Forgiveness is a central theme in God's salvation package, as illustrated by David's experience in Psalm 32 and the woman who washed Jesus' feet in Luke 7. The sermon emphasizes that all humanity is sinful and falls short of God's standards, a truth often ignored in modern society. True forgiveness comes through confessing sins to God and believing in Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. For believers, maintaining communion with God requires confessing sins as they occur, ensuring an unbroken fellowship with their Heavenly Father.
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Thank you, Mr. Graham. Now, should we open our Bibles, please, and read one or two scriptures? First of all, we read two or three verses, I think five verses, in Psalm thirty-two. Psalm thirty-two. The thirty-second Psalm, verse one. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blesseth is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long, for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me.
My moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah, I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Luke, Luke's Gospel, chapter seven. Seventh chapter of Luke's Gospel and verse thirty-six. And one of the Pharisees desired him, that is he desired the Lord Jesus, that he would eat with him.
And he went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meet. And behold, a woman in the city which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meet in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and he wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisees, the Pharisee which had bitten him saw it, he spake with him himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that touches him, for she is a sinner.
And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. He says, Master, stay on. There was a certain creditor, which had two debtors, the one owed five hundred pence and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most.
And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman and said, And said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered thine house, and thou gavest me no water for my feet. But she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss, but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with all thou didst not anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.
Wherefore I say unto thee, her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much, But to him whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven thee. And they that sat at least with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy faith has saved thee. Go in peace. And may God bless to us the reading of His precious word. We'll refer to one or two other scriptures a little later on.
Let's ask God's blessing again, shall we? Blessed God, our Father. We cannot but wonder at the fact that thou hast given us this book, the Bible. Every day we're more amazed as we read this book to find how perfect it is, how up to date it is. how it tells us, even today, of thine eternal plans and counsels. And we can see thy will and the things that were prophesied in this book so many centuries ago being fulfilled before our eyes this day. We thank thee for the wonderful book, the Bible. And we thank thee for the lessons of the Bible.
And we pray that tonight, thou write upon our hearts one of these wonderful lessons out of this wonderful book. that we might learn more about thyself. We seek thy blessing in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Now there are two classes of preaching. There's what is called topical preaching. Topical preaching. That's when you have a topical subject and preach about that subject. Now that often takes you all through the Bible, you know, referring to all the various scriptures in the Bible.
But then there's expositional teaching, where you take a book of the Bible and verse by verse by verse, you expound it. Personally, I'm a lover of the expositional teaching. That, of course, is largely due to background. I often say, We are what we are because of certain men and certain people that have come into our lives years ago. I think I could count down one finger, perhaps about five men that during my life have influenced me. Early days, midlife days, when I've met men of God.
I'm not talking about other men, but men of God who have made me what I am, good or bad today, by their teaching. And one man who influenced me very, very much when I was a young man in my teenage, or really from the time when God saved me at ten years of age, I used to go every Wednesday night to a Bible study meeting, where there was one man, he was a great leader in the study of the Bible. It was a conversational Bible study, but he led it. And I was saved when I was ten, and from then on, nothing in the world would keep me from being at that Wednesday night Bible reading. Of course, we hadn't got any television in those days to detract us, but I was there.
And I suppose for a period of, well, till I left home at twenty-five years of age, those fifteen years, I was there every Wednesday night. And this man was an expositional teacher. I remember with him going through the whole of the Roman epistle, verse by verse. And that's when I was a youngster from ten to twenty years of age. And when you learn it then, you've got it for life, you know. You never forget. I remember the very words that man spoke. Week after week there. And that's the time to learn the Bible when you're young. We went all through the book of Leviticus. We went through the Song of Solomon. We went through Colossians. We went through Hebrews. We went through Revelation. And I learned about the Bible.
Expositional teaching. And I love it. But yet you find some preachers, they'll get one subject and they can preach beautiful, using beautiful oratory, they can expound subjects from the Bible. That's good. There's nothing in the Bible to say you can't do that. That's wonderful. Then I was again influenced later, very much later in life, by a man whom many of you know, Dr. Alden Gannett, who at that time was, when I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, he was president of Southeastern Bible College. And I got under his teaching a lot. And he used to teach his scholars. Now we got one of his students here, although he's there, not there any longer, but one of the students from Southeastern, our young sister, Grace Bell is there, and she tells me that the Bible College starts up a week on Monday.
