Last Lord's Day morning we were saying how
beginning with verse 6 in chapter 1 of
this first epistle of John and proceeding over
to verse 2 of chapter 2, the apostle
is dealing with a certain behaviour, a kind
of behaviour, and then with certain beliefs that
are quite incompatible with our walking in the
light and in fellowship with God.
We were concentrating last Lord's Day morning on
verses 6 and 7 and we were envisaging
the incongruity of walking habitually in a moral
climate that is here spoken of as darkness
when we say with our lips that we
have fellowship with God who is light.
Now that simply makes no sense.
If we say that we have fellowship with
God who is light whilst we habitually walk
in darkness, not simply make an occasional excursion
into sin, but walk in darkness, then John
tells us categorically we're simple liars, simply liars.
We are not speaking the truth.
It is not so.
It cannot be so.
But then he goes on to give us
a word of comfort.
There is an answer to our need.
We may have been guilty of walking in
darkness while making such a profession.
Well, says John, here is the answer.
If we walk in the light as he
is in the light, come right out into
the light of God's holiness and judgment, we
shall find that we shall have fellowship with
him and fellowship with one another.
And what is more, the basis of its
beginning and its continuance is this.
The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, will
keep on cleansing us from all sin.
Now, today we come to the first of
two beliefs that are incompatible with walking in
the light.
We cannot have fellowship with God, who is
light, if we hold one or other of
the two beliefs that are enunciated in verses
eight, nine and ten.
We shall take one this morning and we
shall return to the second at some other
time.
But before we come specifically to this, can
I just note the principle here?
We note that our actions and our ideas
are important in the sight of God.
Not only what we do, but what we
think.
Indeed, Scripture says, as our man sinketh in
his heart, so he is.
God puts tremendous premium on the kind of
thoughts we entertain, on the beliefs that harness
our energies and mold our behavior.
We live in a world which tends simply
to place emphasis upon the way we behave.
I'm sure you've met this many times.
Someone has done something morally outrageous, and then
someone chirps up, oh, but he's a good
person at heart.
He's a very good neighbor.
He's very kind to the poor, and these
are great virtues.
But the suggestion is, you see, because a
man is a good neighbor, it doesn't really
matter about his morals and his beliefs and
his principles.
Now, I am not for one moment wanting
to be understood as minimizing the importance of
good living, moral living, care of the poor,
and so forth.
That's not the point.
The point is that in the sight of
God, behavior is important and belief is important.
It is not a question of either or,
it is a question of both and.
And this morning, we are coming to consider
a particular denial which is in the realm
of the mind, in the realm of thought,
a denial of certain things.
And let's look at it then.
You have it in verse eight, the denial
that speaks of deception, or that spells deception.
Here it is.
If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in
us.
If your view of yourself at any given
point in time is such that you claim
concerning yourself that you have no sin in
you, the apostle is being terribly blunt with
you and with me this morning and he's
saying to us straight in the eye, you're
deceiving yourself.
And what is more, you're not only guilty
of self-deception, but the truth of the
gospel, the word of God, is not in
you.
You may have a certain knowledge of its
doctrines, but the word which is saving and
sanctifying has never really got down into the
depths of your soul.
Now, let's examine this.
Two things I want to say concerning the
denial that spells deception before we move on
to the rest of the text in the
next verse.
I want us to look first of all
at the claim that is envisaged and then
at the conclusion that is reached.
Here is the claim.
If we say we have no sin.
Now, this kind of claim could conceivably be
made as implying one or other of many
things.
It could have been made as a denial
of the presence of sin in our natures.
As such, it could either be a denial
of the fact that we have ever had
sin in our natures or, whereas we may
at some time or other have had sin
in our natures, we haven't got it there
anymore.
You know that there are certain schools of
theology, or of sanctification to be more precise,
that claim that the roots of sin have
been taken out of our natures.
Now, John will have no truck with that.
If we say we have no sin, either
that we've never had sin in our natures
or that we have had it at one
time, but we've no longer got it, says
John, as a conclusion which is rather shattering,
that's a matter of self-deception.
Now, there are many who claim something of
this order.
There are schools of psychology, for example, which
deny the objective basis of guilt.
Freud took this point of view.
There is no objective basis of guilt.
There is no such a thing as sin
in and of itself in your nature or
in any other way or in any other
sense.
On the other hand, it is right for
us to say that there are some modern
psychologists and psychiatrists who are coming back to
the biblical point of view as far as
this is concerned.
