Open your Bibles to 1 John 1.
1 John 1. That which was from the beginning. which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at. Actually,
the word could be gazed at. It means to look intently at
something. And our hands have touched. This we proclaim concerning the
word of life. The life appeared. We have seen
it and testify to it. And we proclaim to you the eternal
life which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim
to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have
fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the
Father and with his son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make
our joy complete. This is the message we have heard
from him and declared to you. God is light. In him, there is
no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship
with Him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the
truth. But if we walk in the light,
as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from
all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned,
We make him out to be a liar. And his word has no place in
our hearts. I want to speak on the subject
of the forgiveness of sins. If we confess our sins, God is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins. It would seem from the scriptures
that this is the greatest blessing of all, and you can understand
why. Every problem that we have, every sorrow, every pain, everything
that's wrong with the world in which we live and wrong with
us is the result of sin. The tendency and direction toward
death that is in all of us is the consequence of a single sin,
the sin of Adam. It says by one man's trespass,
sin entered the world and death through sin, through that sin. And yet our sin, our own individual
nature of sin and the actions of sin that we commit They aid
and abet this whole death process. You know, people say, you know,
if you do such and such, God's gonna punish you. You know, something
they think's evil. Well, it's true if you sin, God's
gonna punish that sin. There's no question there. But
it's not as though, certainly in our experience, of this life,
it's not as though God must somehow interject himself into the flow
of space and time in order to inflict some special judgment
on us because we sin. Because you see, sin bears its
own fruit, its own result. You know, if a person is standing
up on the ledge of a building, You don't say to him, if you
jump, you're going to get arrested and we're going to try you and
convict you and we're going to throw you in prison. Why? Well, jumping off a tall building
carries its own punishment with it. And we, by our own sinfulness
and the sinfulness of our way, we bring suffering on ourselves
that we might have avoided if we'd taken another direction. Now, there's nothing we can do
to avoid the eternal punishment of sin, but so far as the things
in this life are concerned, the way God has set things up, in
general, the more you walk in obedience to him, the less natural
trouble you have. But sin, whether it is that singular
sin Adam or our own sins or the sins of those around us, sin
is at the root of every trouble we ever experience. Therefore,
to be forgiven of sin would be a good thing. And the psalmist
himself said, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within
me. Bless his holy name. Bless the
Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And as he begins
to list the benefits from God, the first one he mentions is,
who forgives all your transgressions. Now, forgiveness is a twofold
thing. There is legal forgiveness. And
that is based entirely upon, for us believers, it's based
entirely upon the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross. His
death in our behalf wiped our slate clean. And by the slate,
I don't just mean the things, the sins we'd written on it up
to that point. That slate was full before we
ever showed up. Because what we were going to
do was already known to the Lord when Christ died. As Donnie Bell
said, people say, well, when Jesus Christ died, he wiped out
all the sins you'd committed, but after that, you're on your
own. He didn't die to put away future
sins, and Donnie said, when he died, all my sins were future. But so far as the relationship
between us and God, our legal standing, righteous or unrighteous
people. That forgiveness is not founded
upon our confession, it's not founded upon our faith, it's
founded entirely upon the doing and the dying of the Lord Jesus
Christ. But there's also forgiveness
that we might call experiential, For instance, let me illustrate
it this way. You sin against someone who is
your friend or loved one. And your sin, at least from your
viewpoint, has created a breach or it's built a wall between
you and that person. But unbeknownst to you, that
person never really was angry at you about it. From their own
heart, they forgave you of it the moment they heard about it.
Your love will do that. They caught wind of what you
did, and it may have hurt, but their love for you did not diminish.
