Excellent song. Let's go back
to Ephesians chapter one. I have a message this evening
that I hope will be of interest to all of you, and I think it
will be of interest to all of you, and to all of you who are
watching by way of the internet, If you aren't interested in it,
I hope that God will give you an interest in the message that
I want to bring to you this evening. I know I'm speaking to some people
who have a great confidence of your everlasting salvation in
Christ Jesus. He is your all. He's all of your wisdom. He's
all of your righteousness. He's all of your sanctification. And He's all of your redemption.
And you understand from the Word of God, you are complete in Him. And you have a blessed assurance
that the Lord Jesus is indeed your glorious Savior, and you
are forever safe in Him. Oh, blessed assurance to be able
to say by the witness of the Spirit, the Lord Jesus is mine,
and I'm His. He knows me, and therefore I
know Him. He has loved me from old eternity,
And he, through the gospel, has brought me to love him. And I have cast my poor soul,
with all of its neediness, upon the mighty, mighty Savior. And I am in him quite confident
that I'm safe. I'm safe through this life. and I'll be safe forever. That's
a blessed assurance. So I believe I'm speaking to
some people who, you understand your assurance is not based upon
what you feel, but about, it's based upon what God has said. God said, he that hath the Son
hath life. And if you have the Son of God,
you have the life that only God can give, and it is a life that
will never die. I'm also speaking, I suspect,
to some people who believe on the Son of God, but you find
yourself often doubting the reality of your salvation. If I ask you, indeed if you asked
yourself, am I a believer? You would say yes, but I'll tell
you my faith is weak. I don't believe him like I ought
to. And perhaps you even say I look
within searching for some evidence of a saving relationship with
God. I look within looking for some
good works, some godliness, some evidences of salvation, and I find none. Let me tell you something, if
God honestly enables you to look within, you will only see something
that is very disappointing. You're not gonna see that goodness
that perhaps you expected to find. We find sin in all that
we do. I caution you, if you look within,
look within only to examine the very foundation of your faith. You see, you and I who are believers,
we are still sinful people. There's just no question about
that. There's nobody, nobody who is
a perfect Christian in our experience. I know in Christ we're perfect.
I know that. I know God sees us in his son. God sees us in the beauties of
the Lord Jesus Christ. His obedience all the way up
to and including His death has been imputed to us. We're made
the very righteousness of God in Him. But we must say, if we're
honest, like Paul did, In Romans chapter seven, I find that in
me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. I say look within to examine
your foundation. What are you building on? Rather,
who are you building all your hopes for eternity upon? The songwriter said, my hope
is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and his righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but I wholly lean on Jesus' name. If I know my heart, and I know the heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. But if God has given
me, and I believe he has, if he has given me honesty to evaluate
my standing before him, I must say, Lord, all that I am and
all that I hope to be is all in Christ Jesus, my Lord
and Savior. I have no other righteousness.
I don't have any righteousness of my own, and I know that's
what God demands. God doesn't demand the best we
can do. God demands perfection. Leviticus
22, 21 says it shall be perfect to be accepted. I've got to be
perfect, and I am perfect in Christ Jesus. And as I look within,
I see I see a hideous, a hideous monster within me called sin
still. So I tell you, preacher, when
I look within myself, I see somebody that is doing pretty good. Well, you see yourself in wrong
light then. I remember hearing Brother Barnard
say, be honest. Honest people don't wind up in
hell. People who are honest with themselves
from the Word of God will be forced to say and acknowledge
with grief, yes. With sorrow, yes. With tears,
yes. With a broken heart, yes. But
will be forced to say, I'm still just a sinner. A sinner saved
by grace. That's what I am. So I'm persuaded I'm talking
to some people who have a solid confidence of your hope in Christ. I'm speaking to others, perhaps
more than the first group, who say, and in honesty, you say,
well, sometimes I lack that assurance. If we sang, blessed assurance,
Jesus is mine, I'd have to say, blessed assurance, sometimes. Sometimes I have blessed assurance
that Jesus is mine. Aren't you thankful? Aren't you
thankful your salvation is not dependent upon your faithfulness,
but upon the faithfulness of God. He is faithful to his covenant. He is faithful to always see
us in Christ Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, that one who is the
surety, the mediator of the new covenant. God sees us in Christ. Oh God, give me faith that I
may see myself in Christ. And then I'll have peace. I'll
have peace. And then there's a third group
that I'm preaching to, and I suspect there's somebody here like this,
maybe somebody on the internet who's watching or somebody who's
listening to this message later on. And you don't have any confidence
of your salvation in Christ Jesus whatsoever. You don't have any faith. You
don't have any peace, the things that we talk about, the gospel
we sing about, the Lord Jesus Christ whom we brag on, the blood
of the Savior that is so very, very precious to us, the righteousness
of the Son of God that we make our boast in. These things have
little to no interest to you. I say this to you, I pray that
God will get a hold of your heart and do something for you that
he's done for most of us here tonight. He'll stir us up, stir
you up to faith in Christ Jesus. Well, Jim, do you think there's
one message that'll help us no matter what? I do. The subject is forgiveness of
sins. Forgiveness of sins. We all need
forgiveness because this is what we all have in common. Sin. I don't care who you are, who
you are, who are watching. We have a lot of differences.