But Dr. Gannick, who's no longer president of Southeastern, used to say, now don't to the students, don't preach on topical subjects. Don't do that. Preach from the Bible, verse by verse by verse. And that's one of the things I love about our conference at Park the Pound. For those of you that are visiting, we have a winter conference which lasts thirteen weeks. It'll start on the ninth of, God willing, on the ninth of January, this coming winter, and we'll run right through Sunday the ninth of January, right through Sunday the ninth of April. And that'll be thirteen weeks with a different speaker every week, and they'll have expositional subjects.
Very few of them jump from subject to subject. They take a theme or a book of the Bible and they teach us successive and progressive Bible teaching. That's the way to learn the Bible. When I was serving in the British Royal Air Force in Egypt in World War I, I had a wonderful Bible reading I used to lead of young men in the Air Force, and I used to say to them this way, now, when you get your letters, and they used to look for their letters from their sweethearts and their wives and their mothers, you know, I said, when you get your letters, you don't open the letter and read one sentence and fold it up.
Now, you start the beginning, my dear John, and you read right through from... Love from Mary, you read right through the letter every verse, and then you fold it up, and in a few minutes you've got it out, and you're reading it again, and you read right through the letter. And when God wrote to us, he wrote what we call epistles. Epistles. Now, I lived in Greece for ten years, and we used the Greek word epistle quite a lot. And if I were saying to you in Greek, I will write you a letter, I would say, You, I will write, mere epistole, a letter. A letter is an epistle, epistole.
And these epistles are letters written by God to us. And the best way to learn them is to read them. Not just pick up one odd verse, you know, and say, well, I can't understand it. Of course you can. Start at the beginning and read through. You think of the epistle to the Colossians. and Philippians, these four chapter epistles, how easy it is to read them through, and get God's mind and God's will. Now, I've said all that to say this, but tonight I'm digressing, and I want to be topical. We are giving talks here when I'm talking Sunday mornings on John's Gospel, and that can be progressive expositional teaching.
But Sunday nights it will be hit or miss because the I won't be speaking here very often, so I thought for maybe wise to take one or two topical subjects. Be topical for a while. And I would like to speak here from time to time on some of the great truths of the New Testament, some of the great things which are included in God's salvation. My brother Tom, you know, when we're getting anything ready, he always says, now let's make a package deal of it. Let's put it all in and make a package. And there, no, that's it, you see. And God has given us a package deal.
He's given us salvation. But in that package, there are a lot of smaller packages, see. Now here are a few subjects. Think of them. Forgiveness. Redemption. Salvation. Justification. sanctification, election, grace, faith. All these are things that are in the package. God has given us salvation, but these are things in the package. And tonight I picked out one, forgiveness. And I'd like to talk a few minutes about forgiveness as we see it in the Bible. You see, David said in that wonderful thirty-second psalm that we read just now, David said, Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity.
I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgaveest the iniquity of my sin." That's what I want to talk about tonight. Forgiveness. So we read that wonderful story in Luke, which is a little sample, a little parable, not a parable, it took place, but a little picture the Lord gave us of his own great forgiving spirit. He went to the house of Simon the leper, I suppose, and he cured Simon, I'm sure, a Pharisee.
And then a woman came in, a sinner. She was a woman off the street. And she came in, and she brought an alabaster back box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with ointment. And the Lord said to her, Woman, thy sins are forgiven. And they said, Here, what's this? Who's this has got the right to forgive sins? Who can forgive sins except God only? They had not yet acknowledged the fact that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, that he was God.
They said, Who can forgive sins except God only? And Simon, he didn't say one word, but he thought a lot. He said, When the Pharisee which had bitten him saw it, he spake within himself. He didn't say anything aloud. He said it in his heart, in his head. He spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that touches him. She's a sinner, a prostitute coming off the street. He'd have known who this was. Ah, but Jesus knew his thoughts. Simon didn't say this aloud. You know, we were talking this morning at the end of that second chapter of John's Gospel.
