Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayer for attention to the First Epistle General
of John, chapter 1 and verse 9. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. The first epistle general of
John chapter 1 and verse 9. The way of salvation is to be
set before sinners and it's not a nice thing to be a sinner. We mustn't think that well You
can have some certain type of sinners that recommend themselves
to God better than others. Sin is sin. Sin is the transgression
of the law of God. In our hearts we are bent unto
backsliding, to sins, to iniquities. We are fallen and we need a gospel
that addresses that. that provides for pardon, provides
for forgiveness, provides also to renew us and leave us not
to go on in a path of sin, but brings us again and again to
repentance and a fresh sense of pardon and forgiveness. Throughout the Word of God there
are several directions, we might say many directions, as to how
we can deal with our sin. The psalmist in Psalm 119 says,
Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? And then gives
the answer by taking heed thereto according to thy word. Really, What is set before us as sinners
is God's remedy, God's Word, God's direction, and to trust
in that and obey that and have no trust, reliance on our own
thoughts, our own ways, and certainly not our own righteousness and
our own efforts of cleansing ourselves and making ourselves
fit for God. It is important that we keep
close to the Word of God. We're told in Ephesians how the
Lord is sanctifying His people through the washing of water
through the Word of God. We have in our text that way that forgiveness and
cleansing from all unrighteousness is to be obtained. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. I'll say at the outset, I don't
want to cloud the simplicity, the directness of our text. I don't want to put conditions
or things upon it that make it ineffectual or that we turn away
from it and say, well, I can't fulfill the conditions in this verse. But what I do want to do is to
bring together those things that go with it. We read of things that accompany
salvation. God has seen fit to put in his
word simple statements, one here, one there, sometimes a group
of them like in this epistle, and they are all put together
and they all make up a real conversion and the reality of the work of
God in a sinner's heart. But God has seen fit to put them
as separate statements so that instead of feeling that other
statements and other directions in the Word make this one, for
instance, to be impossible to carry out, the Lord has given
them as separate instructions, separate statements. So I want to look firstly at
the path that we are to take as sinners, specifically in the
direction set before us in the text, confession of sins. And then secondly, how God will
bless, that is, He will bless in faithfulness and in justness. And then lastly, God's blessing,
which is forgiveness and cleansing from all unrighteousness. Firstly then, the path that we
are to take. Though we are looking at this
verse, we must be reminded that we must view and take the whole
of the Word of God, and not just take one part of it in isolation. When we come to confession here,
we've read of Daniel's confession in Daniel chapter 9, And it was
all in prayer. He took himself to pray. So when we think here of confession,
it is confession before God. It's not confession before man,
before a priest, before those on earth. It is before God in
prayer. There is a case where we should
confess our faults one to another where we have sinned against
someone. We should acknowledge that and
confess it before them. It is interesting to know that
David, and we refer to him in Psalm 51, the hymn we started
with, is based on that. He says, against thee, thee only
have I sinned. and done this evil in thy sight."
We might think, well, he's sinned against Blasheba, he's defiled
her. He's sinned against Uriah, he's
killed him. But sin is the transgression
of the law of God. And so when he's confessing sin,
that is what he's confessing. He may indeed of confessed his
faults, no doubt he did, before Bathsheba, and it was evident
before Israel that God had dealt with him and his sorrow. But sin is where we have transgressed
the law of God, where we have gone against God. There are things that are bound
up with this that are necessary. We need to identify our sin,
to actually be aware of what is sin. God has given his holy
law, sin is the transgression of the law of God. The law was
given first with Adam just in a Oral way, but it is said that
there is no transgression where there is no law. Sin is not imputed
when there is no law. Therefore it was God himself
who first wrote the law on the tables of stone and Mount Sinai. And the law was given that all
the world might become guilty before God. The Apostle Paul,
Saul, as he was, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, thought that he
lived a righteous and upright life. He was like the Pharisee
that prayed in the temple that our Lord spoke of, that only
spoke of all his good deeds, what he had done. Saul, as he was, was at first,
though a religious man, completely ignorant of himself as a sinner. He didn't see him. He didn't
identify his sins. He didn't recognize them. He
thought that he was a good man. So the Lord brought the law of
God through one point, thou shalt not cover wrought in him or manner
of evil concupiscence, sexual desire, and it brought him in
as a guilty sinner. He says, I was alive once, but
when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. That which was ordained unto
life I found to be unto death. It is God's work to convince
of sin, and we need that we are convinced of our sin, that we
recognise it, that we realize it is against God, that we do
acknowledge it as a sin, and we do confess it as our sin. When we read that of Daniel,