I'm thinking, for example, of Meninger, the founder
of the famed Meninger clinic in the United
States of America, who in his fairly recent
book, Whatever Became of Sin, is coming back
very clearly to John's position and the biblical
position about this.
Sin is something that has affected man in
the depths of his being and his whole
psychology and his whole approach is based upon
this.
If the words before us are a denial
that even though we may have had sin
in our natures at some previous point, but
that we have it no longer, this denial
might not simply have come from the kind
of people that we have referred, who claim
that the roots have been brought out by
Jesus Christ or by the Holy Spirit, but
the Gnostics claim the same thing.
And you remember all the time John is
thinking of certain heretics here and of their
claims.
The Gnostics claim that.
Some of them claim that they had this
higher knowledge, whatever it was, in virtue of
which they were now liberated completely from any
tendency to evil.
And then some of them put it in
a slightly different way.
They said, in any case, sin is lodged
in the body, in material things, not in
the mind, not in the spirit, not in
the nature.
And so they excused themselves.
Now that is the claim that we envisage
here then.
Whether it be on the grounds of a
psychological theory or a physiological, or whether it
be on the grounds of an experience which
we allege that we have had, whatever the
grounds, whatever the reason for it, the claim
is this.
My nature now is free from the taint
of pollution.
My mind has no sin in it.
My imagination has no sin in it.
My inner life, my emotions, my heart as
the Bible speaks of it, is a heart
that is free from sin.
Perhaps I ought to say in passing on
that at least two other expositors of note
understand this passage differently.
They understand it to refer to the guilt
of sin only.
But most people will say, as I think
we ought to say this morning, that if
you can't thus interpret the passage, you can't
thus interpret the words, they refer to sin,
not sins, and sin not over against us,
not a guilt that is standing over us
or before us, but right inside, in us.
Now the conclusion that John reaches.
If we say that we have no sin,
what?
That is the height of spirituality.
John doesn't say that.
If we say that we have no sin,
says John, without any qualification whatsoever, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Says John, it is impossible to make a
claim like that without being deceived.
And not only that, without having to come
to the conclusion ultimately that the truth of
God has never really got deep down in
the depths and done its sanctifying and its
illuminating work, because we don't know ourselves.
Now we can only fully appreciate the significance
of the charge of self-deception if we
bear in mind the two foci in John's
thinking here.
The first is this, the objective nature of
God as light.
And the second is the subjective ministry of
the word in the soul of a believer.
Now if you want to understand why John
is so radical here and so ruthless, it's
because of this.
He relates our condition to God who is
light on the one hand, the objective nature
of a holy God out there above me,
and then secondly to the ministry of the
word of God in the soul of a
believer.
Let's look briefly at the first.
Who is God?
What is God?
Well, God is light, says John.
He will go on to say that God
is love.
He will go on to say that God
is life.
But here in this context, dominating the whole
question of our fellowship with God and with
one another, fundamentally, says John, God is light.
Now that means this, the moment you claim
fellowship with God, the moment you claim to
be an active Christian, a real Christian, that
moment you come into the light.
You come near to God.
You are reconciled to Him.
You bring your life to Him and the
light of God's eye and the light of
God's judgment falls upon you.
Now, says John, it is impossible for a
man to be living in that light and
not know that there is sin in his
heart, in his mind, in his imagination, in
the depths of his being.
The very nature of God will bring up
to the open the scum of the soul.
My dear friends, isn't this what you find?
Isn't this what you find in experience, that
when you come into the presence of the
Holy One, you feel more of a sinner
than when you live with a worldling?
You can mix with people of the world
and you don't feel morally uncomfortable or inferior,
but when you come into the presence of
God and you read the Word of God
and you turn the whole shaft of divine
light in upon your soul, how do you
feel?
Don't you feel like a worm?
The light of God penetrating the soul of
man means that I discover myself and I
get to know myself as I really am.
I cannot, therefore, be in fellowship with a
God who is light and claim at the
same time, there is no sin lodging in
my nature, says John.
Significantly, however, John does not leave the issue
on that level.
The passage before us today, he stresses the
fact that to deny the presence of sin
in our natures means that God's truth is
not in us.
The Word of God has not gone deep
down into the depths of our beings.
Do you remember the psalmist saying, Thy word
have I hid in my heart, that I
might not sin against thee?
