Turn with me to the first epistle of
John, John's first epistle, and I want to
read with you that entire first chapter and
the first two verses of chapter two.
1 John, and chapter one.
That which was from the beginning, which we
have heard, which we have seen with our
eyes, which we have looked upon in our
hands of handles concerning the word of life.
The life was manifested, and we have seen
and bear witness and declare to you that
eternal life, which was with the Father and
was manifested to us.
That which we have seen and heard, we
declare to you that you also may have
fellowship with us.
And truly our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
And these things we write to you that
your joy may be full.
This is the message which we have heard
from him and declare to you, that God
is light, and in him there is no
darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with
him and walk in darkness, we lie and
do not practice the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as
he is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another.
And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son,
cleanses us from all sin.
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.
My little children, these things I write to
you, that you may not sin.
And if anyone sins, we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And he himself is the propitiation for our
sins, and not for ours only, but also
for the whole world.
May God add his blessing to the public
reading of his precious word.
Amen.
I don't know any time in my experience
of the ministry where we've had such a
crisis of integrity.
My beloved brother spoke on that theme on
the very first morning of his Bible studies
in the first epistle to the Thessalonians.
And I want to just underscore what he
had to say to us on that morning.
For those of you who've just joined us,
my theme is the crises of the Christian.
And my first message was the crisis of
identity.
Who are we?
What is God making of us?
Why did he create us in the first
place, and why has he redeemed us?
And our ultimate answer was that we might
be conformed to the image of his Son.
That answers the crisis of identity.
Last night was the crisis of consistency.
How is it that having received new life
in Christ, we can sin?
And we find in us a battle going
on.
The flesh lusting against the spirit, and the
spirit against the flesh.
And these two being contrary, so that we
have a polarization as well as a pulverization
in our lives.
And we talked about the mystery of this
indwelling sin, the misery of it.
And thank God the mastery of it.
But tonight, it's the crisis of what I'm
calling integrity.
Integrity.
John's addressing this very matter here.
Paul does it in Romans 6 and other
places.
He was living in a day when certain
heretics known as the Gnostics argued that really,
sin didn't really matter.
There were two extremes.
Some tried to ignore it completely.
And that's why John says, if any man
says he has not sinned, he's a liar.
He doesn't do the truth.
And neither speaks the truth.
Then there was a group who indulged it.
They were all called Gnostics.
Indulged it.
And they just let rip to their sins.
And that's the one particularly that Paul answers
in Romans 6.
Shall we sin that grace may abound?
God forbid, perish the thought.
How shall we that are dead to sin
live any longer therein?
This antinomianism, I'm afraid, is rampant in the
Christian church today.
I've never lived in a time that I
can remember, except that we might explain it
by the publicity that's given to scandal, where
I have known of great men, not only
sin, but compromise and rationalize everything they've done.
And still try to get away with it.
And what's happening in highest natures, whether it's
political, whether it's, as we were saying, the
medical world of today, whether the psychological world
of today, with the psychiatrists and psychologists who
are, honestly, some of the meanest sinners in
our country today.
Right down to pastors and people in the
church.
The idea of discipline in a local church
is unheard of today.
Indeed, if you were to proceed with such
discipline, you'd be sued, as has happened already.
And we've lost the authority and integrity that
God demands of us as a holy God.
And that's why this wonderful little meandering epistle
deals with the three great aspects of God's
person as light and love and life.
And you'll find those concepts all through this
little epistle.
But here I want to concentrate on that
tremendous opening statement of our study tonight.
God is light, and in Him there is
no darkness at all.
If you want a biblical definition for integrity,
that's it.
God is light, and in Him there is
no darkness at all.
Therefore, if we say we have fellowship with
Him, we have fellowship with Him as light
and walk in darkness, we lie and do
not the truth.
Integrity.
And beloved, I want to say it, with
all you see on television, all you hear
on radio, and all you see in the
papers, and all you see reflected in the
religious life of our day, it's so easy
to lose our sense of integrity.
And tonight I want to speak to that,
but close, I trust, with a glorious note
that you and I can know clean living.
Clean living.
You know, when that awful scandal broke that
I needn't recapitulate, a friend of Dr. Billy
Graham, who was once a fellow evangelist, but
is denied the faith.
He lives in Toronto, and many of you
would know his name if I were to
spell it out tonight.
