will and do of his good pleasure. Now every believer
wills and does of God's good pleasure according to the gospel
but he can't take any credit for him because it's God working
in him to do that. So it comes to us if we confess
our sins and that is laid down as a contingency But that is
no threat to the gospel of God's grace, because we know this,
if we fulfill that contingency, it's only because God worked
in us like hand in a sock puppet, making us do it. And we were only performing that
which God worked in us to perform. So we don't deny that this is
a conditional promise. It is. If we confess our sins,
it's just that we believe that it's God that makes us fulfill
this condition. So that we can't take any credit
for fulfilling it. And it becomes merely the evidence
of the work of God, not the cause of the work of God. See what
I mean? But the scriptures speak to us
where we are. The Scriptures, in giving their
promises and laying out the, for lack of a better way to put
it, the plan of salvation, does not address us as though we're
looking at that thing, looking at this truth from the aspect
of God's throne. No, we're looking at it from
right where we are, living in time and space and seeing a set
of causes and effects and more causes and effects and that sort
of thing. And he says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful
and just to forgive us our sins. One thing we can say about the
confession of sins, there's no virtue in it. Really. If a man is a murderer,
if he's actually killed someone, and he comes before the judge,
the judge says, how do you plead? And he says, guilty. I did it. I shot him dead. Does he have any right then to
claim, make a claim on the judge and say, now, You've got to let
me go, because I confessed my crime." If you're the judge,
what would you say? You'd say, well, yeah, did you
get that? You confessed your crime. That
means you're a criminal. And that means you must be punished.
Confession is not some virtuous act that earns us the right to
expect anything other than the full punishment for that which
we confess to. Now I realize in our judicial
system they'll make deals with people that will go ahead and
plead guilty simply to save the state from the job of the trial
and save them from the possibility that a guilty man would get away
completely free. But friends, confession doesn't
earn us forgiveness. Confession does not qualify us
to be forgiven of the things we confess. But confession, in
this context, will gain us that forgiveness. Won't earn it for
us, but it'll get it for us. If we confess, now understand
confession of sin, as the scriptures speak of it, is not just a matter
of saying that you did it. It's not just pleading guilty
as some formal thing. It's why this whole idea that
you gotta go to a priest, you know, and you sit there in a
booth where you can't see each other and you tell some man what
you've done. As though a man has the right
to give or withhold forgiveness. But the whole idea that somehow
or another I've got to confess, own up to a catalog of sins.
Folks, you and I don't have time to name all our sins. Because
the whole time we're naming them, we're committing more, we'd never
get done. And we would leave this life
with sins unconfessed and would come under God's judgment on
that. That's not the kind of confession he's talking about.
It's not you every night trying to make a catalog of the things
you did bad that day and tell God, well, God, I did this and
I did that. You know, about nine o'clock, I did that. Lord, I
tried not to, but I did anyway. Yeah, I did. No. Confession,
that word confess strictly means to say the same thing. It means
not only to say the same thing that you did sin, it means to
have the same opinion of your sin that God does. To say the
same things about your sin that God does. You can get men to
confess to sins that they really don't think should be a sin in
the first place. They'll do it simply because they believe that's
what's required to go to heaven when they die. But they're not saying the same
thing that God says about sin. They're just going through some
formal action in the hope of avoiding punishment for those
sins. They just see it as the rules
of the game. To confess sin is to not only confess that you've
done it, but to confess that God rightly calls it sin. And
to confess that the judgment that God pronounces upon your
sin is a just and righteous judgment. You know, a lot of people realize
that if they die apart from Christ, they'll go to hell. But a lot
less people believe they deserve to. Have you ever believed that you
deserve to go to hell? I'll be a little bit honest here.