Do you remember the apostle Paul praying for
the Colossians, that the Word of God may
dwell in you richly?
Now that means this, the Word of God
coming into the mind, the Word of God
penetrating into the soul.
My friends, do we know anything of this?
Do you allow the Word of God to
saturate your spirit, to go down into the
depths of the soul and search?
Do you remember what Jesus said in the
parable of the seed and the sower?
There are occasions when the soil is so
hard that the seed falls as it were
upon a rock.
It does not penetrate.
But that man is not a Christian.
That man is not a Christian.
If the seed is only coming on the
intellect, on the surface of the consciousness and
we just toy with it in the mind
and then decide this, that or the other
on a purely intellectual plane, says John, that's
not what it means to be a Christian.
What it means to be a Christian is
for the Word of God to get into
the soul and bring forth life.
Now if the Word of God is in
me, what will it do?
Well, the first thing it will do is
this.
It will reveal to me my own evil
and sin and pollution and I shall become
aware of myself as I never was before.
The Word of God is the greatest diagnostician
in this universe.
Men and women who allow it to penetrate
become conscious of the fact that they are
sinners.
There is sin not only superficially in their
lives but deep in the depths of their
nature.
Now if the Word of God is not
doing that for us, then my friends, we
need to take ourselves very seriously in hand.
I suggest to you, this is why so
many professing Christians are slack about the means
of grace.
Be it public worship like this or be
it the private discipline of reading the Word
and of prayer.
It is because we really do not allow
the Word of God to get deep into
the soul and to show us ourselves.
But the saints of the ages have been
wont to do that.
I was thinking this week as I was
meditating upon this very challenging theme of the
words of the saintly Murray MacChain.
If ever there was a saint and a
godly man, surely it was he.
I remembered a statement of his which goes
like this, The seeds of all my sins
are in my heart, and perhaps the more
dangerous that I do not see them.
He knew that there was sin in his
nature.
And because he knew that, he countered it.
He did battle against it.
He sought the grace of God and found
it.
When at last, of course, we shall see
our Lord and we shall receive a new
body like unto his glorious body, we shall
no longer know the passions and the lusts
of this fallen body of ours, the scene
of so much humiliation.
Then shall we not only be like him
in one sense but in every sense.
Whilst we are in the body, there will
be sin in our natures.
The denial that spells deception.
Now come with me to the confession that
spells discovery.
If I had to finish there this morning,
it would be a very dismal ending, wouldn't
it?
And I wouldn't blame any of you if
you went home and said, Well now, I
really don't like to hear that kind of
thing.
And I don't know that I'll come back
again.
But you know the word of God never
ends there.
John links another thought with this.
He doesn't want us to stay there.
He wants us to get right on into
the joy of the experience of God that
he's been holding forth in the previous verses
and will continue to do so later on.
What do we do then?
We've made this awful discovery about ourselves.
There is sin in us.
When asked this, John, here it is.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and
to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now, before we come to it in detail,
mark the two levels there.
What are we going to confess?
John says, if we confess our sins, individual
acts of sin, what will God do?
Well, God will deal with the individual acts
of sin.
He will forgive them.
But he'll do more than that.
He will cleanse us not only from those
sins, but from the underlying corruption of our
nature that affects us.
And the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse
from all the taint and the pollution of
our fallen natures that we carry about with
us.
Now let's get down to it in a
little more detail.
We have marked the change of fronts then.
From one who is denying the presence of
sin to the person who recognizes the realities
of the situation brought to light by the
indwelling truth and by the outshining of God's
holiness.
The person now envisaged has God's truth within
him and he's living in the awareness of
the fact that he is a sinner of
heart in his nature.
Now, what is he going to do?
Two things concerning this again.
First of all, we're going to look at
the condition presupposed and then the conclusion assured.
Says John, the thing that we need to
do, the key to the situation as far
as practical life is concerned, is this.
If we confess our sins, confess the produce,
the product of this underlying nature of ours
which is evil.
Confess the children that are born in the
soul, the sins that emerge in our lives.
Acknowledge them.
The discovery envisaged in this verse is imponderably
precious.
But it is morally conditioned.
We shall discover that God has forgiven us
for acts of sin and cleansing from the
defilement of sin.
But it all has to start here, says
John, if we confess.
If we confess, we shall discover God's provision.
Without the confession, we shall know little about
it.
Now, what does it mean to confess our
sins?
