Let's turn together to 1 John. I suspect that it is not at all
unusual when you hear a sermon to ask yourself a wonder why
the preacher brought that particular message. So let me tell you why,
and I hope you will listen carefully. I hope this is true. I bring
this message for the glory of my God. The object of preaching,
true preaching, gospel preaching, is and must be the glory of God. We want to exalt, extol, magnify,
and honor our God. Second, I'm bringing this message
because I pray that God the Holy Spirit will use it to inspire
your hearts, the hearts of you who know, love, trust, and worship
my Redeemer with greater love for Him and greater confidence
in Him. I pray that God the Holy Spirit
will sow reveal Christ to you and in you that your hearts will
simply erupt with adoration for Him. And for you who don't know
our God, oh, how I pray God will be pleased by His Word and the
power of His Spirit to cause you to know the blessed experience
of His free saving grace and absolute forgiveness in Christ.
With that in mind, let's begin in 1 John 1 and verse 8. I want us to do three things.
The first one's really tough. The second one is really, really
important. And the third one is really delightful. First, I want us to take an honest
look at ourselves as we really are. If God will enable you to do
that, you will rejoice. Second, to see Christ as He is,
as He's revealed to us in His Word. And then third, oh, how
blessed it will be to see us as we are in Christ. Let's begin
here by taking an honest look at ourselves, 1 John chapter
1 verse 8. If we say that we have no sin,
we say that we're perfect without sin, no original sin, no actual
sin, we deceive ourselves. In other words, you're lying
to yourself and you know it. Your conscience tells you otherwise.
And the truth, Christ, is not in us. His word is not in us. No truth is in us. If we confess
our sins, confess our sins, not to a preacher, not to a priest. It won't do you one bit of good
to come down here and talk to me about some bad thing you did. Matter of fact, it's real easy
to do that because I'm just like you are. To confess your sin. to open your heart before God
Almighty and stand naked before Him, hiding
nothing. If we confess our sins, He is. Isn't that a wonderful word?
Not might be, not possibly will be. I'm here to tell you, if
God Almighty will cause you to do what you will never otherwise
do right now. Rip open your heart before God
like the publican in the temple and cry, God be merciful to me,
the sinner. If he'll cause you to confess
your sins, he is faithful to his word, to his character, to
his covenant, to his son, to his people. He is faithful and
just. In other words, God in faithfulness,
and God because it is right, because it is just, through the
merits of His Son, through the sacrifice of His Son, through
the blood of His Son, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If any man be in Christ, he's
a new creature. If you ever think concerning
your life, I sure wish I could push the rewind button and start
over. You can't, but God can. Right
now, you believe on the Son of God. And I'm telling you, this
is God's declaration. Any man be in Christ, he is a
new creature. Old things are passed away. That's
not talking about the believer's experience of grace. I recall
years ago, you know, people have a strange way of having conviction
about what other people ought to do and ought not to do. This
gal came to me and she said, well, when the Lord saved me,
he took a tip out of my toe. I don't think folks ought to
dance. And I said, when they saved me, he didn't take a tip
out of my toe. I still like to tip. That's not talking about that.
That's not talking about that. This new creation is talking
about our standing before God, reconciliation. Old things are gone. God blotted them out with the
sacrifice of His Son. All your sin. all the past, all
the evil, all the corruption, gone forever. And behold, all
things are become new, made completely new in Christ, made the righteousness
of God in Him. He's faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now,
if we say that we have not sinned, what's this? If I say there was no evil in
that, I've got the Word of God open
in front of me. You've got it open in front of you. We're reading
God's Word. Don Williams, if you say, that's
good. There's no evil in that. No sin.
You just got through praying for the clergy. You just got
through praying for them. No sin in that. I did something
good. Like the harlot in Proverbs 7,
she entices to evil and she wipes her mouth and says, I haven't
sinned. If in anything you do, anything you say, anything you
think, if we say, that we have not sinned. We make God a liar,
and His Word is not in us. Wow! Now, I'm going to tell you some
things about myself that I'm sure will shock some of you.