It says, The Lord did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men, and he knew what was in man, he knew what was in man, and he knew what was in Simon. And he read Simon's thoughts. He said, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee, he said, My house to say on. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors, the one owed five hundred pence, the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him most? And Simon gave a wise answer. Simon answered and said, I suppose that he to whom he forgave most. And he said to him, Thou hast rightly judged.
And here's this woman deep down in the gutter of sin. And the Lord forgave her. And she loved much. He said so. The Lord repeats it. He said, she loves me much because he forgave much. Now some of us here tonight were brought up in Christian homes. We were brought up on the clean side of the street, you know. And I remember when I had to go away and join the British Air Force in World War I as a boy of eighteen and I'd never been away from home.
I remember how dirty and unclean and wicked, everything seemed. To have to rub shoulders with men who had no love for the Lord and use foul language, I'll never forget. I'll never forget the first night I was in the Army. It was in a little tiny square barrack room in Woolwich, East London, in England. And I knew it was the first night then. I knew I had to let those men know that I was a Christian. And I had a little testament. I took it out. It was a little old barrack room with nothing, just a red stone, tiled floor and bare walls.
And out of the wall there was one little bracket, a little tube with an open gas flame, just a little open gas flame. That's all the light we had there. And I got this test when I went close up underneath this gaslight. Whether I read anything, I don't know. But I made a show of reading God's Word. And I was very nervous because there were four men in that room and they were swearing. I had never heard foul language like that in all my life. Although I'd worked in a shop with men in an engineering workshop there. But I'd never heard this kind of thing. But I stood there and... And I read out of this little testament, then I closed it.
And I said to these men, I said, say, fellows, I'm a Christian, and I always kneel down and pray before I go to bed. And down on that little old bed there, made out of three, two trestles and three planks of wood in a mattress, I knelt down. And I expected all the boots from all the men to come hurling at my head. There was perfect silence. All the swearing stopped, and there was perfect silence. And I knelt there and asked the Lord to give me strength. And then the whistle blew and in came a corporal, turned out the light. But I just got one glimpse as I stood up.
The man that was swearing more than all was on his knees praying. Now the lights went out, and I never saw that man again. We all cut up and went off next morning. That was my first night in the army. Did he get killed in the war? I don't know. Did my testimony that night have any effect on him? I don't know. But what I'm saying is this. Some of us were brought up on the clean side of the road, and God forgave us our sin. Others came up the dirty side of the road. Maybe there's some here tonight and you know what it is to go down-watering in the paths of sin, in wickedness, uncleanness, drunkenness, I don't know.
But I tell you what, the Lord tells us that the one that's forgiven most, he loves most, he loves most. And this is a wonderful theme, the theme of forgiveness. Now before we can talk about forgiveness, You've got to talk about man's nature. You see, we're talking about forgiveness of sins. And when you talk about forgiveness of sins, people don't like that today. People do not want to admit today there's such a thing as sin. When I was a boy, a drunkard was a drunkard. And drunkenness was sin, with a big capital S. Today, drunkenness is, well, it's a sickness, you know.
Poor Pharaoh's days. They're just sick and they need proper attention and that's all it's wrong with them. Man's standards change. God's standards never change. With God, sin is sin and always will be sin, never changes. And we have to deal with God. Man is fallen. When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, the human race fell. As in Adam, all sinned. So death passed upon all men, for all of sins.
And every one of us here tonight, we're all sinners. Some, as I said just now, went a long way into sins, some only a small way, but we're sinners. And we were born with a sinful nature. We were born with a nature that cannot do good. Now, that's not popular teaching today. You see, the theory of man today is that somewhere in this there's a spark of good. A little fire here. You fan that flame, that fire, and you'll get a flame. And we're all really good. Really, down at heart, we're good. But the Bible doesn't say that. The Bible says we're all bad. Not good. And the great book that brings it out, our brother Lacey was talking about it here on Thursday night, the great book in the Bible that brings out the wickedness of man is the Roman epistle.
The epistle to the Romans. Paul writes to the Christians in the city of Rome. And here's a little thing in passing. It just came to my mind then. You know, he writes to some of the churches. to the saints in this city and the saints in that city. He didn't write to the saints in Rome. You think of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. If you've written to the saints in Rome, he writes to the churches, the church of Carin, but he never wrote. I'm mixing it up. I'm sorry. I made a mistake there. I made a mistake. Let me recall that. What I was trying to say with this.
