The following sermon was delivered
on Sunday evening, January 23, 2005, at Trinity Baptist Church
in Montville, New Jersey. Now, will you follow with me,
please, in your own Bibles as I read the first chapter of John's
first letter, 1 John 1, this brief chapter of ten verses to which I will be
making frequent reference in our meditation tonight. That which was from the beginning,
that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes,
that which we beheld and our hands handled concerning the
word of life, And the life was manifested, and we have seen
and bear witness and declare unto you the life, the eternal
life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That
which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that
you also may have fellowship with us. Yes, and our fellowship
is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these
things we write. that our joy may be made full. And this is the message which
we have heard from him, and announce unto you, that God is light,
and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship
with him, and walk in the 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 Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say that
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that
we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in
us. Let us again pray and ask God
to bless our reflections upon his truth as we meditate together. Our Father, how we wish that
as your children we did not have to reckon daily with the reality
of sin. We confess to you that we're
ashamed that we have so much sin to confess. But we thank
you for the realism of your word for every provision made for
us in Christ. And we pray that the Holy Spirit
will point very clearly to the Savior, to the efficacy of his
saving work Help me as I seek to give practical pastoral counsel
to your children, your sinning children, that that counsel from
the Word may be helpful to everyone. Meet with us and bless us, we
pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, if you are a true child
of God, and a child of God sitting here tonight in any kind of a
healthy spiritual condition, then there are certain things
which I am certain have been a vital part of your Christian
experience even in the first few days of this new year. Among these things will be, of
course, the discipline of secret prayer, Not that you prayed at
the same length and with the same fervency and the same sense
of liberty every single day, but secret, private prayer has
been an integral part of your life. If not, you're either not
a Christian or you're a child of God in a tragically sick spiritual
condition. Furthermore, the private, reflective
meditation and assimilation of the Word of God has been an integral
part of your life. Not that every day you have been
equally consistent in the amount of your Bible that you've read,
the degree to which you sense you've had dealings with God,
but nonetheless, consistent, some degree of consistent, regular
exposure to this book is a part of your life. If it isn't, You're
not a Christian, or, if a Christian, you're in a tragically sick spiritual
state. Well, for anyone to think himself
a child of God, and in some kind of spiritual health, who does
not also have another discipline as a regular part of his experience,
that person is self-deceived. And the thing that I am referring
to is the discipline, the experience, the spiritual exercise of the
confession of one's sins. personal confession of personal
sins as a part of one's regular ongoing spiritual experience
is the mark of every true child of God who is in anything approaching
a healthy spiritual state. And so tonight I want us for
a relatively brief time for me as a preacher. to consider some
pastoral and practical observations concerning the Christian's dealings
with his own personal sins. And the reason I'm addressing
this is not because my pastoral interactions with others have
been a pointer to the necessity of addressing this issue, but
as I have sought to be honest with my own heart and my own
walk with God since the beginning of this year, I confess that
I have been driven afresh to wrestle with this whole issue. How do I, as a child of God,
deal with my own personal sins? I wish I could testify that the
loving, chastening dealings of God with me bringing me into
the experience of being a widower had made confession of sins not
quite so necessary. I wish I could say that going
home to my house where the only devil I have to contend with
is the house devil who stands before you. Rutherford called
his own remaining corruption his house devil. But in a sense, as a transcript
and growing out of the crucible of my own wrestlings with God,
preaching more perhaps to myself than to anyone else, as Bunyan
said, when I preached, I preached that which I did feel, that which
I did smartingly feel, as I reflected in a relatively short time as
to what I should convey to you. This is something of an issue
that is burning in my own present spiritual experience, and out
of that crucible, and I trust true to the Word of God, I want
us to think together for some moments on some pastoral and
practical observations concerning the Christian's dealings with
his own sins. And first of all, I want us to
think together on the fact that there is a twofold consequence
of a believer's sins. When a believer sins, there is
a twofold consequence. There may be many more consequences,
but there are always at least two. Now remember, we're speaking
of a believer's sin. That is, one who has laid hold
of Christ in repentance and faith, And having been united to Christ,
he has been declared righteous in the court of God. He is justified,
just as much justified now as he will be a thousand millennia
in his glorified state. He is adopted as a child of God. He is accepted in the Beloved. He is, in a very real sense,
and here the large bulk of the biblical use of the word sanctified
identifies him, he is sanctified, that is, he is set apart unto
God in virtue of his union with Christ. Now, such a man, a believer,
justified, adopted, sanctified in virtue of his union with Christ,
such a man, such a woman, such a boy, such a girl, still sins. Jesus assumes this, for when
He gives the model prayer, He says, when you pray, say, or
in the parallel passage, after this manner pray ye, and among
the petitions that are to be our daily concern, one of them
is, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us, or We are asking God to remit our debts as we
forgive our debtors. And the passage I have read in
your hearing is explicit. John says, if we walk in the
light as He is in the light, verse 7, we have fellowship one
with another, referring either to the believer and God or believers
in this fellowship of union with Christ and walking in the light. And in that fellowship, the blood
of Jesus, His Son, goes on cleansing us from all sin, a present tense. And it's as though John hears
an objector saying, well, what's the big deal? I don't need that
provision. And John says, if we say that
we have no sin, which needs continuous cleansing, we are self-deceived
and the truth has not taken up its residence in our hearts.