Male and female in various stations in life. But we all got this
in common. We're sinners. We're sinners. And we need forgiveness of sins. The Bible says all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God. Galatians chapter 3 verse
22 says, the scripture hath concluded all under sin. All means everybody, all of Adam's
race. By nature, we're all under sin. What does it mean to be under
sin? Under the dominion of sin, under the authority of sin, under
the control of sin. We're all under sin. You say,
but Jim, I'm a child of God. I'm thankful for that. But you
still got a sin problem. Say, but my sins are paid for.
Yes. Yes, they've been paid for. But
you still struggle with sin every single day. Because sin isn't
just First of all, it isn't what we do, it's what we are. That's the problem. There's the
guilt of sin. And sin isn't just the things
that you do, it's in your thoughts. Are your thoughts pure? Do you only have pure thoughts? Do you only have pure imaginations? You don't want people to know
what you're thinking. I don't want people to know what
I'm thinking. Because you see, really, even
the children of God, though our sins have been forgiven and we're
not the slaves of sin anymore. We're the servants of righteousness.
But the people of God are honestly, honestly seeking Christ every
day and looking to Him every day because we still have a sin
problem. I know they're paid for, but
in our experience, we have struggled all the time. It isn't a matter,
have I sinned today? It isn't a question of have I
sinned since I've been in here tonight. Because you see, whatsoever is
not of faith is sin. Uh-oh. That means we're in trouble.
We're in a heap of trouble, even as children of God. I mean, we're
not in trouble of punishment or suffering the penalty for
sin. But we know in our heart of hearts
we're just sinners. Like the fellow said, I'm a poor
sinner and nothing at all. But Jesus Christ is my all in
all. In verse seven, we read this,
Ephesians 1-7, in whom, in Christ, We have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sins. What a sweet thought. The forgiveness
of sins, and that's on account of or according to the riches
of his grace. You know, there's an occasion,
and you don't have to turn to it, but our Lord one day, he
was invited by a Pharisee for supper. I want you to come over
for a meal. And the Lord said, I will. So he went over to this Pharisee's
house and they sat down to eat. And as he was eating and as the
man, his name was Simon, as he was eating and the master was
eating, a woman slipped in. I guess she heard that the Lord
Jesus was going to be there. And she had an alabaster box
of precious ointment. And she slipped in, and they
were kind of leaning on their arms and eating with their feet
out kind of to the side and to the back. And she slipped in,
and she knelt down at the Savior's feet. And she began to weep. I like what I believe it was
Hawker said, those are heart tears. She began to weep and she washed
his feet with her tears and then wiped his feet with her hair. And then she took that precious
ointment and she anointed his feet. And everybody in the room
was blessed on account of that because it gave such a wonderful
fragrance. There's Simon sitting at the
head of the table. He's a Pharisee, full of self-righteousness. He thought to himself, to this
man, if he were a prophet, if he were, he'd know what kind
of woman this is that is at his feet. because she's a sinner. Now, no thought is ever hidden
from our Savior. He reads all of us like an open
book, and he read the thoughts of Simon. He said, Simon, I got something
I want to say to you. I want to tell you a little story.
