Please open up your Bible again to 1
John, chapter 1.
We've been studying this morning, 1 John, and
about how can you know that you are
truly born again.
And the first test that we saw is
that if you profess to know Jesus Christ
as Lord, if you profess to be a
Christian, and yet your style of life contradicts
what God has told us about Himself, and
contradicts what God has revealed to be His
will through the written Word of God.
Well, John says you lie when you say
you're a believer.
And I pray to God that it's caused
some people to fear.
Some of you should have heard this message
this morning and you should have said, praise
God, that just gives me such assurance.
Some of you should have heard that message
and trembled.
If you are professing one thing and living
another, this is not this false doctrine of
continuously carnal Christianity.
There's no such thing.
A true Christian cannot remain in a continuous
state or habitual state of carnality or sin.
They cannot.
Because He who began a good work in
them will finish it.
So that's the first test.
Now, after that first test, there's a very,
very important test, and the Holy Spirit is
so wise here, because that first test would
lead some people, and has led some people
to wrongly believe that a Christian is without
sin.
And then when it says that a true
Christian walks in the light, it's talking about
sinless perfection.
No, it's not.
It's talking about a style of life.
That although there is sin in the Christian
life, it is not a habitual rebellion against
God.
And the proof of that is our next
test.
We are going to see that sin in
our lives is not necessarily an indicator that
we're lost.
But our attitude towards the sin in our
life will be an indicator of whether we
know the Lord or not.
Look in verse 8.
He says, "...if we say that we have
no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the
truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and righteous to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say we have not sinned, we
make Him a liar, and His Word is
not in us."
His Word is not in us.
Now, you may be seated.
Let's take a look at this text.
Here's something extremely important with John.
He keeps coming back to this phrase, If
we say, if we say, if we say,
it means absolutely nothing.
You can say absolutely everything that you might
want to say, but it doesn't necessarily validate
your Christianity.
He says, "...if we say that we have
no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the
truth is not in us."
Here's the test.
A true Christian will be sensitive to the
sin in their life, and it will lead
them to brokenness and genuine confession.
But the person who says they are a
Christian and are not sensitive to sin, they
are not sensitive to sin, it does not
lead them to confession.
The person who is that way is not
a Christian.
Now, when I teach this, sometimes in a
pastor's conference, I always say something.
Now, I'm about to say something that all
you pastors will almost laugh about, because it's
so true.
Whenever there's a word from God out of
the pulpit, and the Holy Spirit begins to
work convicting the people of God of sin,
sometimes that happens.
You'll be preaching, and it's like God begins
to work, and people begin to be convicted
of sin.
You know what the most unusual thing is?
It is always this.
Pastors of many years will agree with me.
It is always the case, the most holy,
the most godly, the most devoted people in
the church are always the ones that are
most broken over their sin and come forward
confessing it.
And the most devious, carnal, backslidden, cold-hearted,
professing Christians in the church sit there as
cold as a stone as though nothing has
been said.
What are we seeing?
We're seeing the difference between the lost membership
and the saved membership.
The true Christian does not live without sin.
John makes that clear.
But the true Christian is sensitive to sin.
And that sensitivity to sin leads them to
confession, which leads them to cleansing.
Now, let me ask you a question.
Are you sensitive to sin?
Now, let me ask you another question that
might terrify you.
When was the last time you were broken
over your sin and weeping?
When was the last time God showed you
specific sin in your life and it led
you to a broken heart, weeping, and confession?
I say that to so many church members
and they don't even have a clue as
to what I'm talking about.
What is your attitude towards sin?
When it says in Ezekiel that He will
take out your heart of stone and replace
it with a heart of flesh, what He
is saying is this, I will take out
your heart of stone that cannot respond to
divine stimuli and I will replace it with
a heart that responds to Me.
Is your heart responsive to God when He
begins to speak of your sin?
Now, let's look at this text a little
more in depth.
If we say that we have no sin...
You know, in 1 John 5, verse 16,
He talks about a sin unto death.
And there is great debate, has been, will
continue to be over exactly what that means.
And I'm not saying that I know, but
some very, very careful scholars have said this,
it may be this, someone who adamantly, habitually,
refuses to acknowledge their sin before God, that
when God comes to them, when God speaks
to them, when God's dealing with people about
sin, they dig in their heels and refuse
to acknowledge their sin and their need of
cleansing.