And so here is the believer justified, adopted, sanctified in the biblical
sense of set apart unto God in union with Christ. Yes, there
is a progressive work of sanctification. I'm fully aware of it. But the
predominant use of that verb in the New Testament points to
this once for all setting apart unto God in virtue of our union
with Christ. Well, such a one still sins. Now, when he does, what happens?
What is the consequence of that believer's sins? Does God rescind
the declaration of his justified state? No. Does God disinherit
him and unadopt him and disown him? No. Does God say he is no
longer set apart unto himself in union with Christ? No. God
does not nullify the reality of who he is as a justified,
adopted, and sanctified man or woman, boy or girl. Well, what
happens then when he sins? Because he is justified and no
longer has to deal with his sins in the courtroom of God with
respect to divine wrath, does he just forget his sin? Treat
it as though it's a non-entity? Because he is adopted and he's
the king's kid, does he just say, well, I'm the king's kid.
Nothing I do will get me kicked out. So what's the big deal?
I'm sanctified in Christ once for all, set apart unto God,
so why should I be concerned with piddling little things that
I may not... No. What happens when a believer
sins? What are the consequences? Well,
I want to use an analogy, an extended metaphor that will carry
through the remainder of the message. I want you to think
of a little boy, who's all boy, whatever that means. Without
excusing, Adam in him. I get tired of it when people
say, oh boy, he's all boy. What they mean is he's all Adam
at this point. And when he's acting all Adam
and not all boy, he doesn't need that kind of fawning, condescending
indulgence. He needs to go to the woodshed,
all right? But this guy, this boy is all
boy in that he's different from girls. Some parents have yet
to make that distinction, and they want their boys to be little
wimpish girls. Often a mama can't understand
the boys. At times my daughter Heidi gets
so frustrated. She says, oh daddy, I live with
a man and an emerging man and I just so much want to relate
in my household to something feminine. She's learning, learning
the hard way. Boys are different from girls.
So here's this kid and his dad knows him through and through
and they've had four or five days of very heavy rain in the
backyard. The level is kind of low and
it turns into a mud hole. So he said, now Johnny, when
Daddy goes off to work today, I don't want you playing out
in the backyard. I want you to stay clear of the backyard. If
you play, you play in the front yard, you play in the neighbor's
yards that aren't a sinkhole of mud. You understand? Yes,
Daddy. Well, lo and behold, the appeal of the mud becomes overpowering. And that afternoon, Johnny temporarily
blocks out. You kids, you know how you can
block out? You have a very convenient forgettery, huh? You block it
out. You block it out. You know something,
but you block it out. And he blocks it out long enough
to go out, and he is in his element. I mean, he's slopping and flopping
around in that mud. He's just having a grand old
time. And then his blocker-outer goes down, and he says, uh-oh.
