I want to talk to you this morning,
or endeavor to talk to you, try to talk to you, about the, and
of course it's difficult to not get on each other's feet when
we're here on Sunday morning on occasion. Last Sunday I closed
with the question, are you satisfied with Christ? Christ work sufficient for you
Or are you still looking for something in yourself? Are you
still looking for something in yourself something in your way
or your work or your effort? feelings Whatever For evidence
of you being forgiven by God And I said that such a search
was fruitless, right? You can't find it. And if you
thought you had found it, all it would be would be a hindrance
to your spiritual development. So I want to talk to you this
morning about the extent of Christ's
sacrifice. The extent of the forgiveness
of God. How far does it go? Now, Christ's work is sufficient
for God. He said so. And because it is sufficient
for Him, it should be sufficient for us. God is satisfied with
the believer's righteousness that is in Him, and we ought
to be. We ought to be. There is an old song that used
to be sung among people who believed, well, sung a lot amongst four-pointers,
let me put it that way. It said, I am satisfied with
Jesus. This is just a couple of lines.
I am satisfied with Jesus, but the question comes to me, is
he satisfied, is he satisfied with me? And the answer's yes. If you're a child of God, if
you're a believer, if you've committed your way to Him, He's
satisfied. Because let me tell you, He makes
up any lack that I have. The perfect righteousness of
Christ being imputed to those who believe. Well, I'm getting
way ahead of myself. Is the forgiveness of God limited?
There are many, many, many of God's living children that never,
never see the fullness of the forgiveness of God and constantly
dwell in fear and in doubt and in spiritual misery. They seldom seem to see the fact that forgiveness, the
forgiveness of God applies to all, I said it, all, all of their
sins. All of them. They limit, some of them, they
limit the forgiveness of God to the sins that were committed
before they were converted. And then they're troubled over
the fact that after they were converted, there's this sin and
that sin in pursuit. They begin to build up and build
up and build up until you find yourself in the same old defeated
position that you were in before you confessed Christ. And their desire is to be found
in Him. And well, it should be. That
should be all of our desire, to be found in Christ. In the third chapter of Philippians,
Paul gives this witness. He said, but what things were
gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all
things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ,
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. And there's not a one of us here
that can say that. Not a one. We've suffered losses, but we
haven't suffered the loss of all things. He did. Not only that, I've suffered
the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, refuse, that I may win Christ and be
found in Him. Ah, here it is. Not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through
the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that
I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection. What's the
power of the resurrection? Life in Christ. New life. Paul said, I am crucified with
Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. That's the question. How much
do I realize that? Christ liveth in me, and the
life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me. That's faith life. Faith life is not just sitting
around believing, well, tomorrow's gonna be better than today. But a lot of people think so.
They think that's faith. It's a sort of a rabbit's foot
that you hang around your neck. or any four-leaf clover things. Well, it's got to be better tomorrow
because it can't get any worse than it is today. Yes, it can. Yeah, it can. The power of His
resurrection is the power of the life of Jesus Christ. Look what it means. The fellowship
of His sufferings. fellowship of his sufferings
that's a whole other message being made conformable or formed
with his death that goes back to I am crucified
with Christ now this is the desire and this
is the goal of every believer The desire of every child of
God is to have that good hope, Walter, that good hope. But where is that hope found?
Somebody said, well, I don't want to hope. I'm not talking
about that silly hope. I hope I get to go to town tomorrow.
I'm not talking about that kind of hope. This is a good hope.
That's a vain hope. To say I hope it doesn't rain,
that's a vain hope. Because God will do what he pleases
with the weather. But this is the good hope. Where is it found? You gotta see 2 Thessalonians
2 and verse 16. It says, now our Lord Jesus Christ
himself, it's definitive, and God, even our Father, which hath,
past tense, loved us and hath given us everlasting Consolation and a
good hope through grace you see that's not not a wish That's
something that God has given He's given us an everlasting
consolation everlasting comfort and Good hope through grace now
that hope the hope is the gift of God to his children given
us everlasting consolation, given us. It's ours. I said one time,
and Mason Lilly accused me of preaching Arminian doctrine,
we almost had it. I said one time, a gift is not
a gift unless it's received. But I added this, and this is
what he evidently didn't hear. The gift, if God gives you a
gift, it is received. Because he gives it sovereignly.
