So we'll take your Bibles and
turn with me to 1 John chapter 2. 1 John, the second chapter. We'll be looking at verse 1 this
morning, verses 1 through 3. The title of the message this morning
is simply, Believer, Sin Not. Believer, Sin Not. The first thing that John says
here in verse 1, he says, "...My little children, these things
I write unto you, that ye sin not." Now the first thing I want
us to see is this is the command of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is a command of the gospel
to every believer in Christ. Most people will look at this
verse and they'll refer immediately to the law. They'll see this
verse that says, sin not, and immediately they'll take someone
directly to the law of God and show them that they're not to
sin. Truly the law says, sin not, doesn't it? The law says,
Thou shalt and Thou shalt not, and whoever shall and shall not
go against the Word of God, they shall forever be damned. That's the law. That's the law. The law truly gives no hope of
forgiveness, no direction as to how one may be made righteous. It only says, sin not. That's all the law says. Sin
not. No man therefore will ever be
justified by this. No man will ever be justified
by the law because the law is an all or none principle. There's
no middle ground in law. You either do it all or you don't. You either offer everything and
believe the law to be everything and God to be everything and
not to sin at all, or you sin once and you shall forever pay
for that sin in hell. That's the law. And so John is
not saying, sin not according to the law. That's not what he's
saying. Because the law of God is only the knowledge of sin.
Paul says, therefore, by the deeds of the law shall no flesh
be justified in its sight, for by the law is the knowledge of
sin. John here is not writing by law,
but by grace. John is saying, sin not, believer,
because of grace. Because of the gospel. Because
of what I've already written to you. Believe you that believe
on Christ. Sin not because of the gospel. Sin not because of the gospel. He's speaking to us who have
fellowship with God. Do you have fellowship with God?
He says, who has fellowship? Those who had fellowship with
us, with our gospel. Those who walk according to the
light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have fellowship with
God. Have fellowship. Union and communion
with Jesus Christ, our Savior. The gospel of God's free salvation
in Christ is to every child of God the most wonderful and joyous
message that they have ever heard. Why? It's free. Everybody likes
free, don't they? Everybody likes free. Well, this
is the greatest free thing in all the world, the gospel. And
it's free. It's free. How that the Son of
God freely became a man. How that the Son of God freely
obeyed the law of God. How that the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, obeyed God's will in every aspect, in the law of God,
in every decree. He obeyed God freely for us. And by that, obtaining a righteousness
that none of us could have obtained. And he freely took the cross
of Christ. He took His cross. God had imputed
our sins to Him and He freely received them and bore their
guilt in His own body on the tree. He freely suffered and
endured all the wrath of God so that He may freely give us
salvation. Freely. Freely. All who believe
have free salvation. What is it to be free? At no
cost to you. Now, it cost Him everything. Oh, but the wonder of it all,
He gave it to me freely, without a cause. Without a cause in me,
He gave it to me freely. And then John writes, he says
in verse 6 of chapter 1, he says, if we have fellowship with Him,
and we walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if
we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another, and the blood of Christ cleanseth us from all
sin. I love that word, cleanseth.
As I've told you before, that's a present perfect tense. He has
cleansed us from all sin. He is right now in the midst
of this congregation to His believers. He is cleansing us from all sin. And He shall forever cleanse
us. from all sin. And this is what
compels John to say, if we confess our sins presently, now, if we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
Why? He's cleansed them. He's cleansed them. They're gone.
And He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And we believe
this gospel. And this is a wonder to our hearts
that God has been so gracious, been so merciful to such sinners
as we are. It's a wonderful gospel to our
ears. To hear that the blood of Christ
is so powerful, so effectual, so wonderful that it takes away
all our sins. Every one of them. Not one is
going to be left on us. Not one of them. He takes them
all away from us. And John continues then to remind
us that of all sins that we have
committed and are committing shall be and are made perfect
by the blood of Christ. But he also reminds us that if
we walk by faith and light in the gospel, because we have fellowship
with God, because Christ has forgiven us of our sins, does
not mean that we are without sin. That's not what he's saying. He has spiritually, righteously
judged our sins in Christ and they have been done away with.
