When John says, if we are walking
in the light, then we cannot also at the same time walk in
darkness. That's verse six, which implies
that the believer is always fighting against falsehood. When you are
sincerely pursuing God, you are always fighting against falsehood. If you are comfortable with hypocrisy,
then you are not walking in the light. If you are comfortable
with walking in those ways which constitute
our former lifestyle of which the Bible very clearly says,
how can darkness and light dwell together? How can they have communion?
How can they have fellowship? How can Baal and Jehovah dwell
in the same space? How can they have koinonia? Obviously
they can't. That's a rhetorical question.
And the same is true. If I am a true believer and I
am walking in the light, that's a present indicative. That means
that's my way of life. By necessity, I'm going to be
fighting against falsehood. And point B of your outline,
what we are doing when we fight against falsehood or deception
or lies, everything that is not like God or not true, we are
affirming the value of both the relationship that we have and
its quality, but also the grounds and source. Remember what we
learned last week that as 1st John puts it, the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanses us from all sin. If we walk in the light as he
is in the light, we have fellowship with one another in the blood
of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. It means that we value
the blood. When we are talking about valuing
the blood of Jesus Christ, we're not talking about valuing the
plasma We're not talking about valuing the blood that ran through
his veins. We're talking about valuing what
the blood means When we say that we value the blood we plead some
people use the term plead the blood I don't but when they use
that term if they are not meaning by that we are standing on the
grounds of what the blood did in terms of atoning for our sins
and justifying us before God and cleansing us and securing
an eternal habitation for us before God, then we have a faulty
claim. Our claim of the blood is a pagan
notion of something that happened that sort of in a vague and an
ethereal way satisfies God. No, when we talk about having
a knowledge of the blood. We are walking in the light of
the triumph of the blood, Revelation chapter 13, and they overcame
him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony.
It didn't mean that they metaphorically sprinkled some blood on the devil
or on their trial or on their difficulty. It meant that they
understood. And when we talk about the blood,
we're talking about the incarnation of God. When we talk about the
blood, we're talking about the sacrifice of Christ. on Calvary's
tree. When we talk about the blood,
we're talking about the satisfaction of God's justice against his
wrath. When we talk about the blood,
we're talking about the way in which God now can impute justification
to guilty sinners. When we talk about the blood,
we can talk about how God now can take the filthy and wash
them in the atoning work of Christ and bring them near to him by
the blood. When we talk about the blood,
we are actually talking about God now effecting a new and everlasting
covenant by which we have fellowship with God. Does that make some
sense to you? So when we talk about the blood, we are not satisfied
with using the term as a nomenclature like people do in religion, the
blood, the blood, the blood. We're not pagan. The blood is
a doctrine and it underscores everything from the incarnation
to eternal glory. And it's very critical to know
that that's in your outline. We'll be touching on that here
a little bit as we work through the idea of confession. So when
we are talking about walking in the light, we're talking about
a quality of relationship between us and God fighting against falsehood. And we use the metaphor extensively
last week, didn't we? Between the husband and the wife.
And you'll find that pastors and teachers will use that metaphor
frequently because it is what we would call the penultimate
metaphor of the relationship between the believer and Christ,
right? It is the quintessential analogy that constitutes what
we would want to say is the comprehensive nature of the relationship. In
this portion of scripture that I'm trying to clarify for us,
what I'm getting at is that, and I think John is getting at
this too, is that salvation is a relationship with the true
and the living God, and therefore the relationship component must
at all times be important to us. That a person cannot merely
be satisfied with the notion of being a Christian because
they went through some formulaic expression and have been able
to articulate a right statement concerning the gospel so that
they are secured for heaven based upon being able to be orthodox
in their expression. It's more than that. It is actually
a relationship. And so what the Bible does is
it gives us the metaphors and the analogies by which you and
I now can make the comparison, the comparison between a husband
and a wife. So Old Testament Israel had to
be under that same analogy. God called himself the husband
of Israel. Oh, Israel, I, the Lord, your
maker, am your husband. And it was his long appeal to
them, which lasted some thousand years before he had to put them
away, where he said, listen, I'm your husband, but you're
not treating me that way. Now that's real relational language,
isn't it? So so what the Christian religion
does not do it does not put God in this Transcendent state where
he is so far above us that there is not a tangible psychological
and spiritual dynamic between us and him and I told you this
last week before I go on to develop these next points that when he
gave us the third person. And by the way, when we talk
about the blood, what we are talking about now is the release
of the third person of the triune Godhead by which Christ becomes
a reality to us. If you recall what Jesus said
right before he went to Calvary, he was partaking of the last
Passover, which was the first Lord's table. He said, this is
the new Testament in my blood, which is shed for you. And what
he was declaring was that in a moment, the new covenant would
be brought into effect. And the first gift that proceeds
from the new covenant is the Holy Ghost. the spirit of God,
the third person, wait for the promise of the father, because
when he comes, he will take everything that I've been telling you and
he will make it a reality in your life. In other words, the
goal of God from the foundation of the world has always been
to bring his sons and daughters into a viable relationship with
him, a real substantive relationship. And we have that now by the spirit
of God, if we're children of God, which means this, The Spirit
of God, who is the immediate presence of God in my life. Christ
is the mediator and God sits on his throne in glory as father
in this triune relationship. You guys got that vision? The
Spirit of God is the immediate presence of God in my life. He's
the one that makes everything tangibly real concerning God.
Christ is the mediator between us and God. The Spirit of Christ
is in us by way of his spirit and so now My thoughts can be
affected by the spirit of God. My motives and my actions now
can be affected. What I mean by that, if I think
wrong thoughts, the spirit of God can convict me. If I have
a flawed motive or a bad and faulty understanding of God,
the Spirit of God can now cudgel me and bring me into a proper
understanding of things. That's what is called the guidance
of the Holy Ghost. He shall guide you into the truth,
right? So one of the gifts of the New
Covenant is the all-encompassing power and presence of God in
Christ to actually lead us. We heard that in the sermon a
couple weeks ago, right? Being led by the Spirit of God. This is what Christ knew would
be the effects of the blood The effect of the blood and so in
the relational sense the Spirit of God is there in our life to
teach us how God thinks and what his will is and how we are to
comply to that if we want to Experience the joy that comes
from the relationship between the Godhead and us who are his
people There's nothing like us being out of the will of God
and experiencing the pain of being out of the will of God.
You guys know that, right? You become a Christian and then
You are happy. We call that the honeymoon phase.
