Acts chapter 13. Let me read these two verses
again. Acts chapter 13 and verse 38 and verse 39. Be it known
unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by him all that believe are
justified from all things. from which you could not be justified
by keeping the law of Moses. Tonight I want to look with you,
and I want you to think with this, on this for a few minutes
with me, on the nature of forgiveness. The nature of forgiveness. I
thought as we were back in the kitchen eating, I thought, you
know, what a little group of people we are. A feeble bunch
of folks, aren't we? And what a treasure. We're here
talking about forgiveness of sins from God Himself. What a
treasure we have. You would think this may be for
some mega churches, educated folks, intellectuals. But this
is for us. Unto you is preached through
this man the forgiveness of sins. What a thrill that is. Many of
us have experienced forgiveness. And I hope all of us experience
it. before we leave this life. And the only thing that we know
really about forgiveness infallibly is what the Bible tells us. We
have experienced it in our conscience and blessed God for it. But all
we know about forgiveness infallibly is the Word of God. And I am
interested in what it says about forgiveness. I understand, I
believe, that the Lord has forgiven me. And I want to search the
Scriptures now and to see some details about that forgiveness. So let's look at four or five
things concerning the nature of this forgiveness. And the
first one I want to consider with you this evening I think
is one of the most important aspects of it. And that is this. When God forgives sins for the
sake of His dear Son, He forgives all sin. That's a wonderful thought,
isn't it? He forgives every sin that we've
committed. In our youth, in our old age,
our middle age, all kinds of sins that we've committed, every
color, every shape, every caste, He forgives all our sins. We have believed in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Our conscience has experienced
forgiveness. And now we see what kind of forgiveness
it was. It was the forgiveness of all
sins. Brother Wayne almost read the
verse this morning that I have written down here in Colossians
2.13. Listen to this passage. And you
being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all
trespasses. All trespasses. And listen to
Jeremiah chapter 50 and verse 20. In those days and at that
time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for,
and there shall be none." I don't know who is seeking for it. I
know the devil does. Let the justice of God seek it.
Let the all-seeing eye of God seek it. He will not find any. He says himself, there is none. And the sins of Judas shall be
sought for, and they shall not be found, for I will pardon those
whom I reserve, saith the Lord." So when God pardons sins, He
pardons all sins. When the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ cleanses, it cleanses from all sin. Who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? If one sin was left unforgiven,
God Himself would lay to our charge, wouldn't He? But because
He's forgiven all sins, there is nothing to be laid to the
charge of God's elect. Here's one of Kent's old songs.
Here's pardon for transgressions past. It matters not how black
they're cast. And oh, my soul, with wonder
of you, for sins to come. There's pardon, too. Pardon for
our sins. Luther said the devil appeared
to him. Luther was a strange fellow. He used to have debates
with the devil. And he had dreams. And he said
one night the devil appeared to him in a dream and had a whole
scroll full of his sins. And he said he kept telling me
how bad they were and how many they were. And when he finally
finished, I said, yes, and right on the bottom of that, would
you please write counsel? The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Yes, we've sinned, haven't we?
God knows we've sinned. I can't remember when I first
started sinning, can you? And I ain't quit. I don't say
that with arrogance or bragging. I haven't quit. I say that with
shame. But I tell you this, brothers and sisters, God has forgiven
all. He has forgiven All. What's the nature of this forgiveness?
All sin. The second thing, here's the
nature of this sin. It's a present or immediate forgiveness. We see it here in our text, in
verse 39. By Him all that believe are justified. They are presently forgiven,
presently justified. There is no elapsed time between
believing and forgiveness. As soon as the soul believes
in Christ with all of his heart, all of his sins are immediately
forgiven. As soon as I have believed, I
am forgiven. I may not have the assurance
of it. I want more assurance of forgiveness, but it is not
assurance that forgives. It is faith in the blood of Christ.