He never wrote to the churches Carin, the churches in Galatia. But Paul didn't write to the Church of Rome. You can just about guess why the Holy Spirit didn't let him write to the Church of Rome, eh? Because the Church of Rome would claim that and say that's just ours. He didn't do that. He wrote to the saints in Rome, the saints in Rome. There were saints in Rome, there were Christians. And Paul says, I long to see you that I might impart some spiritual gift to you. And he said, I'm ready. And I'm waiting for the opportunity. And whenever I go into Spain, for he wanted to get right into Spain with the gospel, whenever I get into Spain, on my way I'm going to call it Rome and see you.
Now the Roman epistle is the epistle of God. If you've got it open there in the first chapter, let me just look at one or two things here, how God is mentioned in this first chapter. Verse one is separated unto the Gospel of God. Verse one, the Gospel of God. Verse four, declared to be the Son of God. The Gospel of God. The Son of God. Verse six, in the middle of the verse, the power of God. Verse eighteen, the wrath of God. Verse twenty-three, the glory of God. Verse thirty-two, the judgment of God. He's talking about God in this edition. God.
The one who made us, the great creator. The one against whom we have sinned. Now this is not popular teaching today, but it's true. We have sinned against God. And God looks down from heaven upon all men. And he sees us just as we are. God has standards. They never change. With God, right is right and wrong is wrong. You can't mix them up. With God, light is light and darkness is not light. And you can't mix light with darkness. The Lord Jesus clearly talked about those on my right hand and those on my left hand.
The Lord Jesus spoke about heaven. He spoke about hell. The Lord Jesus spoke about a broad road which leads to destruction and a narrow road which leads to heaven. And you don't mix them up. We're either in the broad road on the road to destruction or on the narrow road that leads to heaven. Ask yourself the question tonight, where are you? With God we're saved or we're lost. It isn't a case of being saved and not saved. It's either saved or lost. If you are not saved tonight, you're lost. That's your position, lost before God. You see, but I'm not so bad.
God saves you're lost. If you've not accepted Christ as your Savior, God has standards. And you can't mix things up with God. This is what's wrong with the world today. They put this old book on the shelf and said, we don't want it. We have our own standards. You see, in the old days, oh, how many times I've been visiting in the old cemeteries and places in England, and I've seen epitaphs and I've seen, and I've read stories there of, and not too long ago, if a man stole a sheep and he was arrested, and found guilty of stealing a sheep.
Do you know what they did with him? Took him out and hung him. He was put to death for stealing a sheep. That's not two hundred years ago. But today a man can commit murder. He can shoot down four policemen. They're not going to put him to death. They put him in jail. And after about six, seven, eight years, you get a parole and you come out and start shooting somebody else down. Man's standards have changed. But God hasn't changed. He's just the same. Just the same. Now what God tells us in the Roman epistle is that we are sinners. And our brother Lacey went over this on Thursday, so very briefly I'll say, in the first chapter we get a category of the sins of the Gentile nations.
An awful category. I'm not going to read it here tonight. Verse eighteen down to thirty-two. When men decided to put God out of their lives and do what they liked. And three times it says God gave them up. God gave them up. God gave them up. Because they did not want to retain God in their memories. God gave them up. That's where we are today. Put God out of the schools. Put the Bible out of the schools. Let's put God and say God is dead today. Let's do what we like. And God gave them up and that's what's going to happen to this generation in which we live. God's giving it up to judgment. And in that first chapter there's an awful category.
of sin, the sins of man. Read it, and you'll find that's the very sins that are filling our newspapers today, these very sins. Then, of course, in those faraway days when Paul lived, there were not only these Gentile nations living in sin, but there were Gentile nations that were really sophisticated. I lived for ten years, as I said just now, in Athens, in Greece, and I've been in some of these wonderful temples out there, and I've seen some of the wonderful results even today of the philosophers and the great teachers of learning there in Greece. Why, Greece set the standard for things.
Even for modern medicine, it was set by those old Greek professors so long, long ago, and in all their knowledge. They said, what are we? We don't want God. We make our own gods. And they made a god for this, a god for that, and a god for that. And when Paul went to Athens, there were so many gods. He said, he found the city, really, in the Greek it says, he found the city of Athens full of idols. Full of idols. Unless there should be one god that they'd forgotten, they built an altar to the unknown gods. And he said, now, this is in case we've offended one god, the unknown god. And Paul took that up and used that as a subject. to preach his sermon on Morris Hill in Athens.