Let me ask you a question, because the
human side of this will always reveal something
of the divine side.
How do you respond when someone comes to
you and tells you that you have sinned?
When some friend or some person you barely
know comes to you with a word to
convict you of something you've done wrong, do
you buckle against that?
Do you stand up and fight that?
Do you immediately say, no way, you're judging,
you're this, you're that?
Or do you ponder their words as if
they could be true?
Do you think about it for a while?
Are you sensitive?
Or are you hard-hearted and proud?
You say, well, if God wants to show
me my sin, He can do it.
Yes, He can.
Sometimes He uses individuals to do it.
How will you respond to a messenger from
God?
Because that will tell me a lot about
how you will respond to God.
Are you sensitive to sin?
If we say that we have no sin,
we are deceiving ourselves.
Let me tell you something, you're deceiving yourself,
you're not deceiving anyone else.
And you are most certainly not deceiving God.
It is such a foolish thing to hide
our sin.
It's like trying to hide cancer from the
only doctor who has a cure.
It's like Adam, isn't it?
Adam, where are you?
Hiding, of course.
Hiding from the only one who can save
you.
Oh, my dear friend, I want to tell
you, pride.
Many of the patristics, many of the early
church fathers on down through so many scholars,
they have said that pride is the root
of it all.
Could be.
Because the only reason we will not be
sensitive about our sin or acknowledge it before
God and even men is pride.
Pride.
To break away from that demon we call
pride is a very freeing thing.
Oh, to confess our sins brings such joy.
To acknowledge them before God can bring such
freedom.
But the unbeliever will have nothing to do
with that.
The religious church member who is unconverted will
have nothing to do with that.
He will deceive himself and actually reach a
point that we call self-righteousness.
You keep denying more and more of the
truth of God as it applies to your
life and eventually you become cold as a
stone and the most dangerous malady takes the
place in your heart.
The malady of self-righteousness.
You become a religious man who knows not
God.
A religious man as cold as a stone,
as hard as nails, as cruel as a
tiger.
He goes on and he says, If we
say that we have no sin, we are
deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in
us.
To not acknowledge sin before God is to
say that the truth is not in us.
Have you read John chapter 8 verse 44?
The same words are said about a certain
person in that text.
His name is the devil.
There is nothing of truth in a person
who will not acknowledge their sin before God.
Truth is as foreign to them as it
is to the devil.
If we, he says, say that we have
no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the
truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, what does it
say?
He is faithful and righteous to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.
Now, if we confess, first of all, we
need to understand what the word confession means.
So many people think that confession just simply
means, Lord, forgive me.
No, that's asking for forgiveness.
Confession, it means literally in the Greek language
to speak the same thing.
To speak the same thing.
And what does that mean?
The Holy Spirit, through the Word of God,
speaks to you and points out a specific
sin.
And basically, although we do not hear a
voice, there is a voice.
There is an impression when the Word of
God is preached, or it is read, or
the Spirit is dealing with a heart.
There is such a thing as a voice
and it says, you have sinned, you have
anger in your heart, you have greed in
your heart, you have jealousy in your heart,
you have bitterness in your heart.
God speaks forth that word.
To confess our sins is to say the
same thing that God is saying to us.
Yes, Lord.
Amen.
So be it.
Truly, truly, what you say about me is
true.
I confess that to you.
That's confession.
That is confession.
Now, I just want to read to you
just carefully a passage.
Just listen.
It's in Psalms 32, but just listen.
Verse 3, When I kept silent about my
sin, my body wasted away through my groaning
all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy
upon me.
My vitality was drained away as with the
fever heat of summer.
I acknowledged my sin to you, and my
iniquity I did not hide.
I said, I will confess my transgression to
the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of
my sin.
Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to
you in the time when you may be
found.
Now listen.
He says, now let everyone who is godly
do this same thing.
You see, godly people must deal with sin
in their lives.
One of the marks of godliness is that
you are sensitive to sin and you're willing
to honestly deal with it in your life.
Now, this passage that I've read, many people
who profess faith in Jesus Christ, it is
totally foreign to them.
They live in sin habitually, continuously, in rebellion,
but their body has not grown under the
weight of it.
They don't even feel it.
They can't even see that anything is wrong.
And why is that?
Their heart has not been regenerated.
They are not truly children of God.