And although he's overthrown the doctrines he once
held, and even though to many he's nothing
more than an apostate today, and though he
criticizes most, most Christian preachers and evangelists, I
was so thrilled not only to read, but
to hear somebody who heard him say, remark,
there's one thing about my friend Billy Graham,
he's still Mr. Clean.
Now, zeroing in on your life and my
life, are you Mr. Clean?
Are you Mrs. Clean?
Are you Ms. Clean?
See, I'm with it.
Because you know, God is light.
And you say you have fellowship with Him.
God is light.
And if you walk in darkness, when you
say you have fellowship with Him, you lie.
You're living a phony life.
And the truth is not in you.
Well, you say, what do you mean by
this integrity business?
Well, we're going to talk about its prescription,
its provision, and protection.
Right here in the text.
The prescription for a life of integrity is
really wrapped up in that beautiful verse seven.
Look at that verse again with me.
Remember again, God is light, and in Him
there is no darkness at all.
We say we walk in the light and
do not the truth.
By walking in darkness, we lie.
But then comes this glorious statement introduced with
that little if.
Mark the if, by the way, in the
whole chapter there.
If we walk in the light, as He
is in the light, we have fellowship one
with another.
And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
goes on cleansing.
Goes on cleansing us from all sin.
In those words, we have what I call
the prescription for a life of integrity.
And three tremendous things are involved here.
And I want you to follow me as
we deal with them.
Number one, what I'm calling obedience to the
light as revealed in Christ.
Obedience to the light as revealed in Christ.
If we walk in the light.
Now, the term walk is used so often
in the New Testament, especially by Paul.
It suggests life and activity and direction and
destiny.
It's moving, it's moving.
If we walk, if we find our environment,
our activity in the light, in the light,
in the light.
Let's stop there for a moment.
What does it mean to walk in the
light?
To walk in the light is to walk
in the light of the Word of God.
The light of the Son of God.
Jesus said, I am the light of the
world.
He that followeth me shall not walk in
darkness, but shall have the light of life.
But for you and me tonight, let's make
it very practical.
It really means up-to-date obedience to
the Word of God.
That incarnate Word is also the inscripted Word.
This blessed book I hold in my hand
tonight.
God's inerrant Word.
And beloved, if you were to ask me
what is the greatest sin of the evangelical
church, I would quote Carl Henry tonight.
And I would say the greatest sin of
evangelical people today is unapplied orthodoxy.
Failure to take the Word of God and
to apply it to our lives.
We argue until we're blue in the face
about inerrancy and I'm in that battle too
because I believe we have a trustworthy, reliable,
inerrant Word.
Otherwise I'd quit being a preacher.
But what's the use of arguing for inerrancy
when we don't obey?
When we don't obey.
I wonder how many of us in this
room here tonight are up-to-date even
in the light of the teachings on Thessalonians
and the evening messages.
Up-to-date.
Every I dotted.
Every T crossed.
Obedience to the Word of God.
It's my own judgment that the lacking word
in our vocabulary today is that one word,
obedience.
Even the word love, to which we'll come
in just a moment, is secondary for a
moment because if we say, I love Jesus,
Jesus looks back and says, If you love
me, if you love me, you will keep
my commandments.
By the way, that's how the Greek reads
there.
It isn't, if you love me, keep my
commandments.
No, no, no.
If you love me, if you love me,
it'll follow logically.
It'll follow reasonably.
It'll follow inevitably.
If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.
Keep my commandments.
That's walking in the light.
One of my dearest friends from the African
continent was Bishop Tester Cavengery.
Before he became a bishop, he was over
in this country many times and never came
over without visiting us at Calvary Baptist Church.
He studied theology in Pittsburgh, got his degree,
went back, and was made a bishop.
But thank God that never affected that revival
spirit, one of the greatest revivalists Africa has
ever known.
And to hear him talk about the Rwanda
-Uganda revival, which happens to be the longest
revival that has ever, ever been known since
Pentecost, that is in terms of continuous wave
after wave after wave of blessings, I asked
him.
As a matter of fact, at Amsterdam too,
I said to him, Tester, tell me, why
has this revival lasted so long and what
is the secret of it?
What is the secret of it?
He gave a two-fold answer and one
relates to what I'm saying right now.
He said, Well, Stephen, I would say that
the secret of that revival has been one,
the spirit of brokenness amongst God's people.
The spirit of brokenness.
The willingness to repent.
The willingness for a husband to say sorry
to the wife.
