In his sermon titled 'Fear of God and Church Beauty', Scott Brown explores the themes of sin, confession, and redemption as outlined in 1 John 1:8-2:2. Brown emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and confessing our sins to God, highlighting that self-deception leads us away from the truth. He explains that Jesus Christ acts as our advocate, interceding on our behalf and providing a path to forgiveness through His atonement. Brown delves into the concept of self-deception, cautioning against denying our sinfulness and rationalizing our actions. He underscores the power of confession in purifying the church, fostering unity and honesty among believers. The sermon also touches on the transformative process of sin losing its grip on believers, illustrating that as sin 'dies' within us, we grow closer to God. Brown concludes with a call to recognize our need for Christ's righteousness alone, advocating for a sincere and continual practice of confession within the church community.

The scripture reading is out of 1st John, if you'll turn there please. Starting in verse 8 and going through chapter 2, verse 2. 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 so 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. Let us pray. O Lord in heaven and earth, the lover of our souls, Lord you've brought us together to be before your word and Lord I ask that our hearts prepare for the word, that our ears be opened, that our minds be ready to be reformed.

Oh Lord, we thank you for this day. You truly are the Lord of our love. Lord I ask now with Mr. Brown coming forth to give us this word that you be with him, that you strengthen him, that you guide him by your Holy Spirit. Oh Lord we want to praise and glorify your name today through the receiving of your word.

Oh Lord, let your spirit make it effectual on us for this day and the days ahead. Lord, bring us together in unity by your Holy Spirit now. God be the glory. In this passage of scripture, we're brought into a consciousness of the tenderest thing that can ever happen to a person, and the most pivotal thing that can ever happen to a person, and that is when they actually come before God. And these words are brought to us by the Apostle John, who is now an old man.

And in his fatherly love, he's instructing his children. He calls them his little children. And so we know that he's addressing a Christian audience here in his letter. And some of them seem to be very young in the way that he addresses them in the language that he uses. And John is bringing us to this moment that we all have had where we either believe that we have come before our Father, or we actually have.

And John is instructing us in many things here, but he, among all the things that he's doing here, he really is reminding us of the death blow that he has made to sin in his church and how he helps his church to deal with sin as he's waging war against it. And what we see here is that when the light shines in the darkness, there really are only two alternatives. There are really only two things that happen when the light shines in the darkness. And so far, you know, John has made many things clear in his letter. In verses 1 and 2, he says that Jesus is real and he's an eyewitness.

In verses 3 and 4 he makes it very clear that turning to Christ brings a sinner into fellowship with him. And it's a fellowship of joy and it's a fellowship of love among the brethren. And then in verses 5 through 7, we saw that God is light, and the light shines in the darkness. And now, as we come to verse 8, We're instructed about the implications of the light, of what happens when the light shines, what happens in the human heart when the light shines in the darkness. And what we learn here is that because of the light our sin is exposed and it's revealed and when it is revealed we're always at a crossroads.

We either ignore our sin acting like we're perfect or we confess it and if we confess it we're forgiven by a faithful Savior who keeps His promise to forgive. And He's our advocate. And He is propitiation for our sin. And then in verses 9 and 10, we're instructed that we must never use our confession as an excuse for continuing in sin. And that's why he says, I write to you that you may not sin.

He's calling his little children out of sin. And then in the first two verses of chapter 2, he's making it very clear that we must never think that our salvation is based on our own righteousness or our confession of anything, but rather it's based on Jesus Christ's work alone as our advocate and as the one who is our comforter and the one who has propitiated the wrath of God. So that's sort of a flyover of this text today. But what is the heart of the matter of these verses? I want to propose that the heart of the matter here is that God, through his son Jesus Christ, is proclaiming that he's dealt a death blow to sin.

And the power of sin has been broken. Just like was read earlier, that in Romans chapter eight, for The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Something has happened through Jesus Christ and through his atonement. And God has extended his love toward his people by giving them confession of sin. And their confession is an expression of the war that God has waged against sin in the world and in our own lives.

And he does it in very, very tender terms. He's speaking to his little children. And I hope you see yourself like that today. That you see yourself as a child before God, needing help, needing instruction from his word. Not proud, not high-minded at all, but crying out to God as a little child would cry out in a time of need.