And it's a wonderful dynamic because it's really predicated
upon this wonderful overture on God's part to receive us to
himself based upon the work that Christ did 2,000 years ago. And
the promises are overwhelming. They are just ecstatic in us. And we go through the same type
of physiological, psychological, emotional dynamics of being in
love. That's what happens when you're
born again. You are actually in love with God. Anybody know
what I'm talking about? When you're born again, you're
in love with God. Now watch this. Everybody knows this in psychology
that there is a time when the feeling element of love wanes. When the dopamine and all of
the other dynamics start to wear off, right? The endorphins and
that's because we enter into the normalcy mode, right? Normalcy. And sad to say, because you and
I are still sinners, simultaneously sinful and righteous, I'm sorry,
sad to say that we can get bored with God. Can I get a witness? That's our fault. That's not
God's fault. He is glorious in all of his attributes and characteristics. And he's wonderful when we see
him the right way. But just like in human relationships,
if you don't work at it, it will wane. Husbands and wives, am
I telling the truth? And see, so so, you know, you
cool with marriage the first year or maybe the first month
or whatever the case may be. And then you find yourself having
to labor to sustain the excitement and the joy and that emotional
dynamic. Right. Well, you have to do that. That requires some things. That
requires some skills, some preparation, some preparing of the mind and
a right way to think about your spouse and being able to see
them for who they are and the gifts that they bring to the
table. All those dynamics are critical to sustaining the health
of a relationship. You're not gonna have a good
relationship if you're casual about it. Keeping the fire going
requires work. And the word of God tells us
the same thing, quench not the spirit. And that's another way
of saying, keep the fire going in the relationship dynamic between
the believer and Christ. I just want you to know, as we're
dealing with this terminology, this is not abstract theology
in the pedantic sense. When he says, if we walk in the
light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another
in the blood of Christ cleanses us from sin. So now let's go
into what we know has been sort of the top terrain for the church
through the 2000 years. In last week, I said, I want
us to avoid two extremes. And this goes into confession.
This goes into confession. Listen to the language between
verses 8 through 10. Listen to this. If we say that we have no sin,
are you there? We deceive ourselves and the
truth is not in us. So we're going to work through
that language tonight, okay? Because we're there now. John
has established the premise, the quality, the nature and the
source of the relationship. He's told us we need to be walking
in the light. That's what God said. And we
saw this beautifully in Psalm 51. David learned that even though
he was a king and beloved of God, his name, David means beloved.
And God chose him in Christ. Before the world began, he called
him out of the smallest of the tribes. When his mom and his
daddy rejected him here, God raises David up to be king David's
living large. But what David had to learn was
he could not be God's king and walk in dark. Psalm 51 teaches
us that David had learned that you can't live in ongoing sin
against God and not suffer radically for it in Psalm 51 verses 1 through
7 actually is sort of a framework for where we are. I really believe
John took Psalm 51 verses one through seven and drew from it
the framework for what we're getting ready to deal with now.
Watch this. 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 just 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. You guys see that?
So what I wanna do right now while we are locked in on that
is I wanna talk about confession. So let me deal with the sort
of the underlying syntax here because you can't see it in the
English Bible. Our King James Bible doesn't
do justice to the verb form. So I want you to grasp this in
your head. When he says, if we say, if we say, It is in what
we call the present tense. So it would be the same as if
we are what? Same. If this is our common expression,
if we are going about telling people two things, this is what
he wants you to get. Verses seven, verses eight and
verse 10 are bookends in between verse nine, which goes into confession.
If we say that we have no sin, We deceive ourselves in the truth
that's not in us. So if we're going around saying, watch this,
that we are without, and sin is in what we call the noun form.
That means without a sin nature. If we are going around saying
that I am not a sinner, are you with me so far? Because you're
not saying we are not going, we are not possessing sin. I'll talk about that in the next
verse. The verb form for possessing sin is a different notion. Here
he is saying we do not have a sin nature. I am not a sinner. If
we are going about telling people that I am not a sinner, then
we are deceiving ourselves because the scriptures tell us that we
are sinners. Even after conversion. And the truth is not in us, because
if the truth was in us, we wouldn't talk like that. So I'm giving
you the context for the framework and then we'll unpack this from
the Old Testament to the new. Can we do that? So here's what
John is saying. Remember, I told you that John
is dealing pastorally with the church because they already had
the split with some false prophets and teachers that come in and
taken a whole group of people and told them that they were
holy and that they didn't have sin and that you don't have to
worry about your sin because you're perfect now. John says,
if you go around saying that you don't have a sin nature,
Then two things, you have just deceived yourself and the scriptures
are not in you. So that's a real predicament,
right? Because if I am deceived, that means I'm blinded by the
reality, blinded from the reality. The scriptures have not overcome
that blindness in my life to bring me to a point where I see
things, watch this, the way God sees it. Now, there are lots
of people like that. The gospel is a sinner's gospel,
and what this means is when you go to a person with the gospel
of Jesus Christ, if you aren't able to have a conversation about
the reality of their sin, that we are born and conceived in
sin, from our mother's womb we go astray, speaking lies, all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's not
a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not. There's
none good, no, not one. There's none that do it good.
There's none that seek of God. There's none that's righteous. There's
none that knows So I've just given you four New Testament
verses that underscore the presence of a sin nature in us Old Testament
and new I just did I gave you the Psalms Ecclesiastes I gave
you Romans chapter 3 Jesus said it in John chapter 8 you are
of your father the devil and your father Sin it from the beginning
because the truth does not abide in him. He was telling the rulers
You are acting like you don't need me Here's the real catch
when a person says that they are not a sinner and don't have
a sin nature you have automatically Discounted the significance of
the incarnation and told me Jesus Christ You have basically made
the work of Christ on Calvary Street of non effect You've essentially
told God he was a fool Are you following me? That's the logic
of for the Christian gospel to people who would say that they
don't have a sin nature. Because if you don't have a sin
nature, then that means that you don't sin. And if you don't
sin, then you don't need a savior. And if you don't need a savior,
then at best, Jesus is a Maytag man because he did a work for
which nobody needs him. And he's sitting around waiting
until the washing machine breaks and it never breaks because you're
not a sinner. This is why we tell people the
gospel is a sinner's gospel. Are you with me? The gospel is
a sinner's gospel. The gospel only works for sinners. But if you say you have no sin,
then two things, whatever you are, it doesn't comport with
the Bible. But because the Bible is true,
you are deceiving yourself. And the truth does not abide
in you. If we are saying that we have
no sin nature, then that the argument that John is raising
is, is that we deceive ourselves in the truth. That's not in us.