It is faith in the person of Christ that forgives our sins. And as soon as a man believes
in Christ with all his heart, immediately he is forgiven. They who believe are justified
from all things. This is one of the most wonderful
aspects of the salvation that is in Christ Jesus. Man-made
religion will have you working for years to obtain what God
is willing to bestow on you immediately. That poor publican standing there
in the temple calling on the name of the Lord for mercy, he
went down to his house justified. He went down to his house having
obtained this blessing immediately, a blessing that at first he was
going to seek for the rest of his life and still not obtain
it. Isn't that immediate forgiveness? Don't think about being forgiven
tomorrow or next year or after you've labored or worked and
wept and went heavy hearted for weeks or months. Don't think
about forgiveness being that way. Think about forgiveness
being immediately. Right now, before you leave this
building, if there is somebody here who is dead in their trespasses
and sins, the very instant you look to Jesus Christ and believe
on Him, you are immediately forgiven. All that believe are justified. The old hymn that we sang, there
is life for a look at the Crucified One, there is life at this moment. And that's the wonderful thing
about salvation, isn't it? Forgiveness of sin. There's life
at this moment for you. Then look, sinner, look unto
Him and be saved. Unto Him who died on the tree. How many sinners have bowed before
the cross of Christ with a conscience loaded down with their sins,
and they saw in Him Complete and full and free forgiveness.
I tell you, heaven is full of people like that. Heaven is full
of men that lived in sin and came to Christ and was forgiven
all of their sins. And they were forgiven immediately.
One of the most blessed aspects of forgiveness. It's immediate.
And what does this immediate pardon tell us? Well, it tells
us this. That this pardon, this forgiveness,
is not of works. But it's of God's free grace.
God can forgive us immediately if forgiveness is based upon
His free grace. If forgiveness is based upon
the works of man, it's a long, drawn-out process. I mean a long,
drawn-out process. But if it's of God's free grace,
then it can be immediately, right now, at this instant. Listen
to this passage. Who is likened to Thee, O Lord?
Who is likened to Thee? A God that pardoneth iniquity
and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?
He retains not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again. He will have
compassion upon us. He will subdue our iniquities.
He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. Who is a God like Him? He's gracious. He's merciful. He's full of compassion. Forgiveness of sin is not based
upon the works of man, but upon God's free and sovereign grace
in Christ. Therefore, He can forgive you
immediately. You know what God is purposed to do and His greatest
desire to do is to magnify His grace in Christ. You hold that
passage right there and look with me on Ephesians chapter
1. Just over to your right in Ephesians chapter 1. And look
in verse 3. Look in beginning in verse 3. God has purposed to glorify His
grace, His free grace, in the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you
and I come loaded down with a lifetime of sins, and we bow down before
Him, Here's the way that He's going to magnify His grace by
freely and immediately forgiving all our sins. Isn't that a surprising
thing? Remember the message that Peter
Meany preached one time on the surprise of grace? Grace surprises
you, doesn't it? Because when we come to Him guilty,
He just freely, immediately forgives us. And we say, man, what a surprise! What a surprise! I didn't expect
that. Well, that's what grace does.
It surprises you, doesn't it? Look at what he says in Ephesians
chapter 1. Look what he says about His grace.
Verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. And I tell you, forgiveness is
one of those blessings. According as He has chosen us
in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption by Jesus Christ according to the good
pleasure of His will, look at this, to the praise of the glory
of His grace, wherein He hath made us accepted in the beloved
in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
sins according to the riches of His grace." He's going to
glorify His grace. And I tell you the way He does,
by showing us our sin, and showing us our guilt, and then so freely
forgiving us. So we have a pardon that's immediate,
and we have a pardon that's free, freely by His grace. When he
saw they had nothing to pay, what did he do? He freely, he
frankly forgave them. And here's a wonderful thought
about this nature of forgiveness. It's irreversible. It's irreversible. Through this man is preached
unto you the forgiveness of sins, and once he forgives our sins,
he forgives them all, he forgives them freely, and he'll never
take it back. He'll never reverse the forgiveness
of our sins. He won't come back later on and
say, I've thought about this. I've seen your sins were more
aggravated than I first saw. And we've got to deal with this
again and take it back. That'll never happen. Listen
to Isaiah 43, 25. I, even I am he that blotteth
out thy transgressions for my own sake, and will not remember Listen to this covenant blessing
in Jeremiah 31 and 33. This is the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord.