And these with all their wisdom, these Greeks with all their knowledge, they set their standards, you see. They decided what was right and what was wrong. But of course that doesn't change God's standards. God's standards remain. And then there was another class of people, the Jew. He says, You are a Jew. Behold thou called a Jew, and resteth in the law, maketh thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approveth the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that thou thyself are the guide of the blind, and a light to them that are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which is a form of knowledge and the truth in the law.
Thou that teachest another, teachest thou thyself. Thou that preachest a man should not steal, does thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, does thou commit adultery? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, you Jews, with all your religion. The Gentiles blaspheme God's name because you've got a religion but you don't practice it. You say a man should not commit adultery but you do it. A man should not steal but you steal. So although they had God's law, they didn't live up to God's standards. And then Paul takes the whole thing in the third chapter, and he comes to one great conclusion.
For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans three twenty-three. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now this applies to me first. All have sinned. And it applies to you. Everyone here tonight, in God's sight, were sinners. God is holy. God is righteous. God has standards. In these chapters which I skimmed over so quickly these three chapters, he talks about the righteousness of God. the righteousness of God, the holiness of God.
It speaks of things according to truth, God's truth, according to truth. And it says God is no respecter of persons. Whether it's a king upon a throne or the pauper in the gutter, God is no respecter of persons. He reads the heart, as he did the heart of Simon the leper, and he says, all have sinned. And I guarantee there's not one of us here tonight, young or old. would like everybody to know the thoughts that go through our minds. We're so glad we can keep them to ourselves. Why? Because we're sinners. Because we have a sinful nature. And it's that that God has to deal with.
And you and I could never get to heaven. Here's the sentence. We're outside because of sin. Shut up. And could never be saved. And never get to heaven. Now this, I say again, is not popular teaching. Thank God it's according to truth. And God declares according to His truth and His holiness all have sinned. All the world guilty before God. Now if we went by men's fluctuating standards, you see, if you talk to men today, our philosophers and our leaders of knowledge in this country and other countries today, they set up their standards, you see.
And they said, well, we don't call that sin, but we would call this sin, you see. And their standards are different. And if we had to be lined up before men and become guilty before men, guilty before men, there would be degrees of guiltiness before men. Some things which God would say, that's sin. Man wouldn't call it sin. But I'm not talking about man's standards. I'm talking about God's standards and God, the Holy Righteous God, said, all have sinned and come short of a glory of God. Now here we are, we're back in that house of Simon the Leopard. A sinner is coming.
Everybody knew she was a sinner. They all knew it. And that's what amazed Simon. He said within himself, well, doesn't this prophet know that that woman's a sinner? I know she's a sinner. Doesn't he know she's a sinner? Of course the Lord Jesus knew she was a sinner. and he knew how deep her sin was. And she came to Jesus. I tell you that makes a difference. She came to Jesus. Have you ever come to the Lord Jesus Christ? You say, well, I go to church. Yeah, that may be. Well, I'm a member of a church, that may be too. But have you ever come to the Lord Jesus and said, I'm a sinner?
What did David say to me? He read it again. David said, I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgaveest the iniquity of my sins. How do you get forgiveness? I tell you how you get forgiveness. By coming and confessing your sins to God. That's how you get forgiveness. I acknowledge my iniquity, I confess my sin. And thou forgave us, my sinner. And that's the only way I know of getting saved, to come to God and tell God you're a sinner.
God does not save righteous people. So don't think that by going to church you'll get saved. God doesn't save good people. He came not to call the righteous. The Lord Jesus said personally, he said, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent. So if you're going to be saved, you've got to come as a sinner. and you've got to acknowledge the fact that you're a sinner. And you've lost, you've come short of God's standards, and your thoughts are not his thoughts, and your way is not his way. If you'll come that way and confess your sin, God's going to forgive you. He said there was a certain man who had two debtors, one who owed five hundred pence and the other fifty pence.
