Tonight we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that reveals to us a special word that has become almost a secret in modern churches.
A certain lady died stood at the Gates of Heaven. The gate keeper appeared and said, “Hello. We’ve been waiting for you.” And she said, "This is such a wonderful place, how do I get in?" The gatekeeper smiled and said, “All you have to do is correctly spell one word.” “What is it?” She anxiously asked. “Spell love,” he said.
The woman smiled and spelled “l.o.v.e.” and she was welcomed into heaven.
About a year later, the same woman was on gate duty when her husband arrived unexpectedly. She said, “I am surprised to see you! How have you been doing?”
He said, “Actually, I’ve been doing really well since you died. Do you remember that pretty nurse that took care of you? We fell in love and married a few weeks after you died. Then I won the lottery so we sold our little house and moved into a huge mansion. My new wife and I have been very happy and have been traveling all over the world. In fact we were just on a skiing trip to the Swiss Alps when I was caught in an avalanche, and that’s why I’m here. By the way, how do I get in?”
His ex-wife said, “All you have to do is spell one word correctly and you can enter heaven.” He said, “OK, what’s the word?” She smiled and said, “Czechoslovakia.”
Can you spell SIN? M-I-S-T-A-K-E? It is pretty easy because it has a huge I right in the middle. That is the essence of sin. The holy trinity of sin is me, myself and I. Sin is our major problem, sin is why Christ had to come to die on the cross.
Sin will take you further than you ever intended to stray.
It will keep you longer than you ever intended to stay.
And it will cost you more than you ever dreamed you would pay.
Here we find John as the only living apostle, the elder statesman of the body of Christ. He is writing 60 years after Jesus died and about 25 years after the apostle Paul has died. Wrong things have begun to happen in the life of the church and John is the only one left who can try to fix them. We desperately need a John or a Paul in our day!
People like Joel Osteen are now seen as representatives of Christianity in America by the likes of Barak Obama and Fox News. Osteen told Fox News in a recent interview that Mormonism and Christianity are basically the same. "I don't believe that Mormonism is traditional orthodox Christianity," "I realize there are differences there. They follow the teachings of the Bible, I believe they are followers of Christ and that they're my brothers."
Others in the modern church are now making these types of statements, Brian McLaren ‘Theology is all about the searching, not about the finding’.
’we cannot know for sure….not to make judgments…..need to be more modest’.
‘truth is like a wad of BUBBLE GUM, shapeless and elastic’ and that ’biblical truth is evolving. We are moving beyond the New Testament’(I. Howard Marshall)) Statements like ‘Scripture is like a TRAMPOLINE that helps to propel us upwards towards God…would it matter if we took one or more springs out? Such as the trinity and the virgin birth? So long as there are still enough springs left to get us airborne?’ (Rob Bell Mars Hill BIBLE Church)
These are not unknown discreet people but they are pastors who write books and preach to thousands in the mega churches of our country. Young people are flocking to hear this new message of a God who allows us to determine what the truth will be in our lives. This bible was for a Christianity in the past so we can now pick and choose the truth that works best for us. We can now have a God who does not condemn us or send anyone to hell. And we can have a Jesus Who is not the ‘only way’ but just ‘a way’ to know God better.
Swiss theologian Emil Brunner stated that ‘we are living at a unique moment in the west. Never before has a major civilization sought to build itself deliberately and self-consciously without religious foundations’.
In fact in 2006 in Britain 99% of the Christmas cards had no religious message.
JOHN where are you today? We desperately need someone with that kind of authority to return the church to where it was originally called to be.
When John wrote he emphasized that the church in his day had strayed from problems such as:
1) Understanding what True Fellowship was to be: That which was founded upon the Person of Christ and had the evidence of true joy.
2) Recognition of Who God truly is which is light and not darkness and an accurate assessment our own spiritual condition in comparison.
This morning we are going to look at a passage where John confronts the church in his day with what we also need to understand in our day.
SIN EXISTS! IT IS A PROBLEM! CHRIST DIED BECAUSE OF IT!!
No matter what a book tells us or some preacher or any other person in our day tells us we will be held accountable regarding the issue of sin in our lives.
(1:8) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. (1:9) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(1:10) If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
Verse 7 makes the point that ‘if we walk in the light as He is in the light’ then when we truly step into the light the first thing we will see is OUR SIN.
In fact Becoming a Christian comes down to one single issue: SIN.
I hope that you are not here to have a better life, to escape eternal judgment, to have a better reputation in the community or to make better business contacts.
The only valid reason for you to call yourself a child of God is because at a point in time you recognized SIN in your life and that you were led to the only hope of forgiveness and mercy which was found in a person named Jesus Christ.
This morning I want to look at issues with regard to sin and its impact in our lives.
THE DENIED THE PRESENCE OF SIN:
TO SAY WE HAVE NO SIN SHOWS WE DON’T KNOW GOD’S TRUTH: (8) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
This is the denial of something the Bible describes as ORIGINAL SIN.