I'm going to get it when Daddy comes home. And he knows by looking
at the clock that Daddy's coming home in about 20 minutes. What
am I going to do? Because when Daddy comes home
and he has to face him, he's got a two-fold problem. Number
one, he's guilty. He has broken his Daddy's clear
commandment. Daddy said, no going out in the
backyard and playing, and he's been flopping around in the mud.
He's guilty. But he's got a second problem.
He's all covered with mud. He's polluted. He's defiled. He's got a problem of guilt and
a problem of defilement. You know the defilement by your
looking at him. He's head to toe and everything
in between, covered with mud. No way he can just rush into
the little wash up sink in the back porch and fix himself up. I mean, you need to throw him
in the washer along with his clothes. He is defiled. He's muddied from head to toe,
and he's guilty. Now, when Daddy comes through
the door, what's the kid do? He'd been off somewhere in the
cellar trying to hide. Where are you, son? I'm down
here, Dad. So what happens when his dad
approaches him? Well, again, his twofold condition creates
a twofold response. He's conscious that he's offended
his dad. and he doesn't want to approach
him. His consciousness of his guilt
causes estrangement between him and his father. He's nothing
but a rotten, spoiled brat if, having defied his father's law
and gotten himself muddied from head to foot, he hears his father's
voice. He comes running up the stairs and says, How are you
doing, Dad? And jumps up in his arms. Oh no, you don't want to
see his dad. The consciousness of his guilt
makes him feel estrangement from his father's face. And the consciousness
of his defilement makes him feel uncomfortable in the thought
of wrapping his arms around his daddy. You got me now? He's got a two-fold problem.
He's guilty and he's defiled. And that twofold problem creates
a twofold strain in the relationship with his father, estrangement
and discomfort. Now, that's exactly what happens
when a Christian sins. When a Christian sins, he's guilty
of disobeying his father. Sin, shorter catechism, is any
want, we would say lack, of conformity unto or transgression of the
law of God. With me, my biggest transgression
was a lack of conformity unto my Father's law. Son, this afternoon
when I come home, I want that lawn cut. And I'd get involved
playing ball and all the rest, and I'd look at the clock and,
oh man, 20 minutes, Papa's coming around that curve on Soundview
Avenue in Stanford, Connecticut, and the jig is up. And when that
lawn was not cut and Dad was coming home on the day it should,
I clue you, I never ran out to meet him. I wanted to hide. There
was estrangement. But my father didn't go down
to town hall and take out papers to disown me. He didn't call
the cops. and say he's broken the law in
such a way that he needs to feel the full weight of the penal
sanctions of the local code. No. I was still his son, but
there was estrangement and there was discomfort. Not so much there
because I was outwardly polluted, but in the case of the little
illustration I've used, there is the discomfort. Now, when
you and I sin, That's what, if we're in a healthy spiritual
state, we will feel, and ought to feel, because that's reality.
We've disobeyed our father. We've not done what he said,
or we have done what he says we should not do. It's real guilt,
but now follow me. It's the guilt of the household,
not the guilt of the courtroom. The guilt of the courtroom has
been settled by the Lord Jesus. When He cried out on the cross,
it is finished. What was finished? All that divine
justice demands of punishment for the sins of all of His people
for all time, Christ bore it. And though our sin is sin, and
sin against the Holy God, it is sin against the Holy God who
is no longer in relationship to us as the judge in the courtroom,
but the Father in the household. And so, we have household guilt. Jesus said, when you pray, say,
Our Father, forgive us our debts. Not all righteous judge. In the
initial actings of repentance and faith, we come to God as
judge through the mediator, the Lord Jesus, and ask Him to pardon
our sins and accept us as righteous for the sake of the righteousness
of Christ alone. But when as believers we sin,
it is real guilt. It is household guilt, not courtroom
guilt. And there is real personal pollution
and defilement. When we sin, we are defiled in
the process of sinning. Remember what Jesus said in Mark
7? The Pharisees thought you got defiled by what you touched
and what you ate. Jesus said no. Defilement comes
from what comes out of you. Out of the heart of man proceed. And he says, after naming all
of those things, these things proceed from within, and they
defile the man. They not only make him guilty,
murder, adultery, pride, thefts, all the sins that he names, they
defile. In the process of committing
them, we are defiled by them. We not only have broken Daddy's
law, we've wallowed in mud, and it clings to us. Now, to show that this is not
some fantasy, let me ask you, as a child of God, when you've
had time with God in the morning, and with your lips you've sung
His praise, with your lips you've worshipped Him, with your lips
You've pleaded for grace for yourself and others. What do
you feel when, with those same lips later on in the day, you
speak an angry, harsh word to your spouse? You speak a word
to your children that you know was not tinged by love and disciplined
by self-control. Not only are you conscious you've
been guilty, but don't your lips feel dirty? They do. The lips that were praising God
two hours ago are now saying these nasty, ugly, biting, sarcastic,
unloving words. I was telling one of the elders
before we came out tonight, there was a lot of sense in what our
parents did in my generation. When you use dirty words, you
got your mouth washed out with soap. There was some good theology
in that. Some may say it's bad pedagogy,
but it was good theology. It was the sense, you see, your
mouth has become unclean when you speak those words. They came
out of your mouth and made your mouth dirty. You know, wash it
out with soap. Well, don't you feel that way?
