And my text was found in chapter
2, verses 1 and 2. But as I began this message,
it started back in chapter 1 and went down to chapter 2, and that's
what I plan on doing this evening, is going basically verse by verse
until we get to chapter 2. But let's read chapter 2 and
verse 1 and 2 together. John says, My little children,
these things I write unto you, that you sin not. 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 our sins only, but
also for the sins of the whole world. I've entitled this message,
Our Continual, Perpetual, and Everlasting Advocate. Continual,
Perpetual, and Everlasting Advocate. Now, John begins this by saying,
My little children, these things I write unto you, that you sin
not." And so in order to understand where He is coming from and the
things that He had written, we're going to go back to chapter 1
and read those things that He had written to them. He had written
these things for a purpose, that they sin not. And then He had
written these things for their comfort, that when they sin,
that they have an advocate with the Father. And so, let's go
back to chapter 1 and verse 1. The first thing that John here
establishes in his letters, the same thing he establishes in
his general epistle. And that is the deity of the
Lord Jesus Christ. 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 of Life." John here establishes the deity of Christ,
that which was in the beginning. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God, and all things that were made were
made by Him. Our Lord Jesus Christ is none
other than God, very God, the Son of the living God, equal
with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And so John, reflecting
on this person, deity, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, reflecting,
he reflects with such love and affection concerning his privilege,
Consider his privilege. He says that which was from the
beginning we have heard. Now, there's a lot of people
that heard God in the Old Testament, right? He was one of the very
privileged few that heard the audible voice of God. But not
only that, that's which we have seen with our eyes. Now, there's
a lot of people in the Old Testament that saw many signs and visions
and the pre-incarnate Christ. But John here says, I've done
more than that. I looked on Him and our hands
have handled the Word of life. What is he saying? He's saying
that God was made flesh. He's testifying of both the deity
and the humanity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That
which was from the beginning came down, we saw Him, we heard
Him, and not only heard and saw Him, we touched Him. We handled
Him. We handled the word of life. And now John declares to us the
record of what he saw and what he heard of Christ. For this,
for a purpose, he said, for the life was manifest, and we've
seen it and bear witness and show unto you eternal life, which
was with the Father and was manifest unto us. That which we have seen
and heard declare we unto you for this purpose. that you also
may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with
the father and with his son jesus christ john is testifying saying
i'm right these things so that you might have the same fellowship
that i have The same fellowship that we apostles had who handled
Him and touched Him and heard Him and saw Him. He said, these
things I write unto you that you might have that same fellowship,
that same intimate union that we had, which is fellowship with the
Father and the Son. Verse 4, And these things I write
unto you, that your joy may be full. Is that not the most joyful
thing? To be able to be in union and fellowship with God. To be
at peace with God. That you and God are able to
abide together. That you would be acceptable.
unto God. This is why, this is how your
joy might be full. You want to know what joy is?
That's joy. That's joy if you have fellowship
with God. That's joy. And here's the message he revealed
to John concerning this fellowship. Verse 5, and this is the message
we have heard of him in declaring to you. Here's the message. God
is life. God is light and in Him is no
darkness at all. What does this mean? He said
when we heard it from His very lips, this very truth, that God
is holy. That's what we've learned from
Him. We learned that God is light. Unapproachable light. In Him is no sin, no darkness,
only righteousness and holy perfection. That's what we learned from Christ.
That's what we saw in Him. We saw holiness. We learned that
God is holy. And in order to have fellowship
with holiness, with light, what must you have? What must you
be in order to have fellowship with this God of light? You must be light. You must be as holy as God is. Look at what he said in verse
6. If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness,
we lie and do not the truth. He's told us this. If you walk
in darkness, if you have sin, you cannot walk in the light. If you say you have, you walk
with the light, you say you have fellowship with God, anybody
could say that, couldn't they? Anyone could say that. Well,
I have fellowship with God. Really? Well, are you as holy
as God is? Well, no. Then you don't have fellowship
with God. In order to have fellowship, you must be one. You must be
in union. You must be in harmony. How can
two walk together except they be agreed? In order to walk with
God, you must be walking in light. Perfect light. Verse 7, 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 cleanseth us
from all sin. Now see this, when I said that,
I know this is true, that every believer The red flag popped up. It just
did. Why? Because every believer understands
we have sinned. Every believer knows this about
ourselves. We are not just walking in darkness. We ourselves by
nature are darkness. We, by nature, are darkness.