The wife to say sorry to her husband
over a kiss.
The willingness to even repent to your children.
The willingness for a pastor to repent to
members of his church or vice versa.
The spirit of brokenness.
Spirit of brokenness.
But he said the second answer would be
this, walking in the light.
Walking in the light.
He said, As we move around our communities
as Christians and we look into each other's
faces, if we see a man with a
cloud across his face, a woman with a
cloud across her face, we come right up
and say, Brother, are you walking in the
light or are you in the bushes?
Sister, are you walking in the light or
are you in the bushes?
You say, that sounds a little bit strange
here at Keswick where God speaks to hearts.
Oh, no.
Not if you know your Bible.
For you remember that in Genesis 3 when
Adam and Eve ceased to walk in the
light, where were they?
And said Thesto, we interpret walking in the
light as obedience to the newest word that
God has spoken.
You are assuming that you are carrying the
obedience from all you have known before, but
what has God said to me today in
my quiet time?
As I rose early to meet my God
and I opened the pages of His word
and I said, Lord, speak.
My ears are open.
I am not going to be rebellious.
Say a word to me.
Say a word to me this morning, Lord.
Now, am I obedient to that word?
That is walking in the light.
And brother, you are never going to have
integrity in your life.
Sister, you are never going to have integrity
in your life unless you know what it
is to walk in the light.
Obedience to the light in Jesus Christ.
But that leads immediately to continuance in the
love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Not only the life of God, but the
love of God.
And all exegetes and fundamental expositors believe that
the fellowship here in this line is horizontal.
It stands to reason that if you are
walking in the light, you have fellowship with
God.
So, when you walk in the light, that
immediately expresses itself not just in obedience to
the light now, but continuance in the love
of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Love to one another.
If you see a community of Christians, whether
it's in your local church, whether it's in
your family circle, or in that Bible study,
and you see a love one toward another,
a love one toward another, you know there's
integrity.
Nothing kills love like lack of integrity.
Integrity.
Beloved across our land today, there's nothing but,
division and faction and schism.
Even in some of our megachurches, it may
look terrific to see five thousand, nine thousand
people back to back, three thousand each time
in a big church.
But get your ear down to the ground
and hear what's going on.
We need a new baptism of love.
Telsha, the real koinonia.
Love.
If I were to borrow Jacob's ladder and
climb all the way up to the throne
room of heaven tonight, I believe out here
my intercessor who in session is praying right
now.
And I feel out here an echo of
that 17th of John.
Father, make them one.
Oh, Father, make them one.
Make them one that the world may believe
that you have really sent me.
Love one to another.
Telsha.
The prescription for integrity is obedience to the
light as revealed in Christ.
Continuance in the love as revealed in Christ.
Jesus said this is the badge of integrity
that you love one another.
By this shall all men know that you
are my disciple, that you have love one
toward another.
May I ask that you love your wife
very tenderly, but honestly and sincerely.
I know you've been married for many years,
but do you really love your wife right
now?
I'm asking that question in all seriousness because
we've been doing some counseling here.
Do you love your husband?
Do you really love him?
You're just getting on with him.
Do you love your children?
And even more important, do your children love
you?
What about your church?
Can you honestly say, I haven't a single
thing against anyone in my church.
For if I did, I know as a
matter of integrity and as a matter of
holy love, I cannot pray.
I cannot have my quiet time.
I cannot go to the prayer meeting until
I go and put something right with my
brother.
I will leave my gift at the altar
and go and be reconciled to my brother
because I happen to know he has something
against me or she has something against me.
Even if I don't have something against her
or him, and I must leave that gift
at the altar and go and be reconciled.
But notice, the text goes on.
It's not only obedience to the light as
revealed in Christ, continuance in the love as
revealed in Christ, but experience in the life
as revealed in Christ.
For the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
cleanses us from all sin.
Now, here we could go very theological.
This is not an aspect of justification.
It's not the initial application of the blood
that's referred to here because it's to go
on continuously.
Continuously.
When I came to Calvary, just as I
was, weary, worn, and sad, I knelt there
and I received reconciliation through the virtue and
value and victory of that blood that was
shed in that penal death for me, a
sinner.
That's never repeated.
I've never repeated.
But here, the blood is to go on
cleansing.
So it's more than justification here.
It's sanctification.
The blood that was shed at Calvary and
caught up in life and resurrection is applied
to me on a continuous basis by the
Holy Spirit.