I take it that perhaps someone might say
that's a very rudimentary question and really shouldn't
be asked in the presence of educated people.
What does it mean to confess our sins?
We all know that.
I wonder whether we do.
I take it that the answer that someone
thinking along those lines would say is that
confession of sin is simply an acknowledgement of
its presence.
Now, that is basic to it, but confession
of sin is something far, far bigger and
greater and more significant than that.
Biblically considered, confession of sin is something very
big in a man's life.
It is something that he can't do thoughtlessly.
It is not just when you're half falling
into bed and you're half asleep and only
a third awake.
You may question the mathematics of that, but
practically it's right.
Lord, forgive me my sins.
I confess my sins.
That's no confession of sin.
That's nothing at all.
That's just playing with realities.
There is nothing in the whole of a
man's experience with God which is more realistic,
in which he needs to be more alive
and more alert than in this business of
confessing his sins.
The word translated confess literally means saying the
same as.
Homo logeo.
Saying the same as someone or something.
Now, what does that mean?
What's the implication of that?
Can I refer back to our two foci?
When I bring my life into the light
of God, who is light, God says something.
He puts his finger on something.
He points at something.
Or, God and his word are one.
I'm not suggesting to you that they're divorced
for one moment.
God often brings the truth out by his
word.
What happens when the word of God is
allowed to lodge and remain in my mind,
and I think about it, and I seriously
consider its implication?
What will happen is this.
I'll feel awkward about something.
I'll have a conviction of sin.
I'll know of certain areas in my life
where things are not what they ought to
be.
Now, to confess my sin is to take
the trouble to do this in relation to
God, who is light, in relation to the
word that searches.
To read the word, to study the word,
to apply the word, and to receive its
judgments.
This is a discipline.
But now you see, when I come to
confess, what I do is, I say the
same as.
I say about myself what God says about
myself.
I say about myself what the word says
about myself.
I hand over the judgment of my life
to God.
And I say, Lord, you say it.
I accept it.
I know it's true.
And now, out of a full contrite heart,
I say the same as you do.
I take God's side over against myself.
I take the word's viewpoint over against myself.
This is what it is to confess our
sins.
If we confess our sins, then what are
we to confess?
What do we need to confess?
Living under the rule of the indwelling truth,
living in the light of God, we shall
become increasingly aware of both sins and of
our sinfulness, if we are honest.
Now, this may sound very strange to some
young Christians if they're here this morning.
And I'm sure there are.
But what I'm saying is this.
As you grow in grace and in the
disciplines of the Christian life, you will become
more and more aware, one of the sins
that you commit and of the sinfulness of
your nature.
Not less, but more.
You say, that doesn't make sense.
Does this mean that I'm getting worse and
worse rather than getting better and better?
Not at all.
What it means is this.
The nearer you come to God, who is
light, and the more honest you are with
the word of God as it speaks to
you, the more sensitive you will become to
the things that are wrong.
A man who is growing in grace and
in the knowledge of God is a man
who is becoming increasingly sensitive to things that
are wrong.
When we are born again, we have the
capacity for this sensitivity because we have the
divine nature of the Holy Spirit given to
us.
As we grow up, well, you know, the
world will harden us and we'll argue against
the word and we'll argue against the Spirit.
But as we mature through this, as we
overcome this, we'll become more and more sensitive.
Now, let me give you a perfect illustration.
It's good to have a perfect illustration.
We don't often have one.
I've got a perfect one this morning.
It comes from the life of the Apostle
Paul.
Now, I don't think there would be anyone
here this morning who would argue but that
the Apostle Paul became one of the great
saints of the New Testament.
Mature in thought, in holiness, in service, in
every respect.
His experience of God, if you lay emphasis
upon experience, this man had great experiences of
God.
On every front, this man is a gigantic
man.
Intellectually, morally, in terms of activity and so
forth, he's a gigantic man.
Now, one of the first epistles that Paul
wrote, possibly the first one, was his letter
to the Galatians.
Now, I'm not criticizing him.
Now, I'm stating a fact.
In his epistle to the Galatians, you will
find that Paul is standing high on his
two feet, asserting that he is an apostle
of Jesus Christ and that he is equal
to any of the other apostles, wherever they
are, whoever they are.
I'm not criticizing him because the circumstances required
that he do something of that kind.
He says, they didn't do anything for me.
I received the gospel direct from God.
I received everything directly.
They are not responsible for making me the
man I have become.