But that does not mean we have escaped the presence of sin.
Look at verse 8. He says, if we say we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse
10, if we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word
is not in us. We who have been cleansed of
all sin are not absent from the presence of sin in our own lives. That's what John's telling us.
He says, yes, you've been cleansed. Yes, if you confess, you shall
be cleansed. But that does not mean that sin
is eradicated in you. Sin is still present in every
one of us, in every one of our hearts. Though we've been given
a new heart, a new nature, a new love, a new affection, although
the new nature is created perfectly and wholly and righteously in
us, after God, that old nature did not change at all. It is still just as wicked and
just as vile as it always was. And so now then, we are born
again, believers, in what has happened to us. We have become
at warfare with ourselves. We've become at constant variance
against our own hearts, so that we fight constantly against sin,
constantly against this flesh. We are at war. This is not a
joke. This is not something funny.
We are at war in our own hearts. And don't take that lightly.
Don't take that warfare lightly. Go to Romans chapter 7. Go to
Romans chapter 7. The apostle Paul didn't take
this lightly at all. Romans chapter 7, verse 18. Read this very carefully with
me. Paul says, "...for I know that
in me That is, in my flesh, in my nature, my sinful nature dwelleth
no good thing. For to will is present with me,
but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good
that I would, I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I
do. Now, if I do that, I would not. It is no more I that do
it, but sin, that sin nature that dwelleth in me. I find then
a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. For
I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another
law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, bringing
me into captivity of the law of sin which is in my members.
O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Now friends, if you're a believer
in Christ and you have no idea what he's talking about, I'm
sorry, you have no salvation. You don't believe in Christ at
all. If you are not struggling with sin in your own members,
there's something wrong with your faith. There's something
wrong with you. If everything's just fine and
there's no conflict, then there's no life. In life there's conflict,
and it's a conflict not with everyone else, it's a conflict
with our own selves. It's a conflict with our own
sin. You see, your sin really don't affect me as much as my
sin does. And no matter how hard you try
to escape it, you can't. It will be there till you die. And there is no reprieve from
it in this life. There is going to be a war in
your heart. The old man and the new man will
struggle constantly and oppose one another. But God doesn't leave us comfortless,
He says, if we confess our sins. That's good. I'll tell you what,
if there was a warfare and there was no comfort of this, I don't
know what I'd do. We would go insane. But there
is a comfort if you confess your sins. If you contritely go before
God and kneel before Him and confess, I have sinned! God says,
I'm faithful and just to forgive you your sins. Faithful in that
He promised. God promised us that He would
forgive us. Is He not faithful? Of course
He is. God willing, more abundantly
to show to the heirs of promise, made it with an oath. He swore
by Himself that He would forgive us our sins by Christ. And you
know what? He's just to forgive us our sins.
Many times I go into my closet and weep for my sins in private,
but I know this, God does not forgive my sins in private. He
publicly, openly says, I forgive you all your sins, and I'm just
to do it. It's not a shady backdoor deal.
He did it. He didn't do this thing in a
corner. He did it in the open. And Christ died in the open.
And there's my forgiveness in Christ alone. There's my forgiveness
in any one of us. Believer, if we go to Christ,
we have this promise. He will forgive us of all our
sins. And not just some of them. All
of them. Every one of them. And He's faithful
and He's just to do that. That's our comfort. That's our
peace. Remember when David confessed
his sin before Nathan, he said, I've sinned against the Lord.
