Beginning in chapter 2, 1 John,
verse 1, John says, My little children, these things write
I unto you, that ye sin not. And if, this word is translated
other places, when, when. And if any man sin, we have an
advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He
is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also
for the sins of the whole world. He begins here with this word,
my little children. My little children. And He uses
this address nine times in this epistle. Little children. That's
what Christ, how He addressed His disciples. It didn't matter
what their age was, It didn't matter how new they were in the
faith or how long they had been in the faith. He addressed them
as little children. It reminds us, reminds the believer
that as long as we're in this flesh, we're absolutely dependent
upon our Father. And we come to our Father. We
have access to Him. We have liberty to come to Him.
I was thinking about Joshua. He's the youngest one here. I
was thinking about Joshua coming to art and being able to just
come to him and feel like he's going to be received by him because
it's his father. He can come to him. That's how
our relationship is as believers with the Father. And the Lord
said, verily, verily, He said, except ye be converted and become
as little children. You cannot enter the Kingdom
of Heaven. Little children. Totally dependent. Absolutely
dependent. Now John says here, these things
write I unto you that you sin not. Now these things he's writing. Let's go back to the beginning.
Go back to 1 John 1. He says, that which was from
the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with
our eyes, which we have looked upon, And our hands have handled
of the Word, capital W, the Word of life, Christ Jesus. For the life was manifested,
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The life was manifested
and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that
eternal life. He's talking about a person,
isn't he? He's talking about Christ. He's the eternal life,
the life. which was with the Father from
the beginning, from before the world began, and was manifested
unto us, that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you
that ye also may have fellowship with us." Or have the same fellowship
that we have. Now he's going to tell us what
that is. And truly, our fellowship is with the Father. and with
His Son Jesus Christ. Little children is what He's
saying. I'm a little child and I have
fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. I can come
to Him. That's oneness. The Lord said
in John 17, As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that
they may also be one in us. This is the fellowship we're
talking about. Unity. Oneness. And with oneness comes
joy, and it comes freedom, and it comes liberty. Now watch this,
verse 4. These things write we unto you
that your joy may be full. What is this joy that he's talking
about? He's talking about this oneness, this unity. You can
turn there if you'd like, Ephesians 3.17. Let me read this to you. Ephesians 3.17. Paul said that Christ may dwell in
your hearts by faith. Christ dwell in your hearts,
in you by faith. That you may be rooted and grounded
in love. Look at verse 19. And to know
the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that you might be
filled with all the fullness of God. This is that fullness. We're talking about Christ being
formed in a person. So John's given two reasons here
that he's writing this. He said, I'm writing this that
you sin not, and I'm writing this that your joy may be full.
Now what kind of message, what kind of What kind of word is
it that's going to create a fullness of joy in a sinner and also constrain
the sinner not to sin? not to walk on in a life of sin
and rebellion against God. What's going to do that? What
message is going to do that? There's only one message that
will do that. It's the message of God's free and sovereign grace,
of His electing grace, of His saving grace, of His forgiving
grace, that grace that will not turn away one of His children,
that will not turn away from them. Grace didn't cause Him
to choose anybody. Grace was free, it was unmerited. Nothing in us caused Him to choose
us and nothing in Him will cause Him to turn away from His people. Now watch verse 5, this then
is the message which we have heard of Him, of Him, of Christ. This is the message and we declare
it unto you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at
all. Every sinner who believes on Christ, every sinner who comes
to God shall have God to do for us what is right, what is faithful,
what is just. This is to have the light of
life, to know that the God of the whole earth, our God, who
is our Father, is going to do that which is right for us, that
which is faithful to us, because in Him is no darkness at all. There's no There's no unrighteousness
in Him. There's no unfaithfulness in
Him. There's nothing in Him that's unjust. There's nothing in Him
that's unmerciful. There's no darkness in Him. He
is life. This is what Christ said, He
that followeth Me, He that forsakes everything and comes to Me shall
not walk in darkness. Why? but he shall have the light
of life. He's gonna have it. I'm gonna
make, I'm gonna see to it he has the light of life. Verse six, now if we say that
we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and
do not the truth. Now we're talking about coming
to God. We're talking about coming to
Christ by faith. And anybody that says he has
Christ, has fellowship with Him, that Christ is in him, and he
in Christ, that he believes on Christ, and yet walks in darkness. He's afraid to come to Christ. He's afraid to own what he is
before God. He's afraid to lay open his heart
before God and bring forth all the sins that he is and confess
them before God. And he hides back from the light.