Don't you feel unclean when you sit? Isaiah did. that holy man of God. Do you remember what the acute
pain was when he saw the Lord in his burning holiness? And
he cried out, Woe is me! I'm undone! I'm shattered! Why? I'm a man of unclean lips. And I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips. He felt the defilement of his
words. set apart by God to speak the
words of God, that the mouth that would speak the words of
God would speak words that were so ungodlike. He felt unclean
and defiled. So when you and I as believers
sin, we incur household guilt, we incur personal pollution. With the result, The consciousness
of that guilt brings a sense of estrangement between us and
God. Do you feel at ease tripping
into the Lord's presence when you've sinned? You're acting
like an arrogant bat. You don't come tripping into
his presence when you've broken his law, defied his directives. There is the consciousness of
guilt that brings estrangement. I've offended this great and
glorious God who is my Father. Not just a distant, angry judge
who'll zap me in the day of judgment, but He's my Father who sent His
Son to die for me. He's my Father who's embraced
me in His arms and kept me and nurtured me and met all of my
needs in my hours of deepest need, and I've sinned against
so glorious and gracious and tender a Heavenly Father. The consciousness of our guilt
brings a sense of estrangement and distance, and the consciousness
of sin's defilement makes us feel discomfort, unfit to come
into the presence of a Father who is, as Jesus addressed Him,
Holy Father. Now, if you don't know anything about
what I'm talking, my friend, face it. You've never known what
it is to be in the orbit of grace. If what I'm saying does not strike
a resonance and a response and say, Oh God, that's what he experiences
too, that's me. That's normal, healthy, biblical
experience when a believer sins. His position remains unchanged,
justified, adopted, sanctified. But when he sins, he has household
guilt and personal defilement with the result that the consciousness
of his guilt gives a sense of estrangement, and the consciousness
of his defilement brings him discomfort. But now we move,
secondly, to the wonderful truth, the twofold provision for the
believer's sin. We've looked at the twofold consequences
or consequence of the believer's sin. Now, what's the twofold
provision for the believer's sin? Well, as the sin brings
guilt, there is a marvelous provision for forgiveness. And as the sin
brings defilement, there is a marvelous provision for cleansing. Now
let's look at the scriptural evidence. It's all condensed
into one verse, and then we'll look at other texts as it's expanded. First John 1.9. Having asserted that walking
in the light is walking in a realm where the believers' sins are
brought to the fore And in the consciousness of that, dealing
with them biblically, there is ongoing cleansing. He does not
manifest the self-deception of saying he has no ongoing sin
that needs forgiveness and cleansing. Well, what is he to do? Verse
9, if we confess our sins, he, God, is faithful and righteous. Now, notice the two things. He
is faithful and righteous to do. He is faithful and righteous
to forgive us our sins. That deals with the household
guilt our sin has brought. And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's God's dealings with the
personal defilement that our sin has brought. And so God has
made provision in the person and work of his beloved Son that
the ongoing reality of a believer's sins can be adequately, righteously,
gloriously dealt with whenever that sin is owned and confessed
to God. Here is the scriptural evidence
and promise that for our guilt there is forgiveness, for our
defilement there is cleansing. And what's the basis? Though
there are two dimensions to our sin, there is one common foundation
for dealing both with the guilt and with the defilement. For
the guilt, here is the foundation. Chapter 2, verse 1 and 2a. My little children, These things
I write unto you, that you may not sin, and if any man sin."