Their desire to be your friend did not diminish. Their enjoyment
of you did not diminish. They just immediately and completely
forgave you for what you did. But you have built a wall. And maybe in pride, you don't
want to go and admit that what you did was wrong. And so what
happens? You don't enjoy their fellowship
anymore. It's not their fault. It's yours. You have been objectively forgiven
by them, but you don't know it because you're too proud to go
talk to them about it. and say you're sorry. And because
you don't do that, you never hear the blessed words, oh, yeah,
I forgave that. The first time I heard about
it, it was over. So, our Lord forgave us, and
you could put it this way, since Jesus Christ is called the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world, His blood was before
God the Judge, so to speak, even before He created the world,
we were forgiven of our sins before we ever committed them,
even before we ever existed, before anything other than God
existed. our sins were forgiven but we
come into the world with our minds already at enmity with
God and we begin to sin against him and our conscience begins
to accuse us and it builds up this wall that we cannot climb
over or we refuse to climb over we don't have fellowship with
God we think he's mad and so we're mad and we're too proud to say, I
have sinned. And so we go on and we live our
lives in enmity against God, hating him and believing that
he's hating us. But the Holy Spirit comes and
he teaches us the truth of the gospel. We learn about his love
toward his people. We learn about the sacrifice
of Christ. Our hearts are reconciled to him. and we realize that all
of our sins, all of them, are gone and forgiven
and we rejoice in that and we enter into fellowship with God
and we enjoy his presence and many of you may be able to remember
the early days of faith and how it seemed as though all there
was was Christ, all there was was mercy and grace, all there
was was the joy of the Lord And we thought that nothing could
ever interrupt that blessed experience. But as time goes by and that rush of emotions associated with
early converts begins to get, well, it begins to subside, and
our thoughts become cluttered with the normal thoughts of the
world, and then we begin to notice our sin. After all, the devil
wants us to notice our sin. He wants us to see it. He wants
us to think about it. He wants to believe that the
wall that was broken down by Jesus Christ has been built again. And in our flesh, we do begin
to believe that. Not only that, because in our
flesh we still love the sin that we do, we resist confessing it. We don't want to acknowledge
that's what it is. We begin to make excuses for
it. We might even go so far as to say, I guess it don't matter,
sin's forgiven, it's all by grace anyway. That's not the confession of
sin. I think it's wonderful that we can be assured that in spite
of our great sinfulness, God has never withdrawn his love,
mercy, and grace from us. But to look into the face of
our sin and say, it doesn't matter, salvation's by grace, that shows
we're not confessing sins. We're just ignoring them. But we begin to hold these sins.
We begin to say, well, you know, everybody sins. Or it wasn't that bad. What does he expect? We hold on to our sins. David put it this way. He called
it regarding iniquity in my heart. Now understand, believers do
that. We regard iniquity in our heart. We don't call it what it is. We don't acknowledge that we
have sinned. And whenever we do that, what
we have done is turned our face away from the Lord. He's not
turned his face away from us. We've turned away our face from
him. We're believers. but sin's got a grip on our mind,
it's got its hooks in us, and we're not going to own up to
it. What do you think David was doing
between the time he sinned with Bathsheba and then sinned against
Uriah, and the time that Nathan came to him and confronted him
with his sin? Do you think that David had gone
to the Lord and confessed his sin? No. He had not. I'm sure he still tried to write
some psalms. I'm sure that he still went on
the day-to-day activities of being the king of Israel. And
whenever he'd start to feel bad about it, he'd just put it out
of his mind and say, well, after all, I'm the king. And it wasn't me that
killed Uriah. It was those soldiers on the
enemy. Yeah, I know I told him to withdraw and don't help him,
kind of set him up for it. But still, it wasn't me that
stabbed him. And I'm just a guy, I'm just
a man, you know, I might do these things, that just happens. And
he's making excuse after excuse after excuse, and the longer
he does it, the colder his heart grows. He's regarding iniquity
in his heart. Now, God will not allow his people
to continue in that. Why? Because he's mean? No, not
at all. Because he loves us. And he not
only loves us, he loves the ongoing fellowship that we experience
with him when the air has been cleared. And so, whether by discipline
and action, or through something maybe I say, or another preacher
says, whatever, somehow or another, God gets the attention of his
people. And he forces them to confront
what they've done. And he works in their heart to break their
hearts once again. And they confess. Now, they do not at that point
become any more forgiven than they were. But they experience
inwardly the joy that comes from sins forgiven. I've spent five or so minutes,
maybe even a little longer, going through that whole business.
Every believer here knows what I'm talking about. Because we've
all been through that process many times. Many times. Here we read in verse 8, if we claim to be without
sin, We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Now there
were those in John's day who were claiming that very thing.