He gives it sovereignly. I realize what the Armenians
teach. They do teach that. God's gift
to all men, but you gotta receive it. No, if it's not received,
it's not a gift. I mean, if I give you $50, and
I'm not going to, but if I do, you're going to have to take
it before it's yours. You have to receive the gift. But if I say, Joe, do you want
$50? And Joe says, yes, that's it. So it's not will give, but hath
given. That good hope is a God-given
possession, right now, of every child of God. And here's the
witness of the scripture, quickly. 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse
1. It reads, Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is. who is our hope. That's 1st Timothy 1.1. I'm going
to skip right through these so you don't have to turn to them.
And in Colossians 1.27, Paul writes, to whom God would make
known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, Jesus said at one time,
I am with you now and shall be in you. In you. Not just with you, but inside
of you. Note this, Peter in the first
chapter in the third verse says, blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy,
what's he done? He hath begotten us again unto
a lively or a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. A living hope, not a dead, worthless
hope, but a living hope. Now, I don't have the time to
do it this morning, but back in John 17, Christ speaks of
being in the Father, the Father being in Him, and they being
in us. That was His prayer. Paul writes
to the Corinthians and says, what know ye not that your body
is the temple of the Holy Ghost? Yes, sir. Again, it's the temple
of God. Right. Again, all of this being
true, John writes in 1 John chapter one and verse nine, if
we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, does this mean that you
have to kneel down by your bed every night and say, now Lord, today I did
this and I did that and I did the next thing and so on? Now,
she's not going to get this taped, so I'll tell you a story about
my sister-in-law. She said she said she told me she said every
night when I go to bed I begin to pray on my prayer list and
she said it's so long I I go to sleep in the midst of it and
It just wears me out because if I wake up in the night, I
realize I didn't finish and I got to start all over again Well Bless her heart. I'm glad she feels the obligation. But this is formalism. It's formalism. Now, it's not
sin by sin by sin. A lot of people will teach you
that that's confessing your sins. You know what confession of sin
is? To live daily, Hourly and by the minute in the knowledge
that I know that in my flesh dwelleth no good thing That's
good. I need Christ if I'm going to
ever see God and without him and without total and complete
dependence upon him I Cannot enter into the kingdom of God
Now that is confession. And coupled with that confession
is repentance, because we are of those who save men, and put
that in quotes, I am not going to preach on that this morning,
save them as brands plucked from the burning, hating even the
garments spotted by the flesh. God's people are not in love
with themselves. They're in love with Christ. I had a preacher
stand in the pulpit down at Mabscot one time, some of you might remember
this, rubbed the lapel of his jacket and say, I tell you, I
think quite a little bit of myself. I'm proud of myself. That same
man said he was glad that the sin of gluttony was under the
law, but be that as it may. It's a recognition of what I
am. And I am a sinner. Conceived in sin. Born in sin. I'm a sinner. But like Scott
says, I'm not a miserable sinner. Even now, right this morning,
he is Faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness Many years ago there was a fellow
on the radio. This is going back And not many
people would remember and maybe none his name was Edward McEwan
And he used to sing a song he was a singer He used to sing
a song and one verse of it was, forgive the sins I have confessed
to thee, forgive the sins I do not see. Love me, guide me, and
my teacher be, dear Lord wilt thou. That's not a bad song. That's not a bad song. And I
have only one answer to it. He has and he will. That's the
answer to it. All of the sins of God's children
have been atoned for. I said they've been atoned for.
They've been forgiven. All of them. How far, to what
extent does the forgiveness of God reach? It reaches all the
way to the end of sin. But to him that worketh not,
worketh not, you know that's hard even to get out of a good
old hardshell's mind. Him that worketh not, I'm telling you, he that doesn't
even try. Oh, but we've got to try! Hey! That is just simply to improve
the flesh. Has nothing to do whatsoever
with the grace of God. Do God's people try to serve
God? Yes, but that has little to do
with the improvement of the flesh. but to him that worketh not,
but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly his faith." Now notice
the separation of the two words again. He that believeth, that's
something we do. We believe. How do we believe? Because we're given the gift
of faith. That's what it is. Faith is perfect.