We are sinners. We have come short of the glory
of God. There's none righteous, no, not one. There's none that
understandeth. There's none that seeketh after
God. They are altogether become unprofitable, but there's none
that doeth good, no, not one. So then if we say we have fellowship
with God but are not as righteous as God, John says we lie and
do not the truth. So then how may the apostles
as well as sinners have fellowship with God? That's the question
that Christ came to answer. That's what He came to show.
He came to show God in His holiness. He came to show you in your nature. And then He came to show us how
that we might have fellowship with perfect deity. How then can we who walk in darkness
Walk in light. There's only one way, and he
says it right there at the end. You see that? And the blood of
Jesus Christ, His Son, does what? Cleanseth us from all sin. Don't you see now how you may
walk in holiness? If the blood of Christ cleanseth
you from all sin, then you have no sin. He cleansed it. He washed it. And that word, cleanseth, is
a perpetual cleansing. It's not a one-time. It's a perpetual
cleansing. He has cleansed us, He is cleansing
us, and He shall cleanse us from all our sins. See, then, we,
that when the sinner comes to faith in Jesus Christ, you see,
we by nature have no holiness in ourselves, none whatsoever.
But in the day of God's grace, in the day of God's mercy, God
comes to the sinner and quickens him from the dead. Now, what
do we mean by that? It's what the Scripture calls
the new birth. It's what the Scripture calls a new nature.
God gives something holy. God creates something holy inside
of the sinner. He gives him a holy nature and
is made by the power of God. He gives us what the scripture
calls a new heart. And this new heart, it loves
God. This new heart believes on the
Lord Jesus Christ. This new nature is something
that God made that cannot sin. Cannot sin. He gives us the very
presence of His Holy Spirit in our mortal frame and keeps us
in this faith firm until Christ returns. This is what God does
in order to establish fellowship between the sinner and Himself.
And this greatness of this power of the blood of Christ is that
it has completely and forever removed our sins from us. That's
the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. His blood has washed
away our sins. It has blotted them out from
the eyes of God so that he will never see them again. Jeremiah
15, verse 20, "'In those days, and at that time, saith Jehovah,
"'Iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be
none.'" The sins of Judah, and they shall not be found. Why?
"'For I will pardon them.'" whom I reserve." God pardons. In Isaiah chapter 44 and verse
22, he said, I have blotted out. Listen, I've blotted out as a
thick cloud, a thick cloud, thy transgression. And as a cloud,
thy sins return unto me. Why? For I have redeemed thee. Believer, listen, you may have
fellowship with God because the blood of Christ cleanseth us
from all our sin. The blood of Christ has blotted
out our sins completely from the sight of the justice of God. Completely. You remember that
great day of atonement when the high priest would kill that other
goat, but he confessed the sins on the scapegoat. And they would
take the strong man, and he would lift that scapegoat on his shoulders,
and you could watch him walk away into the wilderness. You
watch him walk, and you watch him walk, and pretty soon he's
so far out there that you can't see him, or you can't see the
goat. And you're waiting. You're waiting. And all of a
sudden, in the distance, there's the man. He's coming back. He
gets closer and closer, but you notice something's missing. The goat is gone. The sins are
gone. That's exactly what Christ did
on the cross. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
He bore them away, and when He died, we could not see Him. He
was buried. His Spirit ascended into the
Father. But when He came back from the
grave, notice there was something missing. Sin. It was gone. This is how we might have fellowship
with God. You want fellowship with God?
It's only through the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us
from all sin. And it's by this blood that He
makes in us. It was because of that sacrifice
God is able to create in us a holy nature. Paul said that this new
man is created after God, listen to these words, in true holiness. Listen, I have a very vague understanding
of holiness. I have never really seen holiness,
experienced holiness. But whatever true holiness is,
that's what God made me to be. That's what my new nature is.
It is created. It's not something I merited,
it's not something I made, it's something God created. And this was according to the
covenant. This is done because of a covenant made by God with
Himself in eternity. In Ezekiel 36, this covenant
says, I'll take you from among the heathen. Isn't that where
He got us? He got us from among the heathen. I gather you out of all countries
and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon
you and you shall be clean." Isn't that exactly what John
said? His blood cleanseth us from all our sins. From all your filthiness. Do
you have filthiness? Filthiness of thought? Filthiness
of action? Filthiness of deeds? Filthiness
of words? Listen, he said, I'm going to
cleanse all that. I'm gonna wash it all away. From all your idols. You ever worship a false god?