And how gracious a man was. He frankly forgave them all. He frankly forgave them all. That's a picture of God. God forgives sin. Do you know that? God forgives sin. But all the time he's God. All the time he's holy. All the time he's righteous. Now for God to forgive sin, there must be some basis upon which he can do it. Because God doesn't lightly look upon sin. In God's holy eyes, sin must be punished. But two thousand years ago, outside the city gate of Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus heard upon that cross. And there in his own body upon the tree he bore our sin.
He who knew no sin was made sin for us. And the punishment that was due to you and me on account of our sins was borne by our sinless substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And God looks at him. He looks at his son and he forgives you and me. Not because we've ever done anything, we never did anything that deserves salvation. But he looks at his son and he says, my son died for that man, for that woman, for that boy, that girl. He bore their sins in his own body on the tree. And if that person will only come and admit he's a sinner, that's all. And believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, he'll have eternal life.
And that moment he's forgiven. Now this is forgiveness. This is one of the great things that God gave us when we accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior. One of the things he gave us was forgiveness. Sometimes we talk about some of these other things he gave us. In this package deal called salvation. But one of the great things is forgiveness. So my sins, and as I look back over life, you don't know my life, but I know it. And those sins which are many, he's forgiven them all. And we stand in his presence and I cleanse our sins put away forever. He says in the Old Testament they're cast in the depths of the sea.
He says they're behind his back. He says as far as the East is from the West, he's removed our transgressions from us and he's forgiven us. And we have salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. Forgiveness. He frankly forgave on the basis of Calvary. Now, when the Lord Jesus went to Calvary and died, bore our sins in his own body, and then God raised him from the dead, then he commissioned his disciples and told them to go out. And he said that forgiveness of sins is going to be preached freely in his name. And Peter, you know, I like the way Peter puts it in the, when he's talking to Cornelius there.
You see, Acts, no, not Cornelius, Acts five, Peter is preaching. And he says this. Peter and the other apostles, ah, this is Acts five, verse twenty nine. Peter and the other apostles answered and said, we ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom he slew and hanged upon a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand, to be a prince and a savior, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sin. That's what God did. Forgiveness of sin. And when he went into the house of Cornelius in the tenth chapter, that's just what he said again in the tenth chapter, he said, To him give all the prophets witness.
Verse forty-three. that through his name, whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission or forgiveness of sin." That's what Peter brings. And when God called Saul of Tarsus and commissioned him, this is what he said to him, Acts twenty-six, Paul the Apostle, is giving his testimony there before the great King Agrippa. And he tells how God saved him on the road to Damascus. And he says, the Lord said to him, I am Jesus whom thou persecuted. Verse sixteen, rise and stand upon thy feet, for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness, both of those things which thou hast seen, and of those things in which I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes.
to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins. That they may receive the forgiveness of sins. That was Paul, Saul of Tarsus, is commissioned to go and preach to the Gentiles, open their eyes, that they may receive the forgiveness of sins. That's what we have received as part of our salvation. Now somebody is saying, All right, that's true. When I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior, He forgave my sin. Well, I'll tell you something.
It's over sixty years ago that I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior, over sixty-one years ago. And I committed a lot of sins since then. What about that now? How can we deal with that? See, as a little boy, when I knew I was a sinner and I looked up, there was a God of holiness and justice and judgment, and I learned a lot about the God of justice. And I heard preachers who used to preach in those days about hell fire. And I used to feel myself sometimes standing on the brink of a lost eternity and find myself slipping down into a lost hell, crawling upon God to save me in those days.
But I don't look up to God now as a God of justice. He's just the same God of justice. But a great change took place. When the Lord Jesus saved me, when God saved me, he brought me into his family. Do you know that? As many have received him, to them gave he power to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name. And there's a wonderful book in the New Testament that's written to the children of God. It's John's epistle, his first epistle, to the children of God. And today when I look up to God, I don't look up to a God of justice, but I look up to a Father. Makes a lot of difference. You know that? You look up to a Father. And sometimes we sin.
