I was trying to remember how
long it's been since I've been anywhere to preach. I'm quite nervous. I think the last time I went anywhere
to preach was here. just outside in the parking lot.
And it sort of fitted, I guess, that this is the first place
I've preached since I lost my wife. And I wouldn't have it
any other way. I am so thankful to be here with
you and worship with you. And you're of God's mercy that
endures forever. And may the Lord be pleased.
to send you folks another pastor that He may feed you as your
last pastor did. I want you to turn to a passage
of Scripture with me tonight in Isaiah's Gospel, chapter 43. A few verses here I want to read.
Isaiah chapter 43. I want to begin reading in verse
21. Isaiah chapter 43 and verse 21. This people have I farmed for
myself. They shall show forth my praise.
But thou hast not called upon me, O Jacob, but thou hast been
weary of me, O Israel. Thou hast not brought me the
small cattle of thy burnt orphans, Neither hast thou honored me
with thy sacrifices. I have not caused thee to serve
with thy offering, nor wearied thee with incense. Thou hast
brought me no sweet cane with money. Neither hast thou filled
me with the fat of thy sacrifices. But thou hast made me to serve
with thy sins. Thou hast wearied me with thy
iniquities. I, even I am he that blotteth
out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember
thy sins. Put me in remembrance. Let us
plead together. Declare thou that thou must be
justified. Thy first father hath sinned,
and thy teachers have transgressed against me. Therefore have I
profaned the princes of the sanctuary, and have given Jacob to the curse
and Israel to reproaches. My subject tonight is found here
in verse 25. He that blotteth out thy transgressions. The blotting out of transgressions. Several years ago I read a story
about a young mountain climber who went up in the mountains
alone and was caught in a dreadful snowstorm. And when they found
his frozen body, they found a little note that he was clutching in
his hand and simply said this, My greatest fear, will God forgive
my sins. My greatest fear, will God forgive
my sins. I would say the forgiveness of
sins is the most important subject that
you and I can understand and believe. But we'll never appreciate forgiveness. We'll never appreciate the one
that we've sinned against forgiving us until He confronts us with
our sins. Until He makes us aware that
we've sinned against Him. You and I live in a world, we
have neighbors, we have friends, we have loved ones, dear ones.
They do not value, they do not seek forgiveness for their sins. And one of the reasons is that
God has not confronted their conscience with their sins. You'll
notice here how He takes time in these verses. You're in verses
22 to verse 24. He confronts them with several sins of omission. He
doesn't go into great detail, but they knew. He made them to
know. He confronts them with their sins of commission. You
made me to serve with your sins. But he stresses this. You did this against me. He kept using that pronoun. Me. You have brought me. You
have wearied me. You have not honored me. And
He makes them to know that they have sinned against Him, and
why is that? That they may value forgiveness
when He does forgive them. Here in verse 26, those who know
something about Hebrew, They translated it something like
this. There where he says, put me in remembrance, let us plead
together. And they said this gives us a
scene of a courtroom. And they say literally in the
Hebrew it reads like this, take me to court. Let us enter unto
judgment together. If I have falsely accused you,
let us plead together and justify yourselves. That's what God is
telling them to do. Come to court with me. I've laid
all these charges against you. If I brought false charges against
you, then come before me and plead your own cause and justify
yourself. You know God has brought devastating
charges against humanity. And if those charges are true,
then humanity is in trouble. Listen to some of these places
and some of these statements that God makes against us and
our sins. He says this, You have forsaken
me, the fountain of living waters, and you out-Cisterns that will
hold no water. All we that sheep have gone astray,
we have turned every one to his own way. Then he says this, there
is none righteous, no, not one. There is not a single one that
doeth good, not one. There is not a just man upon
earth that doeth good and sinneth not. There is no fear of God
before their eyes, there is none that understandeth, there is
none that seeketh after God. These are devastating charges,
aren't they? That our hearts are deceitful
of all things and incurably wicked, that our ways are corrupt, and
that we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. And
he sums it up like this through James the Apostle. When sin is
finished, it brings forth death. I mean, why does He do this? Why does the Lord confront us
with all of these charges? It's because you and I will never
live in admiration and appreciation to the Lord until He makes us
know that we're in desperate need of forgiveness of our sins. And is there anybody here tonight
that would be so bold and to stand up and say that I do not
believe I'm as bad as God charges me to be. I do not believe that
these charges that He's brought against me are just charges. Is there anybody that would be
so bold as to want to stand before the God of all the earth and
plead your cause? There's not a soldier tonight
that has any concept of who God is and His holiness with his
all-seeing eye. And you have any concept of who
you are and what you've done that would take God up on such
a thing. To stand before Him and say,
I am not guilty. But you know it's not enough.