It comes from God. Everything that comes from God
is perfect. I'm going to keep repeating this. Our believing
is imperfect because that's what we do. And we also doubt, don't
we? I'm afraid so. I'm afraid so. But believeth on him that does
what? Justifieth the ungodly. Oh my soul. God doesn't justify
the righteous. That's right. The whole have
no need of a physician, but they that are sick. But believeth
on him that justifieth the ungodly. That's me. Yes, sir. That's me. His faith is counted for a righteousness
that he doesn't have. Exactly. And that faith's a gift.
What do you got in this? Nothing at all. Even as David
also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth
righteousness without works. What's that word imputeth mean?
It means gave it to him when he didn't deserve it. Now that
may be oversimplification, but that's it. God giving us that
which we don't deserve, righteousness, is imputed righteousness. That's
what imputed righteousness is saying. Now God's talking, saying,
blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven. Who are they? Well,
they're those that God imputed righteousness without works.
That's who they are. Blessed are they whose iniquities
are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man unto
whom the Lord will not impute, will not reckon, will not charge
with sin. I'm one of those people. And that's what you have to understand
about grace. I told I told Mac a story this morning
about a fella up around Fairmont. His name was Frank DeGarmo. And
Frank, I don't know, he followed me around for a while. And he
said to me one day, of all places over at the Catholic Center at
Huttonsville, he said to me, he said, well, early he said,
I've been a success. And he went on to say how much
money he had, and how much this he had, and how much that he
had. And he said, the Lord gave me every bit of it. God did it. Well, I said, I'm happy to hear
you testify, because I don't hear that very much. Oh, but
he said, now, I don't want to get your wrong idea. I had a
lot to do with it. Let me tell you something. That's
not grace. That's not a gift. He didn't want to lose his credit,
you see. I shot my credit when I was born. I had not one thing
to my merit on the credit side of the ledger. It was all on
the debit. And let me tell you, if God looks
at me now in pure justice and righteousness and the holiness
of God, there's nothing but debits. For I must, along with the apostles,
count myself as unworthy of service. Unworthy of that grace. When He forgave us, when He forgives
us, we've never deserved it. It's grace. If those sins were
not forgiven, if one sin were left out, I said one, One, did
you ever pretend something before somebody that you knew in your
heart wasn't true? Anybody here, I'm sure, I don't think anybody
here could say, I never did that. Because if you didn't, you hurt
some feelings pretty badly. Somebody said, well, what do
you think of? Oh, well, I just, and you kind of push it off to
one side, you know. You know, that's a sin. I'm talking about just those
little bitty things you know Daily occurrences, I'm with Henry
Mahan when he said I sin in thought word and deed every day I Stand
with that crowd Yeah If one sin were left out, no
matter how small or how trifling that sin was, I could never enter
into the presence of God. If all of the believer's sins
were not forgiven, I said all, were not forgiven in the death
of Christ, then neither by confession, or by prayer, nor by fasting,
nor by any other means could there be any forgiveness at all. You can talk to me about Mother
Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi and all of those cross-legged, sheet-wearing
Hindus that you want to. And I'll tell you this, there's
nothing in this world that will bring a man into the gates of
glory except the shed blood of Jesus Christ and His imputed
righteousness. That's all. The power of death, the power
of the death of Christ reaches from eternity to eternity. Now you'll notice I didn't say
eternity past because eternity knows no past. It knows no future. From eternity to eternity, the
death of Christ and his substitution reaches. And it goes over this small span
of time that we live in. Because one day, there's going
to be a man come, and he's going to put one foot on the land,
and the other foot on the sea, and he's going to raise his hand
to heaven, and he's going to declare that time shall be no
longer. That's my Lord. And the forgiveness of God reaches
from eternity to eternity, and this time shall be no more. Someone asked you mean that all
of my future sins are forgiven In Christ death They had to be
Joe Because you weren't there when Christ died And I wasn't
either We must never look at the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ
as from our position here on earth. We've got to look at it
from God's position in heaven. A complete and adequate sacrifice
for the sins of His people. Now, we are to try to see the
substitutionary death of our Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son,
our Lord, as the total payment for the sins of the elect. And
not only that, but of the Father's complete satisfaction with that
payment. That song that I quoted to you,
is he satisfied with me? Yeah, he is. Yeah, he is. He's satisfied with
the payment that Christ made. And my debt was covered by the
payment of my surety. See, that's what I'm saying.
