Honest People Don't Go to Hell

Now let's open our Bibles again
to 1 John chapter 1. Ronnie could do that every once
in a while, couldn't he? Oh, I like to hear him sing.
That was a blessing. 1 John chapter 1. Now to begin
this message, I'm going to read a line from verse 5. This, then, is the message which
we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light. God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all. God is light. That's purity.
Almighty God can have no communion. with the evil of pretension.
He is light. Things appear to God as they
are, not as they seem to be, not as they are professed to
be, as they are. God is light, that's purity. And he can have no communion
with the iniquity and evil of hypocrisy or pretension. God is light, that's knowledge.
He knows things to be as they are. Christ said to Nathaniel,
before you heard of me, I saw you. The scripture says, Christ
knowing their hearts, knowing their hearts. So God can have
no communion with ignorance. He can have no communion with
ignorance. And then God is light, that's
truth, truth. He cannot put his approval or
his smile upon anything that's false, anything that's hypocritical. Now let's read, seeing that,
understanding that, let's read verse 5 and 6 again. This is
the message which we've heard of him and declare unto you that
God is light, purity, knowledge, truth. And in him is no darkness."
Now, if we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness,
pretension, hypocrisy, we lie and do not the truth. Now, man
invents fiction. God deals in fact. Man sees things
as they appear. God sees things as they are.
Man looks on the outward accountants, the outward appearance, that's
the only way he can look. But God looks on the heart. The
way things are dressed impresses us. The scripture says all things
are naked and open unto him with whom we have to do. We are forever
trying to make things look better, or appear to be better, or bigger,
or more are more brilliant than they really are, but everything
is seen by God in its naked, cold reality. So if we're going
to do business with God, God is light. In Him is no pretension. In Him is no darkness. If we're
going to do business with God, if we're going to fellowship
with God, if we're going to walk with God, we're going to have
to come to this place, this place of light. We're not talking about
perfection. Enoch walked with God. He was
not perfect. We're going to have to come to
that place of light, though, of the bright, clear light of
honesty and truthfulness. And if we think that we can fellowship
with God and communicate with God and walk with God while there's
a false word or a false thought or a false judgment in our hearts,
hidden by the dress of pretension and hypocrisy, we're sadly mistaken. God is light. God is light, and
in him is no darkness. Now, one old writer said this,
the natural tendency of human nature is to try to appear to
be what we're not. The natural tendency of human
nature is to try to appear to have great spiritual affections,
to hide our real selves, our real tendencies, our real desires,
and our real conflicts, and three things motivate that. And here's
what he said. First of all, there is the love
of approval, which makes men pretend. We want others to approve
of us. We want others to accept us.
We want others to praise us. And therefore, having this love
of approval, it makes us pretenders. And this carries over, he said,
even in our worship of God and in
our prayer lives. We love approval. even the approval
of God. The second thing he says, the
natural tendency of human nature is to try to appear what we're
not, to try to appear to have great spiritual affections, to
hide our real self, the real person that we are, the real
tendencies that we know are there, because we want people to approve
of us, to accept us. And then the other The second
thing that motivates this is the fear of censure. I dare not
disclose my real thoughts. I would be scolded. I would be
rebuked. I dare not reveal my real self. I would be rebuked. I'd be cut
off. He says there are so few people,
even in the Church, with whom you can be perfectly honest That
we are honest with no one, even ourselves, and not even with
God, because we want approval and we fear censure. And then
the third thing that motivates this hypocrisy, this pretension,
this religious veneer that hides what really is inside, is the
protection of our position. We work hard to acquire that
reputation. We work hard to acquire that
position of trust and leadership, that high seat in religion. We're
preachers. We're pastors. We're deacons.
We're elders. We're Sunday school teachers.