We preach these things all the time. We tell people, we quote
people these scriptures. But until God comes to the conscience
and teaches the conscience that here is where you are, here is
how you stand before me, even though he's so plain in his word,
you and I will never feel our need of conviction. When do we
really feel our need of being forgiven? When the Holy Spirit
comes. When He comes and convinces us
of sin, when the Spirit of truth has come, what does He do? He
convinces, He convicts, He leaves no doubt about it. Oh, I sinned
against God. I am guilty before God. And then what do we do? We put
our mouths in the dust, don't we? And then when He says, I
am He that blotteth out thy transgression, then and only then do we say
with Mary, My God has done for me great things, and holy is
His name. You and I may try to plead our
cause until God is pleased to teach us the truth, but then
that leaves no doubt about it that you and I are guilty. And
we don't deserve anything but destruction, eternal damnation
for our sins. And then He comes to us as He
did a year when they thought the shoe was ready to drop. You
did all of these things, and you have not done all of these
things. You have omitted all of these things, you have committed
all of these things, and I have taken notice of it. You did it
before me, and you have offended me. And now I'm ready to take
vengeance. That's what you thought was going
to happen. But what happens? I have blotted out thy transgression.
For my name's sake, I purge you from your sins. Brothers and
sisters, it seems to me that we only have these two options
in regard to our sin. They must either be forgiven,
our sins must be washed, or we must burden ourselves. If our
sins are forgiven by Him that we sinned against, then we live,
and we're happy forever. But if He leaves them upon us
unforgiven, then we're damned. I see no other option in the
Scriptures. Some people have this notion
that there's some middle ground that they can stand on. They
don't feel like they're good enough to go to heaven, but they're
not bad enough to go to hell. And they seem to entertain this
notion there's a middle ground somewhere, but there's not. It's
either forgiveness or we must bear the guilt ourselves. Our
sins must be purged, must be blotted out, or we must stand
before God with our mouths stopped and guilty and be damned forever. If anybody else knows any other
option, let me know because I do not. And I don't believe the
Bible would set forth any other option. When you and I are convinced
that our sins deserve damnation, and we're guilty before God,
and then He says, I have blotted out. Oh my, can you think of
a more gracious word, a precious word than that? I have four or five points on
this that I want to look at. And if you're here tonight and
you've been convinced of your sins by the Holy Spirit of God,
and He has forgiven your iniquities, all of them, then here's five
things that will encourage you, and they're here in this passage.
First of all, we have a personal pardon. A personal pardon. I am He that blotteth out thy
transgression. If you and I have any apprehension
of our sin and who it's against, and the guilt that we deserve,
you will want to know that He has forgiven you. It won't be
enough for somebody else to tell you that He's forgiven you. You'll
never be satisfied. Your conscience will never be
satisfied until He personally witnesses to you that He has
blotted out your transgression. I was at a worship service one
time a number of years ago, and a man almost fell out of his
seat, a young man, and he was begging the Lord to save him.
So like that word Paul said, they'll come in and hear the
preaching of the Word, and they'll fall on their faces and glorify
God that He's in you for truth. He got down on His face, and
some of us was praying with Him. You know, the man was seeking
the Lord. I'm not going to tell him to go home and think about
it, are you? If a man's seeking the Lord, I was praying with
him. Well, this one preacher came
up from the congregation and put his hand on the young man's
shoulder, and he said, young man, God told me to tell you
that He had forgiven all your sins. Well, another old preacher
stood up and said, don't you think God should tell him Himself? That's the truth, isn't it? Remember
when the Lord was preaching, or He went to the Pharisee's
house to eat dinner? And while they were there eating,
this woman that was called the sinner in the town, she came
and began to wash his feet with her tears and drown with the
hairs of her head. And the Lord said, her sins are
many. And she felt him to be so. And
he looked at her and was talking to Simon, and he said, Simon,
her sins, which are many, are forgiven her. But he didn't stop
there, did he? He said that to Simon, but he
had to say it to somebody else. And it was her. He said to her,
Woman, thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee. Go in peace. Brothers and sisters, we all
have our doubts, don't we? I tell you, I guess when you
value forgiveness to the point that you know the necessity of
it, you want to know it without a shadow of a doubt. And I tell
you tonight that God the Holy Spirit is able to make us know
that all our sins are purged away. All of our sins of omission,
all of our sins of commission, the sins that we sin in our youth,