You see, God doesn't have any special people
in His kingdom because they're all special.
He doesn't deal with one more than another.
In all His children, He desires holiness, and
He'll see to it that it happens.
For he who began a good work will
finish it.
And if you're a true believer and you
sin, God will deal with you.
Hebrews chapter 12 is very, very clear that
if a person can live in sin without
discipline, they're an illegitimate child.
They do not belong to God.
Now, when it speaks about confession here, we
need to be very, very careful, and I
think Dr. MacArthur points this out quite well.
No man knows all his sin.
No one.
You know, I was in the office before
coming out to greet all the people, and
I'm walking back and forth, Lord, show me,
show me, show me.
You know, but even walking out there saying,
okay, I dealt with a few things in
my life, but walking out that door, I
wasn't a man saying, okay, I have confessed
everything I've ever done.
I don't have a clue about everything I've
ever done.
So when it talks about confession, it's not
something that can almost drive you internally insane
thinking about, do I have all this done?
But it is more a state or an
attitude.
Now, I want to read to you, and
I always like to go ahead and turn
to it myself instead of just quoting it,
and there's a reason so that you see
that it's actually in the Bible.
It's Isaiah 66, verse 2.
He says, For My hands made all these
things, thus all these things came into being,
declares the Lord.
He's saying, I don't need anything from anyone.
God's not served by human hands.
But to this one I will look, to
Him who is humble and contrite of spirit
and who trembles at My Word.
This gives me more hope for the Christian
life than almost any other verse in the
Bible with exception of those that talk specifically
about the finished work of Christ.
And why is that?
I'll tell you why.
If it's said here that God would look
to me with favor and compassion because I
perfectly obeyed His law, there would be no
hope for me.
Or if He said that He looked to
me because my heart was always right and
He looked to me because my heart was
always passionately on fire for Him, there would
be no hope for me.
But this is what He says, I will
look to the one, and that means look
with favor, I will look to the one
who is humble and contrite of spirit and
who trembles at My Word.
What are you to do in light of
the Word?
So many people are always talking about with
regard to the Word, we need to obey
it.
And that is true.
But more, the first step is tremble before
it.
You see, when you've got this Bible open
and God begins to point out sin in
your life, the first thing is don't be
discouraged.
This is not an executioner or a prosecutor
pointing out your sin in order to use
it to condemn you.
This is the one who is for you.
And He's pointing out your sin because He
loves you and He wants to see you
healed.
He wants joy in you.
You say, oh, there you go with the
emotion again.
Have you not read?
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy.
C.S. Lewis said one time, I think
joy may be the primary evidence that one
has truly come to know the Lord.
After years of driving myself in the ground,
trying to earn the love of God and
be holy enough to be loved, it almost
led me to a nervous breakdown.
And one day, the love of God was
shed abroad in my heart like something like
a thunder from heaven.
And I'm happy, not because of my performance,
but because of His finished work on my
behalf.
And when He points out sin, He points
out sin as someone who loves me and
is for me and will not allow me
to be condemned on that day.
He will stand up and raise a standard
against every flood of Satan that tries to
drag me down into the pit of despair.
Satan will stand up there and accuse and
accuse and accuse.
And then God comes like a king riding
a mighty mount with a mighty standard and
sets me free.
So when we talk about sin, believers, always
believers, so many believers when I preach this,
I come down from the pulpit and they
say, oh, you really stepped on my toes.
And I say, well, then I did a
terrible job because that was not my intention.
It's to show you that there is a
lover of your soul who loves you more
than you could ever imagine.
You can't know God's love because you've never
seen anything like that before.
There's no example.
You look to mothers, fathers, grandparents, wherever you
want to look.
A soldier dying for his men on the
field.
You know nothing of the love of God
because nothing compares.
And that's why you have so much trouble.
Your problem is not in believing God to
do a miracle or to raise the dead.
Your problem is, His love is so great,
you can hardly believe it to be true.
So when I talk about God wanting to
expose your sin, it is not to kill
you.
It's to save you and set you free.
A true believer will recognize that.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and righteous.
Now, the fact that we sin show that
we are neither faithful or righteous.
And I think maybe that's why John used
these words.
He's trying to tell you something.
Do you know why you have hope, believer?
Because God's not like you.
And He's not like me.
And He's not like those who would judge
you or destroy you or cast you out.