John Owen makes a statement in his book Communion with God he says this Sin is dying in us now. I Love those words sin is dying in us now in Some measure while we are alive in believers it is still dying and decaying until it utterly be abolished. And he goes on and he says that sin has been crucified in the life of the Christian and he died for us. And as a result, our body of sin is being destroyed so that we would not serve sin any longer, but that we would be raised up with Him and have dominion over that sin. And he says this, so also we are raised from sin that it should not have dominion over us and This passage makes it very clear that God the Father through his Son Jesus Christ has made it so that sin would be dying in us And there are various ways that that happens.

But it also can be that someone can think and say that sin is dying in them, but it isn't really dying in them. And so John brings these two things before us. This marvelous truth that Jesus Christ has forgiven iniquities, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that we are judged not guilty, that we are actually made righteous by the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. And we can find ourselves in that place that we read about earlier in Romans 8, who will bring a charge against God's elect. And John brings these words to his little children, probably for two reasons.

One is to separate the sheep from the goats so that all would know who they really are. But also, perhaps even to deal with those who are discouraged about their sin. And so the Lord Jesus Christ in His tenderness and His mercy rescues us from being crushed by our sin through His Son Jesus Christ, through his own work on the cross. And you find here in this passage this perfect honesty and his absolute tenderness and compassion towards people in dealing with their guilt from sin. And so that's why you find all these words piled up here.

A confession, forgiveness, cleansing, advocate, propitiation, righteousness, all these things. He's speaking of the fact that the church is a fellowship of truth tellers and not liars. And there's no deception. They do not deceive themselves about their sin. And they do not make their father a liar.

And so John makes these distinctions all throughout his letter. He divides the sheep from the goats. He makes it clear that there's light and darkness. There is truth and there's a lie. And those things reside in the hearts of men and women.

But I also want to bring out the fact that he's also speaking of what makes a true church. And how do you get the junk out of the church? He addresses this directly here. How does God purify His church? How does God humble His church so that they're not puffed up?

How does He keep His church from legalism? How does His church root out sin? How does the church keep from being fake? How does the church learn to fear God all these things are embedded in in this language? In the in the range of the verses that we're in today and He does he does all these things Through two things through confession of sin and through the work of His Son, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Imagine a people like that who have a sense of that, who have a sense of what God is doing among them when they gather together. That He's dealing another death blow to sin. He's doing that right now. When the Word of God is read and preached, God is speaking, He's doing a death blow to sin. As he uses the various words that he's embedded in his word in order to relieve us of our sins and to help us to think rightly about ourselves and about the world, there's nothing more difficult for us than to think rightly about ourselves.

You know, in many years of counseling, it's become very, very clear to me that so often people think of themselves differently than the way that other people think of them. And you find this all the time when you sit down with people who are having conflicts. They see themselves differently. I found this to be true in my own life. I often see myself differently than the way that other people see me.

But here we have this work of God Called confession that helps us to come closer and closer to who we really are and God gives it as a gift So that we would walk in reality so that we would know more of who we are The problem with us is that when we're saved we are so massively deceived our brains have been so Muddled and clouded up with wrong thoughts about ourselves in the world And God spends the rest of our lives clearing out the clouds and he does it through through the Word of God and through the confession that comes when the light of the Word of God is shining. And so that's the context here. John has just spoken of the fact that that the the word of God the light of God shines in the darkness and and that light it it exposes your sin and And that really introduces this section that we begin with in verse 8 So John John shows how we must love the light as it shines in the inward parts, but the problem with that is it exposes sin, and John acknowledges a great deception that can take place.

And I believe this is a deception that you find in the unbeliever. I don't think you find this in the believer you might find Manifestations or vestiges or leftovers of it in the believer But you find a massive Deception in the unbeliever and he speaks of it if you see the outline in front of you I've broken this up into five sections that correspond With each verse that we'll be dealing with so I'll be taking this verse by verse You'll see first in verse 8 this self-deception in verse 9, our true confession in verse 10, a self-righteous contradiction in verse 1 in chapter 2, our righteous advocate, and then finally, fifthly, in verse 2 in chapter 2, our complete propitiation. So that's the basic trajectory of what we'll be doing. We'll be trying to explain each one of these as we go through them verse by verse. But first, John wants there to be an acknowledgement of a danger of self-deception.

And so he says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. So he's speaking about being deceived, and that deception is that the truth is not in you. You can say things but the truth not being in you. Notice also this is the second if we say statement in this chapter. Now there are many, many conditional statements in 1 John.