He said, I'm gonna get rid of that too. I'll cleanse you from
all your idols. And listen what I'm gonna do.
He said, I'll put a new heart in you. I'll give you a new heart. And a new spirit will I put within
you, and I will take away that stony heart out of your flesh
and give you a heart of flesh, a heart of feeling, a heart of
love. You see, man by nature can't
love God. His heart is stone. God says,
I'm going to give you a heart of feeling, a heart of love and
compassion and grace and mercy, a heart of faith. And I will put my spirit within
you not only will give you a new spirit. I'm gonna give you my
spirit That's something The Spirit of
God dwells in the bodies of his believers and cause you to walk
in my statutes and keep my judgments This is, friends, when he does
this, when we experience this, this is part of that sanctifying
work of God. Remember, God sanctified you
in election. He set you apart in election. He says in Ephesians chapter
1, He has given us all spiritual blessings and heavenly places
in Christ according as He had chosen us in Christ before the
foundation of the world that we should be what? Holy. There's
sanctification. and without blame. There's justification.
You see, He purposed our sanctification and justification in Christ Jesus
before the world began. You were sanctified long ago.
You were sanctified in Christ when He was here on the earth.
You were set apart in Him. while He was making you holy.
And this sanctification is continued when He comes and He gives us
a new heart. He sets us apart by making us
holy in our new nature. John Gill says of this sanctifying
work of Christ, he says, there is a perfection of sanctifying
grace in Christ. Perfect holiness is in Him. From
Him must we have our holiness as well as our righteousness.
For we stand in need of a holy nature as well as justifying
righteousness. And as without one, so neither
without the other can we enter the kingdom of God. For without
holiness, no man can see the Lord. Isn't that what John's
saying about fellowship? He's saying, look, if you want fellowship,
this is what Christ taught us. God's light. In Him is no darkness
at all. And if you want to be in fellowship
with Him, it must be by the blood of Jesus Christ. He must give
you a holy nature by which you may have fellowship with Him. And that's what God did for you,
isn't it? You who believe in Christ. That's exactly what he
done for us, that we may have fellowship with him. I pray God would give us such
faith to believe that. How confident would we be if
we could actually believe what God said? How sure of our fellowship with
God would we be if we could understand and truly believe what God says
about that nature. That we are made partakers of
the divine nature. I tell you this, we'd sing with
old Joseph Hart, we'd sing this hymn, with thy holy garments
on, I'm as holy as the holy one. That's the only way you can have
fellowship with God. You can't have fellowship with God any
other way. Now then, there's a problem,
isn't there? Why is it that you don't believe
that? Why is it that we have trouble believing that? Well, let me ask this question.
Believer, do you feel holy? Is this truth that is revealed
in Holy Scripture, does it not go against everything you see
and feel within your own soul? You know it does. Scripture says
you are complete in Him. Isn't that what Scripture says?
Do you feel complete? You don't feel it. Friends, we
don't even experience it in any measure in His fullness yet.
You are complete in Him. This is why faith is necessary,
isn't it? Because we don't see these, we don't feel these things,
we don't experience these things. So then, how is it that I am
so full of sin? If I'm holy, then how is it that
I'm so full of sin? How can it be that I am made
holy and have a new man created after God in true holiness, yet
sin corrupts everything I do? How can that be? Doesn't that
disrupt your peace? Doesn't that make you feel in
disunion with God, rather than having fellowship with God? How can we understand this seeming
contradiction? Well, the Apostle will now show
the reality of this experience. I like this. He doesn't hide
this truth. He doesn't try to do away with
this truth of your sin in you. He's actually going to show you
that's true. He doesn't excuse it, but he
shows you how it can be. Though we are made holy and perfect
by the work of Christ and by the grace of the Holy Spirit
in the new nature, yet we are not rid of sin because of this. The old man still abides in us. He still abides. Look at, well,
Paul said this about himself. You know this in Romans chapter
7. He said, For I know, I know that in me, that is, in my flesh,
That old man of sin I was born with, in my flesh dwells what? No good thing. He says, look,
I want to do good. I want to love God. I want to
serve God. There's a principle in me. There's a principle that loves
the law of God, that desires to do the law of God, that wants
to believe and trust Christ with everything in me. Yet there's
another law warring against my members. It leads me to despair. O wretched man that I am! Who
shall deliver me from this rotting corpse? I know you know the illustration
there that Paul is talking about, that Roman torture of tying a
dead corpse to the neck of a prisoner and making him drag it around
until it falls off. That's exactly how you feel.