you might say, well, Daniel was a very godly man, an upright
man. Of all the people of Israel,
he was the least, you would think, that ever had need of confessing
of his sin. You think his prayer And confession
should have been confessing all the sins of their nation, his
people, and not including himself. But he included himself. He realized
he knew that he was a sinner. The hymn writer says, though
our outside be kept clean, the sinner, he knows the filth within. He knows what is going on within. And so that is very mindful with
Paul, it was a specific sin. And we can in our prayers just
pray in a general way, but really a general way brings general
forgiveness, which is not a forgiveness to points. And maybe always view
where we are convicted or found out, tripped up in one particular
sin. May that change our prayers,
so our prayers dwell upon that sin, and that is what we confess,
and all of its aggravations, all of the different parts of
it, to confess it before God. Another thing that we need to
confess before God is this, that often we are unwilling to really
forsake sin. Our deceitful hearts, they will
say, now you don't pray against that sin. I still want to commit
it. I still want to indulge in. So
don't make a point of that sin. Because if you do, then you're
aiming at stopping me from walking in that path. And I want to still
continue in it. And part of what we confess is
our deceitful heart, our love of sin, our inability of ourselves
to deliver ourselves from it. And yet we know if we are not
delivered, if we are not saved, then we are lost and that we
need to turn. We need to confess those sins. So in confessing a sin, Often
there's other things that we're confessing at the same time. The aggravation of it, the context
in which it was done, the provocations, the goodness that had been shown
before, and what we have sinned against light, against knowledge. A different sin than those ignorant
of that light or of that knowledge. And so a confession of one sin
can have many other aspects to it that we bring before the Lord. And that is what it is, pouring
it out before the Lord, making known to the Lord what is going
on within. However hard, however ugly, however
wrong it is, we're told that whoso hideth his sins shall not
prosper, but whoso confesseth them and forsaketh them, they
shall be blessed. And so then, there are those
things that accompany this confession. And I do want to make sure that
we receive it in that way, they accompany the confession of sin. I want to first look at the context,
what John puts in the verses before and after. In verse 6 we read, If we say that
we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and
do not the truth. So here's another direction for
a poor sinner that has sins to confess. Are we walking in darkness
and at the same time say that we have fellowship with the Lord? Because if we are doing that,
then we are lying and we're not doing the truth. In verse seven, we have another
beautiful promise related to that on the other side of it.
But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, We have fellowship
one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth
us from all sin. So it's another statement, direction
of the path of a poor sinner to walk in. Our Lord said, when
He was on earth, that men, they would not come unto the light,
lest their deeds should be made manifest. And I'm sure many of
us will know that our own deceitful heart has avoided parts of the
Word of God because we know what is in them and we don't want
to read it. We don't want to have to come
face to face with our sin, so we'd rather just read somewhere
else. And it's a mercy if God shows
us that deceit and shows us how inconsistent with a true desire
to be saved and a salvation and yet it is true we have such a
heart like that but those whose ways are completely governed
by that who won't even have a have the whole word of God at all
they're not just avoiding certain parts of it but won't have it
at all but there are those that are avoiding major parts of the
Word of God. In the professing church, openly,
many of our politicians confess to be Christians, but we fear
that many of them are avoiding many parts, even of our Lord's
own words, and therefore the laws that are made are not according
to the Word of God. And no testimony is held in our
Parliament as to what the Word of God says. The Word of God
is a light and it shows forth the darkness. You know, if we
had in this chapel, if it was in the night, in a deep darkness,
we wouldn't see the pews, we wouldn't see one another. We
could imagine what was there, but we wouldn't know what was
there. If then we brought a light, that
light would make manifest, it would show what otherwise was
hidden. It wouldn't make the pews there,
it wouldn't make the people there, but it would show what was there
already. And so the light of God's Word,
it doesn't put sin in our hearts. It doesn't make us to be sinners
and against God. but it shows what the condition
of our hearts are. And God does that. He does that
through His Word. He does that through the preaching
of the Word. And where that is so, then that
will bring us to know those things we are to confess before Him. Then we have some other statements
in verse 8. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So one that
is confessing their sin, in conjunction with that, we are not to say
that we have no sin. Maybe we just got to confess
a little bit, but we haven't got much. But the word says here,
if we're saying we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. In verse 10, the other side of
our text, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar
and his word is not in us. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. And we should remember this.