Simon said, say on. Let's hear it. And the Lord said,
there's a man who was a creditor. And he had two people who owed
him money. And I'm gonna just change the
wording here a little bit. One of them owed him $500. And the other one owed him $50. And neither one of them had any
means by which to pay him. Not the one who owed $500, not
the one who owed $50. And the man just forgave them
their indebtedness, both of them. You owe me $500? I've written
it off. Don't worry about it. It's done.
You don't owe me another dime. One who owed $50. Don't worry
about it. You don't owe me anything. Consider
it paid in full. I forgive you both of them. Forgive you both. And the Savior asked Simon, he
said, which of these two loved that creditor the most, do you
think? Simon kind of cleared his throat
and said, well, I suppose. The one who's forgiven $500.
The Lord said, you've judged correctly. He said, Simon, do you see this
woman at my feet? See what she's doing? You know,
I've come into your house because you invited me to eat. You didn't
wash my feet. But she's washed my feet with
her tears, and she's dried my feet with the hair of her head. And you didn't anoint me with
oil, but she's anointed my feet with oil. You gave me no kiss, but she keeps on kissing my feet. honoring me. Wherefore I say unto you, her
sins which are many, she's the one in debt for $500, as it were,
using his illustration. Her sins which are many are forgiven. But she loves me much. You don't think much of me, do
you, Simon? Because you consider yourself
to be the one who is in the least debt. You don't see the seriousness
of your sin problem, but she does. And that's why she's at
my feet. And you're sitting here in your
self-righteous arrogance. And then he said to the woman,
thy sins are forgiven. Thy sins are forgiven. Oh, what
blessed words. What blessed words. And the people
who were eating with them said this. Who is this that forgives
sin too? He does all these miracles and
now He has forgiven her sin. Who can forgive sins but one? That's God. You've got that right. And that's who forgives sin. And we know the Lord Jesus Christ
forgives us of all of our sins through his bloody death upon
the cross of Calvary. Let me just say a few things
about forgiveness. Forgiveness is a magnificent
blessing. In fact, in that passage of scripture
Joe read to us there in Ephesians chapter one, forgiveness is listed
with other Tremendous blessings chosen in Christ, divine election,
predestination unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ Himself,
and then redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, which results
in the forgiveness of sins. This is no little thing. It's
no little thing for God to forgive you of your sins. What did it take for God to forgive
us of our sins? Well, the blood of bulls and
goats couldn't do it. And your repentance and confession
of sins, that can't do it. When you say to the Lord, I'm
sorry I have sinned against you, you being sorry, That's not going
to mean forgiveness of your sins. That can't do it. It's the blood
of the Son of God. That's what it took. Weigh the
enormity of our guilt by the tremendous price it took for
God to forgive us in a righteous way. Now you can be sure of this. In this matter of forgiveness,
God will not compromise his law and his justice. He can't do
that. The soul that sinneth shall die.
And like I said this morning, and I said all the time, every
preacher of the gospel does, this is why Christ had to die. This is why God had to deal so
severely with him to deal with our sin problem. In order for us to have the forgiveness
of sins, now you think about it, in order for God to forgive
us, the Son of God, the Eternal One, the very Majesty of Glory,
He had to come down here to this earth, join Himself to flesh. You see, God's invisible. God can't die. God can't suffer. God can't bleed. So God came down here and joined
himself to our humanity. And that's a union that will
never end, I might add. He's still the God-man. And the
God-man lived on this earth being tested and tried on every point and found to be absolutely innocent,
guiltless. The Bible words are without spot
and without blemish. And therefore, that perfect one,
he was qualified to be the sacrifice for sin. And then God dealt with
him in utter severity. Don't tell me sin is a little
thing. All sin is against God, and every
sin is serious. Now, I recognize the fact that
every sin does not have the same effect outwardly, right? We understand that. Every sin
doesn't have the same result or the same consequences outwardly. Some have a greater consequence. But every sin, as far as God's
concerned, let's put it this way, there are no little sins
and big sins with God, just sin. And if you were to have kept
count today of the number of times you have sinned, which
is an impossibility because you really don't know, you'd be going
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You'd be doing that all day long
because you sin so many times and I do too. One writer said, how many breaths
do you take during the day? He said, maybe that'll give us
an indication of how many times we sin during the day. Oh my! When God examines every thought,
every motive, motive! What's the reason that you do
what you do? Whether you eat or drink or whatever
you do, do all for the glory of God. When you took that mouthful
of food at lunch today, it was good, wasn't it? You enjoyed
it. Did you take that mouthful of food for the glory of God
consciously? Lord, I receive this food for
your glory. And I'll be honest, I'm not trying
to be funny, but when I had my ribs today for lunch, I wasn't
conscious of that. I was only conscious of the fact
I don't want to get any of this barbecue sauce on my white shirt.