the sin of thought and motive and deed and word, it's all gone. And He can witness to us and
make us know that. I believe you can know that you're
forgiven of all your sins. He can let you know that. The
Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we're forgiven, that
we are the sons of the living God. Did you hear what Jesus
said to me? I want to hear it from Him, don't
you? Because I've sinned against Him. And I want to hear Him say,
Did you hear what Jesus said to me? They're all taken away. Your sins are pardoned, and now
you're free. The one that we sinned against
has now said, I have blotted out thy transgression. So it's
a personal pardon. It's a just pardon. Notice how
he says, I am he that blottheth out thy transgression. They tell
us in the Hebrew this has to do with some of us, well some
of us have experienced, they call it a stroke. It says to
remove with a stroke. I have blotted out to remove
with a stroke. And they said it has to do when
a debt is forgiven. I remember my dad when I was
growing up. My dad was a coal miner and he
ran a credit at the store. We'd go to the store and get
something and we'd get it on credit. They'd write it down
and every week he'd go to the store and pay his debt. And what
the man do, the grocery man would do, he would take and put a check
on the bottom of that. Paid. And he'd put that big stroke
in there. Paid. And he'd give my dad that
receipt with that big stroke in it. Paid. And he hung on to
those little receipts. He had to barely stick those
receipts on. Couldn't come back on him because
he had the receipt. It was paid. The stroke was in
there. And my dad was such a man of
integrity, every payday He went and paid that man the debt. My dad would have never dreamed,
being a man that he was, to continually run a credit and never go pay
that man who let us have groceries. And here is the kind of forgiveness
that this world is trusting in. It's not a just forgiveness. It's a forgiveness where God
basically sweeps your sin under His proverbial rug. What will
they do when the rug is moved? Everything is going to be uncovered.
God is love, so therefore, He must forgive sins. God is merciful,
so my sins must be forgiven. Where's the justice in that?
If I come to you tonight and I said, God will forgive you
of your sins, irrespectfully, of justice, irrespective of His
holiness. Just because He's good, He'll
forgive you. You'll say, Bruce, what about justice? What about
justice? Oh, and here's where the cross
comes in, isn't it? Here's where the cross of Jesus
Christ comes in. Our sins have to be punished. And this is what the cross is
about. Our sins, the sins of God's people,
were put on the Savior. And He bore those sins in His
own body. I believe, brothers and sisters,
that literally happened. I believe in the transference
of sins. Some man said that's impossible.
With man that's impossible, but not with God. All we black sheep
have gone astray, and God has laid on Him the iniquity of them
all. God took the sins from us and
put them on His Son. And then what happened? He suffered
the full penalty of law and justice. Your sins were punished in the
Savior, and now He can justly come to us and say, I have blotted
out your transgression. I have put a stroke on it! Paid! Paid! The debt was paid! That's what the cross is about,
isn't it? And God won't ever come back later and say, Oh,
wait a minute. I found out here that your sins
have not been sufficiently punished. No. God saw the travail of His
soul and was satisfied. in whom we have redemption. And Paul was talking up there
about the redemptive price. There was a price to redeem anything. Sometimes it was money, sometimes
it was blood, but there was a price. And the price of forgiveness
of our sins is the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. You know the
only way to redeem a donkey. If you had an old donkey, an
old mule that was born on your farm and you wanted to keep that
old mule and use him, you couldn't buy him with money. You couldn't
work it out to keep him. Only one way to redeem him, you
know how that was? By lamb. By a lamb. That was the price. And God said
you either redeem him by lamb or break his neck and drag him
off in the wilderness for him to rot. And when we talk about
blotting sins out, brothers and sisters, it has to be a just
forgiveness, as well as a merciful and gracious forgiveness. And
in the cross of Jesus Christ, it's a just forgiveness. God
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. I don't know of a doctrine in
the Scriptures that is more confident to an afflicted conscience than
to remember 2,000 years ago, outside the old city walls of
Jerusalem on the cross of Calvary, your sins were purged away. Ain't that wonderful? You cry
over your sins. You confess your sins. You pray
for grace to forsake your sins. We're often afflicted with our
sins, aren't we? One of our greatest burdens is
not one another. One of our greatest burdens is
this feeling of guilt, struggling with this sin. And yet at the
same time, brothers and sisters, the only way that we can consider
our sins is 2,000 years ago they were purged away. And you buried
them and you carried them to war. That's a just forgiveness. I know of no doctrine that's
more confident than that. It doesn't matter how I feel. It matters what really happened.