And so the word here is for sinners again and again, no Peter said,
How many times shall my brother sin against me, and turn again,
and repent? And I forgive him till seven
times, nay, till seventy times seven. So here's another thing
that comes along with the confession, and that is repentance. It is
turning. We read when John was baptising,
there came the people out to him, confessing their sins. and he baptized them. In Acts
2, when Peter has those convicted of crucifying the Lord Jesus
Christ, those who were pricked in their hearts under his sermon,
so they were confessing what they had done, acknowledging
what they had done. So Peter said, when they said,
what shall we do? repent and be baptized. They were to turn, turn from
their thoughts of Jesus of Nazareth as a blasphemer, as Beelzebub,
and to embrace that he was the true, eternal Son of God. He was the Christ. And that that
was to be a real change of thought, a change of all of their beings. and on that they were baptized. And so, one that is confessing,
especially with willful, outward acts of sin, a course of life,
we should make every effort to avoid those occurrences and to
not walk in that way. It's a very difficult thing,
when it comes to our thoughts, our affections, and the hymn
writer says, affections wild, by sin defiled, oft carry us
away. But even that, dear Job, he says,
I have made a covenant with mine eyes, why then should I think
upon a maid? And Job is acknowledging that
what he sees is affecting his thoughts. And what we hear affects
our thoughts. And so we should take those measures
to try very hard to avoid those things, looking at those things. We might see something. We're
driving down the road and we see a billboard that might be
a lewd billboard, and we're just conscious of it. But if we turn
to have a look at it, we probably end up smashing the car while
we're doing so. It's a different thing. knowing
something is there than to actually dwelling upon it and looking
on it. And so let thine eyes look right
on thy footsteps straight before thee. We read in 2 Corinthians
that the sorrow of the world worketh death, but godly sorrow
worketh repentance, that not to be repented of. And so another
aspect of where sin is being confessed, where it is really
felt, is that it brings sorrow. It's another thing to confess.
Lord, I don't feel the sorrow that I feel I should do. I don't
feel to mourn over it. I can acknowledge it, I can see
it as sin, but I don't mourn, I don't really feel the sorrow
for that sin, and to confess that before the Lord as well,
maybe as well, that we don't take measures to avoid sins,
and we need to confess that before the Lord as well. So, just on
one thing, it is bringing many things to confess, it's laying
bare our heart before the Lord, that which He sees already, He
knows it to be so. But these parts of the Word,
they look at from each a different angle of a sinner coming before
the Lord with those sins, what he is to say, what he is to do,
how he is to act. But I said at the beginning,
I don't want to muddy our text by any going away and say, well,
I can't walk in this way because my confession is not genuine. I'm not sorrowing. I'm still
half planning to indulge that sin. I can't promise future good
to bring. Well, each one of those points
is another thing to confess. the sin itself, then all of the
aggravations, all of the aspects, but don't turn away from this
verse. May we be in our prayers, those
like Daniel, those like David, against Thee, Thee only have
I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. Restore unto me the
joy of Thy salvation. David knew the Lord had dealt
with his sin, brought him to know it through the parable that
Nathan brought. This is one of the marks of the
children of God, that God will bring our sin to our remembrance. And if we don't hearken, then
he chastens us well. Now no chastening for the present
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth
the peaceable fruit of righteousness, to them that are exercised thereby. And so joined with sin and sinning
is the Lord's chastening. The Lord's bringing these things
to our remembrance. One thing is certain, that you
and I, as we go through this life, will have to deal with
our sin. We'll have to face up to it,
the reality of it, And that not only our sin, but that we ourselves
are sinners. And the Gospel is suited to sinners. And God's prescription, His direction,
His guidance in the Word is in verses like this. What shall
I do? How can I go? What if I have
Backslidden so far. What if I feel my heart so hard? I feel so far off. I can hardly
pray for a few minutes. My mind goes away onto other
things. And I don't feel my prayers are
sincere. I feel to be calmly minded and
not even spiritually minded. I don't have an appetite for
the word of God. I don't relish it. When I'm listening
to a sermon or reading the word, my mind is going to this and
that, and the reading is finished, and I can't even remember what
is read. And the hymns are sung. And if
someone had asked me straight afterwards what was in the hymn,
I wouldn't know. And we may have to recognize
how far off we are or how hard we are. And these are things
that we Confess before the Lord. Tell the Lord about it. Acknowledge it. Don't try to
imagine it is not as bad a case as it is and just bluff our way
through. That won't work. It won't be restoring at all. If the Lord has hidden his face
and he's withdrawn his grace from us and we feel so lifeless
and hard, How much better is it to say to the Lord, Lord,
I need and value thy grace and the blessing of life. Without
it, I return as if I was of the world that knew nothing at all.