You're a believer in Christ. I know that's how you feel. Every
ounce of you wants to ascend to heaven, and every ounce of
the other nature wants to bring you to hell. There's a constant
warfare within the heart of every believer in Christ. This is our
experience. Of everyone that is made holy
by the power of God and work of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual
warfare, Galatians chapter 5 and verse 17. The flesh, what is
that? That's the same old nature. The
old man of sin. The flesh lusteth against the
Spirit. That word lusteth, it means it
desires to go against everything that is spiritual, everything
that is good and right. It lusteth, it wants to drag
me down to the earth constantly. Lusting. Objects of carnal lust,
it lusts and works our fleshly. It is though though it is the
seed of the heart it shows itself in the flesh of its members of
our members which are yielded as instruments of unrighteousness
and makes and Dominates carnal our carnal nature even believers
themselves Often it prevails It lusteth what against the spirit
against everything that is holy Everything that holy nature wants.
The flesh wants the opposite. But there's something else here
that I know that that's the dominant thing in our mind. But I want
you to know this. The Spirit also lusteth against the flesh.
The Spirit is also opposed to the flesh. When I believe in Christ, guess
what? I am opposing the flesh. When I love Christ, I am opposing
the flesh. Tonight, what are we doing? We
are doing something the Spirit desires. We want to hear of Christ. I want to hear of my position.
I want to hear of what He's done. I want to hear that I am made
holy by His blood, cleansed of all my sins. What is that? That
is the spiritual man desires to hear those things. And friends,
make no mistake, if there is no desire for spiritual things,
if your flesh is just Winning all the time, something's wrong
with you. I'll tell you this, my flesh,
to my ability, it seems like my flesh is winning all the time.
That's not true. That's not true. How many times
has God allowed us to overcome sin? If he has, that's the work
of the Spirit in the new man. So John, in our text, he gives
us the record of this nature of sin. Look at verse 8. If we say we
have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Now,
some men would say this. Well, preacher, if God has made
us holy, and we have a holy nature, then surely we don't sin anymore.
John says, no, that's not true. There are some religions that
still believe that. You may run across a few of them, so be aware
of them. There are some that believe that once you're saved,
you don't have any ability to sin anymore. I know you raise
your eyebrows. There are people that believe
that. I mean, they're sincere. They don't sin. They'll tell
you right to your face they don't sin anymore. John says this,
look, they're deceived. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Every believer,
I'll tell you this, we know this of ourselves. That's true. We
know that to be true. Every believer is often plagued
with this truth that sin still remains in us. We are often brought
to the depths of shame and sorrow. Having taken our eyes off of
Christ and having tried to resist sin in our own strength, we have
found this to be true. You try to resist sin in your
own strength? You ever take your eye off Christ
and say, I got this? You sit down. I'll take care of this. I can handle this. And where do you find yourself? You find yourself in the teeth
of sin. You find yourself in the jaws
of death. Every time you do that in your
own strength. Every time. Not just one time. Every time
you take these things on yourself, you will fall. You will fall.
Why? Because we have sin in us. This is what moved David to cry,
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Hear my voice,
let thine ears be attentive to my supplication. If thou shouldest
mark iniquity, O Lord, who should stand? When we are brought to
see our sin and the depths and sorrow and pain it causes, what
do we do? We cry unto the Lord. See, that's
the new man. That's the holy nature of crying.
You ever cry? You ever cry unto God? Who's
doing that? The flesh? Well, the flesh is
crying all right. It's crying for satisfaction.
It's crying for relief of the pain, whatever consequence. But
the Spirit is crying unto God. For what? Forgiveness of sins. That's what the Spirit cries.
You take a lost man, a religious man, and he's hurt by the consequence
of his sin, he only wants a deliverance from the consequence. He doesn't
want forgiveness. God's people want forgiveness
of sin. If thou shouldest mark iniquity.