They're going to shock you because you refuse to be honest about
yourself before God. You refuse to face and acknowledge
what you are. Some of you will identify with
what I have to say because as I describe myself, you will find
that I'm describing you. Let's open the door of our dark,
corrupt, depraved hearts and enter into the most secret chambers
and behold the vile, loathsome, creeping, foul abomination that
we are. In my heart, in my nature, in my sinful flesh
is nothing good, but only evil continually, corruption all the
time. In me, in me. My God, how I hate this fact,
but it's fact. Fact I cannot and will not deny.
In me is every evil thing that every man has ever done or imagined
in this universe. Everything. The fact is, Dan
Culver, your heart's just like the heart of the child molester
and rapist in prison out here. Mine too. Same heart. Same nature. We catch ourselves,
I hope we catch ourselves, when we look at something and say,
I don't see how any man could do that. Don't you? Don't you? You really think you can't? You
really think you wouldn't? Were you in the same circumstances
and left to yourself by God like He was? There's no evil you wouldn't
do. No evil. Even for you who are
believers. Some of you say, I just don't
see how a Christian could do that. Go back and read this book again.
What haven't you done? Be honest with me. What haven't
you done? What evil haven't you committed?
I'm not talking about so other folks here. I'm talking about
what you and God say in here. What is it? Here in my depraved
heart is nothing but evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
thefts, false witness, and blasphemies. I've done much that causes me
shame, that other people are aware of, but I've never done
that which men have observed, anything comparable to the evil
that's in me. corruption. That's all. In my
depraved heart, I see depravity itself. I'm going to tell you something.
It's one thing to understand and believe and teach the doctrine
of total depravity. It's something else to experience
it every day. Every day. Every day. Before God saved me, I really
thought things were going to be different. I really did. I knew that my sins wouldn't
be eradicated. I never was that foolish. But
I did think they would be fewer. I did think they would be weaker.
I did think they would be less troublesome to me. But things
are not as I dreamed. I was shocked to wake up one
day and find out that I am by nature just as vile and evil
as I was the day I came into this world, and it just gets
worse. And I'm telling you, anybody
who says otherwise is not being honest, just not being honest. I ask you, before God saved you,
did you ever imagine that a saved sinner, chosen by God's free
grace, redeemed by the precious blood of God's darling son, called
by his spirit, did you ever imagine that a sinner saved by God's
grace could love Christ so little as you love him? and loved the
world so much. Did you ever imagine that a saved
sinner, a man or woman who lived by faith in Christ, could trust
the Son of God so little and fret so much? Did you ever imagine that you
could have such a cold heart of indifference toward the things
of God and such a lively, spirited heart toward things of vanity? How easily we are excited by
our particular flavor of politics. Vanity. Vanity. Vanity. Whichever your flavor
is, just vanity. and how easily our hearts and
minds become still when we think about the things of God. Is there anybody here who finds
their experience otherwise? Anybody? Did you ever imagine
before God saved you that you'd have such a hard time praying
and reading the Word of God as you do, that you'd be so impatient,
so murmuring, so resentful of God's providence at the beast's
face. We have a way of preparing for
big things so that we kind of brace ourselves for them. The real test is the small stuff.
One of the old writers said it takes as much grace to bear patiently
the breaking of a fine piece of china as it does the loss
of an only son. Because you didn't brace for
that. You didn't brace for that. I know that in me, that is in
my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. You see, the believer, every
believer, every person born of God is a person with two diametrically
opposite natures. Mike created 1 John 3 of that
which is born of God. And John said it can not sin. Now, you can look that up in
all the concordances available and find all the definitions
you want. But when it gets right down to where the rubber hits
the road, do you know what it means? That which is born of God can not
sin. Ever. Ever. Paul said, it is no more I that
do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. This new man, that which
is born of God, is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is
that righteous, holy thing born of God. It is that seed of the
Holy Spirit planted in you. And that which is born of God
doth not sin. And yet, everything I do is sin. But blessed be God, that's not
me. That's not me. That's not me. There is something in me that
delights in the law of God. Paul calls it the inward man.
There's something in me that loves Christ and rejoices in
Him and seeks His glory and something in me that seeks to rebel all
the time. It's called flesh and spirit. And the two are at mutual war
with one another so that you cannot do the things you would
ever. Yes, I love my redeemer. I love him because he first loved
me. But my love for him is so fickle. I couldn't even call it love
if he didn't. Yes, I trust him. He is my only hope. He's given
me faith in Him. My only hope before God is the
Son of God. Nothing else. Nothing I know.