It's not often that I feel that conviction. Why? Because we practice self-justification
our entire lives. Once in a while, I feel the horrible
truth that I truly deserve eternal judgment from God. Most of the
time I think, I'm not such a bad guy. Now I've just confessed to something
awful, but I'm willing to do it because I know this about
human nature. Same thing's probably true of you. None of us at all
times sees our sin like God does. I don't know if we could take
it. I don't even know that it's possible because we're not holy
like God is. But this I know. A man who would justify his sin
in the sight of God has never confessed sin. A guy that makes
excuses for his sin hasn't confessed his sin. A guy that says, yeah,
I'm a sinner, everybody's a sinner, hasn't confessed his sin. I cannot imagine any greater
picture or image of the true confession of sin Then King David,
on his knees before the Lord, with impurity in his heart and
blood on his hands, saying against you and you alone,
have I done this evil. He recognized it as evil. He
recognized that it was against God. It wasn't against Uriah,
it was against God. And he recognized that he deserved
that God destroy him. That's why Nathan, the prophet,
when he came to confront David with regard to his sin, And he said to David, you are
the man, meaning you're the one guilty of the crime. You can
just see the picture. David's head drops and he says,
I have sinned against the Lord. And therefore Nathan went on
to say, and the Lord has forgiven your sin. Why did he say that? because he knew that David, in
saying, I have sinned against the Lord, was also implying in
that, and I deserve to die. Because Nathan said, the Lord
has forgiven your sins, you will not die. You will not die. To be forgiven, to confess own
up to God what you are, to own up to him not only that you've
done some bad things but really that's the only kind of things
you've done, to own up to God that you are by nature a rebel
against his throne, to own up to God that you have neither
capacity nor really even by nature desire to be in submission to
him. That's what it is to confess
sin. And if we confess our sins, He's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Now He's faithful. Faithful to what? Well, first
of all, He's faithful to the blood of His Son. In verse 6,
it says, if we claim to have fellowship with Him, yet walk
in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if
we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another. In the blood of Jesus, His Son purifies us
from all sin. Now the light he's speaking of
is the light of the truth of the gospel. Now if we say we
love Him, but we walk according to a false gospel, we're just
lying. If we're trying to gain God's
forgiveness by religious acts or moral acts or whatever, we're
walking in darkness and we don't have fellowship with God. But
if we walk in the light, the light of the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and that means walking in the acknowledgement
of what we are, sinners. If we walk in that light, we
have fellowship with God. And the blood of Jesus Christ,
his son, cleanses us from all sin. And you know what? God's
faithful to that blood. Faithful to the blood. The Lord
Jesus Christ died for his people. And the Lord God is faithful
to the blood of his son. To recognize it, acknowledge
it. as sufficient to put away their
sin. He's faithful to the blood of
his son, and he's faithful to the intercession of his son,
down there in chapter two. Verse one, my dear children,
I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anyone does
sin, we have an advocate, one who pleads to the Father in our
defense, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. People say, pray this prayer
after me, and they get people to recite a prayer and convince
them because they said those words that God has heard them
and saved them. I got a lot of problems with
that whole plan, but here's one of them. I tell you, our prayers
won't get it. Our prayers have never been good
enough, but we have one who prays to God on our behalf. We have
one who stands between us and God and pleads for us. That last song we sang, oh the
love that drew salvation's plan, oh the grace that brought it
down to man, oh the mighty gulf that God did span at Calvary. And I say, you know, it says
that God did span, I almost wish that Christ did span. For according
to the prayer of Job, he said, oh, that there were one who could
stand and referee between me and God, who could put his hands
on both. Only Christ can do that. Only
he can span that inconceivable gulf between a righteous God
and sinful man. And how does he do it? He's at
the right hand of the Father. In our sin, stubborn and persistent
as it is, Satan takes it to cast it before God as though to accuse
us before him and bring us into condemnation. But there is one
there. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And he sits there as that
lamb having been slain from the foundation of the world. And
He pleads His blood in our behalf, and the Father cannot turn away
from that. The hymn writer said, five bleeding
wounds he bore were received on Calvary. They pour effectual
prayers. They strongly plead for me, forgive
him. Oh, forgive, they cry, nor let
that ransom sinner die. The father hears him pray. His
dear anointed one, he cannot turn away from the pleadings
of his son. The spirit answers to the blood
and tells me I am born of God. Oh, what an advocate we have.
And the Father is faithful to that advocate and gives him everything
he asks for. He's faithful to his promise.
Did he not say, look unto me, all ye ends of
the earth, and be ye saved, for I am God? He's faithful to that
word. And he is just, righteous, to
forgive us of our sins. When God forgives our sins, it's
not as though his righteousness rears up and says, now just a
minute. And God has to say, okay, just sit down, you're going to
have to tough this one out. No. The blood has satisfied the
wrath. The blood has satisfied the righteousness
so much so that God's just, righteous nature, which at one time sought
to destroy us, is now equally engaged to save us. You get that? We can easily see how God's righteousness
would be stirred up to send us to hell. We're sinners, that's
where we deserve to go. but because of the shed blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, that same justice and righteousness
of God, which formerly would have sent us to hell, now says
he must, he must be saved and that forever. God's justice is
on my side because of Jesus Christ. We have a faithful God and a
righteous God. And therefore we are saved with
a righteous salvation. And we can know that for eternal
ages, because of the gospel of Christ, because of his suffering
and death, there shall never be a time in eternity when the justice of God shall
rise up and say, okay, I've been quiet long enough. I've decided
I'm not going to sit still anymore. I've got to have satisfaction
against these people. Never. His righteousness is in
perfect agreement with His grace. We are saved with an everlasting
salvation because we are saved with a righteous salvation. May
the Lord be honored and may your hearts be encouraged.