And this is the deepest message of Keswick,
right here in Pauling, in New Jersey.
Yes, it's Keswick that has taught this message
throughout a century and more.
No, it's always been in the New Testament
that I must know the meaning of Romans,
chapter 8 and verse 13.
If I live after the flesh, I shall
die.
But if, through the Spirit, I go on
mortifying, notice the present tense, go on mortifying
the deeds of the body, I shall live.
That's the application of Calvary.
That's the application of the cross.
That's the application of death to self on
a cleansing, continuous basis that Christ might live
through us.
That's experiencing the life, the sanctifying life of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
The prescription for integrity.
Obedience to the light, continuance in the love,
and experience of the life in Jesus Christ.
Amen?
Have you gone all that way yet?
But quickly let's turn to the provision for
integrity.
A life of integrity.
Provision for the life of integrity.
The apostle goes right on to say, if
you say you haven't sinned, you're lying, you're
a phony.
If we say that we have fellowship and
walk in darkness, we lie and do not
the truth.
If we say that we have not sinned,
we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not
in us.
But if here tonight God has touched something
in your life, on the very first night
of welcome, the next morning, or throughout the
days we have met together, or in the
seminars or institutes that you've been holding, and
the prayer meetings, well then, my friend, there's
a provision for integrity, a provision for cleansing.
And it's wrapped up for us in that
matchless verse, nine.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins, and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now, may I point out that that's not
an excuse to sin.
That's antinomianism.
That's taking advantage of the grace of God.
That's turning the grace of God into lasciviousness.
Now, God has made provision, not so that
we shall sin, but in case we do
sin.
When an ocean liner goes out to sea,
it carries lifeboats, right?
Why does it carry lifeboats?
In order that it might sink, in case
it might sink.
And this is God's provision for a cleansed
life day by day.
We've looked at the prescription.
Here is the provision.
And I want you to notice three things
again in this text.
I'll take them in the order in which
I feel will help us.
First of all, there is the provision of
God's word of faithfulness.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful.
Oh, I love that word.
Dr. Fletcher brought us this morning on the
Scriptures.
How we can just depend upon the Scriptures
as God's resources for cleansing.
God cannot lie.
God is faithful.
And I could spend all night tonight by
just stopping here and saying, now then, quote
some glorious truth on cleansing, provision for cleansing
from the word of God.
Quote your special promise.
And somebody would jump up and say, let
the wicked forsake his way and the righteous
man his thoughts and let him return unto
our Lord and he will abundantly pardon.
We return to our God and He will
abundantly pardon.
And we could go on and on and
on and on.
God is faithful.
Faithful to what?
Faithful to His word.
His faithfulness is related to His word.
You can trust Him.
When God says you're going to be cleansed,
you're going to be forgiven, He means it.
And you could rest upon that tonight.
But not only is there the provision of
the faithfulness of God's word, but the righteousness
of God's work.
God's work.
He is righteous.
The word here is righteous.
Righteous to what?
Righteous to what He did when Ron stood
before that microphone and sang my favorite song
on this theme of the rent veil and
the finished work.
I want to tell you, I want to
shout hallelujah right in the middle of that
solo.
Right in the middle of that solo.
Because God cannot look down upon that Calvary
act that shed blood, that poured out life,
and not be righteous to be just and
the justifier of all who believe in Jesus.
And through that work, just only the word,
but the work, not only the faithfulness of
the word, but the righteousness of that work,
you and I, you and I can know
two things that are mentioned here.
Deliverance from the guilt of sin.
He is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins.
That word forgive means to remit our sins,
to send them away.
It's a word that has a beautiful Old
Testament picture of the two goats that were
brought to the altar on the day of
atonement, that great day of atonement in the
history, religious history of the Jewish people.
And the one goat was slain and the
blood was taken into the Holy of Holies
to answer to God on behalf of the
people.
And then the other goat was taken and
the priest confessed the sins of all the
people on the head of that goat known
as the scapegoat.
And that goat was taken by the hand
of a fit man and carried into a
land uninhabited.
The sins, symbolically, were carried away.
Isn't that wonderful?
Carried away.
And when God remits our sins, when God
forgives our sins, when God deals with our
guilt.
Do you know where He puts it?
He puts it in the place of no
remembrance.
Their sins will I remember no more against
them.
He puts our sins in the place of
no return.