And what did Nathan say? He said, the Lord hath. He's already put
away your sin. God put away our sins even before
we confessed them. Should we confess them? Absolutely. But know this, when we confess
them, they are forgiven of our father. I don't confess them
to you, you don't confess them to me. We confess them to Christ,
to God, and He is faithful to forgive us our sins. Is this
not the greatest message you ever heard? Is that not the greatest
thing in all the world? To know that struggle exists
in us, and yet every time we go to God, we know that all the
sins that we have committed have been forgiven of God. That's
grace. That's mercy. Mercy. There are some who will pervert
this message of the gospel of God's free grace. There are some
that will be deceived to say, well, pastor, that's great news. If we're saved by grace, then
that means we can go out here and we can live in sin and all
we have to do is confess Christ and all of our sins are forgiven
so we can continue living in sin. That's why John says, my little
children, I wrote these things unto you,
not that you sin, but that you sin not. I wrote the Gospel to
you that you sin not, not that you are to sin. Go to Romans
chapter 6. Look at Romans chapter 6, just
a page over where we were. Romans chapter 6 and verse 1.
Paul, after expressing that justification is freely given of God by grace
and not by works, what does he say? What shall we say then?
Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to
sin live any longer therein? When Christ died, believer, we
died in Christ. Our sin nature died with Him. The law demanded its death, and
in Christ it is dead. It is dead. And so now we are
free from the penalty of sin. All of the wrath of God is past
and has already been taken care of in Christ, and we shall not
see the second death. Blessed is he who hath pardoned
the first resurrection, over which the second death hath no
power. And that's us. That's us. The second death has
no power over us. But being dead to sin is also
being dead to the course of sin. If Christ died for our sins to
save us from sin, how could anyone misconstrue that to say that
He saved us to sin? You can't. Only if you're deceived. Only if you think you know Christ
and you really don't. To us, sin is a very loathsome
thing. Sin, once to me, was my joy,
was my pleasure. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed sin. When I was young and without
Christ, I didn't want Christ because I didn't want to give
up my sin. But now that I know Christ, I graciously, freely
give up my sin. I don't want it anymore. All
I want is righteousness. All I want is to be like Him
in every way. I want when people to see me,
I want them to see Christ. That's what I want. I want to
walk as He walked. I want to love like He loved.
I want to serve like He served. And I don't want to sin. Verse 12 of chapter 6 in Romans,
it says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that
you should obey the lust thereof. Neither yield ye your members
as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves
unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members
as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have
dominion over you. For you are not under the law,
but under grace. How many times has someone who
has professed to be a believer thrown up their hands with this
struggle of sin? How many people have thrown up
their hands and say, well, I can't stop sinning, so what in the
world am I doing struggling against it? How many people have done
that? Friends, if this is your case, listen to me very carefully.
If you've thrown up your hands about this matter of sin, and
you've gone away from the gospel, listen to me. Little children,
sin not. Don't sin. That's not the gospel. That's not the aim of the gospel.
The aim of the gospel is that you sin not. Wrecking yourselves
to be dead to sin. but alive and dead indeed to
sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ." Believer, I was
looking for an illustration of this and I found one in Joshua. Turn to Joshua 17. Good illustration of this. Joshua
was giving out the inheritance. And you know the sons of Joseph,
Manasseh and Ephraim, They were only given one lot. They weren't
given two lots. They were a large group. And
so Manasseh and Ephraim go out to look at their lot of land.
And over here, there's a big mountain full of trees. I mean,
just packed with forests. And over here are Canaanites
who have iron chariots. And then there's some Canaanites
over here who are paying them taxes so they can stay in the
land. So they come back to Joshua and they say, Joshua, we can't
live in this. We can't do this. It's impossible.