You see, where men are neither faithful nor
righteous, He is both.
He is faithful to fulfill all His promises
concerning you.
Because He is righteous.
He always does that which is right.
That which is conformed to His nature.
You can trust Him.
Now, look at this.
He says He is faithful and He is
righteous to forgive us our sins.
But not only to forgive, you need something
much more than forgiveness.
You move in the realm of forgiveness almost
as just positionally and almost legally.
But you need to understand something.
There's more offered here than forgiveness of sin.
There is cleansing of sin.
And not just before Him, the cleansing of
your conscience.
How can I describe this to you?
Let's say a man of God, a true
man of God, one that this happens.
A man of God commits a heinous sin.
Oh, if you've walked with God and you
have known His presence and then to commit
a heinous crime before Him, I have been
told that a man of God will come
close to losing his mind.
Take his own life.
Suicide.
How could he ever?
How could he walk with God for so
many years and then fall in such a
tragic way?
How can there ever be any hope?
I'll tell you how.
Because Jesus not only forgives sin, He cleansed
the conscience of guilt.
He can remove that from your mind.
He can remove that from your heart.
He is a balm.
There is a balm in Gilead.
There is a healing lotion.
That is why I tell you, if you're
a believer, it doesn't matter what you've done
or what you've become, He can not only
forgive you, but He can cleanse you from
all unrighteousness.
There is not one unrighteous thing you can
do that He cannot cleanse you of and
set you free and restore your heart.
He can do that.
You have a man of God.
You've had a man of God in this
pulpit that preached against sin.
And you think just preaching against sin, preaching
against...
Do you know why?
Because for the believer, when he understands he
has sinned, when he's heard it, when he's
heard it, he's heard it, he can be
set free.
But you've got to preach against it first.
You've got to warn God's people, not so
that they're crushed in the Spirit, but so
they can be set free.
And that's what He's saying here.
We have a Savior who is faithful and
righteous and will forgive us of all our
sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now, what is unrighteousness?
Everything that does not conform to the perfect
character and will of God.
That's what sin is.
Lack of conformity to the character and law
of God.
Everything that we have ever done that does
not conform to His perfect, holy character, He
can cleanse us of it.
That's how...
How can I stand before you?
The terrible sinner that I was prior to
my conversion.
The stumbling saint that I've been all my
life.
How can I stand before you?
I'll tell you how.
This is true.
That's how.
This is true.
Now, we're just going to go through this
test and we're in the last verse.
And I want you to look.
Verse 10, If we say we have not
sinned, we make Him a liar.
Now, this is very important.
A person who is in sensitive sin, who
will not acknowledge their sin.
Now, look, they're not just saying that God's
lying about their sin.
They're saying something much more horrible.
They're saying God is a liar.
There's one thing to say to a man,
you just lied.
There's another thing to say, you are a
liar by nature, by character.
You're a liar.
And what does Scripture say?
No, he is faithful and righteous.
The very opposite of a lie.
Oh, we should not harden our hearts when
the Holy Spirit comes.
When the Word of God is preached, we
should not harden our hearts.
No, no, a thousand times no.
Do not harden your heart.
Do not do that.
Just open your life.
Open your heart.
Lord, here I am.
Show me.
Confess your sin before the Lord, and He
will be faithful.
Now, I want to just talk to you
for a moment about the psychology of all
of this.
And I'm not going to go to a
psychology book.
I'm going to go to Isaiah.
Isaiah comes before the Lord.
A majestic scene.
In the year the King Uzziah died, I
saw also the Lord high and lifted up
in His train filled the temple.
Above Him stood the seraphim, each one having
six wings.
With two, they covered their face.
With two, they covered their feet.
With two, they did fly.
And one cried unto the other.
What a terrifying picture.
Isaiah says, I'm undone.
He pronounces a curse upon Himself.
Let me die.
I am undone because I am a man
of unclean lips, and I dwell among a
people of unclean lips.
Now, look at God's reaction.
Look at what God did not do.
God did not look at Isaiah and say,
Oh, Isaiah, you're just taking this too hard.
I didn't mean that.
It's okay.
Now, just think about that for a moment.
Now, listen to me, saints.
I'm not kidding around right now.
This is truth.
Some believer comes to you because they've sinned
against you.
And they say, I have sinned against you.
Forgive me.
And what do you say?