You should count them. There's an enormous number of conditional statements. If this, then that. And It would be a very helpful study for you just to read through and look for the conditional statements and Understand what they mean, you know for you and your family and your church and your nation Because they apply quite broadly In many of the places here so We have this if we say statement, and it's a conditional statement, and it is proof that Christianity hinges on particular conditions and actions, and they all lead somewhere. And There are three conditional statements in this chapter here, in verse 8 and 9 and 10.

This conditional clause shows what makes a false church. There are distinguishing marks of a true work of God in the heart and in a church. And this verse helps you to understand how you know whether you are part of a work of God or part of a work of man. And your position on sin is pivotal to that. Your doctrine of sin has an enormous influence on who you are before God.

And here We recognize that he is speaking of a person or a church that is not connected to the truth. But that person uses religious language. He says, I have no sin. He speaks of sin. He has some doctrine of sin, but it's a false doctrine of sin.

And notice there are two uses of the word sin here in this chapter. There is the singular sin, and then there is the plural sins in the very next verse. And this indicates that man always has two problems sin and sins sin Most most often would refer to the sinful nature our fall in nature the sin of Adam a Theologians call this original sin original sin that came through the fall from our first parents who rebelled against God And as a result all of mankind was infected with a sin nature Every child that is born has been infected by this sin nature you know all of the sweet children born into this church have an infection that will destroy them And this is why parents are called to preach the gospel to their children when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up, because there is a fatal poison in their souls, and it is called original sin. And we are inclined to sin. Even the saved person has this inclination, even though the power of sin has been broken, the sin nature still remains.

It will finally be destroyed on that last day. And then there are sins, plural. These are things that people do. Sins are the particular sins that are mentioned in the Bible. Now, sin is the reason that we commit sins.

But we have to think about both of these things. Now, John is saying that we deceive ourselves if we think we have no original sin. He could be saying that you deceive yourself if you believe you have no original sin. He could also be saying that you deceive yourself if you believe you have no original sin. He could also be saying that you deceive yourself if you believe you have no original sin or particular sins as well.

But we deceive ourselves, meaning that we are lying to ourselves. There's this talk that we have to ourselves that justify our lives. We're very self-flattering in our sin nature, and we want to justify ourselves through that self-flattery. One example of a person in the Bible who was revealed to have this disposition was the rich young ruler. And he thought he could keep all the commandments.

Jesus asked him of his spiritual status And he said, I'm fine. I've kept all the commandments from my youth Jesus I am fine. I have kept the commandments and Jesus told them that he was wrong that he had not kept the commandments and And so he had he had found himself in this place where the truth was not in him. The truth of the Word of God had not been taken seriously. He knew the Word of God in his mind.

And he did many things that the Word of God told him to do but his heart was not in it and so he was lying about his status before God because he had been such a good boy and then a man and he had deceived himself he was lying and Jesus exposed his lie and so this is this is the matter that John brings up first self-deception and he says if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And the Bible speaks of this in many, many places. I was tracking it this week. One of the more famous places is in Psalm 66, verses 18 through 20, where David says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. But then he says, but certainly God has heard me.

He has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God who has not turned away my prayer, nor his mercy from me." And so he did see the iniquity in his heart, but he also saw the mercy of God, because it was a genuine profession of faith. And so if you know there is sin and pretend there is not sin, and if you love your sin and you say with your mouth that you have no sin, then this is your condition here. You deceive yourself and the truth is not in you. Now God raises this matter of this great deception that any person can have who is not a believer because God is waging war against sin and God through his son Jesus Christ has dealt a death blow to sin and this is part of the death blow it's a death blow of words to to help people wake up to see if they really just say things, but they have no inward reality.

And so for those who would realize that they have been deceived, then they will find that sin is dying in them now. They've turned to Jesus Christ, and the law of sin and death has been overthrown. And then there's a shift in John's focus here. He's speaking of the unbeliever in verse 8, and then in verse 9, notice he's speaking of a different kind of person. He's speaking of a person who's making a true confession.

And So I've worded this point in the outline, our true confession. I mean that by saying our, meaning those who have confessed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, have turned from our idols and He is changing our lives. So our true confession here is spoken of in verse 9. If we, and he's speaking of the believers there, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness now he uses that that conditional word if if we confess so he He sets the stage with this contingency if we confess then this Particular thing happens Now he uses this word confess and I want all the children to really understand several of the words here in this passage. One of them is the word confess.

You've got to understand what it means to confess. Are you ready? To confess is to say the same thing. The Apostle John uses a word here that's a compound word. There are actually two words together in one.