Look, we've got trees over here and they're too big. We can't
live in a forest. And over here we've got Canaanites and they're
too strong for us to get out. What are we going to do? How
can you give us such a land? Verse 12, he says, yet the children
of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of the cities,
but the Canaanites would dwell in that land. And it came to
pass when the children of Israel were waxen strong that they put
the Canaanites to tribute, but did not utterly drive them out. They said we couldn't. Too big,
too impossible. Look at Joshua's response in
verse 18. He said, but the mountain shall
be thine. For it is a wood, and thou shalt
cut it down. And the outgoing of it shall
be thine, for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they
have chariots, and they are strong." Let me ask you, pay attention
believers, how many sins of tribute do you have? How many sins do we allow to
hang around because they comfort us or because they're pleasurable? How many sins are iron chariots
that we can't drive out? How many sins seem so strong
that we can't overcome them? How many sins seem so rooted
like trees into the ground of our souls that we can't live
with them? What does Joshua say? What does
our Savior tell us to do? He says, cut them down and drive
them out. Cut them down and drive them
out. Why? Because you have a promise.
You see, Manasseh and Ephraim wouldn't have been able to drive
anyone out, and they wouldn't have possessed any land had they
had not a promise. God has given us a promise. God
has given us a promise. What is that? Sin shall not have
dominion over you. Is that not a promise? Sin shall
not have dominion over you. Let not sin, therefore let not
sin reign in your mortal body. No. We will never completely
rid ourselves of sin. Absolutely not. As I told you
before, he that say he has no sin has made God a liar. Sin
will always contend with us all the time. We will never fully
be able to rid ourselves of sin. But where in the gospel does
it give us permission to excuse it in our lives? Where? Where? You won't find any place at all.
God gives us no excuse for these things, but rather He has given
us means and opportunity by which we may mortify the deeds of this
body. How, pastor? How is it possible
to get out the chariots of sin? They're too strong. I can't do
it. Yes, you can. If God didn't say you could,
I'd say okay. But God says, mortify the deeds
of the body. If He didn't say that, do you
not think He wouldn't give us strength to do what He's commanded
us to do? Yes, He's given us commands and
He's given us strength. How? How is that possible? Two
things. Two things. Faith and love. This is how we cut them down
and drive them out. Faith and love. Faith in Christ
and love for Christ and each other. That's how. First of all,
faith. John says in verse 3, "...hereby
we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments." Now,
obviously, he's not talking about the Ten Commandments. He's not
talking about the Law. What is he talking about? If
we keep the Word of God, the promise of God. Look at verse
5, "...but whosoever keepeth His Word." Same thing. The Word
of God. What is the ultimate commandment
of God in His Word? Faith. It was the commandment from the
beginning. Faith. When our parents sinned, they
were given the gospel. The seed of the woman shall bruise
the head of the serpent. And they believed the gospel. They believed in Christ. They trusted in Christ that He
would come, that He would conquer sin, that He would conquer and
destroy the works of the devil. Even so, must we continually
by faith look to Christ, continually by faith, so that we might overcome
sin in this life. Go to chapter 5 and verse 4 of
1 John, chapter 5. Verse 4, how does John say we
overcome sin? Look at this. For whosoever is
born of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith. He, who is he that overcometh
the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God."
Friends, this is how we began our journey, and this is how
we're to walk in our journey, and this is how we'll end in
our journey, by faith in Christ. Looking to Christ. Looking to
Christ. It was only by faith in God that
the Israelites were able to cast out Those Canaanites, they trusted
God's Word and they acted on God's Word. We're to trust God's
Word and act on God's Word. Faith always moves. It always
acts. Otherwise, it's dead faith. It's
one thing to say, I believe God, I believe Him, and then to just
do nothing. We can have courage to overcome
sin by looking to Christ. And what do we see by faith? We see love. Love. Verse 8 in John 2, A new commandment
I write unto you, which things are true in him and in you, because
the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. When
this commandment of faith was given, where were we? We weren't
born yet. We had no idea. And even when
we were born, we didn't understand it. We lived several years before
God came to us and revealed this faith to us. But now that the Spirit of God
has commanded the light to shine out of darkness in our hearts,
to see that Jesus Christ is the only hope for salvation, that
light has given us a love for Him, a love for His gospel, and
a love for His brethren. Believer, we see by faith the
love of God in that He chose us. He chose us not to be slaves,
but sons. Isn't that a wonderful thing?
It's one thing if you go to the slave market and you pick a slave.