You know God marks iniquity? He is very meticulous about marking
iniquity. Very meticulous. Sins you have
no idea you've committed are marked. Marked by the holiness
of God. Marked in a book. You remember
there in Revelation it said, He saw the dead, both small and
great, stand before God, and the books were opened. Two books.
One book was opened, and there's a book over there, and it's got
all the names of these people with all of their sins written
in them, and He is judged out of that book. And God will judge
a man out of that book. He will give him exactly what
he deserves. If God gave you what you deserve,
what would it be? Damnation. Eternal wrath. That's what we deserve. But there's
another book. And the other book was open,
which is the book of life. And there were names written
in that book. And I tell you, their sins were meticulously
marked in that book just like the other one. There's a difference.
This book has a big blot stain covering all of those sins. It is the blood of Christ that
blotted out all the sins of those in that book. And on the right
hand of that, there's righteous deeds done. You see, those are
the works of Christ done in their stead. That's what you believers
are going to be judged out of that book. This is the hope of every believer
in Christ. that our names have been written
down, that Christ's blood has cleansed us from all our sins.
Therefore, here's the hope for such sinners, saved by grace.
David said, There is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be
free. That's exactly what John is telling
us in our text. Look back at verse 9. This is
what he's telling us in verse 9. He said, Look, we're not saying
you don't have any sin. But here it is, if we confess
our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and
cleanse us of all our unrighteousness. Have you sinned? Have you sinned? Believer, I'm talking to believers.
I'm not talking to lost. I know lost man has sinned. Have
you sinned? After you've been converted,
after you've received fellowship with God, have you sinned? See,
here's a promise for God for you, knowing that you have the
old man still with you, still dragging you into sin. Here is
a promise of levity. Here's a promise of lightness.
If you confess your sin, He is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. What does this mean, confess
your sin? Well, it does mean confess your sin, whatever sin
that is. But more than that, it's confessing
who you are. It is a constant confession of
I am sin. Sin is not just what I do, it
is who I am. It is a constant confession.
And what does this do? Does this give us any pride?
Does this allow us any merit? No, it abases the people of God. It shows us that our salvation
is totally dependent upon the merit of Christ and not upon
us. But this confession surely is
felt by the experience of certain sins when they're exposed, right?
Think of David. David, he committed adultery
and murder. Now, before he had committed
adultery and murder, these sins were hidden in his heart. They
were unknown to anybody, including himself. David, you would have
told him a year before that, David, you're going to commit
adultery with this woman, and you're going to murder her husband.
He would have laughed. He would have mocked you. Surely,
that would never happen to me. Said that? You ever said that?
You ever said that to see a believer fall? Watch him. Watch him fall.
And what do you say? Well, bless his heart. I never. Really? If you haven't, surely
it is the grace of God and the power of God that you haven't.
David, a man after God's own heart, committed adultery and
then murdered the husband to cover it up. Yet what did God
say about him? When he confessed his sin, he
said, I have sinned against the Lord. And what did Nathan say?
The Lord hath put away my sin. Now you mark it. He did
not put away consequences of his sin. David suffered consequences of
that sin for all the rest of his life. But I tell you this, God was
faithful to forgive him of his sin, to put it away. How faithful is he? We sing that
song, summer and winter, springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars
in their courses above, joined with all nature in manifold witness
to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love. We sing that song.
What does that mean? Well, it comes from Jeremiah. God says,
look, I made a covenant with you. I made a covenant with you
that I would forgive your sins and not remember your iniquities
anymore. He said, once the sun and the moon and the stars stop
listening to me, then I'll stop forgiving you. That's how faithful
he is to forgive us our sins. Not only faithful, John says
he's right to do it. That's something, isn't it? God
is just to forgive us. Now, we think God is just to
punish us for our sins. No, he's just to forgive us our
sin. Why? Because God already exacted payment
from Christ, and he cannot demand twice payment. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith the Lord. Speak comfortably unto Jerusalem.
Tell her that her warfare is accomplished, for the Lord hath
received double at the hand of the Lord for all her double. Christ paid double. Now then,
let's look at this chapter two. Go look at chapter two real quickly.