Verse 10. Here it is. Now, if we say that we have not
sinned, see that the King James puts it in almost the past tense. When, what are you saying is
if we say that we have no sins to account for, like There's
nothing on our roster by which God can look at us and say you
still got a problem Okay, if we have if we say that we have
not sinned at any time in our life watch this we make him a
liar and Again, his word is not in us in two cases. His truth
is not in us and his word is not in us Are you guys following
what I'm saying? And so John is dealing with what has been
going around in the church, and that is this. I want you to hear
the premise of this argument, this syllogism that John is developing
here for the church that he knows is struggling with these false
prophets who are Gnostics. And the Gnostic teaching in the
first century was essentially saying this. There is a radical
dichotomy between the spirit and the body. Now, there's a
fallacy. We learned this in theology class years ago, that there's
a fallacy when you think that you can disregard your nature
and your body and how you feel and what you do as irrelevant
to God, because after all, it's just my flesh. Haven't you heard
in religion people kind of casually use the term the flesh in almost
a despising kind of way, right? That's the flesh. Now, I want
you to hear me. I want you to hear me with this.
I want you to hear me very carefully. That attitude is not Christian. It's easy to buy into because
we are both simultaneously righteous and sinful at the same time.
But it's a flawed thinking to say, well, that's just my flesh,
because what it what it implies is that it's all right for my
flesh, my nature to do what it wants to, because after all,
God doesn't regard it. All God regards is my spirit.
Now that dichotomy, as I said, is not Christian. When God redeemed
you by his blood, guess what he redeemed? The whole man. He
redeemed the whole man. And this is why the New Testament
early epistles were really struggling with what it means to be justified
by faith and then live to the glory of God on the grounds of
no condemnation in Christ and a righteousness imputed by which
God now has fully put away your sins by the sacrifice of himself.
The real challenge in Corinth and the real challenge in Galatia
and the real challenge in 1 John was how does the Christian live
motivated to serve God now that he knows that in God's sight
in Christ there is therefore now no condemnation. How does
he live motivated to serve God with a body that really gives
him a lot of trouble, with a mind that is still very limited and
flawed, with motives of the heart that are so dubious and so complex
that we're tripping all the time? How does a believer stay motivated
to do what's right when they know their justification merits
them no condemnation? We talked about it last week
and I want to drive this home as we unpack this. How do I,
as a Christian standing before God, according to who I am in
Christ, completely righteous, struggling with what I know is
practical sin, whether it's in deed or in thought, tongue, or
word, and continue my walk with God? How do I reconcile obedience
to Christ, free from any eternal destruction, yet struggling with
my fallen nature? It would seem like I'm just free
to sin, right? Can I get a witness? Well, see,
that's the anticipation that Romans chapter 6 verse 1 gives
us. 1st Corinthians chapter 6 as well in Romans 6 1 it says now
that you and I have been freely justified by Christ righteousness
Shall we sin that grace may abound see that's the logic, right?
That's what we call flawed logic as human logic and here's how
the human logic goes Follow me now the human logic goes this
way if I am a sinner by nature and I'm prone to sin but God
doesn't look at my sin because Christ is my righteousness, then
I'm free to just live out my nature according to who I am
and everything's all right with me and God. But what we are disregarding
is the relational dynamic of that whole consideration. Am
I making some sense? Let me see if I can build this
so that it can actually come home. I couldn't actually think
that way and have a healthy relationship with my wife, but I'm going to
act that way with God. Right now, watch this now. My
wife knows I'm a sinner by nature. She knows I'm prone to sin. And
so because she knows that she, you know, she loves me anyway.
Well, I'm going to go out and sleep around on her because that's
just who I am. I mean, you know, she knows who
I am. You see how observed that gets
when we talk about the horizontal relationship? And yet you understand
in the Christian church, it's very easy for people to play
with those boundaries when it comes to God, isn't it? And what
this indicates is that people do not have the level of appreciation
for the relational dynamic of the new covenant that has to
do with you and God and the motive for doing something for someone
to their good without you being under some kind of legal threat.
So let me give you the answer quickly so that we can go on
and unpack why it is important to acknowledge our sin nature
and why it is important to deal with our sin. If I love my wife,
I'm going to do everything I possibly can not to offend her. Are you
guys following me? If my wife loves me, she's going
to do everything that she possibly can to not offend me. And what
we're talking about is love. So the thing that occurred as
the chief deposit that was placed in your soul, that conversion
for God is the love of God. The spirit of God, according
to Romans five, has poured the love of God into our hearts by
the Holy Ghost. so that what's taking place on
the inside of us is the law of love that does not allow me to
easily transgress against the object of my love. So now if
I properly define love, which is supposed to be the essential
connection between me and the other person, love works no ill
towards his neighbor. Love does not defraud its neighbor.
Love is kind. Love is gentle. Love is peaceful.
Love does not boast itself. Love does not vaunt itself. Love
bears all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures
all things. Are you guys hearing me? Love
does not rejoice in iniquity. Love rejoices in the true. 1
Corinthians 13. This is why in the New Testament,
the way Paul always summed up the law was he called it this
way, the law of Christ. He talked about the law of Christ
having been fulfilled by Christ and then imputed to us. And if
we are walking right with God, what we are operating out of
is the law of Christ. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? Okay, so the premise upon the relationship between
the believer and God is love. I want you to get that, okay?
So now what you have to do if you don't know is go study love.
Don't develop your own definition of love, study it. Because love
is not merely a feeling. You see, once again, we categorize
love in the psychological realm. And unfortunately, love is not
a feeling. Feelings are a byproduct of love,
like feelings are a byproduct of hate. If you hate somebody
now, watch this. You don't necessarily have to
feel hateful towards them, but you may. You know, to hate someone
is to simply leave them in harm's way when you have power to stop
it. Did you get that? That's the
Hebrew word for hate means to abhor, to leave them to themselves. Is that okay? And this is why
when we talk about the nature of the love of God in relationship
to the whole world, we say that it is impossible for God to love
someone that actually ends up in hell. Because for someone
to end up in hell, it means that God has left them to themselves.