But he went to the slave market and picked a son. He chose a
son. And he said, I'll take you to
be my son because I love you. Because I love you. And Jesus, He loves us. We can
see this by faith in what He's done for us. We can see that
He suffered for our sins. He endured the wrath of God for
our sins. Why? Because He loved us and
gave Himself for us. Consider Him that endured such
contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest you be wearied
in your minds. Are you wearied with struggling
with sin? What are you to do? Consider Him. Consider Him. Look to Him. Look to Christ. See His love for you. Consider what He's done to bring
you to Himself. Has not God moved all providence
and men and nature to bring you to Himself? What has He not done
for you? What has He not done for you?
He has done everything for you. Everything. He says, since thou was precious
in my sight, thou has been honorable, and I have loved thee. I have
loved thee. Should not such great love move
us to please Him? I tell you what, I'm not motivated
by law. I'm motivated by love. I love Him. Therefore, I long
to sin not, because He loves me." Is it not reasonable then for
us to abandon all sin? Is that not reasonable? Is it
not reasonable for Christ to say, dear children, sin not? That's just reasonable. That's
reasonable for me. If we truly love Christ, if we
truly desire Him, we will desire to sin not. And instead of love for ourselves,
we'll manifest this love. This love is always manifest.
This love is always going to be manifest. It's one thing to
say, I love Him, one thing to say, I don't want to sin, but
it's another thing to actually perform those things. And this
is the way it's going to be manifest, John says, by loving our brother.
Look at that in verse 9, he says, He that saith he hath is in the
light, and hateth his brothers in darkness even to now. And
he that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none
occasion of stumbling in him." If we love Christ and we desire
to sin not, we'll do away with selfish love. We should encourage one another
in the gospel. Is that not true love? To sacrifice
what we think or what we feel for the sake of our brethren?
Is that not love? Let me tell you this, and I want
you that hear this that are faithful to the gospel, you encourage
me. I want you to know your faithfulness
to the Gospel. It encourages me in my study. When I'm bogged down and sin
has encompassed me all about, you know what I think of many
times? Your love for Christ. Oh, that moves me. That helps
me. That strengthens me. Encourages
me. But I'll tell you this, those
who are not faithful, I'll tell you this, you discourage me and
your brothers and sisters in Christ. You discourage us. You discourage, and that's not
love. That's not love. That's selfish. Believer, lay aside all your
excuses for sin. You don't have any. Not when Christ has done so great
a thing as He has done for us, we have no excuse for our sins
and unfaithfulness to Him. None. Set them aside. Let us love Christ and believe
Christ, and let us love our brothers and sisters and encourage them
in the Gospel. Lastly, the comfort of the gospel. Not only does the gospel command
us to sin not, but it gives us comfort. Look at this. It's always
saying this even in the same breath. This one verse should
be said in all the same breath. Little children, sin not! And
when you do... And when you do, we have an advocate
with the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous. Strive
against sin. Yes. But when you fail, and you will,
and you do, we still have an advocate with the Father. We
still have Christ pleading our cause before the Father. Do you know that the wounds of
Christ are still visible? When he rose again and his body
was perfected, those wounds didn't heal. They remained. He told Thomas, reach hither
thy hand and put it in my hands. Reach hither your fist and put
it in my side. These wounds are still yet visible. Why? Because he's always interceding. So when our conscience comes,
remember Christ holds up His hands and He says, paid for. When the devil comes and accuses
us, Christ holds up His hands and says, paid for. When the
world points at us and says, how in the world could you call
yourself a believer? And Christ says, paid for. We have an advocate. And this should move us more
than anything else to be faithful, to serve Him, and to not sin. Praise God I'm not under law.
Law gave me guilt with no hope. Christ, when He comes, He convicts
my soul of sin and then gives me hope. That's the gospel. Sin not. But when you do, look to Christ. I pray that God blesses to our
hearts. Let's stand and we'll be dismissed in prayer.