As far as the East is from the
West, so far does He remove our sins
from us.
Have you ever thought of that?
You can never, never, never catch up with
the East and West because it's a circle.
As far as the East is from the
West, place of no return.
But do you know where He puts our
sins?
In the place of no recovery, in the
depth of the sea.
He has put our sins into the depth
of the sea.
I heard W.E. Sangster preach on that
one text many, many years ago, that illustrious
pulpiteer and expositor, Dr. W.E. Sangster, youngest
president of the Methodist Conference since John Wesley
and probably the greatest authority on John Wesley.
And to illustrate it, he went into meticulous
explanation of how the steward system of that
great city of London worked, how it's reduced
to a liquid.
All the filth and all the dirt and
all the corruption of that city is reduced
to a liquid.
And every day of the week except Sunday,
a ship goes down the Thames to several
miles off the coast of England to a
spot well known where with great engines pumping,
the moment comes when a button is touched
and that entire filth is plunged into the
depth of the sea.
And so deep is that spot in the
English Channel, so deep that five minutes after
the operation, you could take a glass, dip
it in the water and drink it, and
there would be absolutely no harm whatsoever.
Gone forever.
That's what God does with your sin and
mine.
Isn't that wonderful?
I remember Dr. Barnhouse coming to Keswick and
on this particular night of the Keswick Convention,
giving us, I think it was, twelve things
that God does with our sin.
And apparently he had preached that message at
10th Presbyterian Church before he flew over to
England.
And he must have waxed very eloquent that
morning.
He said, I went to the door as
my custom was, shake hands with members as
they came out of the door and many
people came into blessing, but he said, I
saw a little fellow there, a bright little
young chap with a red bow tie standing
there almost at attention, and he didn't approach
me until the last person had gone by.
And he came up and said, Doc, he
said, after all God's done with our sin,
we're sitting pretty, aren't we?
And I could hear that great Ted shake
with laughter.
Don't have much, usually much humor there.
But people were rejoicing, rejoicing in the amazing
truth that God removed our guilt.
He delivers us not only from the guilt,
but notice the grip of sin, cleanses us
from all unrighteousness.
And that word unrighteousness means all the little
wrong acts that have defiled our lives, that
grip upon our lives.
He not only delivers us from the guilt,
but from the grip of sin.
That's all tied up in the righteousness of
His work through the cross of Jesus Christ.
The cross of Jesus Christ.
You say, but Stephen Alford, wonderful as all
you've said is from the word of God,
I want to get this matter settled.
I want to get this matter settled tonight.
In this provision, in this provision for my
cleansing, in this provision for a life of
integrity, I can trust the faithfulness of God,
I can trust the righteousness of God because
of His word and His work.
But how can that be applied to me
right now?
Did you notice the if we confess?
If we confess, that has to do with
the openness of God.
God is waiting for you to come.
Openness.
Do you know what that word confess means?
To agree with God about everything He said.
To agree with God and to be open
with Him about openness with God.
Openness with God.
That's right back to our key thought.
God is light.
You can't walk in darkness and have fellowship.
He's light.
You've got to be open.
You say, would you be practical for a
moment and tell me how I can be
open with God?
Yes.
Let me use monosyllable words, three things, and
never forget them.
Notice what it says.
If we confess our sins, plural.
We're not talking about the sin nature here.
That's another subject.
But the sins that come from the sin
nature, when we commit those sins, what are
we to do?
Number one, tell God.
Tell God.
Name the sins.
Don't be gentle.
Name the sins.
I don't know how many in a congregation
like this would ever have heard of a
wonderful lady who almost hit the one hundred
mark and was to preach on her hundredth
birthday to all the women of the Southern
Baptist Convention who could attend a rally, Miss
Bertha Smith.
But you know, in her meetings, in her
meetings, she used to bear down, especially on
the Old Testament.
She was an Old Testament scholar.
And when it came to this matter of
sins and naming them, naming them, spelling them
out, she would hand out sheets in a
congregation, especially a bunch of pastors, and make
them write them out right there in the
congregation, and then ask them to pray over
those sins, and sometimes publicly too.
I wonder how many of us here are
hiding sins.
Hiding sins.
You're in darkness.
God is light.
You're in darkness.
Name them and nail them.
Number two, tell God.
Number two, trust God.
Remember, we've already talked about his faithfulness.
Remember, we've already talked about his righteousness.