Are you guys following me? Because to hate simply means
to abhor. To abhor, look it up in the Hebrew,
in the Old Testament, it means to leave someone in their state. And if that state is a state
where they perish, then you hated them. Remember we preached a
sermon a couple of weeks ago about the Good Samaritan. And
we saw how the Levite and the priest went around the other
way from the man that was wounded on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem,
from Jerusalem to Jericho. And I said that the Levite and
the priest represented the rulers of Israel. Jesus was making that
clear. In that when they passed by that
man, they did not love him. They hated him. Are you hearing
me? But they could justify it with
religious claims that it was unceremonial for us to go touch
him or what have you. The reality is love would never
do such a thing. Are you guys hearing me? And
so it's very important for us to understand why the concept
of love is critical to our walk with Christ and critical to our
walk with one another. But we must never define biblical
concepts in a what we would call common vernacular, a present
day vernacular, contemporary vernacular. We must have a clear
biblical definition of the term. And when we see love acted out
in its ultimate epitome It's in the person of Christ and his
sacrificial death on Calvary street. That's love. And when
we work our way through first John, because John actually regulates
the terms that we're dealing with, we're going to see again
and again, John will say, this is love. Not that we loved him,
but that he loved us and gave his son as a propitiation for
our sin. And I said this last week, you
know, when you love somebody because love gives, you know,
when you love someone because love gives, Are you hearing me? Love gives. You haven't loved
until you give. For God so loved the world that
he what? Gave. So the fundamental definition
of love is giving. And what that would presume is
an antecedent. And that is for us to be able
to love, it means that love is already on the inside of us.
You know, when people are wounded and afflicted and abused of all
sorts, They can't love people because that love was stripped
away from them They are unable to love until somebody loves
them enough to fill them up with love. They can't love in return
And so it is with you and I in a sinful state We can't love
god until the love of god is poured abroad shed abroad into
our hearts where we now have That capacity to respond to god
in love and the same with one another haven't you found? Uh,
let's walk in the light now where we've been walking in the light
for the last several weeks. Let's, let's, let's work this for a moment
and see this issue of love is powerful because we'll often
talk like love is a very common and available ubiquitous commodity
all over the world. But I'm here to tell you it's
not, it's really hard to love people. It's really hard. Watch this now. This is what
religion does. Religion loves to say, I love
you. See that little phrase, say,
is what we're dealing with. This is why John and James jumped
on the little word, say. John says, if we say, and James
says, if a man says he has faith, we'll tell him, well, I want
to see your faith because you say it, but saying you have faith
isn't the same as possessing faith. And so in the Christian
church, often we actually put more commodity in what we say
than what we possess. And the walk of obedience or
faith before God is really a discovery of what we don't have that we
need from God to be what God has called us to be. See, we're
going back to the fellowship thing now. is equal partners,
mutually experiencing the blessings of the resources of that covenant
that constitutes the fellowship, right? So if I have koinonia
with God, God knows what I need in order to have a sufficient
reciprocal relationship with him. You know what he does? He
brings to the table of the relationship with me everything necessary
for me to respond to him. Are you hearing me? If God wants
me to have a viable reciprocating relationship And no relationship
is satisfying if it's not reciprocating. If it's a one-sided relationship,
you know that's not satisfying. And so if it's going to actually
be reciprocal, somebody has to bring to the table the resources
in order for that person to be able to love them back. And that's
what God did when he gave you his spirit. He gave you the capacity
to love God. And then as we grow in grace
and in the knowledge of the Lord, and we see Christ in a more comprehensive
way, he gives us the capacity to love others. Albeit, I want
to say before we go on to deal with confession now, be honest,
loving others is hard because we are selfish by nature. Am
I telling the truth? Because we're selfish by nature,
loving others is hard. But I want to warn you against
what goes on in religion. Religion makes a major commodity
out of words. I love you. What a Bible. Now, I want you to hear this.
This is an interesting statement before I go on. Do you know the
Bible never says I love you? It never says that you want me
to read that, and I just stated that in what we call the present
tense. I love you. You know what the Bible will
say? I have loved you, past tense. For God so loved, past tense. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
The the scriptures will speak 95% of the time in the past tense
with love Because love in a biblical sense is always action Therefore
when I say I have loved you I can affirm that statement by the
action that gave me the basis of saying I have loved you I
have loved you with an everlasting love therefore with cords of
a man. Have I drawn you to myself? That's what God says when God
goes I have loved you. He demonstrates how he loves
you Does that make some sense? So it's very important that we
don't get caught up in the emotional sort of language dynamic that
goes on in the church where we talk about loving people. Love
them. Don't tell them you love them.
I mean, you can tell people you love them all you want to. Don't
get me wrong, because people love to do that. I mean, I guess
we're so emotionally damaged. We do need to hear that, right?
I need to. We need to hear, right? So there's
a few honest people in the house. Pastor, I'm so emotionally damaged. I'm so dry. I'm so parched. I'm so famished in my soul. If
you could just say you love me, that'll help. Watch this. Even if nothing comes
from it. That goes to show you how depleted
we are. And watch this. Vulnerable. We're
vulnerable. Isn't this what we learn, ladies,
in our women's theology class? How vulnerable we are? And so
now I want to go to this facet of our relationship with Christ
in the context of fellowship, which He provided for us to sustain
a strong, healthy relationship with Him that He knows is critical
to our conscience and to His honor. and it's called confession. Notice what John said in verse
nine. Here's what he said. If we confess
our sins, you guys see that? Now, that's in what we call the
same verb form, the present indicative verb form. And indicative is
a state of being. It's like when I observe you,
whatever you are doing, However you are acting, that's
the indicative. Wherever you are, whatever you
are doing, whatever your condition is, that's the indicative. And
so when John says, if we are saying, if we are confessing
rather our sins, and notice how he puts it in the plural, if
we confess our sins, He is stating an indicative for the believer.