He won't come out into the light. He says he knows Him. And before
men, he may look like he knows Him. But between him and God,
he won't come out into the light. He won't walk into Christ and
come to Christ and confess to God. This is a personal thing.
This is between a sinner and between God. That person is yet
in darkness. He's afraid of God. He's afraid of Christ. He doesn't
know the faithfulness and justice of God to forgive and to give
forgiveness. He doesn't know anything about
it. He hasn't tasted that. He doesn't have anything about
that. Let me show you John 3, 20. John 3, 20. He says, John said right here if we say
we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness we lie and do
not the truth What's what the Lord said this is where we're
coming to now John 3 20 John 3 20 Everyone that doeth
evil hateth the light neither cometh to the light lest his
deeds should be discovered, lest they should be out in the open
and out in the light. Man thinks he can hide these
things from God, but God doesn't know them. But he that doeth
truth cometh to the light. He comes to Christ, that his
deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Now
look back at 1 John 1.7. Now He said there, if we say
we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and
do not the truth. But if we walk in the light,
as He is in the light, if we come to the light, to Christ,
Christ as Christ is the light, He is the light. If we come to
Him, we have fellowship one with another. We will have, this is
a promise, we will have fellowship with God. That's what John just
said. Our fellowship is with the Father.
We'll have fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus
Christ. And look, and the blood of Jesus
Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. It's His blood
through the Spirit that purges the conscience. John's sitting
here, he's saying, I'm declaring these words to you that your
joy might be full, that you might be filled with this word of life,
filled with this light of life, have the light of Christ, that
you might come to Him and know that you can come to Him. And
he says to us here now, when this word's going forth, that
light's going to, through the blood of Christ, He purges first,
He purges the conscience. He makes us honest. He washes
us inwardly. And He makes us to be able to
see what we are and to see who He is. And He draws us to Him. And when we come to Him, we behold
in Him. We've been cleansed from all
sin. And He daily, continually, does this same work of grace
and continues to cleanse us by His blood. And by this light,
which is God's fellowship with us, it's His communion in us,
whereby He abides in us and He keeps us abiding in Him. By this
fellowship, by His continual faithfulness to forgive us, to
keep us, He keeps us walking before Him in the light. Listen,
I want you to turn to these. Psalm 56, 13. Psalm 56, 13. This
is how the Psalmist put it. Psalm 56, 13. Thou hast delivered my soul from death. Wilt not thou deliver my feet
from falling that I may walk before God in the light of the
living? That's exactly what he continues
to do. Psalm 89, look at verse 15. Psalm 89, verse 15. Blessed is the people that know
the joyful sound. Well, that's what I'm trying
to tell you. This is what John said. I'm telling you this that
your joy may be full. The Lord said, I'm giving you
these words that my joy might be in you. Blessed is the people
that know the joyful sound. They shall walk, O Lord, in the
light of thy countenance. Now look back. Look back now. Verse John 1 and look at verse... If we walk in the light, You
come to the light, you come to Christ, as evil and as wretched
as you may be, come to Christ, and you'll find fellowship with
the Father, and you'll find that the blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth us from all sin. Now look at verse 8. Now, if
we hear that and we say, well I don't have any sin, I don't
have any sin to be cleansed of. John says, if we say that we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth's not in us. Look
down at verse 10. If we say that we've not sinned,
we make God a liar. And His word's not in us. We're
lying to ourselves, we're lying to God, and we're calling God
a liar. Because He said that's all we
are in ourselves is sin. Any sinner who won't come to
Christ, who won't come to the light because he thinks he has
no sin is deceiving himself. He's deceived by the sinfulness,
by the darkness of his own heart. And the truth's not in him. Now
you listen to me. Anybody here that has not come
to Christ by faith, listen, the thing that's keeping you from
Christ is this, you will not take sides with God against yourself. That's what's keeping you from
God. It's the same as saying, I don't have any sin. It's the
same as saying, I'm righteous. It's the same as saying, what
need do I have of God? That's what's keeping a man from
Christ. And any man who claims to be a believer and imagines
he's not sinned, that he doesn't have any sin today or this hour
or while we've been sitting here listening to this Word, that
man's deceived and the truth's not in him. He doesn't have the
Word of God in him either. He's a liar. As believers, by
God's grace, through faith in Christ, we know this, we've been
justified by Christ. We know that we've been freed
from the guilt of sin. We've been freed from the condemnation
of sin. We've been freed from the dominion
of sin reigning in us. It's not having dominion over
us anymore in our body. We've been freed from the wrath
of God towards sin. Before God in Christ, before
God, the all-knowing God in Christ, we have no sin. He said, I will
remember your sin no more. I will not remember it anymore
because Christ has put away the sin of His people. But because
of His light, because we do have His light shining in our hearts,
we know that in our flesh dwells nothing good. Absolutely nothing. Our flesh is what it's been and
it's what it will be. And it's sin. And sin therefore
is mixed with everything we do. I'm sinning right now. We're since mixed with everything
that we do. We have a need, a constant need,
just like little children have the continual need of their father. We have the continual need of
being cleansed from our sins every hour, every day. Now you
remember this, John's writing this that our joy might be full.