And what happened? 2,000 years ago, our sins were
purged. He by Himself purged our sins. And now, on those grounds, He
comes to our conscience, and He says, I blotted it out of
your conscience. I have blotted out thy transgression. We often hear these verses quoted
in those days. And in that time, saith the Lord,
the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall
be none. None? None. And the sins of Judah, and they
shall not be found, for I will pardon them whom I reserve. Forgiveness of sins. Fourthly, this is a complete
pardon. Did you notice that? I have blotted
out by transgressions, plural, all of them. You'll notice here
how he mentions the sins of omission. He confronted them with a lot
of sins, a lot of things that they omitted. You and I are probably
just as guilty of what we omit as what we commit. He confronted
them all of them. What you've omitted to do and
what you've done. And then he turns right around
and says, Yet I have blotted all of them out." All your transgressions,
blotted out, forgiven. Every one of them. Isn't that
amazing? 1 John chapter 1 and verse 7 says this. If we walk
in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one
with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses
us. From what? All sins. All sins. Oh, you can lay down and sleep.
You can lay down and rest. You can rest your soul there.
Oh, the night when you confess your sins of the day, they come
back to your mind. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, cleanses us from all sin. David worried about the sins
of his youth sometimes. He said, Lord, don't remember
them. And the Lord said, I won't. They're forgiven, all of them.
Brother Henry used to say, Brother Henry Mann used to say, that
Christ took my guilt and He paid the price. He paid the price. And if He paid the price, I don't
know it. And if I don't owe it, God won't
charge me with it. It's gone. It's forgiven. It's
purged. Someone made the statement, I
think he was one of these self-righteous legalists, he said, only sins
that are confessed are forgiven. Boy, if that's so, then you and
I are in trouble. Most of our sins that we've committed, we
don't even know about. Many of them that we commit,
we forget. Under the ceremonial law of Moses,
there was a sacrifice that had to be offered for the sins of
ignorance. If a man sinned, though he wished
it not, yet is he guilt, and he shall bear his iniquity. How
many sins do we commit that we don't even know about, and yet
they're forgiven? They're purged, they're blotted
out, all of them. There's not going to be some
sin that sneaks up to the judgment and bothers the child of God
up there. It won't happen. I've forgiven
your transgressions. I've blotted them out. My favorite
verse, I think, in the Scriptures is Colossians 2, verse 13. You've been dead in your sins,
and the uncircumcision of your flesh, as they quicken together
with Christ, having forgiven you all the trespasses. All of them. They're gone. Fourthly,
this is a gracious pardon. He says here, for my own sake,
it's namesake, he says in another place. What does that mean when
the Lord makes this statement? I blotted out your sins for my
own namesake. Well, it means this. I'm not
forgiving you for your sake. It's not for your sake. It's
not for who you are or what you've done. It's not because you can
compel me to forgive you your sins. It's not left up to you
whether I forgive you your sins. It's my prerogative. It's my
decision. I forgive you wholly and strictly
for my name's sake. The cause of me forgiving you
is found in me and nothing in you." That's what it means. You can't merit or earn my forgiveness. It means that. I don't forgive
on those grounds. I forgive altogether on these
grounds for my name's sake. Now what does that mean? That's
for Christ's sake, isn't it? Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted,
forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven
you. Why would God forgive sins? Blasphemous
sins. Mountain of sins. It's for the
sake of His dear Son. Boy, what a plea. What a plea
for us poor sinners when we come to God and we feel that we've
sinned against Him. And we've sinned against Him.
And daily we come back and we've sinned against Him. And we've
sinned against Him. Brothers and sisters, I can't
remember the first sin I committed against God. I can't remember
the last time I sinned against Him. Sometime during this message.
And yet He's forgiven them all for the sake of His dear Son.
What is it God will not do to glorify His dear Son? If you and I would go on the
East Coast and started confessing our sins with every step, every
step you confessed a sin, you'd run out of steps before you'd
run out of sins to confess. And yet for Christ's sake, God
has forgiven all your transgressions. Oh, what a plea. What a plea. That's the way to get to judge's
ear. Oh, Father, for Christ's sake,
forgive me for my sins. Forgiven. You're forgiven. I saw on TV one time these people
whipping themselves in some foreign country They were all dressed
in white and their backs were bloody and their clothes were
bloody. Someone was interviewing one of the men and said, why
are you doing this? They said, to atone for our sins.
Such things don't please God. They're abomination to Him. There's
only one thing that pleased Him when He saw the travail of the
soul of His dear son. He said, then I'm satisfied.
Let a man come to me and confess his sins on those grounds, I'll
forgive him. I don't care how black they are.