The believer confesses in the plural. He confesses sins in
the plural. This here is an ongoing indicative. If you ever meet a mature believer, who highly regards and treasures
his relationship with God. And he or she has a knowledge
of the word of God and has a knowledge of the glory of God and has a
knowledge of their own shortcomings. They will be men and women who
are constantly confessing their sins. Are you with me? We're getting ready to unpack
that. I don't want you to buy into the extreme. So let me let
me, as it were, now dissolve the the the the illusion that
comes with two extremes. The first extreme is over here
in the realm of Catholicism and legalistic works, religion. So
let's stay over here for a moment. When we talk about the perpetual,
indicative or ongoing lifestyle of a confessor of our sins, here's
what we are not saying. We are not saying that we sin
and then we are threatened to go to hell. And so I got to go
to the confession booth and pray to the priest because I committed
a sin. Every week I go to the priest
or maybe every day, like Martin Luther, like Martin Luther, he
would get up in the morning and go to confession. By the time
he finishes lunch, he's got to go to confession again. And then
by the evening, he's got to go to confession. And sometimes
he didn't go because he was tired. So he had to double confess in
the morning because he should have went that night. And then
when he read the Bible at length, he realized that there were things
that he didn't confess when he confessed the last time. So he
got to go back and confess that because he didn't confess everything
now. Watch what's taking place here. You are digging a massive hole
of guilt and legalism based on an ignorance of the concept of
confession. Okay? You are digging a massive
hole and you are actually increasing your own conscious guilt, not
before God, but before yourself because of your ignorance of
the concept of confession. So when we say that we are people
who are confessing our sins as an ongoing indicative, We are
not saying that we are in this repetitive mode of religious
legalism of which Jesus warned about in Matthew 6. Don't be
like the rulers of the church who think that they shall be
heard for their much speaking. We are not like the Catholics
who will take advantage of the guilt of the conscious and the
ignorance of the work of justification which we're going to develop
here by having people thinking that they're on the brink of
going to hell if they don't hurry up and get the confession or if they
die before all of the ritual rites are executed on the life
of the Christian, he ends up in purgatory. Those are damnable
doctrines that have no basis in the scriptures and they also
dishonor the efficacy of the atoning work of Christ. Are you
guys with me? So there's an extreme on that
end of an over-hypersensitive conscious based upon an awareness
of just the few sins that you are aware of. Because see, if
Luther were here, he would tell you, you know what? The reality
is, I didn't even scratch the surface of all the sins I actually
had committed. I was sinking deep in sand over
the sins that I was aware of. Job said in the book of Job are
not my sins, many in my iniquities, infinite. So now if the reality is my sinful
state. Affects an infinite nature of
transgressions. And my conscience is limited.
I am not omniscient. I don't know all the sins I'm
committing and conscious and motive indeed are in practice.
against God and against you, against people I don't know.
If in fact, indeed, I'm mounting up those sins and I have to deal
with every one of them individually, God better give me some omniscience.
Because I'm going to be lacking a few billion and trillion sins
by the time the process is over with, right? So it is futile
to find comfort in a repetitive confession of sin predicated
upon the danger of going to hell upon one sin not being confessed
for. Are you guys hearing on the other end of the spectrum,
which is what we would call the realm of licentiousness. And
it's a realm of presumption. And this goes on in the Christian
church, too. Bob George is a radio talk show
host. He's been teaching this doctrine a long time, too. And
and he gets it out of First John. And he says this now that Christ
has died and he has put away your sins by the sacrifice of
himself, you no longer have to confess your sins because he's
he's died for your sins. In God's sight, your sins don't
exist. So confession is unnecessary. That's the other extreme. That's
the other extreme. And a lot of people walk in that
extreme because I want you to think about the immediate psychological
and personal consequences of that kind of thinking. The immediate
personal consequences of thinking that because Christ died for
my sins and I'm freed and I'm possessing his righteousness,
I'm justified eternally. Well, I don't have to be all
that serious about how I walk with God. I can chill. That ideology has opened the
door up to what we call the carnal Christian mindset. It's called
carnal Christianity. OK, CC, carnal Christianity and
carnal Christianity is not a biblical doctrine, although there is such
thing as being a Christian walking in a state of carnality. It is
not a biblical doctrine to say I'm a carnal Christian because
the the premise upon which the carnal Christian doctrine exists
is this. And we're going to deal with
this in about four weeks when we start our class on Thursdays
on the gospel and sexuality. Remember, we're going to go through
a long series and deal with the whole idea of why our sexuality
is such a problematic issue in the 21st century and prophesied
in scripture. Why it is that we don't have
a handle on what the Bible teaches about our gender, our roles,
our specific callings, our duties, and the dignity of being a man
and a woman, according to God. That struggle is Huge for every
one of us is it not it's huge if it's not huge in terms of
our own personal struggles with it Psychologically in some cases
genetically certainly sociologically theologically Philosophically
and in these areas we're going to be dealing with all those
areas because all these areas now have been assaulted by what
we call the new morality and the new morality is this I Want
you to hear me now We're all right just like we are. We don't
need to change. Are you hearing me? We're all
right just like we are. We don't need to change. Now,
if you are an informed Christian, a Bible-believing Christian,
and you hear that proposition, we don't need to change, you
will be immediately alarmed by that statement, understanding
that it basically militates against the whole of scripture. That
if indeed no human being has a problem for which they need
salvation, rescue, deliverance, complete radical deliverance,
then the gospel is a mockery to us and the word of God is
not true. So if you contemplate or embrace
the ideology of the new normal or the new morality, and it's
everywhere. It's in your movies, it's in
books. This here is Huxley's Brave New World. The whole Brave
New World ideology that was warned about 20-30 years ago. Aldous
Huxley. And what he talked about, what
they talked about, and many of the prognosticators talked about
is the time when humanism will prevail so much in our culture
that it would basically challenge the proposition of biblical truth
that we are sinners by nature. Now, if we are not sinners, like
John is saying, they say, if we have no sin, if we have never
sinned, then we don't need to change. Right? And if we don't
need to change, we're all right, like we are. And if we're all
right, like we are, Christ's death was in vain. Am I making
some sense? Or here's another one that you
have to think about in that implication. We're getting ready to go to
our go to work. If we. Well, in fact, this is a flawed
notion. The liberal church would somehow
say that we all need Christ as a savior, but when it comes to
our sexuality, that is part of our nature. That does not need
to change. And so in our churches now we
are advocating the normal moral position of homosexual and lesbian
as something that God made and created. And they're boasting
in that. That really is at the core of the battle of the gospel
today. And that's what we will work
through. When we are talking about confession, it's really
interesting. I'm getting ready to open our understanding to
something about confession. He says, if we confess our sins,
He is faithful and just to what? Forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness. So we won't get to that last
line today. But what I wanna do right now is talk about confession,
both from the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old
Testament, the word confession is a Hebrew word that is really
interesting. Don't worry about the Hebrew
language. It's yada, yada. It's not yada. You know, you go yada, yada,
yada, yada. It's not yada. So you ain't blaspheming when
you go yada, yada, yada, yada. It's yada, yada, yada. The emphasis is on the da, there's
a hyphen that breaks it, yada, okay? And the word yada for confession,
which is one of the primary words for confession in the Old Testament,
means to cast away, to throw off, and to open up widely. The verb means to cast away,
to throw off and to open up widely. And here's what this verb is
indicating when it talks about confession. It means to tell
the whole truth and leave nothing out. The idea of confession in
the Old Testament is the idea of opening the mouth and saying
everything you know to be true about God and about yourself.