That's what I was conscious of, but I wasn't consciously eating
for God's glory. Say, Jim, you a preacher, you
talk like that? Yeah, yeah, because I'm just
telling you the truth. And you're just like me. I know
you're just like me. Because you're sinners too. That's just what we do. That's
just what we are. And we have no idea of how many
times during the day we do sin. But listen! The blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, 1 John 1-7, goes on cleansing us from all
sin. Isn't that wonderful? From all
of them. I can't calculate them. I can't
tally them up. But God says, I freely, fully,
frankly, all forgive. Why? The blood of my Son has
washed them all away. See, that's the beauty of this
gospel. And I don't, well, I started
to say I don't understand men not preaching this gospel. Actually,
I do. If you haven't seen the glory
of Christ and the glory of the forgiveness of sins through the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll speak very little of that
blood. You'll speak very little of the grace of God. But if you've
ever seen preachers, Sunday school teachers, if you and I, if we
ever get a good look at our sinfulness, and then get a greater look at
the price God paid to put our sins away, we'll brag on the
one who did it. Don't you think that's right?
We'll brag on the one who washed us. We'll brag on the one who
made us the very righteousness of God. When we talk about forgiveness
of sins, it means the penalty for sins is eliminated. It is not possible for God to
forgive a sinner and still punish the sinner. Remember that. everlasting punishment for sin
will never happen to anybody who is forgiven of sins because
you're forgiven on account of the fact your sin debt has already
been retired. That's why you're brought to
faith in Christ Jesus. Forgiven people are cleared of
all guilt. There is therefore now No condemnation. There's no punishment. There's
no judgment to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after
the flesh or after the spirit. And I'll tell you this, being
forgiven of our sins means divine fellowship is restored. Sin came
between us and God. But things were fine between
the Lord and Adam. till sin entered into the picture. Then like a huge mountain, sin
arose, broke the fellowship. No wonder David said, blessed
is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered,
lifted off and taken away. Who bore our sins? Christ did. Who put them on him? The Father did. All we like sheep, all of God's
sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his
own way. Every one of us did. But the
Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. All of our guilt, all of our
transgressions, all of our iniquities, all of our sins were laid on
Christ by the Father. He took them off of us. Isn't
that wonderful? He took them off of us. We don't
bear them anymore. And put them on His Son. And
then His Son had to answer for all of them. He had to answer
for your filthiness. He had to answer for your guilt.
He had to answer for your iniquities. He had to answer for your transgressions. He had to answer for your sins.
And the justice of God saw open season on him and punished him
and you go free. That's the good news of the gospel. And a peace comes to the heart.
There's no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. But to those who've
been forgiven, there's a blessed peace, a peace within. We've been forgiven of all past
sins. We've been forgiven of all present
sins. We've been forgiven of all future
sins. In fact, when the Lord Jesus
Christ died for us, all of the sins of many of his people, the
people who hadn't yet been born, they were all in the future.
They were all paid for and forgiven through his blood. Well, to what extent do we have
forgiveness? Turn with me to Psalm 103. Let
me just take you to a few verses. Psalm 103. Psalm 103, verse 10. Psalm 103, verse 10. He hath
not dealt with us after our sins. That is one tremendous statement. He has not dealt with us after
our sins. Do you know how magnificent that
is? How wonderful that is? He has not rewarded us according
to our iniquities. Watch this. For as the heaven
is high above the earth, So great is his mercy toward
them who fear him. High above the earth. I went to Google. I asked Google
a lot of questions. So I went to Google, and I said,
because we're thinking about here, as high as the heaven is above
the earth. I asked Google, how near, how
close to us is the nearest star? Well, of course, that's the sun,
about 93 million miles away. And the next nearest star is
25 quadrillion, 300 trillion miles away. But beyond that, there are stars
and planets, whatever heavenly bodies, that no human eye has
ever seen. But beyond that, there's the
third heaven. And the Lord says, as high as
the heaven is above the earth. That's how great my mercy is.