Nothing I feel. Nothing I experience. Nothing
I do. Just Him. That's all. But my faith in Him is so utterly
filled with unbelief. I'm like Peter. across the water
when he began to sink. I've got my eyes on him and I'm
walking toward him, but I start to see the storms in the sea.
And I start to see me. And I'm constantly sinking. And I cry, Lord, save me. I perish. Yes, I read this book. I studied
it. I spent my life doing that. Because
faithful men like you and faithful women like you provide for my
needs so that I can. But you know there's nothing,
there's not a book, a piece of literature of any kind that I
read and study upon which I have such a hard time focusing as
I do this book. I can read worn ads about ladies
curling irons all night long and stay awake. And I open this
book when I'm wide awake and fall asleep. I read the most precious things
in this book, the most sacred, and my mind will run all over
the world in five seconds and run to every evil there is. Yes,
I pray. But honestly, I don't know that
I've ever prayed. My prayers are full of me. You lust and you have not because
you want to consume it upon your lust. Is that the case with you? Several years ago, Brother Gary
Sheppard and I had been asked to come to Grand Rapids, Michigan
to preach. And so we went. And some folks were considering
the possibility of starting a work. And word got out we were going
to be there and several preachers, local preachers, about 20 or
25 of them came. First night we were there, Gary
and I started back to the room. He got in the car and he said,
the preachers want to meet us for lunch tomorrow. I told him
we would. I said, I sure wish you hadn't. I said, I know what
they want for lunch. They want roast don and I don't
like it. And the night before I had preached
similarly to what I'm preaching to you now from 1 John chapter
3. And they started asking questions. And this young fellow who had
been pastor for 7 or 8, 10 years, been a believer, said for just
a little longer than that, he seemed to be chief spokesman
of the Sanhedrin. Finally, I got tired of, we were
a public restaurant, and I got tired of the yiff-yack. And I
looked at him, and I said to him, you said God saved you 10,
12 years ago, is that right? Yes, that's right. I said, let
me ask you a question, and I want you to answer it honestly. Are
you more holy now than you were 10 years ago? I want you to know
nobody in that restaurant even crunched down on a piece of lettuce.
Everybody wanted to hear his accent. And he sat there for
a few minutes, or a few seconds, and finally he looked at me and
he said, well, honestly, I'd have to say I am. And I said,
well, honestly, I'll have to say either you or I, one, don't
know God. Because I'm not. That's just fact. Christ is all
my holiness and has been for 38 years. And I am all sin and I have been
for 55 years. Alright, now let's take a careful
look at our Lord Jesus as he's put to us in the Scriptures here. 1 John 3 verse 5 And you know that he was manifested
to take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No original sin, no Adamic sin
nature, no actual sin. In order for our Lord Jesus to
be a suitable sacrifice for us, it was necessary that he be altogether
without sin. The sinner's substitute must
be personally innocent and perfectly righteous. He must be. Now, in
recent months, there have been some fellows who like to, some
blooming liars who send out things and say Don Fortner said. A fellow
wrote to a preacher friend of mine recently and said Don Fortner
doesn't believe the blood of Christ is necessary for our salvation. That's how I responded. I would
have probably kicked him in the teeth if he'd been in front of
me, but he wasn't. Somebody sent out something the
other day. Said, Don Fortner says that Jesus actually said
it. Not Don Fortner. No, sir. He must be a man. Otherwise,
he could not redeem man. He must be an innocent, holy
man. Otherwise, he could not redeem
fallen men like we are. He must be the perfect God-man. Otherwise, his sacrifice could
not be of infinite value as it is. But in order to redeem us,
in order to save us, the Lord Jesus was made sin for us. Our guilt, our shame, our reproach,
our foolishness, our guiltiness, those are the words used in this
book, were made His and imputed to Him because they were made
His. when He hung upon the cursed
tree, bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. And when
He was made sin for us, the Son of God, having assumed total
responsibility for our souls from everlasting. Oh, glorious I mean, when He struck hands
with the Father as a covenant surety before the world began
and said, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O my God, He became totally
responsible for us before God. And the Father trusted Him as
our surety. And at Calvary, being totally
responsible for us. He suffered all the vengeance
and fury of God's holy wrath that must have sunk the world
to hell forever to the full satisfaction of justice. And he who was made
sin for us put away our sins. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. To them that walk not after the
flesh, but after the Spirit. And to walk after the Spirit.