God has done everything, and I'm no whit
less an apostle than they are.
Now, towards the year 40...
40...
no, it's more than that.
It's about 53 A.D. The apostle Paul
was writing to the Corinthians, perhaps 55.
He was writing his first letter to the
Corinthians.
In the course of writing to the Corinthians,
this is how he speaks of himself.
I am, he says, the least of the
apostles.
Now, mark the change.
I'm as good as any of them.
None of them has done anything particular for
me to make me the man I am.
God dealt with me personally and directly.
Seven or eight years later, I am the
least of the apostles.
In another eight years or so, in the
year approximately 63 A.D., he's writing to
the Ephesians.
You know how he speaks of himself here.
Unto me, he says, who am the least
of all the saints.
The least of all the saints.
Now, the apostleship is beyond the level of
the ordinary Christian.
There was authority given to the apostle.
There was status given to the apostle.
He says, Paul, forget about that for a
moment.
I'm still an apostle.
But he says, I am the least of
the saints.
The least of all the saints.
Unto me, who am less than the least
of all the saints, is this grace given
that I should preach among the Gentiles the
unsearchable riches of Christ.
Turn another seven or eight years to the
last writing that Paul wrote, his letters to
Timothy.
You know how he speaks of himself, 1
Timothy 1.15, as the chiefest of sinners.
The chiefest of sinners.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners of whom I am chiefest.
Now, notice, not of whom I was the
chiefest.
We'd all agree that perhaps because of his
blasphemy and persecution, he was the chiefest.
I don't know.
When I commune with my own heart, I
might not be prepared to agree to that.
But that Henry Paul doesn't say that.
I was the chiefest of sinners, but I
am the chiefest of sinners.
You say with bewilderment, what is it that
makes this man take such a view of
himself?
I'll tell you.
He's living in the light.
And the truth of God, in its deep
indwelling in his soul, is revealing to the
man all the truth about himself.
And he's humbled.
He's no less an apostle.
He's no less a saint than he was
at the beginning.
But you see, he's aware of his evil.
He's aware of his sin.
He's aware of himself.
What then are we to confess?
Everything that God accuses us of, some of
them are very private sins, secret sins as
the psalmist speaks of them.
Nobody knows about them, only you and God.
Confess them to God.
Accept his judgments upon them.
There are sins that we have sinned against
one another as a fellowship.
Sins that we have sinned against men in
the world.
Sins in business.
Sins of all kinds.
And sins against God.
If we confess our sin, the condition presupposed
and lastly the conclusion assured.
If we confess our sin, says John, he
is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now, there's a discovery here, first of all,
concerning the person of God and the provision
of God.
We shall discover, says John, that he is
faithful and just.
Let's take the first of these.
There will come first a discovery of God's
faithfulness.
God's faithfulness.
Now, what does this mean?
Faithful to what?
Faithful to whom?
Can I spell this out very briefly?
Basically, God is faithful to himself.
If God were not fundamentally faithful to himself,
then his faithfulness would vary because God is
the only abiding and eternally abiding reality.
Everything else fluctuates.
The standard of the world, the need of
the saints, the well-being of the people
of God, everything fluctuates.
We're like a graph, we're up and down.
Everything of man is up and down.
The one stable static is God himself.
And the most precious thing about the faithfulness
of God is this.
He cannot deny himself, as Paul puts it.
He is faithful to himself.
Let me put it like this.
God will never contradict himself.
But now that means, to take it a
step further, that means that God will be
faithful to himself as he is revealed in
the prophets, in the law, but supremely and
superbly in his all-glorious Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ.
So whatever God has said in his Son,
he will be loyal to that.
He will be faithful to that.
Has he promised us anything in his Son,
he will be faithful to that.
God will be faithful to himself as revealed
in his Son.
Now that boils down to this, you see,
that God will be faithful to what he
has recorded in his Word.
Practically speaking, this is what it comes to.
Has God promised anything in his Son that
we have in his Word?
Have we a promise of God?
We have a covenant of God promised to
Jeremiah of old in chapter 31, beginning with
verse 31.
I will make a new covenant with the
house of Israel, not according to the covenant
that I made with them of old, but
an entirely different one.
And among the terms of the covenant is
this.
Among the promises, their sins and iniquities will
I remember no more.
The faithfulness of God means this.
What he has said, he will do.
God is faithful to what he has promised.
He will keep.
Now let me slip on to the next
very hurriedly in closing.