And he's writing this that we sin not. This is the joy and
constraint of the believer right here. This is it. This is what
drew us to Christ in the first hour and this is what keeps us
coming to Christ right here. This is the joy and constraint
of the believer. Verse 9. If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. If we confess our sins, don't
tell them to me, I can't help you. Don't go to a priest and
tell him, he can't help you. Don't go and try to pay for forgiveness. Nobody can give this to you but
God Almighty. He's the only one and He does
it in His Son. And this is what He says, God
is faithful. to forgive and to cleanse. Faithful
to Christ for the sake of Christ, faithful to the one into whose
heart he speaks and draws him to himself, saying, I will forgive
thee. I have and I shall. You have
complete forgiveness. He's faithful to his word. He's just to do it. He's just
to do it because the blood of Christ has cleansed everyone
that Christ died for. It's cleansed them. And He not
only is faithful and just, He does it. He forgives and cleanses
the believer of all unrighteousness. Now this is the peace. This is
the joy right here. You ever been in a strange place
where you didn't know anybody? and there's just nobody that
you could come to and just that knew you and that you know so
that you just are comfortable with them and just able to come
to them. You ever been in a place where
that's the case? Well, the joy and the constraint of a believer
is this. We have fellowship with God. We are able to come to Him
and to be honest with Him, and to pour out our hearts to Him,
and to not hold anything back, and to tell Him of all the sins
that we know of, and to confess to Him, not only that, Lord,
but there are sins we don't even know about, we don't even realize. We're taking sides with God against
ourselves and coming and asking Him, Lord, forgive me. If you
don't forgive me, I'll have no forgiveness. If you don't create
in me a clean heart, I will not be cleansed. If you don't cleanse
me, I won't be clean. But it's joy. I just wish I could
express it. I wish I could. could get it
into somebody's heart just how, what a joy it is to be, have
that burden of trying to hide in the darkness and to hide from
God, to be able to step into His light and say, Lord, here
I am. And to know He was faithful and just to forgive
him. Man, how can he do that for the
believer? Now, here's where we started. Verse 1, My little children,
these things write unto you that you sin not. And if, when, any
man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous, and He is the satisfaction for our sins, the
complete and total atonement for our sins. And not fires only,
but also for the sins of the whole world. For his people that
he died for, in this whole world, he's the advocate for them. Are
you one of those? Are you one he died for? Let
me tell you what he does. An advocate is somebody who pleads
for another before the judge. Now you get, try to get this
picture. This is a judge, a law, we're
talking about law here. We're talking about a court.
an advocate. He's the defendant of the guilty
party. And you think about a lawyer
who represents his client before the judge and he says, I'm not
only going to defend him, he's guilty, but I'm going to pay
all the sentence. I'm going to pay the whole debt
of justice that he owes, not only for this crime of the past,
but for the crimes that he's engaged in right now and for
the crimes that he's going to commit in the future. This lawyer
said, I'm going to pay for every one of them. And so he does the
time, he pays the sentence, he satisfies justice completely. And then this man does something
else, commits another crime. And he's brought before the judge,
and the advocate stands between him and the judge, between the
guilty one and the judge. And he says, for my sake, who
has completely and totally paid this man's debt. I paid the debt
that he's just now committed. And he says, for my sake, who
paid it, and for the sake of the justice of this court, don't
put this to his charge. Don't lay this to his charge.
That's what Christ has done. I want you to see this. Psalm
69. Listen to this statement. Forgiveness for one of Christ's
redeemed. For somebody that He is the advocate
for. It's not only an act of mercy
from God. It's an act of justice. He's
faithful and just to forgive us. Now look at Psalm 69. God
is faithful and He's just. He's faithful and He's just. Because Christ has honored, He's
magnified the law of God for those He represented on the cross.