I've pointed out to you before that in the first century, the
Lord visited the church with two major heresies, a Jewish
one and a Gentile one. And as the apostles confronted
those two heresies, and wrote about them, they gave us all
the answer we need in confronting any other heresy which may spring
up in the church. There were the heresies of Jewish
legalism and Gnosticism from the Gentiles. Now John was writing
probably with Jews in mind, and yet that Gnosticism had crept
in even among Jewish believers. And these Gnostics, they, there was more than one
branch of them, you know. Any group, once it gets big enough,
it starts to split. And they had split over some
doctrines, too. But they had this in common. They believed, according to Greek
philosophy, that man is made of flesh and spirit. And all flesh, all material things,
are essentially evil. And all spiritual things are
essentially good. In fact, the philosopher Plato
believed that we existed before we were born as pure spiritual
beings. And when we were born into the
world, and that spirit was united with flesh, it was such a remarkable
experience. We forgot about what we were
beforehand. And we go through our lives living
a spirit encased in this wicked flesh. And it's a great thing
to die because then the spirit is delivered from the flesh.
And you could see then how these Gnostics could take some of the
things Paul said, misunderstand them, and twist them into their
doctrine. And part of what they believed,
they went on and said that Jesus Christ, he was just a normal
man and the Christ spirit went into him. Because Christ could
never really possess a material body. Because material things
are, by very nature, evil things. So, that split into two groups,
and you had one group that said, okay, the flesh is evil, so we
have to deny it. We can't do anything that is
pleasurable to the flesh. You confront those Gnostics in
the book of Colossians. Touch not, taste not, handle
not. They had more rules than you could shake a stick at. They
believed that the more miserable they made their flesh, the better
they were. And then you had the other kind,
that's what John was confronting here. You had those that say,
well, the spirit's good, the flesh is evil. The flesh is gonna
die, set our spirits free. So it really doesn't matter what
we do in the flesh, because our flesh isn't us. The spirit is us. That flesh
is just an animal we inhabit, and so really we are without
sin. You see how subtly Satan can
work? And take what seems wise on the
surface and make utter foolishness out of it. If we claim to be without sin,
Whether we claim to be without sin by some clever philosophical
stuff like the Gnostics were doing, or if we just claim to
be without sin because, well, we think the things that we do
aren't that bad. It doesn't matter. If we claim to be without sin,
we deceive ourselves. We're not deceiving anybody else.
They know us. We're just deceiving ourselves,
and the truth is not in us. Now, understand, he's talking
about if we claim to be without sin, and that is our true heart's
position on things, and we don't change. Because actually, believers
can get so wrapped up, so uncaring about their sin, it's almost
as though they're saying, I'm without sin, you know? We claim to be without sin. Truth's
not in us. If the truth is in us, Anytime
our flesh tries to enforce that ideal on us, it's going to start
a fight. It's going to start a fight. Paul says the flesh wars against
the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Now he's talking about
within a believer because you see in the believer the spirit
is good because it's been born again and the flesh is evil because
it's part of this world that's under a curse. But these two
natures fight with one another. It's a struggle in the mind.
And if the flesh ever interjects into the consciousness, you're
just without sin. The spirit says, well, hold on
just a minute, that's not so. But we can get into such spiritual
lows that the spirit doesn't have a very loud voice in our
consciousness. And what we mainly hear in our
head is, I'm without sin, I'm not such a bad guy. I didn't
do that much. Nothing to worry about here.
Nothing to be concerned about. But if we belong to him, one
thing's for sure. Not only is our spirit worn against
the flesh, the spirit of God is in us. And at the appointed
time, he will exert His unstoppable power and He will work in us
the understanding that we have sinned. And that's why John says
in verse 9, if we confess our sins, when we confess our sins, when
we give up that wicked holding on to sin regarding it in our
hearts, which in a sense is to disregard it as sin, to hold
it lovingly to ourselves, or try to hide it or cover it up
by some means. When we do that, we do not experience His presence within us, though
it's there, We'll get in a state, we'll hear the gospel, it'll
have no effect on us. It doesn't minister to us the
joy of sins forgiven. But when we confess, when we
give up the fight, and like David said, I have sinned against the
Lord. I've sinned. God is faithful. Oh, I want to be faithful, but
I'm not. Not like God is faithful. You could translate that, God
is trustworthy. God is faithful, first of all,
he's faithful to his promise. He that covers his sins will
not prosper. He that confesses his sin is
wise, says the Lord. The confession of sins is this. The word actually means to say
the same thing. And we, when we confess our sins,
we're not just owning up to the fact that we did something that
is against the law somewhere. We're confessing it to what it
actually is. We are seeing our sin as much
as is possible for humans. We're seeing our sin the same
way God sees it, and we talk about it the same way God talks
about it. It's not a confession of sin if we go to God, God,
I did such and such, but you know, I was having a tough day.