Remember, we've already talked about his openness.
So trust him.
Trust him with that sin.
Trust him with those sins.
Trust him.
Trust him to deal with them in the
fashion he has declared he will deal with
them.
Trust him.
You say, Amen.
Amen.
That's fine.
That word ends.
No.
There's something more implied in that word confess.
To confess is to tell him.
To confess is to trust him.
But don't leave it there.
There's one more.
To confess is to thank him.
And if you don't thank him, you know
why it is?
You haven't trusted him.
And why have you trusted him?
Because you haven't told him.
Tell him.
Trust him.
Thank him.
Lord, thank you.
My sins are forgotten.
My sins are as far as the east
is from the west.
My sins are in the depth of the
sea of no recovery.
Thank you, Lord.
Thank you.
Tonight, we're going to have the altar open
as we have each night, and folk have
come.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you just came
to say thank you?
Wouldn't it be wonderful to come forward and
say thank you?
Never mind anyone else.
Who are they but just small people?
This is a holy God.
You're coming into his presence to say thank
you.
Somebody says to me, that's very fine, but
Keswick's only one week.
And I'm going down from Keswick, and I'm
going to hit a home you can't believe.
A situation that's so hostile, I haven't had
the courage to even come and share it
with you.
I have a very serious problem at work.
School is full of corruption.
Dope is being passed around the classrooms.
I don't know how I can maintain this
integrity.
I want to close very briefly by speaking
on one of the most precious things that
have come out of this text today, and
this is brand new out of my heart.
This message was born late last night, or
should I say early this morning, as I
lay on my bed.
And heaven wondered why I was taking so
long trying to prepare for tonight.
But I was just reveling in some new
insight the Lord had given me from this
passage.
We've looked at the prescription for integrity and
the provision.
But look at the protection.
Oh, I love these words.
And you know there is no real break
in the Greek.
In fact, there's no break at all.
Chapters are very convenient for finding our way
around, but John goes right on to say,
My little children, these things write I to
you that you may not sin.
Now, you wouldn't say that unless there was
victory in Jesus, a life of glorious triumph.
I'm writing to you that you can live
victoriously, victoriously, victoriously.
And then he tells us how God has
made provision.
If anyone sins, we have an advocate with
the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
And He Himself is the propitiation for our
sins, and not for ours only, but for
the whole world.
Three wonderful words are given here to describe
our wonderful Savior.
And all the music has related to His
person and preciousness here tonight.
Notice the three words.
One, Christ the righteous, Christ our advocate, and
Christ our propitiation.
Let me explain that.
How can I know this protection?
You see, folks, I'm not just talking theology.
I'm not just expounding or exegeting and applying
truth from the Word of God.
In the ultimate sense, our protection for integrity
is a person, a person.
Christ the righteous, Christ the advocate, Christ the
propitiation, He's our wonderful Lord.
Now let me put it in the form
that you can remember it.
You can trust Him for protection because, listen
carefully, because He accurately detects our failure.
He is Christ the righteous.
Christ the righteous.
When we fail, it isn't what other people
say about us that matters, it's what He
says.
And He's always fair.
He's always fair.
Do you know that's a wonderful protection?
Because I'm going to tell you something.
We have to battle not only with what
people say about us, and most of that
is unfair, but worse than that, we have
to battle with the accuser of the brethren.
That's the devil.
Satan.
And Satan has a way, Satan has a
way of accusing us until he brings us
absolutely to despair.
You know something else?
We can be introspective ourselves, and I believe
the Bible teaches examination of ourselves, examination of
ourselves, especially as we come to the Lord.
We have been put underground, and we have
no right to go to the cemetery and
dig up the dead bones again.
It's a violation of the truth of Romans
chapter 6.
And very often we dig down into the
depths of our being only to discover that
the old nature is still there.
Who said it wasn't there?
There's nothing the devil can tell me I
don't know already.
There's nothing you can tell me I don't
know already.
There's nothing I can tell myself that isn't
true already.
Why?
Because that root of sin will remain until
the rapture when it will be totally, totally
removed.
Hallelujah.
But in the meantime, I can know victory.
But when this matter of failure comes along,
He is the righteous one.
He'll detect when we're wrong if we're walking
in the right.
The accuracy with which He detects our failure.
Secondly, the advocacy with which He defends our
frailty.
He's our advocate.
And that word advocate there means parakleto.