That's the way the word is used. So now, watch this now. Confession
in the Old Testament, we're gonna read some verses now, means to
say everything that God says is true about him and about you. Are you with me so far? That's
what it means. The verb form there means to
throw off. And the antithesis of that verb
is this. to hide, to cover, to conceal. The antithesis of that verb is
to hide, to cover, and conceal. So follow me now. When the Old
Testament saints in Israel went to do sacrifice, they laid their
hand on the bullock or the goat, because the bullock or the goat
became the substitute for their sin. What they had to do before
the priest was to openly acknowledge all their sin as being transferred
to that innocent lamb or bullock and goat in order for that goat
now to take their sin and be punished for it. That's what
confession was about. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? It was an open expression before the priesthood and God
that I am hiding nothing. Everything that I know I'm telling
the truth about and I am saying what your word says it would
go like this Today I have sinned against my neighbor or against
my wife or against my son. I And I have done that because
I am a sinner by nature. Not only am I a sinner by nature,
but because I'm a sinner by nature, I am prone to commit any and
every kind of sin, so says the Word of God. And because God
is holy and righteous, God has every prerogative to punish me
for my sin. But I am confessing my sin, Because
God says if I come to him and acknowledge my sin, he will forgive
my transgression Because he is a God of mercy. He is a God of
grace. He is a God of forgiveness That
listen to me. That's how it was done In other
words when they were confessing they weren't playing with God
They were telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth as
they understood it now, you know what John calls that Are you
ready walking in the light? He calls that walking in the
light. You know what John is doing? John is underscoring by
that statement that Old Testament saints were part of what was
called the Commonwealth of Israel, right? The Commonwealth of Israel,
they were under the Old Covenant. There were Old Covenant stipulations,
Old Covenant blessings, Old Covenant warnings. They had to follow
those Old Covenant stipulations to be blessed. And when they
followed those stipulations, guess what they experienced?
The forgiveness of God. The patience of God. the atonement
that came from God through the sacrifices that allowed them
to go on living another year. This would go on year after year
after year. Let me share with you a few verses to show you
what I'm saying. Leviticus chapter five. We're going to run through
three or four verses. We're going to find ourselves for the close
because we only got 10 minutes before we open the floor for
questions. We're going to find ourselves looking at three or four verses
in the Old Testament To understand this Leviticus 5, I want you
to see how it's done in that Old Testament Levitical code
where the sacrifices were offered and all of the rules and regulations
were stipulated by which the children of Israel maintained
relationship with God. Remember, the Levitical priesthood
was the mediating factor between Israel and God. The priesthood
stood between a holy God and a simple people to offer sacrifices
for them. And we read over in Leviticus
chapter five, verse five, these words, and it shall be when he
shall be guilty in one of these things, talking about transgressions.
That he shall what confess was this, that he had sinned in that
thing. And he shall bring his trespass
offering unto the Lord for his sin, which he had sinned a female
from the flock, a lamb or a kid for a sin offering. And the priest
shall make an atonement for him concerning the sin. See the model.
You guys see the model. He's conscious of what he did
that was wrong. He's actually coming to God through the sacrificial
system. He's acknowledging his sin. Now
he has a substitute in that lamb. That lamb now is brought to the
priest. The priest mediates between him and God. God sees the blood
and the man goes on. And this is done several times.
Look at verse 16. I'm just going to do it one more
time. And then I want to show you this, this illustration of
what we mean by when you confess, you open up in Leviticus chapter
five or 16. And he shall make amends. Let
me start at verse 15. If a soul commit trespass and
sin through ignorance in the holy things of the Lord, then
shall he bring for his trespassing to the Lord a ram without blot,
without blemish out of the flock, with your estimation by shuckle
of silver after the shuckle of the sanctuary for a trespass
offering. And he shall make amends for the harm that he has done
in the holy thing and shall add thereunto the fifth part and
give it to the priest. And the priest shall make an
atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering and
it shall be what forgiven him. And so he's coming to the priest.
He's acknowledging his sin. He's bringing the trespass offering
and he is being forgiven. His sin go with me to chapter
16. I'm this in chapter 16 to chapter 16. This here is a day
of atonement They're doing the same thing. Now. This is the
whole nation once a year and Yom Kippur Did the whole nation
have to come to the high priest and exercise this this national
repentance for sins and in chapter 16 this is what we read in verse
21 and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live
goat and and confess over him the life goal, all the iniquities
of the children of Israel. Do you guys see that? And all
their transgressions and all their what? Now, hold on. Now, you know, he busy that day.
Is he not? Millions of children of Israel
coming to Yom Kippur on that day. And the priest have to confess
the sins of the people because the priest stood as a mediator
of the people. You guys understand that? Before
God. Now the emphasis of the all here is the point that I'm
getting at when we talk about confession. Confession corresponds
in the marriage relationship that we talked about, the five
positions. Position number one is what?
Face to face. When a man and a woman operate
out of position number one, they are looking at each other face
to face, and they are being honest and truthful with one another,
are they not? As soon as the man or the woman begins to hide
things from each other, position number one is gone. At best,
we are operating out of position number two. You guys know what
position number two is, right? Side by side. That's the position
of getting things done in the household. laboring together
like two oxen and under the yoke and trying to get the bills paid
and take care of the rent and take, you know, take care of
the food, get the kids to school. But mom and daddy are no longer
in a communicative mode because they're not face to face. They're
doing that secondary or inferior communication that gets things
done, but they're no longer being honest with each other. Because
see, in position number two, you don't have to be honest.
All you have to be is pragmatic. Are you guys hearing me in position
number two? All you have to do is make sure
that you come home at the appropriate time and and pay the bills and
and everything appears to be normal, but deep down inside
the soul of a love covenant A love covenant Both the man and the
woman know something is wrong Because it's been it's been a
long time before they since they looked at each other And the
husband has said, you know what? I've been thinking like this.
And the wife says, you know what? I've been thinking like that.