There's the realism. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation, the
sacrifice that turns away divine wrath with respect to our sins. and having offered a once-for-all
propitiatory sacrifice on the basis of that sacrifice. He is our paraclete. He is our
advocate. He is the one there in the presence
of God who by His very presence embodies the virtue of His once-for-all
sacrifice and stands ready to forgive. If any man sin, we have
an advocate. It is Christ in the sufficiency
of His once-for-all, propitiatory sacrifice, and in His ongoing,
continuous work of intercession that forms the basis of the ongoing
forgiveness of the child of God. Therefore, John can say in verse
9, if we confess our sins, He, God, is both faithful, He can
be counted upon, and righteous to forgive. Wait a minute. I thought grace stands behind
forgiveness, not righteousness. I thought righteousness demands
justice and punishment and wrath. Yes, it does. And it hasn't relaxed
its demands. But they were all met in Jesus.
They were met in Jesus so that God can, as it were, I don't
want to be irreverent, but I want it to stick in your mind. God
can fill His lungs and stick His chest out when you come as
His child, conscious of your sin. conscious of estrangement,
conscious of defilement, and you say, oh God, how can you
forgive? I've had to ask your forgiveness ten, twenty, thirty,
forty, fifty times without number for the very same thing. And
God can say, I'm trustworthy and I'm righteous to forgive
you. Have you forgotten? There was a place called Golgotha,
and there my son, in a welter of his own blood, and his face
dripping with the vile spit of viler men. There he hung, and
there I poured out all the viles of my wrath and made him the
greatest sinner that ever was upon my earth." He, Jesus, made
the greatest sinner. and all the wrath due to those
sins I poured out upon Him, I can be righteous, my son, my daughter,
and forgive you, because He is propitiation for our sins. And so though my spirit feels
that reluctance to come, that shame that I have sinned, I come
to deal with my guilt, recognizing my Father is faithful. He can be counted upon. He is
trustworthy. He doesn't hold out promises
to mock me, to tease me. He holds them out to draw me
back to Himself. And I can say, O righteous Father,
though in itself my sin deserves that I should be sent to hell,
Father, Father, Forgive me for Jesus' sake. Did you not make
Him propitiation? Did you not pour out all of your
wrath upon Him? And in that confidence, Father,
I own the fact I never should have gone out in the backyard. Father, I'm ashamed that I shut
down for those moments when I chose to do what I knew you had forbidden. And when I shut down the pressure
upon my conscience of what I knew You wanted me to do, Lord, my
shutdown was my act, was part of my vileness, part of the wretched,
devious actings of my own remaining sin. But Father, You're still
my Father. And You poured out Your wrath
upon Your Son. and in the confidence that if
I confess my sins, you are faithful and righteous to forgive me.
Oh, Father, forgive me. Forgive me for those sharp words
I spoke to my husband, those gossipy words I spoke to my sister
when I called her on the phone, my sister in Christ. Forgive
me, Lord. for that second glance at that
ad on page three of the paper that the moment it registered,
everything in me said, turn to page four. Father, forgive me
that I looked the second look. You don't let the estrangement
drive you from Him. You're never going to get back
while you stay away. How did you get reconciled in
the first place? Was not the cross of Christ that
bridge by which you came to a holy God when he still had a case
against you? Well, you don't build a different
bridge. It's the same old bridge. You're going to walk on it all
the way to heaven until there is no more sin. And then you'll
glory in the Lamb in the midst of the throne forever. And then what about the defilement?