If it was the other way, the Lord would say, why? I've withheld
my grace and help from this sinner, and he acts as if I haven't.
And they're just going on. as if they can get to heaven
without my help, without my grace, without forgiveness and pardon,
it's better to actually tell the Lord we miss the influence
of His grace. And what a sad case and condition
that we are in. So this is the path we are to
take as sinners, confession, of our sin in prayer before our
God. I want to look secondly at how
God will bless. We might say, how can he bless? How can he bless a sinner? We're told here he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins. If we were to go back to the
Old Testament, after Solomon had dedicated the temple, and
the Lord came and blessed him, and we read in 2 Chronicles chapter
7 and verse 14, the Lord saying, If my people which are called
by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and
turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven
and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." And he
says, now mine eyes shall be open and mine ears attend unto
the prayer that is made in this place. And really, we may say,
unto the prayer of my people in confession. God is faithful
because of that which is written in the word of God. In Colossians
chapter 2 verse 13, we read, You being dead in your sins and
the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with
him, having forgiven you all trespasses. We would remember
that all of God's people, their sins have been put away at Calvary
before they were ever born, or at least in the New Testament
ones. There it was, thou hast laid on him the iniquity of us
all. There the sin has been put away. But what remains and what is
needed is for that to be applied and felt imputed to a sinner
and so that he knows that peace and pardon and forgiveness, and
knows that his sins were laid upon the Lord. They shall look
upon him whom they have pierced. We read also in Paul's epistle
to the Galatians, in the first chapter, we read this in chapter,
in verse seven, in whom we have redemption through his blood.
the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. And so the way that God forgives
a sinner, how He can do it is in faithfulness to His promises
and to His Word. Remember His name, His name shall
be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. and that He is just, because
those sins already have been laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Already He has borne them away. In Isaiah 53, He shall see His
seed. The pleasure of the Lord shall
prosper in His hand. The Lord shall see those for
whom He died. They shall be quickened. They
shall be called by grace, their resistible grace. They will be
given repentance, they will be given confession, they will be
given spiritual life, but they had to walk it out. We sung of
our middle hymn, that strange path of a believer, because it
seems a strange thing when one becomes a believer, then they
become more and more feelingly a sinner. And where we grow in
grace and in the knowledge of the Lord, That's not getting
better and better in ourselves. If we're growing in grace, grace
is the opposite to works. And so more and more we're feeling
our own works as nothing, as worthless, as marred by sin,
and more and more needing mercy and the free, sovereign grace
of God to be bestowed upon us. More and more realizing, as the
hymn said, if ever My poor soul be saved, tis Christ must be
the way. All of mercy, all of grace. And that is brought about by
seeing more and more of ourselves. At the beginning, sometimes we
cannot stand much, but we read in Ezekiel, turn again, thou
son of man, thou shalt see greater abominations than these. And we might think a strange
thing, that the Lord does not just once like he did with the
Apostle Paul, as recorded with the Apostle Paul, show him one
sin, but show us another and another where we didn't even
think it was there. Sometimes things that happen
in providence, they show us what we are. We might think we're
a nice person, but you get a situation that arises and the nasty side
of us comes out. We might think that we never
tell a lie, but we have a situation and we find ourselves lying,
not telling the truth or economical with the truth. The Lord knows
how to bring those things, to bring the muck, the sin, the
evil up and to show us that we are capable of these things. Sometimes you might see the sin
like David did in another, as in the parable, when he was convinced
of seeing in another, then Nathan said, Thou art the man. It's
easier to see other men's faults than our own. That's why we are
to pray for our enemies, because often when we pray for our enemies,
the Lord will turn it round and our words die upon our lips when
we realize actually we do exactly the same thing as what our enemies
are doing against us. And the Lord uses that way to
show us our sin. So the Lord is just in doing
it. He is dealing with his people
for their good, for their salvation. He himself has brought them to
confession. He himself has convicted them
of sin. He has made them what they are,
but bids them walk this path of confession. because it is
the way he has appointed, not man, he has appointed, that our
sins might be forgiven. And so on to, look then lastly,
at God's blessing, forgiveness and cleansing from all unrighteousness. Some of the commentators would
say, well, The forgiveness of our sins and the cleansing from
all unrighteousness is the same thing, it's just put in a different
way. I've never viewed it as that.