We're Christian leaders. And we must always appear assured
and confident and knowledgeable and victorious. So along comes this effort. this
shallow pretense, which is really, in truth, hypocrisy. God is light, and in him there is no darkness
of pretension and hypocrisy. And if we say we walk with him
and walk in this valley of pretension and hypocrisy, we are liars,
because the Lord will not walk with any man on the grounds of
appearance. God will not walk with any man
on the grounds of pretension. But God will walk with a man
only on the grounds of what he really is and who he really is,
and in proportion, I like this right here, in proportion, as
we are untrue and dishonest with God, we cut ourselves off from
God. God is like God is light, the
light of purity, the light of knowledge, the light of honesty,
the light of truth, and if we say we have fellowship with God
and walk in the darkness of pretension and hypocrisy, we lie, and the
truth's not in us. Now, dishonesty of heart is dangerous. To refuse to deal honestly in
the spiritual realm is dangerous. To refuse to deal honestly with
God in the matter of sin and in the matter of our relationship
with him and our true self, it may seem a little thing. It may
seem a little thing to play at the game of prayer or to play
at the game of worship. It may seem a little thing to
deny our real selves and our real tendencies and our failures
and our faults, but it leads to grave consequences. Now, I
want to show you three steps here. First of all, the man lies. He says in verse 6, if we say
we have fellowship with God, if we pretend to have fellowship
with God, if we pretend to communicate with God, While it is a hypocritical
show, while it is pretension, we are lying, aren't we? If I
stand here before you as a minister of the gospel and say, bow your
head, we're going to pray, and I pretend to pray, and I pretend
to call on God, and if it's not genuine, honest communion with
God, it's a lie, isn't it? If we sit at our tables and the
food is there, we're going to bless the food. And we bow and
we go through a little ceremony. And we pretend to have fellowship
with God and to talk to God, while in reality we're not talking
to God at all. We're going through a little
silly sentimental ceremony to impress someone at the table
to appear to be religious. We go in a restaurant and they
bring our plates, and we're Christians, so we've got to maintain this
position. We've got to let everybody know that we're religious, you
know, so we bow our heads and scratch our eyebrows and go through
a little ceremony and don't really talk to God. It's pretension.
It's hypocrisy. And we're lying, aren't we? Absolutely,
we're lying. God's truth now, he sees things,
not as men. Men look on the outward appearance,
God looks on the heart. We impress men by the way we
dress something up, but God sees it naked and cold and plain and
bare in the reality of truth. He's light. So we're lying. We're putting
up a front. We're appearing to be religious.
We're going through the motions. We come to church, and we sit
down, and there's a man across the aisle. We have a bad feeling
toward him, and we pretend. We went up and said, you can't
glad deceive. We're lying, aren't we? God sees
that thought of hatred. God sees that thought of evil.
But we appear on the outside to be one of God's own We appear
to have the spirit of grace, and the spirit of mercy, and
the spirit of forgiveness, while in here, it's a rotten, dirty
lie. And that's the first step. If
we say we have fellowship with God, and at the same time, we're
putting up a false front, we're walking in the darkness of hypocrisy
and pretension, we're lying, aren't we? Alright, what's the
second step? Watch what it leads to. The second
step is down here in verse 8. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves. The second step, the man lies,
and the second step, he begins to believe his lie. He begins
to believe it. It's one thing to deceive others.
We can set that right with an apology. That can be corrected. But woe to the man who goes through
these motions so much and so often. who continues this life
of pretension and play-like religion so long that after a while he
begins to believe it himself that it's the real thing. One
old man, one old writer said this, Woe to the man who closes
his eyes to his hypocrisy so long that he becomes stone blind,
stone blind. Woe to the man who walks in religious
pretension so long that he becomes personally deceived and he begins
to call darkness light and light darkness. That pretension becomes
his religion. And when the real message comes
along, when the real truth of God is presented, he doesn't
even recognize it. If that light in you be darkness,
how great is that darkness, Christ said. That's the second step.
If you play church long enough, if you play at religion long
enough, if you walk in pretension and hypocrisy long enough, you'll
get to believe in it. You'll deceive yourself. And
what's the third step? In verse 10, we'll begin to say
we have not sinned and we'll make God an accessory to the
fact. Our false pride reaches the bottom
of the barrel and we make God Almighty an accessory to our
pretension. We make God a liar. We make God a liar. In our attitude toward God, in
this thing of honesty, spiritual honesty, religious honesty, in
this true confession of sin, in this thing of true prayer,
we have three courses laid before us in this text. I want to take
them one at a time. Now, the first one is found in
verse 8. There are three courses laid
out before us, every one of them. First of all, we can deny our
sinful nature. If we say that we have no sin,
singular, S-I-N, if we say we have no sin, we say we have no
sinful nature, if we say we have no part with Adam in the fall,
if we say we are not partakers of an evil, sinful nature, if
we say that we are not tainted by original sin and depravity,
this is a bold assertion. And the man who makes it has
no truth in him. We are sprung from the man whose
sinful fall corrupts our blood and taints us all. Sin is not
a technical term. Sin is not a theological term. Sin is a nature. Sin is a state
of the heart. And my friends, it was my kin,
it was my tribe, it was my people, it was my brother. who rejected
the scepter of God in Eden's garden? It was my kin, it was
my tribe, it was my relation, it was my brothers who bowed
down to idols in Babylon and Egypt? It was my kin, it was
my brothers, it was my tribe who defiled the angels in Sodom? It was my kin, it was my people,
it was my brothers who crucified the Son of God? And only the
restraining hand of a sovereign God keeps me, or you, or any
one of us from the lowest criminal act, because the potential is
there. The root is there. The nature
is there. The tendency is there. The source
is there. I hear people say, well, I never
have gone into what we call the vile and grossest sins of life. Why is that? It's certainly not
because of anything in you. The potential is certainly there.