How does Christ's work deal with the defilement? Well, look at
verse 7 of 1 John 1. If we walk in the light, and
what that means is best interpreted by John himself in his gospel,
John chapter 3. where he says that those who
do the truth keep coming to the light that their deeds may be
made manifest, whether or not they're wrought of God. It's
living transparently before the eye of God and the law of God,
ready and willing to see your sin, not excuse it, not rationalize
it, not be transferring guilt, blame shifting, and all the other
nonsense of which our devious hearts are altogether too competent
and too skillful, walking in the light transparently before
God and before men. We have fellowship one with another,
and in that context, what happens? The blood of Jesus, His Son,
goes on cleansing us. It is not only the foundation
of our forgiveness to deal with our guilt, it is also the basis
of our cleansing from defilement. In Hebrews 9.14, God says, How
much more shall the blood of Christ Purge, cleanse, same Greek
word, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God. You can't serve God when you're
loaded with a sense of the shame of defilement. It is only in
the consciousness that was brought to Isaiah. His service flowed
out of the removal of his, not only his guilt, but his defilement. And I want you to turn to that
passage to see this clearly confirmed. In Isaiah chapter 6, Isaiah sees
the Lord high and lifted up, confesses his undone-ness in
verse 5, and he focuses upon the sense of moral uncleanness
in conjunction with his lips. Verse 6, Then flew one of the
seraphim unto me, having a live coal. Notice, he did not come
from the altar with a basin of blood, To say primarily your
sin is expiated, that will follow. But he came with a coal. He came
with a coal and with the tongue so hot even a seraphim couldn't
hold it. And he touched my mouth with
it. Can you imagine the shriek of Isaiah's pain? I've just got
a little cold sore. When I'm showering and rub the
scab off it and then put my aftershave on, it stings. very sensitive
nerve endings, having a live cold touch your lips, a shriek
and a curl of smoke. And then what happens? Lo, this
has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, now notice, and,
and your sins forgiven. You are both cleansed and forgiven
in conjunction with the stuff of the altar. This is what God does. He both
forgives and he cleanses, according to 1 John 1, 9. He is faithful
and righteous to forgive and to cleanse. Look at David's penitential
prayer for that twofold emphasis again, so clear. It was Martin Luther that said
every believer ought to pray through the 51st Psalm every
day of his life. I don't do that, but I do pray
it through many days of my life because here is perhaps condensed
in short compass the most thorough yet comprehensive and succinct
expression of what confession is that reckons both with the
problem of guilt and defilement. Look at the language. Have mercy
upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according
to the multitude of your tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. That's legal language. My transgressions
are now written in the book of heaven. O God, blot them out,
so that when you look upon me, you do not see those transgressions. But He doesn't stop there. Wash
me. Wash me. I'm defiled thoroughly
from mine iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. Blot out and cleanse and again. Verse 5, I was brought forth
in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. O God, I
did what I did because I am what I am. You desire truth in the
inward parts, in all of those areas where I did my shutdown
act. When I looked at Bathsheba, I
did a shutdown act on your command. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not covet another's
wife. Lord, there in my heart I lied
to myself. And in that deep recess of my
heart where I lied to myself, without which I never would have
sinned, Lord, You desire truth in the inward part. In the hidden
part, You'll make me to know wisdom, purify me with His Hyssop
was that branch with which the blood was taken and sprinkled
upon the people. He's saying, Oh God, I need an
application of expiatory blood to my conscience and to my person. Wash me and I shall be whiter
than snow. He wants pardon for his guilt
and cleansing for his defilement. And God granted it to him. and so he will grant it to you
and to me." So we've looked at the twofold consequence of the
believer's sin, the twofold provision for the believer's sin. Now,
thirdly and finally, what's the simple condition to go from the
consequences into the full enjoyment of the provision? Well, look
at 1 John 1.9. There it is. we confess our sins. If we confess our sins, no parenthesis,
no asterisk saying, see the footnote for 10 other accompanying conditions. If we confess our sins, there's
the simple straightforward, unambiguous condition. If we confess our
sins, He, if we, He, we confess, He, faithful and righteous, forgives
and cleanses from all unrighteousness. Now, I know what some of you
are thinking. Pastor, does that mean anybody just mouths away,
Oh God, forgive me? No, the Bible has a lot to say. This is not