I don't care how enormous they are. I don't care how abominable
they are. They've sinned against me. They've
sinned against my law, my gospel, my church. I don't care what
sin it is. I'll forgive it for the sake
of my dear son. Brothers and sisters, that's
good news. That throws the door wide open. Let any man come. Find the worst man in the community
and say, God will save you. He will forgive you for the sake
of his dear son. Let him come on those grounds
and he'll find the Father to be a forgiving God. Lastly, it's an irreversible
pardon. I will not remember thy sins. Never remember them. They're
all gone and I'll never remember a one. against you again. Here's what you and I think.
We sometimes think, if we don't do it openly in our minds, we
do it secretly, we begin to think God is something like us. And
we come to the Lord as poor sinners, He forgives us, and then we begin
to grow in grace and knowledge, and then we begin to see our
sins in the light, and they become awful to us. I'll confess this
to you. Not long ago, I was right in
the middle of committing a sin, and the thought come to me, boy,
you're going to smart for this. You're going to smart for this.
I never thought much about it. Just to be honest, I never thought
much about it. Until just a few days later,
man, did I smart for that sin. And I began to see that sin in
a light that I didn't see it in a few days before. And oh,
how black it was, how abominable and exceedingly sinful it was.
And I almost despaired in my heart that I did such a thing.
But here's the problem we face. Sometimes we think because we
have come to a greater life and we see sin as exceedingly sinful,
we think, well, God sees it that way too. It's almost like he
comes to a greater knowledge of our sins. And therefore, we
think, well, since he sees it like I see it, maybe he's going
to reverse this pardon. Maybe he's going to come to me
and he's going to say, Bruce, I knew your sins were bad, but
I see them now in a different light, and I've reexamined them,
and they're worse than I thought. We're going to have to reexamine
your pardon. It'll never happen, brothers
and sisters. God knows all along how dark our sins are, how wretched
and abominable they are, and yet He forgives us our sins,
and when He does, He said, I'll never remember them against you
again. Now, I've got some sins in my
life, brothers and sisters. I'll tell you, I wouldn't want
anybody to know. But they're gone. They're gone. I've often told people there
was a time in my life when God remembered my sins and I didn't.
And now I remember my sins and He don't. And never will. You will, but He won't. Thou hast loved and loved my
soul. Listen to what Hezekiah said.
Thou hast loved my soul, delivered it from the pit of corruption.
Thou hast cast all my sins behind my back. God can't see behind
his back. That's a way of speaking to us
to tell us in another way, I'll never charge you with your sins
again. And he said this in Micah, who is it God likened to you
that pardoneth iniquity? You pass by the transgression
of the remnant of your heritage. You retain not your anger forever
because you delight in mercy. Thou hast cast all their sins
unto the depths of hell. I guess we can't go there still,
can we, to the depths of the sea? God don't either. After
we've put our sins to the depths of the sea, never to be remembered
against us again. I love this, don't you? I love
to tell people about it, but every time I do, I just feel
like, boy, Bruce, you fail. Man, you fail to tell this. We
all fail to tell it. Because it's so glorious, you
can't reach the high of this. You feel it in your mind, and
when you start to explain, oh, he's blotted it out, you just
fall so short, and you feel like, oh, you failed. Don't feel bad
when you talk to your neighbor about Christ and salvation, and
you feel like, boy, I messed that up. No, you didn't. No,
you didn't. The Lord can take these little
things and teach people with them. I just like to think about
these things, brothers and sisters, because I'm an awful sinner.
I can sit down with the Apostle Paul and say, I'm the chief of
sinners. But I think God has given me
the assurance, that God has given assurance that He's blotted all
of it out. And now I stand in Christ complete
and without any condemnation. And that's the gospel, isn't
it? That's the message of the Gospel. You believe it. You've
been taught it. You believe it. Lord, we thank
You, O Father. Gracious Father, we thank You
for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank You that You put our
sins upon Him and thank You, Lord Jesus, for receiving them
and calling them Your own. Suffering for them, something
awful, something dreadful. And you suffered and you hang
and you cried and you shed tears and you feared until the law
of God said that's enough. I'm satisfied. Thank you, blessed
Holy Spirit, the third person of the sacred Trinity, the spirit
of promise for coming and teaching us these things for opening the
word and opening our conscience. What a glorious gospel you've
given us. The only gospel. You're the only one that can
do us good. And we rejoice in the low bottom of our heart that
you made us know these things are real, they're true. And when
this life that is often such a burden and almost unbearable
is over, thank you for the promise that we can go bow before you
and worship you, as our dear brother has said, with undimmed
eyes and an unsinning heart. Thank you for this, dear people.
Thank you for their kindness and listening, being so patient.
And I pray that you'll continue your work here. For your namesake,
we ask. Amen. Thank you, Rex. Thank you, dear
folks. Lord bless you.