And sometimes people mistake sovereign restraint for personal
righteousness. Who maketh thee to differ? I
am what I am, Paul said, by the grace of God. The person who
denies original sin, the person who denies his sinful nature,
the person who denies his potential of being the world's greatest
sinner, John says, is a deceived man and the truth's not in him. The truth's not in him. Now,
I'm not going to take that course. I'm not going to take that direction.
I know that if God Almighty would take his hand off me, there is
no depth of sin to which I cannot sink. There is no extent of depravity
to which I could not go. There is no crime under heaven
that I could not commit. The potential is there. The faculties
are there. The nature is there. The evil
is there. It is in me from my birth, from
my Father Adam. And to deny that is to reveal
that I am deceived and the truth is not in me. Here is the second course we
could take, verse 10. If we say that we have not sinned,
S-I-N-N-E-D, that's what the Pharisee said. He said, Lord,
I thank you, I'm not like other men. I'm not an adulterer. I'm not an extortioner. I am
not an extortioner. I am not unjust. That makes God
a liar. Because God Almighty plainly
says, all have sinned and come short of his glory. God Almighty
plainly says, there's none that doeth good, no, not one. The
Word of God plainly says, there is not on this earth a just man
who doeth good and sinneth not. If I say, I have no sin, no nature
of evil, no tendency to evil, no potential to evil, I reveal
I am deceived and the truth not in me. I've never learned the
gospel, I've never learned the truth, I've never learned the
truth about myself or the truth about the law or the truth about
God. And if I say I have not sinned,
I'm making God a liar because he said I have. You know, it's
difficult to define sin. so difficult to define sin. I
just almost would be willing to put my week's salary, next
week's salary, maybe next month's salary against most anything
that not one person out of 1,000 can give you a scriptural definition
of S-I-N, sin. I doubt that half the people
in this congregation here tonight could give a scriptural biblical,
true to the Word of God, definition of sin. It's difficult to define. Even for enlightened people,
it's impossible for natural men. Sin is not only the presence
of hate. Sin is not only the presence
of hate, it's the absence of love. That's right. You're not just a sinner because
you hate somebody, you're a sinner because you don't love somebody.
Sin is not just to do evil, sin is to neglect to do good. That's
what the word we were talking about the other day. To him that
knows to do good and does it not, to him it's sin. So sin is not just to do bad,
and that's what the average person would say. Give me a definition
of sin. Well, sin is to do bad. It is not. Not only that, sin
is to neglect to do good. Sin is not only an act of the
body, sin is a thought in the heart. Sin is not taking from
others. What is the definition of sin?
Well, it's wrong to steal. It sure is, but that ain't all.
It's sin not to give. That's right. The man who is
a thief is of no greater sin than the man who is a miser. No greater sin. Both of them
have broken the law of God. Sin is not only murmuring and
complaining, but sin is failure to praise God. Sin is not only covetousness,
I'm not just a sinner when I covet, I'm a sinner when I'm even discontent. I'm a sinner when I'm not rejoicing
in the state in which God sovereignly has put me. Sin is not only fleshly
desires, but spiritual indifference. Sin is not just a wound with
words, but the wound with silence. Well, I didn't say anything bad
to him. Did you say something good to him? Well, no. Well,
you sinned. Sin is not just to speak evil,
it's failure to speak good. Sin is not just a deed, but a
look. Sin is not to only think lowly
of others, but to think highly of myself. Boy, I'll tell you, if God the
Holy Ghost ever in his sovereign mercy and pleasure opens these
minds of ours that are so twisted and warped by our tradition and
religious custom and our high opinion of ourselves and our
low thoughts of God and our ignorance of his law, if he ever shows
us what sin is, there will be some folks crying for mercy.
Where is that man, where is that woman, where is that young person
who has understood to some extent the exceeding sinfulness of sin? Where is that man, where is that
woman, where is that young person who has been taught of God? They'll
come to me, Christ said, when they're taught of God. We've
been taught by Reverend so-and-so, or Brother so-and-so, or by some
Bible study course, or fundamentalist manual, or church catechism.