That's not confessing sin. That's trying to excuse your
sin. Confession of sin involves recognizing it as sin, and nothing
but sin. It involved not making excuses
for it. When notable people of our day
get caught in scandal, so very few of them will just own up
to it. They get on TV and they'll call
it anything but sin. I've made some mistakes. Really
now, you've made some mistakes. Yes, they are. But they're more
than mistakes. You can make a mistake through
ignorance. Sin, that's a different matter.
Sin comes from the wicked nature within us. We do sin because
sin is within us. It's a part of our nature. To
confess our sins means we don't make excuses for it, we acknowledge
it to be what it is, we don't blame anybody but ourselves for
what we do that's sinful. It is a complete and total surrender
to God's opinion of what we have done and why we have done it. And when we are by grace enabled
to do that, The mist and the darkness that our holding on
to sin has brought within us begins to clear. And once again, we begin to see
the faithfulness of God. Once again, we see God is faithful
to His promise. And our sin will not make God
be unfaithful to his promise. His promise has always been,
he said, look to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for
I am God and there is no other. And that's true. It was true
when he said it and it's still true now. And we have looked to him, many
of us, Maybe all of us, we've looked to him and he has saved
us, but our sin often hides that truth from our eyes. But when
we confess it, the mist and darkness begins to disappear and the light
comes in and we see God in all his faithfulness to his promises. He's faithful to his son. It says back here in verse 7,
if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us
from all sin. Now, believers in their flesh, we'll
walk in darkness. We don't do it spiritually, but
we'll do it in the flesh. And when we begin to walk that
way, Well, in the darkness you can't see anything. It may be
there, but you don't see it. But when we walk in the light,
and the light here is used as a symbol of truth. John used that in his gospel,
and this is the verdict. Light has come into the world,
but men love darkness rather than light because their deeds
were evil. If we walk in the light, and the light here is
the truth of Christ, the truth of the gospel, He is the light. He is the light that came into
the world. You read that in the opening verses. He is the light. He is the life. If we walk in
that, we have fellowship with one another. And actually, he says that this fellowship
is with the father and with his son. Now, do you know what fellowship
means? It means to have in common, to
enjoy things that are in common. And we engage in all kinds of
fellowships. The church is a fellowship. We
have something in common, don't we? We have the truth in common. We have the Lord in common. We
have one God in common. But you can have fellowships,
you know, like You belong to a team in a bowling league. You've
got bowling in common. That's what unites you. You may
not unite over anything else, but you unite over that. Well,
here it's saying that if we walk in the light, we have fellowship
with one another, but this fellowship is with his son, with God, and
with his son. We have something in common with
God. We have something in common with
his son. And what is that? We are of one
family. It says of the Lord Jesus Christ,
he's not ashamed to call us brothers. In his humanity, God is his father. And he's our father too. He is
our elder brother. He's the firstborn, he's God's
firstborn. And as the firstborn, he's certainly
worthy of the double inheritance, and we gladly give it to him.
We give it all to him, really. But he sees us, and despite what
he knows about us, and knows about our sinfulness, and how
little it seems that we bear the image of our common father,
he still calls us brothers. And in as much as by virtue of
the new birth we have been made children of God, as it were the
offspring of God, God sees us as part of the family. We have
fellowship with him on that ground. And when our sins cause us to
hide our face from him and cause us not to communicate with him,
we lose that sense of commonality, that sense of fellowship, that
sense of belonging. It doesn't mean we don't have
it in common. It doesn't mean we're not part
of the family. You know, the prodigal son, He did not become
more and more of a son the closer he got back to the father's house. He was never more or less the
son of the father at any time than he was the day he was born.