Oh, that's all right.
Don't worry about it.
That's wrong.
That is as wrong as it can be.
I will not allow you to do that
to me.
I must have your forgiveness.
I must hear it.
If the Holy Spirit has shown me my
sin and I come to you asking forgiveness,
do not call God a liar.
Do not say, oh, that really wasn't sin,
or that's all right, or that's okay.
No, I need your pardon.
And I need to hear it.
Brother Paul, yes, you have sinned.
And I forgive you.
And it's over.
So notice what God did not do.
He did not just say, okay, Isaiah, that's
okay.
Just let it slide.
At the same time, He did not crush
Isaiah.
He did not say, Isaiah, it's over.
It's finished.
I mean, I've let you be a priest.
I've given you so many privileges.
You've done this.
It's over.
Get out of my presence.
He didn't do that either.
What did He do?
He called an angel.
Get a coal.
We're going to cleanse this man.
When you go before God, say, oh God,
I have sinned.
He is faithful and righteous, not just to
let it pass by.
He's faithful and righteous.
He will not crush you.
He will forgive you and cleanse you from
all your sin.
Now, look again.
If we say that we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar and His Word
is not in us.
Again, the person who hardens their heart, the
person who is insensitive to sin, shows not
only that they are not a child of
God, but that they're a child of the
devil.
Because the very words that is spoken about
Satan, the truth is not in him, is
spoken about this person.
The truth is not in them.
The Word is not in them.
The Gospel is not in them.
It's foreign to them.
There's two other things that I want to
say.
Number one, He is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins.
Now, it says here quite clearly in verse
10, if we say we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar.
But now, to say someone is a liar
is to doubt their character.
If God tells you that you have sinned
and you say no, you are casting doubts
about His character.
Now, those of you who are saints do
not do that.
But I want to show you something that
many of us as Christians do.
When God says, I am faithful and righteous
to forgive you your sins, we do not
believe Him.
We confess sin and then we live in
sort of a spiritual limbo for days, thinking
that we've kind of got to allow this
to kind of run its course before we
can actually come back into the presence of
God, before we can call on His name.
There are so many people that I know
that are truly Christians, but like Christian in
the pilgrim's progress, they're in the sloth of
despondency.
They're in despair.
They doubt God's forgiveness.
They doubt God's ability to cleanse.
They doubt God's Word when He says, I
have forgiven you.
Christian, the greatest demonstration of faith is to
believe God.
To believe God when He tells you that
He loves you and to believe God when
He tells you, you are forgiven and it
is over.
You've got to believe that.
You've got to believe it.
Oh, it's such a wonderful freeing thing.
Finally, the second thing in close.
Saints, I am terrified, absolutely terrified.
I'm an itinerant preacher.
Travel around.
You see a lot of things.
I have to come to the conclusion, a
conclusion that many leaders and theologians have drawn.
I've heard some say that if we take
the Bible seriously, less than 10 to 15
percent of all evangelicals, even in Bible-believing
churches, are born again.
And one of the things that makes me
think that that is true is just the
absolute mind-boggling insensitivity to sin.
Can you go home tonight after worshiping the
Lord here?
After hearing about missions, after hearing a sermon
like this, can you go home and just
turn on an ungodly program that just totally
contradicts everything God has ever said about Himself
and His will?
Can you do that and watch it freely?
Can you go to work tomorrow and just
blend right in with all the ungodly around
you?
Can you walk the way they walk?
Can you talk the way they talk?
And even though a lot of people don't
like to hear this anymore, they think it's
old-fashioned, can you dress the way they
dress?
Can you do that?
Oh, my dear friend, are you not sensitive
to sin?
If you're sitting there tonight and you're going,
man, from what He has said, I am
very insensitive to sin.
Then you need to talk to someone.
And again, we'll all be available here tonight.
We need to deal with these things.
We need to deal with them.
Now, I've given the invitation and I want
you to think about it.
I want you to think about it and
I want you to act on it.
Are you saved?
Do you know Him?
Does He know you?
Is it evident in the fact that your
style of life reflects His character and His
will and your style of life demonstrates a
real sensitivity to sin?
Does it?
Because if not, please, after this service, after
this prayer, come and talk to me or
one of the pastors.
Oh, don't walk out this door and have
the Word of God stolen from your heart.
Don't do it.
Let's pray.