We've never been taught of God. That's the man that comes to
Christ, the one that's been taught of God. He's the one who can
identify with a writer of Romans 7. People sit around and argue
about whether or not Paul was saved in Romans 7. Ignorant folks
argue that. Lost religious hypocrites argue
that. Pretenders and church players
argue that. The man who knows what sin is,
not just to hate but failure to love, not just to steal but
failure to give, not just to murmur but failure to praise
God, will cry, the things I would do I do them not, and the things
I would not do I do them. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from this body of death? This religious generation is
self-deceived, not only satanically deceived, but they're self-deceived. They don't want to know the truth. The average religious fundamentalist
doesn't want to know the truth. He'll bring his cup to the service,
and if you don't fill it just like he wants it filled, he won't
come back. He doesn't want to know the truth. If we say we have no sin, if
we say we have no nature of evil, if we say we have no fallen,
guilty, evil, wicked heart, we are deceived. If we say we have
no root of sin, if we say we have no potentiality to the worst
kind of criminality, we deceive ourselves. If we say from the
sole of our feet to the top of our heads we are not unclean
and unsound and no truth in us, we deceive ourselves. And the
truth's not in us. And if we say we're not adulterers
and we're not extortioners and we're not unjust, we're making
God a liar because he says you are. He says you are. He says you've got two coats
and your neighbor's got none. You wear those two and he wears
his none. You're a great sinner. You're a great sinner. If you
can't love all men as you love yourself, you're a sinner. If
you can't love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,
you're a sinner. A sinner. All right, here's the
third course. I'm not taking either one of
those. I'm not taking either one of
those paths. They lead to tragedy, destruction, deception, blindness,
making God a liar. Here is the third one, verse
9, "...if we confess our sins." That's everybody, isn't it? Everybody. "...if we confess our sins."
Now, not before men. That would be casting your pearls
before swine. We confess our faults one to
another. Scripture tells us to do that
in James 5. Confess your faults one to another and pray one for
another. But we don't confess our sins one to another. Why? Four reasons. Number one, there's
nothing you can do about my sins. No use me confessing my sins
to you. You can't do anything about them.
Now, the thing is, you can't do anything about your sins,
and you sure don't need mine to carry two, do you? Secondly,
you're guilty of the same sin, so no use me confessing mine
to you. You just have to turn around and say the same thing
back to me, if you're honest. The third reason is you're too
unholy to forgive me. If I confessed my sins to you,
you wouldn't forgive me. You wouldn't forget it. You don't
want to aggravate my sin and your sin and make somebody else
suffer. There's no use doing that. And
then fourthly, getting a burden off my chest won't get it off
my soul, will it? I won't do a thing about that. Somebody says, well, it's confession's
good for the soul, according to who you're confessing to.
According to who you're confessing to. We confess our sins. If we confess our sins, all right,
how does a man confess his sins? Number one. to walk in the light
of honesty, truthfulness, piety, without pretension or hypocrisy
before God Almighty. God sees things as they are,
not as they appear to be. All things are naked, oh so naked,
so open before Him. God help me. I like what that
That fellow, Charlie, prayed down the Yucatan. I never can
get away from that. They were having service one
night in the church down there, and Walter got up, and one of
these fellows had been a Christian for a little while, a few months,
and so Walter called on him to pray. He said, Brother, whatever
his name was, said, lead us in prayer. Well, he got up and he said,
Lord, forgive me for what I'm about to say. I thought that was one of the
greatest prayers I ever heard. That's honesty. Forgive me for what
I'm about to say. No pretension there, is there?
Cold-blooded honesty. That's the first thing about
confessing sins. All right, secondly, how does
one confess sin? Honestly, truthfully before God. Secondly, it's to continually,
continually, all the time, not just when I'm in the state of
depression or remorse, it's not just when I'm in the valley,
all the time, continually to occupy the position of the sinner. Now a true confession of sin
is not just going to God and confessing my sins, a list of
my failures, and then going out and forgetting them, but it's
to bow in humility before God as the publican all the time. Oh God, be merciful to me, the
sinner, the sinner, the sinner. I don't think the true believer
ever graduates from the position at the feet of Christ. I don't
think the true believer ever graduates from this position
right here, a guilty, needy sinner. I believe you'll find him there
every waking hour. I believe you'll find an awareness
in his heart and a consciousness in his spirit of his shortcomings,
his failures, his sins, and his failure to come up to the glory
of God and measure the glory of God. Thirdly, a confession
of sin is a daily exercise of faith in Christ. That's a confession
of sin. I need thee every hour, most
gracious Lord, I need thee. I need a savior, why? Because
I'm a sinner. To whom much is forgiven, he'll
love much. Baptism is a confession of sin.