It's the same word that's used of the
helper, of the comforter who is the Holy
Spirit.
And you know how frail we are?
How weak we are?
Will I be able to stand?
The Lord Jesus says, I'll come right alongside
of you.
I'm your advocate.
I'm your defender.
I'm your enabler.
I'm your comfort.
I'm going to keep you strong.
Hallelujah.
What a Savior.
Isn't that glorious?
Are you weak-kneed?
Straighten up your legs.
You have an advocate.
I don't know when I've known such legal
battles as in recent years.
I mean, sewing is almost as popular as
sewing.
And you see these guys, big pots of
money and all the rest of it, going
around the country to get the best lawyer,
the best advocate.
And you can see a smirk on their
face because why?
They know that this guy's never lost a
case.
He is.
He is the best.
Listen.
He is not the best.
Christ is the best.
And He's going to come right alongside.
Yes, He can detect failure, but He defends
frailty, too.
And He knows we're weak.
He knows our frame.
He knows we're about just men.
But best of all, best of all, my
last thought here, the, listen, the accuracy with
which He defends us, yes, that's when there's
failure.
The advocacy with which, I mean, the accuracy
with which He detects failure, the advocacy with
which He defends frailty, but, oh, the adequacy
with which He declares freedom.
He's the propitiation.
He's the reconciler.
He's the forgiver.
He's the one who can say, You're free.
You're free.
And when He says, I'm free, I'm free.
I don't care what you say.
And I don't care what the devil says.
I'm free.
When the Son, therefore, shall make you free,
you shall be what?
Free indeed.
There's victory in Jesus.
I wish I could think.
I was thinking.
Victory in Jesus.
The prescription for integrity.
The provision for integrity.
And blessed be His name, the protection for
integrity.
Not a theology, not a philosophy, but a
glorious risen Savior whose accuracy, whose advocacy, and
whose adequacy can keep me clean.
Now, until I see Him face to face.
Otherwise, verses like, Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has
blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
Then Paul goes on to talk about the
wonderful, wonderful truth of a cleansing Savior in
our lives.
Or he says, Thanks be unto God who
always causes us to triumph.
Or again, Thanks be unto God who always
gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Or again, We are more than conquerors through
Him that loved us.
Is that hyperbole?
No.
It's true.
We can learn and live the victorious life.
All right?
You want to know that cleansing?
You want to know that victory?
You want to know that integrity?
I've given you the prescription, the provision, and
the protection.
You've had dealings with God this week?
Still some business unfinished?
Tell Him.
Now.
Trust Him.
Now.
Thank Him.
When?
Now.
Let's pray together.
The greatest thing as we normally do, our
convention hymn of response.
And I want people here tonight, you may
have been on the Christian road 40 years,
50 years, 60 years.
You may be just a young Christian.
But if God has set you free tonight,
I want you to come forward and thank
Him.
Quietly stand here.
And by standing here, you're saying, Thank you,
Lord.
Thank you.
I know that I can trust your righteousness.
I know I can trust your faithfulness.
I know I can trust your openness.
And I am just trusting you for deliverance
from the grit as well as the guilt
of sin.
And, Lord Jesus, I just want to thank
you.
I just want to thank you.
The wonderful of every single soul.
Move forward.
I'm going to have just a moment's silence
to give you an opportunity to tell Him
that sin.
Sins, plural.
It may be just one.
Then in the light of that cross, with
the music you heard on the rent veil,
the finished work at Calvary, the blood shed
applied, and then most important of all, like
that cleansed leopard.
One out of nine.
Cleansed leopard.
One out of nine.
Nine came for cleansing.
Eight went away, cleansed, and never said thank
you.
But one came forward, dropped on his knees,
and with a loud voice for everybody to
hear, he said, Thank you.
Thank you.
Will you say thank you tonight?
Precious Lord, have your way in all of
our lives.
May there be no distraction or disturbance in
these sacred moments of commitment.
We've already preached tonight that unapplied orthodoxy can
lead to death and sin.
A message has been preached from your word.
Give us grace to apply it to our
hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to flesh
it out in us.
Give us grace, Lord, tonight to tell you,
to trust you, to thank you on this
matter of sin or sins in our lives
that we may know not only lives of
integrity, but victory as we go down from
this mountaintop of fellowship in the word this
week.
Have your own way, Lord.
Have your own way in all of our
lives tonight.
For Jesus' sake.
Amen.