Are you guys hearing me? And that can be the same way
with us in Christ. Position number one should be
that personal, honest, open, transparent, reciprocal dynamic
between us and Christ where we confess our sins to him. We'll
talk about that more next week in an open way where we're not
hiding anything. And when you are able to be that
wide open with the lover of your soul is because the foundation
of the relationship is sure, right? But if the relationship
is not sure you, you are not going to be that open, are you? And when we have failed to operate
out of the priority of position number one, now we go to position
number two. And you know what that means? We just do church. We go through the perfunctory
motions of worship. We pretend that we have a zeal
for God. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
We struggle through Bible study. We struggle through the sermon.
We're just doing religion now. Powerful, isn't it? And really
what moved us from position one to position two is sin. That's
right. Sin. Isaiah chapter 50. Your
sins have separated between you and your God. So now we're operating
out of the perfunctory mode of religious protocol, and the spirit
is dwindling. So confession for the children
of Israel was critical in the Old Testament. And so is it for
us? Go with me now in your Bible
to Ezra. I want to show you one more verse in relationship to
that. We'll come back here and pick it up next week. I'm going
to show you Ezra chapter 10, Ezra chapter 10, verse one. And,
uh, this can be found. You can look up all your other
verses too. I want to just show you what Ezra does now. Let me
tell you what's going on here in order for you to appreciate
what Ezra is about to do. in Ezra chapter 10 verse 1. I
want you to get this. So here's what happened, right?
About 1000 BC, a little bit more than that, maybe 1060 BC, God
allowed Israel to have its way. Bear with me for a few minutes
here. Israel entered into the promised land 1400 BC. And they struggled in the promised
land for about 400 years with all of these different pagan
gods and idols in the land. I talked about this on the Monday
show. It's called pluralism. That's what we have in our culture,
pluralism, where everybody has their own view of things. It's
a relativistic ideology that says everybody's view is equal.
And basically, if you have a view that's contrary to the Bible,
it's an idol. It's like the false gods of Palestine. And when God
told Israel to go into the land, he says, you have to demolish
all those gods, because if you don't demolish pluralism, it's
actually going to overcome you and bring you into captivity
to it. It's going to be thorns in your side and pricks in your
eyes. You guys remember that? They had a hard time getting
rid of those idols. Can I tell you why? Because those idols
were beautiful to them. When they went past those shrines,
they saw these beautiful shrines dedicated to these beautiful
gods that in most cases were humans. Some female deity, most
of them were female deities. That's a whole nother thing with
feminism today. But most of them were female deities with a few
male deities. Very few were the crass Ashtarach Moloch gods,
which demanded that you throw your children into the fire.
But that was there, too, for the sadomasochistic thinking
person. But there were so many deities
that the children of Israel were really struggling with. Do we
have to demolish all these gods? And God says, yeah. Because if
you leave them there after a while, they're no longer going to be
a threat to you. And that's a problem. Do you
know if you have a black mamba or a green mamba or a Texas diamondback
rattlesnake sitting in front of you and you are no longer
nervous about that snake you have dead already? Are you guys
following what I'm saying? So God gave us a nervous system
with phobias in order for us to survive. And so the fear of
the Lord is to depart from evil. Is that what the Bible says?
So then when you see these pagan gods and you don't have that
sense of reverence for God and apprehension about the influence
of those pagan gods, you're already set up to be taken in by those
pagan gods. And so the Christian church is enamored by a lot of
what we call secular paganism, secular paganism, which strips
them of the power of exclusivity. Somebody raise your hand and
say, help me with that pastor. Good. I'm glad. And here's what exclusivity
is. Exclusivity is what happens when
you marry somebody. When a man marries a woman and
a woman marries a man, exclusivity becomes the foundation of the
relationship. It secures the relationship.
If my wife says I do to me and she understands the exclusion
clause, I never have to worry about another man taking my wife.
If my, if I say to my wife, I do, and the covenant says, tell death,
do you part? It's just you and me, the twain
become one flesh. As the book of Genesis says,
we're going to get into that too, because right now, again,
this new normalcy is saying we can have all kinds of twisted
marriages, right? But see, if I am operating out of the exclusion
clause, the twain become one flesh until death do us part.
My wife doesn't have to ever worry about me cheating on her. I never have to worry about her
cheating on me. Are you hearing what I'm saying? And it's the
same thing in the gospel. When Christ died for me, he died
to make me his bride. I have no prerogative to start
entertaining other lovers. If I do, I am committing spiritual
adultery against him. And there are consequences for
that. Am I making some sense? There are radical, intense consequences. And so what God told Israel in
1400 B.C. was you got to kill him because
they're going to have you ending up being kicked out of my house.
Deuteronomy 24, verse four, if a man finds something unclean
in his wife, he can give her a bill of divorce and send her
out of the house. God wrote that for himself. He
gave Israel 800 years. He sent his prophets and said,
Hey, look, you guys got to stop that. Now, you know, 800 years
of asking your wife to stop sleeping around is patience. Help me now in that patience. So, so see, you know, people
who don't know, they don't know the Bible. They may call our
God a bloodthirsty God in the old Testament, but they don't
know the depths of scripture. We do. We know that God was patient
with Israel for 800 years. And he said it in Jeremiah and
Isaiah, but more particularly Jeremiah, because the storm was
at hand. I have sent my prophets, B time, rising up early, coming
to you, telling you to repent and turn and stop. God would
preach to Israel and tell her that she will have to leave his
house. That was the land of Palestine.
And you will go into a country far, far away and find yourself
worshiping all these gods you are coveting. And you will be
there a long time. But I'm telling you, I'm the
God who has so much mercy. I'm going to bring you back after
70. Can you imagine your husband saying you got to go? But I'm
going to bring you back after you learn your lesson. Well,
that's what God did to Israel. He brought her back after 70
years, because remember. He was seeking a godly seed.