Homo, or the same, homo, and lageo, word, same word. To confess is to say the same word to use the same word about yourself that God uses if God uses a word to describe you and your Behavior then you say the same thing you say yes Lord That's true about me if you say that was a lie. I say yes Lord. That is true. I lied and You can use that with all of the various words of God that apply to various classifications of sin.

There are many, many words that describe our sin, but to confess is to use the same word that God uses. One of the tragic results of this historical problem that has been put before us through modern psychology is that they've redefined all the words. They've taken the Bible words out of human behavior. They want to use different words. They want to say that you're codependent.

They want to use different words than the Bible uses. But the Bible gives you words to describe who you are. But if you say the same thing that God says about you. Then you find yourself in agreement with God. You are loving God and His Word toward you even though it discloses who you really are.

And so we confess by name How we have offended God that's how you confess and the true Christian wants to know how he has offended God and then he wants to use God's terminology in order to describe it and God God has given us His Holy Spirit to convict us of sin, He's given us His Word to help us understand what sin looks like so that we can think of ourselves rightly and not be so self-flattering as we go through life. There's nothing more harmful for a person than to flatter himself to the end. James chapter 4 verse 17 says, therefore to him who knows to do good and does not do it to him it is sin." And that brings up the matter of the conscience. So there's the matter of the Word of God, there's the matter of the Spirit of God, there's the matter of the conscience that God brings. These are the ways that God reveals sin.

But all of it is under this great category of the light, of walking in the light. Walking in the light is walking in the truth of God's word. So John really has never left the subject of the light yet. He's talking about what happens when the light shines. And he's saying that the true Christian, when the light shines, he confesses his sin before God.

And this confession, you know, is described in the Bible in many different ways, through many different examples. But let me just summarize it by this and that is that that God has designed that we deal with sin promptly personally privately and particularly and This is how sin and the progress of it is dealt a death blow in the heart of man. You know, we subscribe to the 1689 Confession of Faith, and in chapter 15 We read a very helpful statement. It is every man's duty to repent of his particular known sins, particularly. That's exactly what John is saying here.

If we confess our sins. And then the confession reads as well, something that is very hopeful. Not only do we confess personally and promptly and privately and particularly, we also also ought to confess our sins hopefully. The confession says this, there is no sin so great that it shall bring condemnation on them that repent, which makes the constant preaching of repentance necessary. And so here in this passage of Scripture we are preaching repentance.

Repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ through our confession of sin. Now God gives us many ways that this confession is tripped. He puts things in our way so that we would be found being brought into confession. And even when the disciples went to the Lord and said, Lord teach us to pray, he taught them to pray and he said that they should pray, forgive us our trespasses, that they should go into the secret place daily and they should pray and And they should they should say Lord forgive us our trespasses God has given us away every single day to come face to face with our sin as We pray That's why we should pray every day. You know you have this pattern in the Bible of morning and noon and evening.

There are various places you can see this in individuals. This is what Daniel did. Others did the same pattern. They prayed three times a day and every time they would pray they would be confronted with their sin. And they would hopefully pray, Lord forgive me.

Forgive me for my sins in the night and then at noon. Forgive me, O Lord, for my sins in the first part of the day and so forth. So God has given us various ways to empty sin, to clean out the well. And then he gives us the Lord's Supper. In a few minutes we'll be observing the Lord's Supper together.

And he's given us that way that we would privately and personally deal with our sin so that God would not have to escalate it and So he asked he commands us to examine ourselves So that the church would empty out the poison to come to him and confess their sins before God And it says here that he is faithful. For those who confess, notice the language here, he is faithful. In other words, your forgiveness is based on his faithfulness, that he shall save his people from their sins. That's what it was reported that Jesus Christ would do in Matthew 1, 21. Jesus Christ will fulfill his purpose.

He will save, he will forgive his people from their sins. He is faithful to keep his promise. And so the forgiveness of your sins is grounded in his faithfulness. And it's really a fulfillment of what the apostle Paul taught the Roman church in Romans chapter 10 verse 13 where he said Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved this is a promise of God his faithfulness is the ground of your forgiveness when you confess and And then he makes a further remedy for us and that is his justice. First of all his faithfulness and then his justice.

This is another one of his remedies that he's given his people. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. That means that God doesn't turn a blind eye to sin. That he is just and he justifies. There is God's just and righteous anger against sin.

And our only hope is that there would be a just remedy. And that just remedy is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. And that's why in Isaiah 53, remember when we were there recently, we spent many weeks going through Isaiah 53, and in chapter 53-11, we learn this that God says about his son, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall justify many. The sin is paid for, that's what that means. That it's not brushed under the carpet, sin is not ignored by God, but it is justified by the justice of God through Jesus Christ.