all the Bible teaches about the nature of true confession. The
Bible does talk about people that draw near to God with their
lips, but their hearts are far from Him. It certainly assumes
that the confession, which means saying the same thing about our
sin as God does, is not just mouthing words, drawing near
to God with lip service while the heart is not engaged. Certainly,
The whole doctrine of the first two Beatitudes must be brought
into play. What are the two characteristics
of all the true sons and daughters of the kingdom upon which Jesus
pronounces blessedness? Where does he begin? Blessed
are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. All the sons and daughters of
the kingdom know what it is to be stripped of their self-righteousness
and their self-dependence and their self-importance. They know
what true poverty of spirit is. They have what Isaiah describes
as the humble and the contrite heart with which alone God dwells,
Isaiah 57, 15. What John says does not cancel
out what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7.10. Godly sorrow works repentance
not to be repented of. No. But at the end of the day,
with all of the pressure and light of these other passages
in the Word of God, John did write, by the inspiration of
the Spirit, if we confess our sins, in other words, the resolution
of the believer's guilt and defilement, rests primarily external to Him. He sees the sin for what it is. He says the same thing about
it that God says, and in confidence renewed in the sufficiency of
the work of Christ, he is trusting that God indeed is faithful,
both to forgive and to cleanse. You see, for the true child of
God, who has come to know something of the exceeding sinfulness of
sin. It's just too good to be true
that I don't need to have something added to all of this. I mean,
I've miserably wallowed in the mud. And I knew my father said,
don't go in the backyard. I went anyway. And once I was
there, daddy's words were ringing in my ear, don't wallow in the
mud. I wallowed in it anyway. And you mean all I need to do
now is come to my father and say, my father, I got no excuses. I'm not going to blame Shiv.
I'm not going to say the kids next door beckoned me there.
I'm not going to say that my sister said, done the mud. No,
no, Lord. No blaming sis, no blaming the
neighbors. Father, it was the child of my
own heart. Father, you know it. I know it. And Father, you know that knowing
that you know it, And what I know about it, I could wish right
now that my heart was so broken that I couldn't even utter words.
I could wish right now I was so broken over sin that I know
cost my Savior His life's blood, that my eyes were a fountain
of tears. But, Father, they're not a fountain
of tears. But I know, Father, I don't want
to live another moment with a sense of estrangement between us. Father,
I want you to smile. Father, I own my sin. Father, forgive me. Father, cleanse me, for Jesus'
sake. And then, if you need to do like
I have done times without number over the years, Put your finger
right on this verse and say, God, you don't need to have me
show it to you to know it's true. But my faith needs it to lay
hold of it and to rest my soul upon the reality of it. Now, you see, God nowhere says
that you will walk away from confessing your sin in the weak
but real confidence that He has forgiven and cleansed that you
will then automatically forget what that sin was and be tempted
to feel the crippling effect of it in your own soul and the
shame of it. In fact, God says in the book
of Ezekiel, an amazing thing. And I want you to turn to it
because I think this is the point at which some of you, some of
you are crippled in your Christian experience in this very area. In Ezekiel chapter 16, that graphic
chapter, that is a shock even to our shockless age in the graphic
language of God's dealings with Israel and Israel's sins of idolatry
and spiritual whoredom. But now listen to what God says
in verse 60 of 16, Ezekiel 16. Nevertheless, I will remember
my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish
unto you an everlasting covenant. Then shall you remember your
ways, and be ashamed when you shall receive your sisters, your
elder sister and younger, and I will give them unto you for
daughters, but not by covenant. And I will establish my covenant
with you, and you shall know that I am Jehovah, that you may
remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth any more
because of your shame, when, when I have forgiven you all
that you have done." God says there is a shame subsequent
to the conferral of forgiveness. You see that with your own eyes
and your body? And because you walk away still
feeling the shame, you doubt the reality of the forgiveness
and the cleansing. That's my big problem. This is
confession time. I've sinned. I've spoken unjust
words. I've gone to my Father. Father,
forgive me. Father, cleanse me. But I can
still remember the situation in which I spoke the words. And
then I'm tempted to go back and say, Lord, if my confession wasn't
just right, Lord, I confess again. Shame on me. After 52 years,
I ought to know better. As I said, this is biographical.