Now you talking about an immeasurable distance. You can't measure that. And then look what he says this,
as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed
our transgressions from us. I'm glad he doesn't say as far
as the north is from the south. That can be measured. It has
been measured. I wrote the number down here
somewhere. 12,000 plus miles, about 12,400 and some odd miles. But he doesn't say as far as
the North Pole is from the South Pole. He says as far as the East
is from the West. You know, if you start going
East, you will never go West. Right? The only way you'll ever
go west is to turn around and go the other way. But if you
go east or you go west, you just keep on going, you'll never come
to the end. That is the endlessness of divine
forgiveness. So far hath He removed our transgressions
from us. An immeasurable distance. An
immeasurable distance. What has God done with them?
You don't have to turn to this. Micah 7.19 says, thou has cast,
thou wilt cast their sins into the depths of the sea. And the
eye of avenging justice will never see, will never see them
again. The deepest part of the Pacific
is over 36,000 feet. No human eye will ever see that. But he's buried our sins in the
depths of the sea. In Isaiah 43, turn to Isaiah
43. Just talking about forgiveness.
That's what I'm talking about. Trying to help us out a little.
to be appreciative of what God has done for us. Isaiah 43, look
at 25. Isaiah 43, 25. I, even I, am he that blotteth
out thy transgressions for mine own sake, get that, for my glory,
for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. And the word
blotted out, the words blotted out, it can mean remove the debt. The debt that we owe to God's
been removed. I freely, fully forgive. It also
means to exterminate, like you exterminate pests. I lived in Louisiana. Nancy and
myself, Susanna and David, years ago, moved to Louisiana for a
few years. And I was asked to go visit a
man who lived in a trailer. That's okay. And I went to visit him, and
I had on, actually, a pair of boots. Western boots. Sitting
there talking to him, and I saw something crawl across my boots. And then I saw something crawl
across the television screen. It was a cockroach. And that's two I'd seen, and
then I saw more. And they offered me something
to eat. And I politely refused. I said, Nancy's fed me supper,
and I don't need anything to eat. I got home, I said, oh,
I got to take a shower. I said, they need an exterminator
in the worst sort of way. Let me tell you something. Our
sins are like cockroaches. What you see, that ain't near
all of them. They're in every crevice and
crack and corner. of that tabernacle you live in
called that tent, your own self. And here's what had to happen.
God had to send an exterminator. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that killed sin once and for all. He says, I blotted them out. I've extinguished them, I've
put them away, as far as the East is from the West. And our debts are paid. And God
says, your iniquities and transgressions, I'm not going to impute them
to you. I've imputed them to somebody else, Christ. and His immaculate righteousness
that He established by His obedience unto death, He said, now this
is yours. And we say, oh my Lord, what
grace is this? What grace is this? I'll tell
you what kind of grace it is, amazing grace. And that's the
song we're gonna sing here at the end. You know, the last hymn
we sang was written by John Newton. Talk about the name of the Lord
Jesus. And this one, 236, it's also
written by John Newton. But you know this one by heart.
Probably don't even need to turn to 236. Amazing grace, how sweet
the sound. That's what this this gospel
of forgiveness is all about. Let me say one more thing. Just
sit down there, Joe, and I'll be with you in a minute. Let
me just say one more thing. I had a man one time, he was
talking about giving his offerings to church. And I said to him, I said, you
can't buy your way into heaven. He said, no, but you can't bum
your way either. I said, well, it depends on what
you mean by bum. When I think of a bum, I think
of somebody who's absolutely broke and he's got nothing. He's a beggar. And I said, you'll
go that way. Penniless, poverty stricken,
naked, helpless. Lord, I'm broke. I got nothing
to offer you. And the Lord says, I freely,
fully, all forgive through my Son. Amazing grace. You can get up, Joe. 236. 236.
Let's stand together. Sing all four stanzas. You know
them.