I will put my law in their inward part. I will write my law in
their heart. I will be to them a God. They
shall be my people. They shall not teach every man,
saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me. From the least
to the greatest of them, saith the Lord. For I will forgive
their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more."
And you know, that's a quote from the New Testament too. Because
the New Testament says, I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,
and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Oh, that's a wonderful blessing
there. I tell you, I've got sins of my youth that I can't forget. And God can't remember them. I used to say I couldn't remember
my sins and God couldn't forget them. And now I can't forget
them and He can't remember them. It's just turned upside down.
I can't remember your sins. Oh, you go to them and you confess
something. Oh, Lord, I remember what I've done. Please. He said,
I don't even remember that. Why? He's forgiven it. He's forgiven
it, hasn't He? He's forgiven it. You and I make a distinction
in that everlasting love of Christ for His people. A lady told me
one time, she said, don't you believe Christ loves everybody
the same? I said, why, no. He don't love everybody alike.
He's got an everlasting love for His elect people, hasn't
He? You don't love everybody like that. And as long as He loves us, as
long as He loves His people, He's going to forgive them. He
loved us, and what's the very next word? And washed us from
our sins. And as long as His poor people
sin, He's going to love them. And as long as He loves them,
He's going to forgive them. And he's never going to quit
loving them. Having loved his own which were in the world,
he loved them until the end. Somebody say, Bruce, you talk
a lot about sinning. I wish I could quit it. Someday
I'll quit talking about it. And someday I'll never sin again.
Someday I'll never sin again. But a man that says he has not
sinned is deceiving himself, isn't he? He's deceiving himself. and one of the biggest burdens
of our hearts. You don't see us going around sinning so much
with our hands and our feet. It's our heart. It's sins of
the heart, sins of the attitude, sins of the motive. That's where
we have most of our trouble. Men see me sitting in my study
most of the day. They say, boy, that man has no
sins. You can't see my heart. Some of the greatest sins that's
ever been committed has been in the pastor's study. And boy,
sometimes you find me there with tears in my eyes, a confession
in my heart. Lord, forgive me. And you know
something? He loves me. He loved me with
an everlasting love. And as long as He loves me, He'll
forgive me. He'll forgive me. I have loved them and washed
them. Consider this about the nature
of forgiveness. It's a message we can preach
to everybody without exception and without distinction. Look
at this in verse 38. Unto you, unto you is preached
through this man the forgiveness of sins. Unto you. I doubt if
Paul knew any of these men. I doubt if he knew how they were
going to react to the message, but it didn't matter. He preached
the message to them, didn't he? This message can be preached
anywhere at any time to anybody without exception and without
distinction. Unto you is preached. Unto you. Unto you. How did they react? Well, we
are told down here in verse 45. Look at verse 45 of chapter 13.
When the Jews saw the multitude, they were filled with envy and
spake against those things which were spoken of by Paul and Barnabas,
contradicting and blaspheming. They hated the message. But you
know something? This did not stop the Apostle
Paul from preaching it. And it should not stop you and
I from preaching it. We have a message for everybody and for
anybody. The Lord Jesus said, Go unto
all the world and preach this gospel. And Brother Larry read
it to us, didn't he? What is the gospel? Repentance
and remission of sins in His name. We go to the nursery home, and
I tell you, I guess it's the devil that fights me so bad sometimes
when we go down there. Somebody keeps whispering to
my mind and saying, oh, you're spinning your wheels going down
to that place. You've got old people in there that spent decades
and all they've done is added one sin upon another. Look how
hard their hearts are. They've got one foot in the grave. You're wasting your time going
down there. You know something? Most of that's true. They have
spent decades. Their hearts are hard. But I
tell you, we've got a gospel, if they will believe it, will
forgive those decades of sin. And when they believe it, it
will soften and tender their hard hearts. Now, most of that may be true,
but I'll tell you something that ain't true. We're not wasting
our time going down there. We're not. Well, just like these
apostles, unto you is preached the forgiveness of sin. And what
a blessed privilege it is tonight, brothers and sisters, to be sitting
here in this congregation and hearing this blessed message.