God will bring punishment to every sin. He will either punish every sin in hell for all eternity or he will punish his son for your sins. God always punishes sins. He never brushes them under the carpet. He does have mercy.

He has long suffering. And why? Because he justifies. And so salvation is only possible through the justice of God, as the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness. So if we confess our sins, if this, then you have the faithfulness of God to carry along and you have His justice to carry you even further.

And then it says that He forgives. What is forgiveness? It's pardon. It's removing guilt. It's covering sin.

It's the release of a debt where you don't owe anymore. That's why the hymn writer wrote, he said, was it for crimes that I have done? He groaned upon a tree. Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree. This is the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

Forgiveness means that you let someone go. You let them off the hook. That is forgiveness. If you have confessed your sin, do you connect with His faithfulness? Do you connect with His justice?

Do you connect this morning with His forgiveness? Do you see what God has done? And then it says He cleanses. He cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Now, this is a word of purification.

You know, the word that we use in English is the word catharsis. Our English word comes from this Greek word, katharizo. And it has to do with to purify, to cleanse. And this is what God does. By his faithfulness, by his justice, and by his forgiveness, he cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

He really has cleansed us from all unrighteousness. This is so hard for us to understand because we know our sin, but God is trying to teach us the way that He has dealt a death blow to sin. And one of the ways He has dealt a death blow to sin is he he teaches his children how to think about their sin It's not brushed under the carpet But it is cleansed Now the the focus of this passage here helps us also to understand to whom we confess. And I think this is an important matter. Who are we confessing to in 1 John 1, 8, 8, and 9?

And it reminds me of a time, it was over 30 years ago, I was in our, in our, my home church in California. People had heard a teacher say that if, if You had sinned against someone that you need to go to them. And so in our church, you had an outbreak of broken relationships as a result of that. And you had, I remember one man went to another man and said, I've been lusting after your wife. And another woman went to another woman and said, I've always envied you for these five things and it's really hard for me to get over it, would you please forgive me?

And it just caused enormous trouble because it came from a complete misunderstanding of confession. Because overwhelmingly our confession is before God. And there's no evidence in this text here that the confession is to other people. You don't go around telling everyone about your sins. You confess your sins to God.

I was reading Lloyd-Jones about this. He says, John does not mention that we confess our sins to anyone but God. He has been speaking of fellowship with God. He is telling us to confess to ourselves and to God. He is the one we confess to and He is the one who forgives.

And He goes on and talks about you don't confess to Mary, you don't confess to saints, and you deal with the poison in your own heart, primarily. He says, but neither here nor anywhere in scripture do you find the teaching that tells you that you're not walking in the light unless you are all the time exposing your sins to everybody. He says, no, we confess our sins to God. We acknowledge them to Him, mentioning them to Him, bearing them to Him, laying them open before Him, as David did in Psalm 32. Now at the same time, we cannot say that it's inappropriate to confess your sins to man if you have specifically sinned against a person.

That it is appropriate in many cases to go to that person. But one needs to be very careful. The way that God has arranged for the dealing of sin, he begins in the heart. He begins personally and privately. And you deal with your sin in your heart.

And if there's a public sin, then that must be dealt with publicly. But John is speaking here of confessing sins to God. If there is a need to confess a sin to a brother it should be done promptly, it should be specifically, and it should be done genuinely. But we should be very careful not to fall into the trap that many people in my local church did 30 years ago when they ran around spewing out all the thoughts that they had about other people that should have and could have been dealt with privately. Now I also want to just mention in passing that revivals are always marked by confession of sin and repentance.

And while the devil would want the gathered people of God to be asleep in their sin, to be blinded by their sin, to be insensible of their sin, and to be denying of their sin, God calls his church to confess their sins. This is the beginning of a revival when people come before God and if necessary come before one another and they confess their sins. And There is a sorrow for sin in revivals. There's a sensitivity to sin in revivals. There's a hatred of sin in times of revival.

And you can tell if there's a revival going on in your heart when those things are true. And so we should always pray for confession of sin in the church because confession of sin marks whether you are a true Christian or not and whether there is a true church or not. And so God raises this matter of confessing sins because of his war against sin and because God through his son Jesus Christ has dealt a death blow to sin. Sin is dying in his people and it dies fastest when it is confessed. And of course, it's a very beautiful thing in the church to have a confessing church because it humbles the church.