God, way before the beginnings of time, met in covenant grace with the
Son and with the Holy Ghost. And Christ signed as my surety,
He signed as surety for all the people of God. His death picked
up the note. In its completion, It's paid
for you're forgiven Well, I don't feel that way well Remember your conscience is falling
the same as your soul It fell with it The sword of justice
Was raised not against the sinner but against the Sun I And in
the place of each individual chosen in him before the foundation
of the world, Isaiah writes, very clearly, all we like sheep
have gone astray. We have turned everyone into
his own way. And the Lord hath laid upon him
the iniquity of us all. There's a sense, Walter said
it this morning, I'm gonna say it again, if you don't care.
Well, really doesn't, I'm gonna say it anyhow. There is a sense
in which God never forgives sin. Never. Because in justice, He
could not forgive that which He has condemned. But, when He exacts the price, when
He takes the debt from another, the price for sin, the blood
of His only begotten Son. For when we were what? Yet without
strength. I don't have much today. When we were yet without strength,
Christ died for the ungodly. We're prone to focus our attention
on things and not on Christ. We struggle for answers when
we've not heard the question. And the question is, the most
important question that anybody can ever hear is, what think
ye of Christ? They say, well, that's easy for
an old man to say. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. You're going to find out one
of these days if the Lord tarries, that when you're old, you have
more concerns than when you were young, because you're concerned
about a lot more people. And when you're young, you go
into bed and the babies are asleep and so on and so forth, and you
go to sleep. When you get old, you go to bed
and you got so many young'uns out there and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, you lay awake all night worrying about
the devilment they get into. Well, you say we oughtn't to
worry. Well, I guess that's right. But, hear again what Isaiah said. For peace I had great bitterness,
but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of
corruption, for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. All of them all of them, Christ
was our sin bearer. He, by his death, laid the eternal
foundation for the forgiveness of sins so that the children
of God may at any time of their lives, at any point in their
earthly history, at any stage of their existence, or under
any conditions that can come to them, from the time when the
gospel fell effectively upon their ear Faith until the moment
that we step into the presence of the glories of heaven Can
say without fear of contradiction thou has cast all my sins Thou
has cast all my sins behind our back I would think that that
would take a hold of the hearts of men so that you wouldn't have
an Arminian in the world I But let me tell you, they're in love
with the flesh. They will not enter into the
condemnation of the flesh. That's their problem. He's the ground of our forgiveness
that extends through all of the life of the child of God and
covers any charge of any and all sin by the righteousness
of Christ. Since he bore our iniquities,
we certainly do not and cannot. Amen. Who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? And who includes you? Who shall
lay anything? You can't lay anything to your
own charge. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemneth? It
is Christ that died, ye rather, is living again, who is even
at the right hand of God, and maketh intercession for us. You say, well, Brother Cochran,
I pray. Good. But you don't know how to pray
as you ought to, and neither do I. That's what the book says. It's
good to pray, we're counseled to pray, but we don't know how,
not even to do that. We ask God for things that we
ought not to have, and we reject that which we should have. And I do it, and you do it. I'll
tell you, it's the grace of God. It's not our sacrifice, but He
is. It's not our confession, though we do confess Him, but
it's His intercession. All honor, all praise, and all
glory must be to Him. And for this cause, we have this
treasure in earthen vessels or in clay pots. Our Father, we're
grateful again this morning for Your blessing and for the strength
that You give us day by day for this hour that we spend here
together We ask that you'd bless us with a conscious knowledge
of who Christ is, what he has done, and what God has given
in his person. For we pray it in his name, amen.