How can we be otherwise? We still have an old simple nature in here, which we'll have all the way along until the Lord takes us to be with Himself. And that simple nature cannot do good. The new nature which God gave us cannot do wrong, and there's a war going on inside all the time, the one against the other. And very often, or too often, the old nature gets the upper hand and we say things. We lose our temper. We do things which we don't want to do. We're children of God and we don't like doing it and we're full of remorse and regret when we do it. Now what do we do about these sins that we commit? God has given us forgiveness of sins. You see, when the Lord Jesus died at Calvary two thousand years ago, I wasn't born. And he forgave my sins.
and I wasn't born. So that means he forgave all my sins, past, present and future. They're all forgiven. But when I sin as a Christian, something happens. I'm not happy. You've heard the story of a boy that loved his father, and he used to play with his father and his father played with him, but his father gave him certain instructions. You must not do that. And one day the boy does the very thing his father said he shouldn't do. And when the father came home, He didn't want to meet his father as usual. Something had happened. Something had come between. And the father knew what had happened. And the link of communion between the father and son was broken. And as the evening wears along, the boy comes to his father and says, Father, forgive me, I'm so sorry.
I disobeyed your orders. And what happens? Immediately snap. It's all put right. And the link between the father and son is put right again. Now that's exactly what happens. John's first epistle, chapter one and verse seven. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanseth us from all sins. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in it. That's truth. some sinless perfectionist, they say, I haven't sinned for the last three months. Well, the very fact they're saying what they say is a lie, and that's sin anyhow.
Because the thought of foolishness is sin. So, nobody can kid themselves, they're not sinning. He says this, if John puts it clear, if we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves. Not deceiving anybody else, of course, but we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. Listen. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What do I do? If as a Christian I sin and the communion between Father, now, not with God, the God of justice and judgment, but with a loving Father, the communion is broken. What do I do? I confess my sin. I come to God and say, Oh God, I did this.
I'm very sorry I did this. And immediately the communion is linked up again. The early brethren used to have a motto, you know. Keep short accounts. Keep short accounts. There's a verse I love in the Bible that says, Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath. And I believe if I fall out with you during the day, before the sun sets, I must go and talk to you. It's hard to do that sometimes. But we've got to do that. Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath. And we've got to put this thing right. And I believe that when we sin we better keep short accounts and immediately go to God about it. Don't waste any time. When we know we've committed sin, then we confess it.
We don't have to go and say, please, God forgive my sin. He's forgiven it. But we're talking about our communion with the Father and we want that communion to be unbroken. So if we compress our sin, now don't go to the Lord and say, well, I did something that's wrong. Go to that. Go and tell him all the details. Confess your sin and say, Lord, I did this and this and this. Confess your sin. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us. So our subject tonight is forgiveness. Forgiveness of sin by a just, holy, righteous God who looks upon the work of his son at Calvary and the price he pays And when you and I come and confess our sins to Him, and acknowledge the Lord Jesus as our sin-bearer, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, He saves us, and He gives us forgiveness of things.
Now, if we go through life's journey, and something comes in tomorrow, our fellowship with God, we confess our sins to Him, and He puts it right. And so we live in a happy spirit, day by day and hour by hour, of sins forgiven. What a wonderful thing. How happy we should be, how joyful we should be, how full of wondrous joy we should be when our sins are forgiven. Thy sins which are many are all forgiven. And he to whom he forgave most, that's the one of us here tonight that's going to love him most. I don't know which one that is. I know what Paul said. I'm the chief of sinners, and I feel very much that way myself.
So let's see if each one of us can be the one that's going to love him most. Shall we pray? Blessed God, our Father, we thank you for this simple little study from thy precious word. We thank you for this word forgiveness, Lord. There's a balm about it. There's a healing touch about it. There's a warmth in this word, Lord, that we never knew before we found Christ as our Savior. All seemed cold and dark, and we seemed so far removed from thee, the God of justice and judgment and holiness. And when we came and confessed our sins to thee and we accepted the Lord as our Savior, we felt the warmth of thy forgiveness. We thank thee for it. We ask thee, Lord, we might day by day walk in the warmth and the sunshine of thy love and the sunshine of this wonderful word, forgiven.
Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven. We seek thy parting blessing now and ask that this little study tonight might bear fruit in our lives for thy glory. And if, Lord, there should be one among us, this never yet made that great step. We pray that just now, Lord, bow before thee, we might come to thee and say, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. I acknowledge my sin. I believe the Lord Jesus died for me. I accept him as my personal Savior. We pray, Lord, that I'll save tonight for thy glory. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.