It keeps the church out of legalism and it makes the church happy. You're never happier than when you finally found the relief of coming clean and you stopped running from God. There is nothing more beautiful and happy-fying to the soul of man than to confess. And then John changes back again. He's speaking of the believer who's confessing, then he speaks of this self-righteousness, this self-righteous contradiction that a person can embrace in verse 10.

And he's talking about rationalizing sin in verse 10. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. So he sounds like he's saying very much the same thing in verse eight, but he uses a little bit different language. He's using this matter of continuous sin and the lie that exists in the heart of the person who says that they have not sinned. They make him a liar.

Now, this is a rationalizing church. Now, there are two problems in verse 10. The first is you make God a liar When you say that you haven't sinned because God has truthfully Given us language to understand what sin is and if you say that you haven't sinned sinned then you are condemning the lawgiver and the judge of lying you're actually rejecting his word and Then said the second problem is that we prove that his word is not in us Those are the two big problems of saying that you have not sinned. If you feel self-righteous, if you just can't find, if you just for the life of you can't see your sin, this verse is designed to tell you what you are doing. You are calling God a liar and you are proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that His Word is not in you.

The life of His Word is not working. You're not being sanctified. And you know there's more than one way to say that you have no sin. There are many ways that we fall into this trap, even as Christians. First of all, it's when there's a denial of sin and guilt in you personally.

That's one way. Secondly, when we think that this kind of confession only applies to gross sins, or that somehow the good parts of us somehow counteract the bad parts But that really confession is only necessary for really really bad things But but actually the Bible says that if you've broken one law, you've broken them all. So what that means is that we are, you know, we are lawbreakers, comprehensively, and really our only hope is the shed blood of Jesus Christ and his righteousness and his faithfulness. We also deny our sin by blaming it on others. It was the woman that you gave me.

I shouldn't have said that, but it wasn't my fault. I wouldn't have been so mean if I wouldn't hadn't been so if that person hadn't been so mean to me That's another way that we deny our sin Often we we deny that there is no such thing as sin there are groups there There are religious groups who deny that there is no such thing as sin. Christian science, the Unity School of Christianity, religious science, theosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism. There are many religions that teach that there is no sin, but there is another problem. With Christian science, it's just wrong thinking.

You're sick, it's wrong thinking. You committed adultery, it was just some wrong thinking. Well, the Bible says it's something different. It's sin. But this is probably not the most common form of denying sin.

Redefining sin is probably the most common. And in other words, we can divert any accusation of sin by giving it a new name. I was stressed out. It was an error in judgment. It was a mistake.

And, you know, I was having a bad day. We try to redefine. We want to put different names on sin. But we're always safest when we use the Word of God to define what we're doing. And this is the most difficult thing for us because it is so unflattering.

Jesus told the story of the publican who said, I thank you that I'm not like the other people. That's the essence of denying sin. It places yourself in relative terms with other people. You compare yourself with others and you say, well, I'm not as bad as her or him, so I must be okay. That's another form of denying sin.

We like to compare ourselves by others so that we might escape any condemnation from sin So these are some of the common ways that That we do it we often we often would apologize rather than to confess or repent You know The Bible says that we should forgive one another just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Somebody this last week sent me a link to an article about apologizing and I'll just read a couple of lines. Seeking forgiveness is not apologizing. There's nothing in the Bible about apologizing. The world's substitute for forgiveness just doesn't get the job done.

You apologize and say, I'm sorry, but you've not admitted your sin. So often we use fancy language to get around our sin so that we might flatter ourselves with a more conducive word for our own self-acceptance. But God gives us particular words. So God raises this matter of self-righteousness in verse 10 because of his war against sin in order to help human beings understand who they really are. Whether they are like this.

And if you are like this, the Apostle John is saying, please know where you're headed. Turn, confess, repent, believe in the shed blood of Jesus Christ and receive all of His righteousness upon you. That's His appeal. He is doing a death blow to sin. And when a person finds himself realizing this, then sin is dying in them.

It begins to die. What a blessing it is. It would be so nice if it would completely die. But God is merciful and patient with us. And in his long suffering, he continues to apply the shed blood of his son, Jesus Christ.

And then the fourth element here is found in chapter 2 verse 1 as we turn to the next chapter the subject doesn't change and So we read my little children these things I write to you so that you may not sin And if anyone sins we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. So now John is delving more particularly into the remedies for sin. He's already talked about Jesus Christ and his faithfulness and his justice and all of these things. But now he continues to expand it, giving us more language to understand the greatness of his mercy. But I want you to notice first His tenderness, my little children.