Not only shall we discover the faithfulness of
God, but we shall discover the justice of
God.
Faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God's faithfulness and justice are now discovered, will
you notice, not to be against us, but
to be for us.
If we are not in Christ to the
very faithfulness of God to himself, to his
nature and to his words and revelation, God's
faithfulness and God's justice are against us.
Our sins will have to be reckoned with.
And if we are outside of Christ, the
very self-consistency of God and the justice
of God will require that we shall be
condemned.
But when a man is in Christ, when
a man has come to the Saviour, when
a man has embraced God's deliverer, then all
is so different.
The very faithfulness of God is now for
us and the justice of God is for
us.
Now to me this is the most precious
thing of all.
How can God's justice be on my side?
Everywhere in the Bible it seems to me,
when I look at myself, the justice of
God is against me.
The justice of God requires my condemnation because
I have sinned and come short of his
glory.
I have transgressed his law.
And the transgressors reward his death.
How can the justice of God be before
me?
It is always against me.
Paul gives us the key, of course, in
Romans chapter 3.
He says the whole purpose of the death
of Jesus Christ is this, that God should
be just and the justifier of them that
believe in Jesus.
Because of the death of our Lord Jesus
Christ, God's justice can come over to my
side and forgive my sin justly and save
me from all its consequences on the basis
of justice.
Can I put it to you like this?
When I look at myself this morning and
put myself outside of Jesus Christ purely in
thought by his grace, purely for the sake
of an illustration, as I think of myself,
the justice of God can do nothing for
me but condemn me, as it can do
nothing for you but condemn you outside of
Jesus Christ.
But you see, Christ loved even me, says
Paul, and gave himself for me.
This is what every Christian acknowledges, that Christ
came and died for him on the cross
of Calvary.
If you believe that, then you are with
me.
Christ died in your place instead.
He took your load of guilt and shame
on Calvary's cross.
He died for the unjust to bring us
to God.
All right, now then, what happens is this.
God will be just to his Son, who
paid for my redemption, who has provided my
forgiveness, who has shed his blood that I
may be forgiven and cleansed and made fit
for heaven.
And as I confess my sin, what I
discover in reality is this, that God is
not only faithful but on the basis of
justice, not to me, but to his Son.
For his Son deserves it.
His Son has paid for it.
In the words of a very lovely hymn,
payment God will not twice demand.
Once at my blessed shorty's hand and then
again at mine, God is no rascal.
He struck the terms with his Son in
the covenant of grace and having promised to
save us and to endow us with all
necessary for glory, he will not withhold the
benefits of his grace when Christ has died
for us and when Christ has put his
arm around us.
God is faithful to his Son and faithful
to himself and is just to his Son,
and he will be merciful to us.
Hallelujah.
But, my friend, it all hinges upon this.
If we confess our sins, acknowledge that in
you which stems from your fallen nature.
Call a spade a spade.
Call it what God calls it.
Acknowledge it openly and frankly and penitently.
And what you will discover, says John, you
can sense the thrill of it coming out.
But we shall find that as we confess
the truth against ourselves, we shall know divine
remission of sin's penalty and the divine removal
of sin's pollution.
Therefore we need not fear.
We have fellowship one with another, fellowship with
the Father, fellowship with the Son.
The blood of Christ has cleansed us as
well as pardoned us.
We may draw near with full assurance of
faith.
The veil is rent and God beckons us
to himself.
You know these lovely words of Francis Ridley
Haverhill, I know the crimson stain of sin,
defiling all without within.
But now rejoicingly I know that he has
washed me white as snow.
I praise him for the cleansing tide because
for me my Savior died.
Let us pray.
O Lord, our God and our Father, in
humble acknowledgement of the light and the power
and the authority of thy word, we bow
before thee now.
Forgive us that we have not lived more
and more in its light and have deceived
ourselves sometimes and deceived others too.
Father, make us a people who are in
tune with the word and in fellowship with
thee.
And bring us, we pray thee, to this
great discovery of finding that however corrupt our
nature is, it cannot stand in the way
of our fellowship with thee because the blood
of Jesus Christ cleanses us from unrighteousness.
Take us now.
Some of us bear wounds in our spirits
this morning maybe because we've come near to
thee.
We remember things that we have tried to
forget but which were not forgiven.
Enable us to confess every such sin that
we may know in truth the removal of
the penalty and of the pollution.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.