What better message could we hear from anybody, any word,
than forgiveness for all our sins? It's a personal thing,
isn't it? If I wanted to, I could stop
and point to each one of you. and put your name on this. I
could say, Samantha, unto you is preached the forgiveness of
sin. Right where you said it, to you. Gally, to you is preached. Shane and Stacey, to you. I could
name each one of you children, all of you. You could put your
name on this and say, to you is preached the forgiveness.
That's how personal this is. It's an awful thing to live in
a country That's never heard the blessed and sweet name of
Jesus Christ. That's never heard this gospel.
But you know, I could tell you something worse than that. Something worse than that is
to sit under the sound of this gospel and have it applied so
personally to you and then not hear it, not believe it. Isn't
that an awful thing? The worst thing that these men
ever did in their lifetime, and they didn't know it, was be under
the sound of this gospel and not believe it and reject it. Paul said you are opposed in
your own salvation. You count yourselves unworthy
of everlasting life. That's a sad, sad, fearful thing. To have this gospel preached
so personally to you and say, I don't believe it. Or to be
indifferent to it. But oh, what a blessed thing
it is. And I can come here and tell every one of you, God is
speaking to you. How do you know that? Because
that's what He said right here in it. Unto you. Who's saying
that? God is saying that. Unto you. It's preached, the forgiveness
of sins. Oh, how personal this is. How
personal it is. I pray that everybody here this
afternoon will receive it in a personal way and say, oh, my
soul, this is God speaking. And He is speaking to me through
His Word. And believe Him. Bow before Him and believe Him.
And sixthly in conclusion is this. The nature of this forgiveness. The nature of this forgiveness
is this. It reveals the distinction that God has made in His people. If God has set you apart back
in eternity, if He's chosen you to salvation, He's going to reveal
that somewhere in your lifetime. And here is the way He's going
to reveal it. He's going to bring you to believe
this gospel. Notice that again in verse 48.
Look at that again. It's a very interesting passage
of Scripture. When the Gentiles heard this,
they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord, and as
many as were ordained to eternal life, believed." He didn't say
they believed and therefore were ordained to eternal life. He
said they believed because they were ordained to life. Ordaining
to life, choosing to life, election comes before believing. And they
believed because they were elected. Out in the Northeast, Northwest,
they still brand them cattle. Brother Donnie Bell and I was
out there one time. We wanted to help them rustle cattle, but
they didn't think we could ride horses, so they wouldn't loan
us a horse, so we didn't get to help them. But some of the
states out there in the Northwest, they'll round their calves up,
and they'll get that old iron hot, and they'll stick it right
to them and put the brand on them. Until they do that, you
can't tell whose cattle they are. They get young calves and
they have to be careful how they mix up with other calves because
they can't tell them who's who. But when they put that brand
on them, oh, that's old neighbor Frank's calf. There's his brand
on it. If the Lord has chosen you to
salvation, if Christ has redeemed you, there's coming a time when
He's going to put His brand on you. And that brand is faith. And
He puts this brand on none but His. And when He puts it on you,
you'll say, I'm His. And everybody else is going to
start saying, He belongs to Christ. God has chosen Him in Christ
to salvation. His brand. The Lord knows who
they are. God knows those who are His.
And Christ knows His sheep. But they don't know who they
are. until He puts His brand on them. Oh, I pray everybody here tonight
has been branded by faith. God bless this Word. Let's pray.