These things I write to you. He's speaking as to children to urge them to turn from their sin. And they may fall into sin. And they may feel like they have no right to go back to God because they've broken the law of God and They've they have felt they've acted contrary To the work of the Holy Spirit. They've quenched the Spirit of God.

And how do you, how are you supposed to, how are you supposed to deal with that? And there are several things that he mentions here to guide us. And the first is he tells us of God's desire, so that you may not sin. He's calling them out of their sin. And how are they called out of their sin?

Because of what was written. He said, these things I have written, we have written, so that you may not sin. So again, He takes us back to the Word of God. How do you know? How to escape your sin well, it's through the things that have been written That's how you know and so seeking God through his word is the critical matter for escaping the trap of sin in your life.

The church abandons her sin because of her love for the Word of God. The light shines in the darkness and then the sin is exposed. That's why David said, your word have I hidden in my heart so that I might not sin against you. That's exactly what John is saying here. Now when we see our sin, we think that we have no right to go to God.

But we need to remember that it's the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sin. And then John turns to one of the most critical matters in this whole section. And it really is this. If you would ever think rightly about sin, then you must shift all of your thinking to Jesus Christ if you are a Christian. How does Jesus Christ rescue sinners from their inadequate confession, from their lack of understanding even of their own sins, of the presence of unintentional sins?

How does a Christian deal with that? When they know that they sin, what will they do? And the whole matter that John is driving toward is this, You must have all of your thoughts about sin to be fixed on Jesus Christ and on Jesus Christ alone. And so he explains how Jesus rescues sinners from their inadequate confession and their inadequate repentance. And he uses this word, advocate.

He says that we have an advocate with the father Now earlier we learned that we have fellowship with the father and with his son now he expands on it and he tells us that we have an advocate with the Father. And so, now after expressing in the previous verse that we must turn from our sin, he makes it clear that there is no forgiveness or no fellowship at all without Jesus Christ himself. And we have to ask, is our confession enough? Is our life change enough? Is our sincerity enough?

And the answer is absolutely not. All of those have a taint of sin within them. None of them can stand. It's not enough to change. It's not enough to be sincere.

You know, I grew up thinking that if you were sincere, then that fixed everything. If your sincerity is the ground of your faith, beware. Consider the foundation upon which your faith stands, if you are grounded in your own sincerity. Now I'm not here to diminish the importance of sincerity and truth, But the ground of your faith is not your sincerity. There is only one thing that is enough.

There is only one thing that has happened to make forgiveness happen and to be reconciled to God. And we are always in danger when we think that anything that we have done can make us acceptable before God. And I just want to submit that even the most sincere confession falls short. No one ever confessed to the bottom of their sins. No one ever did.

No one is self-aware enough to confess to the bottom of it. If your wife or your friend comes to you and you think you haven't confessed to the bottom of it, you're right. And they never will be able to, ever. And if your acceptance of them is based on the depth of their confession in your eyes, you will never be reconciled to your brother because no one has ever been able to get to the bottom of their own sin and express it rightly we see through a glass darkly we yes we should confess our sins as deeply as we can But don't think that you can rest your relationship with God upon the sincerity of your confession, because even that is flaws. And yet God does call us to confess.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. That is the ground of all true faith and confession. And here he says we have an advocate with the Father. This is the heart of the matter. We have a defender.

The word that he uses here is also translated helper or comforter. You can read this word occurring many times in John 14 through 17. It's the word Parakletos, one called alongside to help. Back a long time ago I was in a church and we had these groups called Parakolo groups. It was groups of, it was women, they gathered together to help one another.

They were called alongside to help like the Holy Spirit is called alongside to help. But there is only one advocate. There is only one way to deal with sin. The Roman church has given us many advocates, many intercessors. There's only one.

He is an advocate with the Father. Notice he says, with the Father. This means face to face, that they are one. It means that In God's fatherly love and his love for Jesus Christ, there's compassion for sinners. The wrath of God that we deserved is being dealt with through this advocate.

You know the Lord Jesus Christ ever lives to make intercession for us. He's looking after us. He's helping us. He's loving us. He's representing us before our Father in heaven.

And don't think for a moment that this means that God the Father is mad and wants to squash you, but Jesus Christ is trying to defend you. Because the Father and the Son are one. It's different than that. There is wrath that you deserve, and the Son of God has quelled the Father's wrath. And we'll get to that in the next verse when we get to the word propitiation But who is the advocate?