I don't want somebody to think I've gone out and robbed a bank
and spent a weekend in a motel with a hooker. No, I have no
sword. I'm talking about the sins that
only God and me know all about. And only God and me would know
if you lived in my house. You have that problem? Am I the
only creature put together that way? And we need to learn how
to manage what I would call the post-operative scars and sutures
that come from the spiritual surgery of repentance and faith
in conjunction with the believer's sin. But we must do so in the
context and in the confidence that our Father's face is toward
us. We don't need to listen to Dad's footsteps as though we
had been in the mud and hadn't owned up to our sin to our dad
and sought his forgiveness. And then it's cheerful experience
even to say, Father, I know your smile is toward me. I know you've
forgiven me because you're faithful and you're just. Your justice
is bound on my behalf to forgive. And according to your promise
that the blood of your son cleanses. But Father, you know I'm still
ashamed." And he said, that's alright, I told you you would
be. That you'd be ashamed when I have forgiven you. And that
dimension of godly shame is part of poverty of spirit and the
condition of ongoing mourning upon which Jesus pronounces blessedness. It's like that old king who had
greatly sinned and God wonderfully forgave him And yet it says,
after his forgiveness, he walked softly. He walked softly. Some of you wonder why, as elders,
when we've had to deal with matters of serious sin, and someone shows
hopeful signs of repentance, we're not ready immediately to
just break out the fatted calf and dance the reel and have a
picnic. This is why you're waiting to see Is there that godly, spirit-empowered
shame? And does the person like the harlot,
it says, that she goes out and has her trick, and goes and has
her meal, and wipes her mouth, and says, I've done nothing wrong.
You see, when this glorious truth, if we confess our sins, He is
faithful and righteous to forgive and to cleanse. When it is wrenched
out of these larger biblical dimensions, it becomes a deadly
thing. But within them, it is a precious
thing. And without a confidence in these
realities, you will not be a stable, happy, consistent child of God. And that's what I want to be.
And that's what I want you to be. And if you're sitting here
tonight, you're not a child of God. Nothing proves it more than
the fact that you've sat there saying, what in the world is
he talking about? I don't know anything about that.
No, you don't, my friend, because your shutdown mechanism has so
blinded you to seeing and feeling the reality of what your sins
are in the face of a holy God that you're in the land of the
blind and the dead. And rather than sit there and
congratulate yourself that you can do what you want and how
you want and never have a twinge about it, that's the harbinger
of hell. And you ought to cry to God to
wrench you out of that never, never land of unawareness of
who and what you really are as a sinner and your need of God
and His grace and His saving mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, may God help us. I trust
this meditation. of these pastoral, practical
observations concerning the Christians dealing with his sins will be
used of God to help us all that we may more biblically and effectively
and God-honoringly deal with our sins. Alas, we will sin throughout
this coming year. That is our greatest burden,
but that's reality. And if we say we're out of that
reality, John says we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
in us. So we're going to live in that reality. Do we go to
that place where others have gone? They don't want any sermon
like this anymore. They say, sorry, don't need it
anymore. And bless God, before long we'll
join them. Let's pray. Our Father, we're so thankful
for the scriptures that they do act as a lamp to our feet
and a light to our pathway. And to the extent, O Lord, that
I've spoken of things that are the concern of your people, will
you not, by the Holy Spirit, bring them home with power and
clarity, that as your people we may make progress in dealing
biblically and Christ-honoringly with our sins? We pray, Father,
for those who sit here utterly, utterly blind to the magnitude
of their sin, that you would break in upon them Show them
their sin and then show them the glory of your offer of free
forgiveness in the person of your beloved son. We pray for
any of your children who are being careless in dealing with
their sins, who, like David, have hardened their consciences,
have kept the shutdown mechanism in place or blame shifting, excusing. Oh, God, we pray, bring them
up short. that they can no longer live
with that estrangement that they know is the present reality of
their relationship to you. That sense of distance and defilement
that in their better moments they know marks them. Oh God,
may they before they pillow their heads tonight, fall upon their
knees and have dealings with you. Oh God, hear our cries. Surely we've not asked things
amiss to consume them upon our lusts. But we've asked things
which, if you granted them, would bring you glory and honor. And
so, for the praise of your name, hear us and answer us. In Jesus' name we plead. Amen.