He's not talking about those who become super pious and float
around in clouds and don't know what it's like to live on this
earth. Those who walk in the Spirit are those who believe
on the Son of God. That's what it is to walk and
live in the Spirit. It is to trust Christ as your
only substitute, your only Redeemer, your only Atonement, your only
Righteousness. And He put away our sins. You know what? He actually did. He actually did. He blotted them
out. He put them away. And now, He
who was made sin for us is seated yonder in the heavens and makes
intercession for us according to the will of God, and is heard
and accepted because He rose from the dead, justified in the
Spirit. And you see Him? He has no sin. He who was made sin is utterly
free from sin. The scapegoat has carried our
sins into the land of forgetfulness and our sins are gone. And this
is the basis of our assurance and our confidence of acceptance
with God. Jesus Christ, the righteous one. is the propitiation for our sins.
Now, God help you to learn something
about this blessed thing. Let's take a look at ourselves
as we are in Christ. Look back at 1 John 3, verse
5. I have interpreted the passage
as relating to our Lord Jesus Christ personally as our mediator. but the passage is speaking of
him as our mediator. And John says, you know that
he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him is no sin. If any man be in Christ, his
new There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ. Are you in Him? Has God put you
in Him? Of Him are ye in Christ? Who
of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification
and redemption? Dwayne, are you in Him? In Him? In Him is no sin. in Him, before God Almighty,
hear me, believing sinners, you who are nothing but corruption
by nature, in Him is no sin. Before God, I am made right now
worthy to be partaker of the inheritance of the saints in
I am right now made the righteousness of God in him. I am right now
made of God in him holiness, righteousness, and redemption.
Right now. I'm not talking about what we're
going to be. What we're going to be is exactly
what we are right now, which is one difference. We won't have
any flesh to contend with. Did you understand that? When
God saves a sinner, He makes him before Himself holy and righteous
in Jesus Christ the Lord. How holy? How righteous? You
remember Paul's admonition over in II Corinthians chapter 6? He calls for us to come out from
among them, be separate. God says, I'll be a father to
you. I'll receive you. You'll be my sons and daughters.
Do you remember his next word in 2 Corinthians 7? Wherefore, brethren, having these
promises, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Oh, now what
that means is that the Lord Jesus, He comes and gives us new nature.
He makes us a little bit holy. And if we'll read our Bibles
enough and pray enough and tithe enough and serve enough, and
give enough, and do enough, and separate ourselves enough, and
look funny enough, and act strange enough, then we'll make ourselves
really holy. What stupid, blasphemous nonsense. No, sir. Perfecting holiness
is the completing of holiness. God Almighty, before the world
was, declared us just, and righteous, and holy, and accepted us in
the beloved. Read Ephesians 1, is that what
it says? That's what it says. Jesus Christ at Calvary having
finished righteousness, having brought in everlasting righteousness
of infinite worth as a man, as our representative, giving complete,
perfect obedience to the Father and laying down His life under
the penalty of divine justice, being made sin for us, has put
away our sins and satisfied justice and justified us with His blood.
But I didn't know anything about it. I hadn't experienced. I was born
in this world just like you, a child of wrath. Went forth
from the womb just like you, speaking lies. Lived all the
days of my life just like you, with my fists shoved square in
God's face, doing everything I could to silence His influence
in my life. And if I could have, I'd have
gotten rid of Him altogether, just like you. And then one day,
God Almighty came down here. in His almighty grace and snatched me as a bran from
the burning, revealed His Son in me, put His
Son in me, called me to see Him and called me to do what I couldn't
do and called me to do what I had to do. He called to believe His
Son. And now I stand before God in
the perfection of holiness in His Son. In Him is no sin. Jeremiah 23, verse 6, this is
the name whereby he shall be called the Lord our righteousness. Jeremiah 33 verse 16, this is
the name whereby she shall be called. She's talking about you
and me. She's talking about His church. The Lord our righteousness. And I'm going to tell you a whole
lot more than I can begin to understand, much less explain.
Everything that the God-man, our Mediator, is, everything
He is. You got that, Tom? Everything.
You are in Him. It's called one with Christ. One with Christ. One with Christ. That's as blessed as it gets
on this earth, in the experience of it. Amen.