Real quickly here, I've got three things I want you to see here
that John... These things I write unto you, the deity of Christ,
the holiness of God, the fellowship that is made by the blood of
Jesus Christ, and the hope of this, that you, being still yet
sinners, have forgiveness, constant, perpetual forgiveness. If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
And so, John begins his second chapter with a pleading. A pleading. He says, my little children.
He talks to them as little children, as a father would his son. I
tell my children, I beg them not to follow into sin. Why? Why do you beg your children
not to do things like that? Dangerous. It's hurtful. We've been there, haven't we? If we're telling our children
not to do something, usually it's because we've already done
it. And we know the pain associated with it. And we plead with him
not to. John is doing the same with the
saints. He says, little children, as
a father to a son, please, sin not. I beg you, sin not. Why? Sin has horrible consequences. There's a pain and death associated
with sin. Little children, please. There's too much pain, too much
sorrow, too much grief associated with sin. I tell you, we would do good
as a church to beg one another to sin not, wouldn't we? Would
we not do good? Don't do that, please. Please
don't do that. You see someone falling, you
see someone going where they shouldn't, It's not self-righteousness. Plead with them. It's not. A pleading. Not only a pleading,
there is a... Secondly, he gives us a very
stern truth here. He says, and if any man sin,
that's better translated this way. win any man's sin." He said,
look, I'm pleading with you not to sin, but I know this, you
will sin. Even when you don't sin, listen
to me, you still sin. In Exodus, there's a place there
where Aaron was supposed to go and put this mitre on, and there
was a plaque on this mitre that says, Holiness unto the Lord.
And he was to wear this plaque for one simple reason. to purge the sin, the iniquity
of holy faith. the iniquity of holy things.
Those things that were already set apart, the blood had already
been sanctified. He was to wear this for the iniquity
of holy things. Tonight, what are you doing?
You are doing a holy thing. You are doing exactly what the
Lord God commanded you to do. Forsake not the assembling yourselves
together as a man or woman. You are hearing the Word of God,
you are seeking Christ, and yet there is still iniquity in what
you're doing. Man is at his best state what? Altogether vanity. So whether you are sinning in
the overt sense or you are in the congregation of the righteous
doing exactly what God commanded, you are still sinning. So what
do you need? You need a constant, eternal,
perpetual advocate. One who is always perpetually
interceding when you confess or when you don't. Now, some
people will say, well, if you confess your sins, he is faithful
and just. What about when you don't confess your sins? What
about when you don't even know you have sinned? Don't you see
you need something more than just some confession? You see,
my confession doesn't merit anything. My advocate, this is what he's
going to tell us the next thing. He said, but when you sin, we
have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He
is the propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but also the
sins of the whole world. This is it. We have an advocate. We have one to plead my cause
at all times before God. This is how I can have constant
fellowship with God. Consider this. He is advocating
for you when you're sinning. He is advocating for you when
you are exposed of your sin. He is advocating for you when
you plead for forgiveness, and He is advocating for you when
you receive forgiveness. He is always advocating. When
I'm preaching to you, guess what He's doing for me? He's advocating
for me. What does that mean? He is the
propitiation, the mercy seat, the offering, the sacrifice for
all our sins. And listen, this is comforting
because you have a lot of sin. How much sin do you have? Could
you could you pile it up? Could you measure it in any any
way? Could you measure your number
of sins that must be advocated for? You couldn't. But listen
to this. He said, not only your sin, but
the sins of the whole world. All of his people of all time,
he advocated for every one of them. Interceding. The scripture
says it, he ever liveth to make intercession for us. This is why every prayer you
pray is heard. This is why every desire of faith and love is heard,
and you receive such gifts and fruits of the Spirit, not because
you deserve them. Well, I've been going to church
really faithfully. I must deserve something. No.
No, if you receive anything, it's a gift of His advocacy,
of His intercession. Why? You have fellowship with
God. I write these things unto you. You have fellowship with
God, because God has made you holy by the blood of Christ.
And because of the blood of Christ, though you have sinned, he says
this, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and even
when you sin, which is all the time. He advocates for you all
the time. Now, this is why John wrote these
things. That your joy might be full.
Now this should give us joy. This should give us joy in the
inner man. Not the old man. The old man doesn't have any
joy in this. The inner man does. The new man has joy. That I have
fellowship with God and God has fellowship with me. So here's
my request. He answers them. He intercedes
for me. In everything. I pray God will help you and
bless you with this. Let's stay and be dismissed and pray.