Do you see it? Who is he? Jesus Christ the righteous He's applying his righteousness to the sinner. He was tempted in all the same ways that you are, and he's a sympathetic and faithful high priest. He understands everything about your sins and your weaknesses.

The Father though he sees you as righteous because you have been dealt with by Jesus Christ the righteous. It is his righteousness not your own. Again we're taken back to the complete inadequacy of the sincerity of your confession. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ and His righteousness alone, which is the basis of everything. And so He is our righteous advocate.

And God raises this matter of a righteous advocate because of his war against sin. God is dealing with sin in your life as he has appointed his son Jesus Christ as your advocate before Him, before your Father. And this is how sin is dying in you. He's dealing with your sin before the Father's throne. I don't understand how that could be, that my sin is covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ and my Savior is pleading before me at all times.

Why would He plead for me? Why would He plead for you considering all of what you have done and all of what we have not done? And then finally our complete propitiation verse 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now, propitiation, and this is another word that that all children need to understand, I was asking my grandson to try to say this word this morning, propitiation.

Can you say it? Propitiation. Propitiation is a process by which favor is shown to a person and To propitiate is to become favorable and something has happened To quell the wrath of God, it's the shed blood of Jesus Christ. His anger is turned away. And God's wrath is placated.

It is, or propitiated. And his wrath turns to favor. And this is how we are delivered from the wrath to come, through his propitiation on the cross. And propitiation restores a broken relationship. It takes two who are at odds and makes them friends again.

Has that ever happened to you? Were you at odds with someone and then you became friends? It's such a blessing when that happens. That is what happens between God and man through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. By the way, this word, this word propitiation is spoken of in different places.

Romans chapter 3, but when you get to Hebrews chapter 9 verse 5, this word is used of the mercy seat. The exact same word is translated mercy seat in Hebrews. The mercy seat was this golden plate under which the law of God rested. It was the mercy seat. Propitiation is mercy.

And in propitiation there are always different things that are addressed. There's an offense that must be dealt with. There's a person who has offended God. There is a sacrifice as a means of atonement for that offense. That's really the heart of propitiation.

And it means several things. It means that God has reconciled sinners. But He mentions something here that's a little bit startling and easily misunderstood. His proficiation is not for ours only, but also for the whole world. What does that mean?

Also for the whole world? Well it means at least four things. First, it means that his sacrifice was enough for the sins of the whole world. Secondly, that he will save people from all over the world in the same way that Jesus said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He wasn't saying that every single person in the world will be saved.

He was speaking generally. Number three, he was saying this because this is the only means of propitiation for anyone in the whole world. And then four, he calls people from all over the world through the universal call through his servants. And five, the salvation is only for those who walk in the light, who confess their sins, who keep the word of God, and who love their brethren. That's what John will say as he goes on in this letter.

When John says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one, he was speaking generally. And when he says here that He made propitiation for the sins of the whole world. He's not saying that every person in the whole world will be saved, but rather he's speaking generally. In the same way that Paul did in 1st St. Corinthians 5 when he said that Christ was reconciling the world to himself.

He didn't mean every person in the world. So God raises this matter of propitiation because he's dealing a death blow to sin. And he does it through these various means. And sin is dying in us now as a result of that. What a blessing it is to have that.

Now here's the end of the matter and I'll conclude with this. Have you sinned against God? What have you done about it? Do you trust what Jesus Christ has done about it? Have you confessed your sins particularly?

Have you turned from your sin genuinely? Have you trusted in Christ singularly? Because what we learn here is that we need nothing else but Christ. We have nothing else but Christ. There is only one way to have fellowship with God the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

And it is found here, if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. And so the Lord is instructing us here today that all of our righteousness is in Jesus Christ and in him alone. And he's called us together to be a confessing people. But we also ought to be the happiest people to have such a Savior who's faithful, who's just, who's righteous, who's an advocate, and who has made propitiation. And so I pray that God would give us hearts that are consistent with the things that we've just been taught here in these words.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, Lord we thank you for the sending of your Son. We thank you that our salvation is not based on anything but Jesus Christ and on him alone. That the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death. Lord I pray that you would give us strength to hate our sins, that sin would be dying faster in us than it has been in the past.

Lord, you have done so much to kill sin, and you have called us to mortify our sin. Oh Lord, that you would give us such a heart for both of these things, to set our hearts toward mortifying the flesh on the one hand, and glorying in our advocate with our Father. Amen.