The idea of this has gone out of style in western culture where man is considered to be basically good by nature and is only bad because to his environment or the lack of being provided basic human rights.
It is NERVES that cause us to be impatient - it is tiredness that makes us speak sharp words - it is stress that makes us lose our peace and become worried and troubled
WE SAY THE PROBLEM IS NOT SIN BUT MY CIRCUMSTANCES
The American Psychiatric Association publishes a thick book to help therapists to diagnosis some of these new diseases. Conduct Disorder - a persistent pattern of conduct in which the basic rights of others / norms or rules are violated.' We used to call this DISOBEDIENT BEHAVIOR Oppositional Defiant Disorder - "a pattern of negative hostile, and defiant behavior” We used to call this REBELIOUS BEHAVIOR Historic Personality Disorder - 'a pervasive pattern of excessive emotional behavior & and attention-seeking." This used to be called being SELF-CENTERED (Paris Hilton is not self-absorbed but is just has an undiagnosed
But we now know that all these and other things are not sins but Syndromes
An FBI agent was fired after he embezzled $2,000 then gambled it away in a day at a casino. Later he sued arguing that his gambling addiction was a disability, so his firing was an act of illegal discrimination. He not only won the case but the therapy he was ordered to undergo for the gambling addiction had to be funded under his health-care insurance.
John says that no matter what you call sin what really matters is God’s opinion and that anyone who claims that they have no sin will have Him and almost every person they have ever known to disagree with them.
D.L. MOODY: Approached one day by a man who claimed to have no sin in his life: ’Well, I would like to ask your wife about that’.
(8) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Sin literally means ‘to miss the mark’.
It is like an archer who misses God’s bull’s eye of perfection.
Paul described it this way in Romans 7. This describes sin in the life of a believer who is trying to understand how to overcome it. Paul dealt with sin.
15-20 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. …….
So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
Sin is very real and it is the battle of our lives. Our initial victory over it comes by admitting it is a real problem and finding forgiveness for it through Christ.
To call sin other than what it is may be in vogue in this life but it will hit us in the face in eternity.
A San Francisco city supervisor claimed he murdered a fellow supervisor and Mayor George Moscone because too much junk food(especially Twinkies) made him act irrationally.
"The jury produced a verdict of voluntary manslaughter rather than murder."' They ruled that the junk food resulted in "diminished mental capacity," which mitigated the killer's guilt. He was out of prison before the mayor's next term would have been complete.
If you died with a busload of lawyers you could not find anyone to defend you with such arguments before the throne of God. Sin is sin and it will be the condemning factor in the case before us as we stand in God.•
DENY THE PAST OF SIN:
TO SAY THAT WE ARE NOT SINNED IS TO DENY GOD’S WORD:
(10) If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
God’s Word has taken the time to describe the details of a sinful life in a very clear fashion.
The book of Romans leaves no sin unturned: Gentiles and Jews, religious and non-religious are all shown to have a problem with sin.
Rom 3:23 states that ’all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ ’there is none righteous, no not one’
One of the reasons we all have a problem with sin is that initially it can seem like so much fun. What if God told me, ‘Go ahead and sin all you want today’. In my mind I might have a pretty fun day. As soon as someone says something I don’t like I can just knock them upside the head. I get cut off in traffic I can yell and scream and swerve at them without any feeling I am doing wrong. I can spread horrible rumors about people I don’t especially like. I can lie to anyone and everyone about anything and everything. I can also let the air out of the tires of all the ATHIESTS I know about. To illustrate to them how they are all FLAT WRONG anyway.
If I didn’t know better that might seem like a pretty fun day.
Sin initially might seem like fun to us but God warns us that the eventual consequences are of a terrible nature.
The standard of sin is not that we will be compared to our neighbors, fellow church members or anyone else we might know in this world. The standard we will be held to is the standard of the righteousness and holiness of God.
If we try and tell God that we are not falling short of that then John says we are calling Him a liar because the Bible is His Word and His Word describes the distance between ourselves and Who God is.
The RICH YOUNG RULER stood before Jesus and denied that he had any problem with sin in his life. Jesus, the Great Physician, then did some spiritual diagnosis and identified the sin in the man’s life. COVETING
He didn’t have a problem with envy or coveting other people’s stuff. He coveted his own stuff and refused to surrender all that He had to the rightful owner Who was God.
We often try to find a nicer label and try to clothe our wrong so that it looks right. The Reality is that the neither the truth of God nor the Word of God is abiding in us.
Jesus didn’t come to die for a weakness, a failure, a mistake, or a Common fault….. Jesus came to die for SIN. Admitting sin means we finally are willing to blame ourselves.
Most school teachers will tell you that teaching is harder than it was years ago.
Kids have changed. They are not dumber but are more resistant to authority. And no matter what kids do, a parent will resist the same authority.
Roots are in Eden(Gen 3) This has been our nature from the beginning.