And when he was there feeding hogs, living in the filth of
a hog pen, which Jews, that's like double filth. It's not only
the filth that all pigs have. I mean, unclean animal, and there
he was. He was as much a son there as
he was when he was back in the house feasting with everyone
else. But I want to tell you, from
the son's viewpoint, it was a whole lot better in the house feasting
than it was out there feeding pigs. When he realized and acknowledged
that it was him and him alone that was upset, adamant, and
refusing to enter into fellowship. As the scriptures say, when he
came to his senses, he headed home. And when he got home, what
did he say? Father, I have sinned against
heaven and you. And I'm not worthy to be called
your son. And he had it in mind to go on
and say, let me be one of your slaves. I'll work for you. And I'll live
in slaves' quarters. I'll eat slaves' food. That's
what he'd been rehearsing. He came home and he started his
little speech, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against
you and am not worthy to be called your son. And the father stopped
him right there. That was a true and honest confession, wasn't it? And immediately, The father's
heart is opened to him and revealed to him. The father had not been
holding a grudge against him at any point. The father was
not angry at him, ever. The father was not sitting in
that house saying, I had good riddance to bad rubbish. He was
nothing but trouble from the day we had him. He already took his part of the
inheritance. He wasted it. It's worth it. And if he ever
comes back, I'll tell you, he's going to toe the mark. He's going
to live. I'm going to put him out in the
slave quarters. I'm going to make him live with
slaves until he learns his lesson. We read in that story, it says,
and while he was yet, that is the son, the prodigal son, while
he was yet a long way off, the father saw him. Why is that? The father knew he was coming
back, and the father was looking for him. And it says that when the father
saw him, that he ran to him, threw his arms around him, he
kissed him. And after the boy had given some
of his speech, the father turned around and said, Get a new robe,
this boy. He doesn't need to be wearing
that. Get him something good. Get him some new shoes. Look
at his feet. They're calloused. Some of them's
blistered. They've been cut up. He's been walking bare. Get him
some shoes. And go my dresser. Now he left this behind when
he left. He had a family ring and he left it behind. I've been
keeping it for him. Top drawer of my dresser. Go
get that ring. And he told those servants to
put a new robe, new shoes, and a family ring on that boy's hand. Now, when was that boy forgiven? He was forgiven before he ever
left home. The father never had an angry,
wrathful thought towards his son. The only angry person was
the son. And the whole time he was gone,
the father still loved him. And the father was looking for
him. Because the father also loved the fellowship that they
enjoyed. And the father knew that because
he was the son, a son, he would return. And he was ready. Ready with a hug and a kiss.
a robe, shoes, and a ring. If we confess our sins, He's
faithful. He's the Father. He will never fail to forgive. And because of the work of His
only begotten Son, He's not only faithful to forgive us, He's
just It's right for him to forgive us because his older son, unlike
the older son in the story of the prodigal son, the older son
in the father's household came and he paid what the son, the
prodigal, had taken. And so God's faithful to his
promise. He's just. He doesn't excuse our sins. He
doesn't say it didn't happen. He doesn't say it doesn't matter.
He says it's taken care of. It's been taken care of. But surely, Dad, you're angry.
No, I'm not. But I didn't treat you right.
I know, but that's not the issue. You're my son. You're forgiven. Welcome home. And then forgiveness
is no more just a legal reality that we may look to to comfort
ourselves against the fear of death. Forgiveness becomes a
blessed experience by which we enter into fellowship with God
and he with us. And we begin to enjoy. Enjoy. the wonderful grace that has
made us sons of God and therefore heirs of God and join heirs with
Christ Jesus. We who have been born again by
the Spirit of God and have been brought to believe, it's silly
that we would ever sin, but it's sillier still that when sin is
brought before us, We're made aware of our sinfulness. We've
been particularly stubborn or whatever, and we won't acknowledge
it. It begins to work all kinds of
mischief in our hearts. It creates doubts. It creates
anger. It blinds us to the glory of
our father, blinds us to his love. But when by the father's grace
he sends his spirit, And he breaks our stubborn hearts again. And we confess. Once again, we feel the robe
put on. Once again, our sore feet are
given new shoes. And once again, we feel the family
ring on our finger and know that everything in the household is
ours. because it's our Father's house. And we are, as we always
have been, His sons. May God work in us always the
grace to recognize our sin and acknowledge
it for what it is, never count it a small thing, but continually
and always confess to our Father what we are by nature, May we
never leave his house thinking that there's something out there
better than his house. May we never be so foolish. May
we always know and experience God's forgiveness.