Jew and Gentile all over the world. He's the advocate for
them. And by His presence with the
Father in glory. Now look at this, Psalm 69, 5.
Oh God, Thou knowest my foolishness,
and my sins are not hid from Thee. Now the Lord said if anybody
confesses their sins, He is faithful and just to forgive them their
sins. This is Christ speaking. This is Christ speaking. He owned
the sins of His people to be His own. And He confessed them
before the Father. Now listen, in confessing the
sin of His people to be His own, Christ justified the sentence
of the law. He justified what the law says
against Himself in the place of those for whom He died. That's
what confession of sin does. It justifies the law as being
right in what it says. And then in presenting himself
to pay the wages of sin, to pay the penalty that his people owed,
he vindicated the sanction of the law and the perfection of
the law. He vindicated the fact law's got to be satisfied. It
deserves to be satisfied. It's right and holy and just.
And then thirdly, in paying the wages of sin, he satisfied the
law. He's the propitiation for His
people. So Christ pleads two things.
Here's what He pleads. He pleads for His own sake, and
He pleads for the sake of God's own glory, His own righteousness.
Look at verse 6. Let not them that wait on Thee,
O Lord God of hosts... And that word wait means believe.
Let not them that wait on Thee, O Lord God of hosts, be ashamed,
here's why, for my sake. Let not those that seek thee
be confounded, here's why, for my sake, O God of Israel. Here's the second reason, because
for thy sake I have borne reproach. I have. Shame hath covered my
face. So this advocate stands before
the father and his very presence is the pleading. His very presence
with the father is all that has to be said. But what his presence
says is, for my sake, who has borne the reproach, who has satisfied
justice, who has confessed the sins of these people before thee,
for my sake and for your sake, because you're just God and a
holy God and your laws righteous. Lay not this charge to their
account. This is how Augustus Toplady
put it. Payment God cannot twice demand. First at my bleeding surety's
hand, then again at mine. And so God is faithful and just
to forgive. all that come to Him, confessing
to Him what we are. Confessing, taking sides with
God and saying, God, You're just and I'm unjust. You're holy and
I'm unholy. You're right and I'm wrong. And He's just and faithful to
cleanse us. And this is the cleansing. This
is the cleansing that comes into the heart. This is the light
that comes into the heart. This is the light of life that
comes into the heart. He says, take away the filthy
garbage from him and put on a change of raiment on him. Put him in
the robe of my righteousness. And we say, thus saith the Lord
thy God. the God that pleadeth the cause
of His people. Behold, I've taken out of thy
hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury,
and thou shalt no more drink it again." I've satisfied my fury. Fury
is not in me towards you. This is the light of life. This
is what you're going to find if you just come to Christ and
believe on Him. And this is what it does. Lamentations
3.58 says this is the answer. This is what the people cry out
to Him. Oh Lord, Thou has pleaded the
causes of my soul. Thou has redeemed my life. That's being filled with the
joy that He's talking about. And here's the second thing it
does. It causes you to walk after the commandments of God. It causes
you to desire to go and sin no more. manifests itself by taking
away the finger and the oppression that we have by nature towards
one another and it causes us to love one another. For this
reason, be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one
another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you. And so
these twofold things were accomplished when this word of life comes
into our heart. The joy of our hearts is filled
up with this forgiveness of Christ, and it constrains us, brethren,
to sin no more. There's nothing else. You put law on a man, you put
rules and regulations on a man, you put a yoke on a man that
he cannot bear, that he cannot possibly, there is absolutely
no way he can satisfy. And all it does is cause him
to want to buck and cast off that yoke and be free from those
chains. It will cause him to transgress
more and more. but you declare this work having
been done by Christ Jesus and declare now, even as we go through
this life and we're just stumbling and falling and weak and helpless,
foolish sinners, even now that we believe Him, this is the message
that God keeps using to fill His children with joy, to fill
up our hearts with joy, and to keep drawing us to Him to say,
Lord, oh, forgive me, the sinner. I want so much. I want now, I
see in His forgiveness, I see something of the holiness and
the justice and the righteousness of the law of God. Not just the
letter of it, of the God of the law. And it makes me want to
follow Him. Makes me want to sin no more
against Him. I pray that's what will happen
with this message. Amen.