Adam said, "The woman you put here with me - she gave me..."
Eve blamed the serpent and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on
We are going to be held accountable before God for the truth about sin in our lives that God has revealed to us in His Word. To try to avoid responsibility is to lie to ourselves and to God about the ultimate consequences we will face.
In the book of Daniel chapter 5 Belshazzar the king took the temple vessels stolen from Israel and began to use them to drink and celebrate the God’s of Babylon. The bible tells us that a hand appeared and wrote on the wall, ‘Mene mene tekel upharsin’
5:26-28 "This is the interpretation of the message : 'MENE '-God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. " 'TEKEL '-you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. " 'PERES '-your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians." Tekel – ‘you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient’.
If I brought a scale up here with me this morning I wonder how many would be willing to be weighed? What if we had a scale that indicated the weight of our sin? The only thing that people are less likely to tell you about than their weight is the sin in their life. God knows exactly what yours weighs so you might as well agree to agree with Him.
What if I gave you a special hat to wear to church today which had a computer type screen on the front of it? All during the morning it projected to others the exact thoughts that were going thru your mind. Would you wear it? Not even in church or especially not in church?
DENY THE PREVAILING IMPACT OF SIN:
TO CONFESS OUR SIN IS TO RECEIVE GOD’S FORGIVENESS:
(9) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
‘Sin, biblically speaking, is not only the absence of good. It also entails our active opposition to God. It is, then, the defiance of his authority, the rejection of his truth, the challenge to his sovereignty in which we set ourselves up in life to live the way we want to live’. David Wells
Difference between sin in verse 8 and sins in verse 9. Sin - is the fallen twist in man that dates back to our original parents. It makes us want the world to revolve around us, it promotes self-centeredness, pride and independence. SINS are the ways that SIN plays itself out in our lives.
When I come to faith in Christ the penalty of my SIN is paid for on the cross but I still have to deal with a sin nature out of which comes my many SINS.
I still do things I should not and those things will cause a problem with my fellowship with God unless I am willing to confess them to Him honestly and often.
Prov 28:13 He that covers his sins shall not prosper but he who confesses and forsakes them shall find compassion
We have to call sin what God calls it: If we confess our sins
The word ‘confess’ does not mean to ask for forgiveness. It literally means to ’say the same thing with’. That means we look at the things that we do and say the same thing, give the same label to them as God does. WE AGREE WITH HIM.
People seem to struggle to do this with God while sometimes they will go on national TV and tell the world. Television seems to have become the new confessional booth. People will tell Oprah, Jerry Springer, Dr. Phil or whoever else is the current TV host the most intimate stuff going on in their lives. Why can’t they admit the same to God?
He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins
Confess & Forgive. Two different meanings and two different Greek tenses.
CONFESS: Present tense meaning ‘continual action’. We have to continually say the same thing God says about our actions and continually seek His cleansing in order to have intimate fellowship with Him.
FORGIVE: Aorist tense meaning a ‘past action with no continual occurrences’.
Lit. means ’to send away’. In God’s forgiveness our sins, past present and future, and their condemnation have been sent away from us forever. This means that when God forgives it is a done deal and whatever we confess is no longer an ongoing issue in our lives.
Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. IT IS FINISHED!
Imagine someone going to traffic court and admitting guilt and paying the fine of a speeding ticket. The next week the same person walks into the court and the Judge asks why they are there. ‘That ticket we talked about last week. I wanted to discuss it again’. Judge says, ‘Why? That has been taken care of, there is no more penalty to discuss’.
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Our daily confession of sins brings a cleansing to our lives that allows us to maintain a true fellowship with God.
Confession is kind of like a phone transfer at the bank. If your checking account is overdrawn, but you have money in a savings account, making a phone transfer moves the money from your savings account into the checking account, to cover your checks. Confession moves God’s payment for our sins into our overdrawn sin-accounts.
This morning the blood of Christ can transfer to your account God’s forgiveness which will more than cover any debt of sin you owe.
Dr. Claude H. Barlow, a missionary to China. A strange disease for which he knew no remedy was killing people. There were no research laboratories for this disease, so Dr. Barlow conducted his own research. He studied the disease, filling a notebook with his observations. He then procured a vial of disease germs and sailed for the United States.
Before he arrived he took the germs into his own body and then went to the John Hopkins University Hospital to be observed. Claude Barlow was very sick now.
He allowed his old professors at John Hopkins to use him for experimentation. A cure was found, which a healthy Claude Barlow took back to China with him. His efforts saved countless lives.” This is in a small way what Jesus did for us, He took up our infirmities, our weakness, our sorrows and provided a remedy for it. And now all who come to Him and ask for forgiveness will receive it.
That remedy is only available to those who are willing to be honest with sin in their lives. We have to admit that it separates us from God’s forgiveness.
We have to recognize that it keeps us from God’s purpose and plan for our lives.
Sin is our #1 problem and no other problems can be solved until #1 is dealt with.
(9) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