I always view it as the forgiveness of our sins, those sins that
are being confessed. The Lord is just to forgive them.
Now this is an act of God. We are used to doing things that
we might say, well, we're given a prescription as to how to do
something. We follow these steps and we
achieve an end. But our text is bringing it before
the Lord, and it is the Lord, an act of sovereign grace and
work upon our hearts. He forgives our sins. He brings
pardon, brings forgiveness. rolls away the reproach, takes
away the condemnation, brings again peace. This is God's work,
this is what He is doing. In walking out this verse we
are confessing here is something we are doing as directed by our
God and He will act accordingly. Our eyes not upon our efforts,
not upon Our deservings but upon the Lord working for us, the
Almighty Eternal God, working in our hearts, bring forgiveness
of sin. But there's another aspect, and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What may so hinder us from confession,
often, is the thought that we shall turn again and will end
up committing the same sins. But here is this ray of hope
that not only does God forgive the sin, but He also cleanses
us from this unrighteousness. All our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags, and we're never ever to trust in our own righteousness. But God's people are sanctified. The Lord does save them from
their sin, from the power and dominion of their sin. And their
lives are not the lives of an infidel or one that is not the
Lord's people. When Barnabas saw the grace of
God, he saw difference in man's lives. Grace makes a difference. And where we are cleansed from
all unrighteousness, That again is the act of the Lord, interning
us, renewing our hearts, bringing us again to walk in the Spirit
and to cleanse us from those very ways that we have confessed
before the Lord. So may it be an encouragement,
this verse, not only to receive the forgiveness of our sins,
but also to have our sins dealt with so that their power is broken,
their strength is broken, and the Lord gives us that help and
grace to bear them. We know from Hebrews 12 that
we shall have to resist sin all our days. We are told, you have
not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. That gives such a picture of
how much sin tries to gain the ascendancy and what a warfare
and a battle it is against it. Dear weary traveller to eternity,
soldier of Christ, battle-worn, struggling against sin, be encouraged,
be encouraged in the Lord Jesus Christ. Encourage you to confess
our sins and to fight on, to resist on, taking on the whole
armour of God, resisting the devil, relying on God's promise,
and he shall flee from you. Remember the Lord is on our side
when fighting against sin. He's like the Jews in Mordecai's
day, Queen Esther's day. What a difference it made when
the authority of the king was on their side. They still had
the enemy, they still had the day appointed he'd rise up, but
they had the King's commission, and that made all the difference,
made it a day of joy. And that's an important thing. The Lord is on our side when
we are resisting, fighting, confessing our sin. But when we are walking
in a hardened way, resisting, all pricks of conscience and
desiring to have our fill of this world, irrespective of the
consequences, then we have not God on our side. But what a mercy if we are found
as sinners and with much to confess about our sins. But we are confessing. that does form a major part of
our prayers as we come before the Lord, may not be all. When we discern the Lord has
weakened the power of sin, give Him thanks for it. When He has
delivered us, give Him thanks for it. When He's brought peace
into our poor souls, praise Him and thank Him for it. When we
bring these specific things, they are things that God acts,
He moves, He does, identifiable. And that peace of God which passeth
all understanding, that keeps our hearts and minds through
Jesus Christ. Well, may this word be a help,
a blessing to us. Remember the foundation of the
Lord's faithfulness and justness is that precious blood that was
shed at Calvary, cleanseth from all sin. The verse 7, the blood
of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. May we walk
then in the light, confessing our sins. Amen.