Who needs to be buried with Christ except dead sinners? The Lord's
Table is a confession of sin. This is my blood which was shed
for the remission of your sins. Every time I come to the Lord's
Table, it's a confession of my sins. True worship is a confession
of sin. I think coming here on Wednesday
night, Sunday morning, Sunday night is a confession of sin. I come here because I need to
come. And then true compassion toward
others. is a confession of sin. You find
a man who is proud and lifted up and arrogant toward the sins
of others, you'll find a man who does not know his own guilt.
But you find one who is tender and compassionate with those
who fall. That's what the Apostle said.
If a brother be overtaken in a fall, restore such a one in
the spirit of meekness, doing what? Considering what? lest thou also be tested." That's
a confession of sin. Your attitude toward those who
fall reveals whether or not you really confess your sin. Now,
confession of sin before God can only be done by those who
are aware of sin, those who come to him in honesty, in sincerity,
in humility, exactly as they are, and such, listen to this
next line, And such shall always find mercy. If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and he is just on the basis of his purpose,
his promise, and his justice in Christ. He will forgive our
sins. He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Let me read you something Spurgeon
said about this. If you feel that all is wrong
within you, you're on good ground. All is wrong. We didn't expect
him to say that, did we? If you feel that you're desperately
bad, remember, in God's sight, you're worse than you think.
If you feel that your sins are more than you can bear, they
are. Christ must bear them. If you
feel that you are lost, you are, but Christ came to seek and to
save the lost. God will meet you where the truth
is, the unadorned, honest truth, and nowhere else. God Almighty
will not debate with you on the grounds that you are not as bad
as somebody If you feel unworthy of his grace,
remember, you are unworthy of his grace. You are facing the
truth. If you feel you ought to be damned
and condemned and separated from God's presence, you are absolutely
right. Make no pretense before God. Be yourself. For he said in his
word, he is plenteous in mercy, he is rich in mercy to all who
call on him." God is life. God is life. And if tonight there were shining,
and there is, down on each of us, exposing every thought, every
motive, every attitude, revealing us in the sight of God, not in
the sight of men or in the sight of ourselves, but in the sight
of God as we are, in our thoughts and imaginations and attitudes
and heart, spirit, soul. I imagine all of us would be crying,
O God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Turn to Galatians 5, verse 5.
Let me close with this scripture here. Galatians 5, verse 5. It says
over here in Galatians 5, verse 5, We through the Spirit wait
for the hope of righteousness, the righteousness of God by faith. Not as the Jews who base their
hope on their carnal descent. We've got Abraham to our father.
That's not the basis of the righteousness for which I'm hoping. Not in
outward rites and ceremonies, neither circumcision or uncircumcision
availeth, and not in my moral virtue or my religious works,
but I wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. It is an act of God's
grace, it's an act of God's justice, it's an act of God's mercy, it's
the work of God's soul. God give me a spirit of honesty,
truth, light, when I deal with these. Our Father in Heaven Father, we pray earnestly and
sincerely that we may not have a spirit of hypocrisy and pretension
when we approach thy holy sovereign throne, thy holy presence, but
that we come to thee knowing who we are and what we are and
what we are worthy of, eternal wrath and condemnation. The presence
of sin within us, when we would do good, we find in our members
another law warring against the law of God and the truth of God
and what we know of God. Make us honest in our dealings
with thee and truthful when we approach thee. Give us a spirit
of prayer, a spirit of humility, a spirit of confession and contrition
and a broken heart. We pray, O Lord, thou would speak
to us by thy Spirit, by thy Word. Truly our fellowship might be
with thee. We might walk with thee. We pray that thou would bless
this message, this study, to our hearts. Use it to accomplish
thy purpose for each one of us. We pray for the members of this
congregation. We pray for those who are in
distress and under trial, those who are sick physically. We commit
them unto thee. We pray, our Father, for those
who A walking conter to thy will, to thy word, to what they know. We hold them up before thee.
We love them. We covet their fellowship. We covet a work of grace in their
hearts. We pray for them. You said, Whatsoever
we desire, when we pray, believe, and we shall have it. And we
pray for them. We covet this. And our Father,
help our unbelief. Move in our midst according to
thy will, by thy powerful spirit and presence, convincing men
of sin, revealing Christ as Savior, and bringing men to repentance
toward thee and faith in thy Son. O God, deliver us from the
terrors and false professors, carnal teachers, those who would
pervert the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To whom
be the glory and the praise and the honor, for he alone is worthy.
Teach us to praise thee. For these things we ask in his
name and for his glory. Amen.

Honest People Don't Go to Hell

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Honest People Don't Go to Hell

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