And that seed was who? So he couldn't destroy his wife.
even though she committed whoredoms against him again and again and
again. That's the book of Hosea. That's the book of Hosea. Are
you following me now? She failed position one, she
got into position two, committed all this idolatry, and thus the
case is. Now, here's the context. After
70 years in Babylon, crying and whining and having fits because
the king of Babylon and the king of Medo-Persia, they were some
horrible men. They were wicked men. They realize
what it's like now to not be at home with the lover of their
soul, to not be in the house with their husband. They were
kind of wishing that they had never messed up. And you know
what God started doing? He started moving the hearts
of the leaders of Israel. The first man he started dealing
with was Daniel. Remember Daniel, prime minister
in both Babylon and Medo Persia. You know what God did? The spirit
of God started turning over Daniel's heart and causing Daniel to serve
as a mediator and representative for the whole country. And if
you read Daniel chapter nine and 10, Daniel was on his face,
prostrate, prostrate, fasting and praying and confessing. That's my word. His sins and
the sins of Israel and the sins of the nation. And if you listen
to the prayers, guess how wide they are. They are wide open
and they go all the way back to when they were in Egypt. We
have sinned against you, Lord, and our children have sinned
against you. We have sinned against you from the beginning. We never
stopped sinning against you. And you had a right to throw
us out of the land. You had a right to. Am I making
some sense? That's called confession. The
Spirit of God stirred Daniel up because the 70 years was about
to end. Israel now is starting to trickle
back into the land. Ezra looks and says, uh-uh, uh-uh. You know how many 800, 900,000
were scattered abroad 70 years ago. A poultry 30, 40,000 are
coming back now. Where's the other 700,000? You know what Ezra does? He now
falls on his face and begs God to have mercy because the few
people that are back in the land Had come back with all of the
Babylonian ideas and methods of government and they hadn't
repented So Ezra now stands in the gap. Are you guys with me
so far here? It is chapter 10 verse 1 Now
when Ezra Had what? And when he had what? Now watch
it, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God. Do you see that? Do you see it? See, see, the whole assembly
is watching this one man lay himself out before God, crying
out to God for the children of Israel. They don't even have
the same passion he does. Do you see that? The word confession
there is our word for to throw off, to cast out, to go wide
open, to unload, we would use it in our vernacular. To let
it all out, to dump it. Do you know God heard him? God
heard that man. Do you know what happened in
Ezra's day? A revival. A revival broke out. Are you
guys hearing what I'm talking about? A revival broke out because
he confessed openly. He didn't reserve anything. He
was totally prostrate. He was unfettered before his
God. The next one is Nehemiah. You don't have to go there. Nehemiah
chapter 1. Nehemiah hears the same thing
a couple of years later. Some of the folks came back,
but boy, it's a mess because they got all of these Babylonian
laws and they're bringing their brothers and sisters in bondage.
They got them in debt. They're working this capitalist
system from Babylon here in the land of Palestine. It looks like
the USA. Ezra? I mean, Nehemiah? Nehemiah's
talking to Ezra on the phone. And you know, he the cupbearer.
He the cupbearer for the king. And he put the phone down, stupefied.
That's what he said. Hey, you there? And he's just
wasted. Nehemiah 1.6 says he cries out
to God. Nehemiah chapter 9 says he breaks
out again before the people. Guess what happened in Nehemiah's
days? Nehemiah gets a tribute from the king to go down to Israel
to build the walls around the sanctuary and build the gates
up. Because see, all the gates are broken down. The whole city
is vulnerable. Remember what the proverb says. A person that
doesn't have control over his own spirit is like a city whose
walls are broken down. And Israel was broken down. The
enemy was able to get in. And so from Daniel to Ezra to
Nehemiah, what are they doing? Confessing their sins. One more
verse, Proverbs chapter 28, 13. I'm done. And we'll come back
here next week and we'll build on this some more. So now what
is his point? Why is he getting all animated?
What is the pastor's point? Here's my point, brothers and
sisters. Here's my point. This is very,
very important. I want you to hear this, OK? The point is when we confess. Our confession must be biblical. It must be honest and it must
be thorough to be confession. If it's not biblical, if it's
not honest, and if it's not thorough, it's fraud and manipulation. Are you hearing me? If our confession
is not based upon a knowledge of the word of God and the scope
and nature of God's character and attributes and what the word
of God says about who I am in relationship to him and what
I did. If I don't confess according to biblical truth, I'm manipulating
the situation. I'm not walking in the light.
Watch how Proverbs 28 13 puts it. Are you there? He that what
covereth his what shall not what? Now see right there, I could
go back into the fellowship realm and talk about how in the fellowship
realm, where in Koinonia, where there's a mutual, reciprocal,
cooperative relationship between the two parties based on covenant,
where blessings and resources are distributed for the welfare
of the whole commonwealth, where everybody is enjoying the blessings
of the king in covenant, that as soon as the people are covering
their sins, the blessing stop. Because the blessings are predicated
upon a knowledge of the blood. Right? If the blessings are predicated
on the knowledge of the blood, remember what he says? If we
walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship
with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ does what? Cleanses
us from all sin. And what it's implying is we
can continue deriving from the true and the living God from
whom all blessing flow, every resource of grace to continue
doing what God calls us to do as the body of Christ. In other
words, the body of Christ will fail to experience the blessings
essential to its unique calling as a gospel church, as a witness
and testimony to the world, as new creatures in Christ, as men
and women who are able to walk in the principles of the kingdom,
righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost, and all of
those great and precious promises of which God has now made us
a partaker of the divine nature, they stop the moment we start
lying about the nature of who God is and who we are in relationship
to him, despising the blood atonement of Jesus Christ, despising the
value of the blood, despising the doctrine of the blood, because
we are not being open. We're not being honest. We're
not being sincere. We're playing church in here.
This is what made Catholicism such an atrocious system. that
it was able to weld with it the mafia for many hundreds of years. You know, the mafia would be
able to just go out and commit horrible criminal crimes. And
you know how good they felt? They felt good because they knew
if they could just get to the priest and tip them a couple hundred
dollars, they'd get their sins forgiven. Are you hearing me? Are you hearing me? And that's
no different than the ignorant are unregenerate, professing
Christian who is arrogant enough to think that he can kind of
give a flippant prayer to God when he's covering iniquity in
his bosom and not being honest with God. Are you guys with me? Proverbs 28, 13, listen to it
again. We're almost done. He that covered
this sin shall not profit, prosper, but whosoever confess it, there's
our same Hebrew word there and what forsaken. shall have what? Oh, do you see it? And go back
in your own time between now and next week when we come back
and read Psalm 51 verses one through six. And remember what
David said against you and you only have I done this evil in
your sight. You desire truth from the inward
part and from the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. I have confessed my transgressions
and my sins. My iniquities are ever before
me. See, David got real with God,
didn't he? And he experienced God's mercies too. So we're just
now entering into this. All right. I went over time.
I'll give five minutes if I need to. Anybody had any difficulty
with what we're talking about? Because we can close and pray.