FTGC#7b-CAN GOD FORGIVE A MORTAL SIN--IN THE LIFE OF A BELIEVER? YES!

this evening in revelation chapter 1 verse 5 is a tremendous reminder that sets the stage for everything we're going to look at both at communion and in the life of david revelation 1 5 is the celebration of the greatest possession we have god sent his son to accomplish for us something that not only is once and for all completed at the cross but is operative today and and everything that we're going to do tonight fits together in that way that we conclude the service celebrating the one look look what it says in revelation 1 5. the one who has set us free washed us removed the eternally destructive sins that were upon us by nature and that we have practiced by choice that's what this verse says because it says and from jesus christ the faithful witness the firstborn from the dead and the ruler over the kings of the earth now look at this summary of christ's work to him who loved us and washed us now that's new king james you notice hey we got another one of those variants there's one omicron difference between the niv the nas esv the new king james and the king james that one unpronounceable letter it's either l o u and then the ending or it's l u in the ending and that o in there is a difference between washed that's what new king james says or loosed or free that's what the other manuscript family says but you know what's the wonderful thing it's all true he did love us he did wash us he did free us he did loose us from our sins through his blood so tonight communion is a celebration the one who has loved us so much that he has loosed us from the prison house of sin he has washed us from all the stain he has freed us from the ongoing power of sin that's why the early church celebrated communion so often because they were so aware of how much christ had done for them so this evening we are loved we are loose from our sins we're washed and we're supposed to live out every day as pilgrims and strangers going through life remembering what christ has done now let's turn to psalm 32 right in the middle of your bibles and just before we bid farewell to this psalm i want to just remind you this morning we looked at paul telling younger men be on guard paul says i implore beg exhort you don't let those dangerous elements in that are going to start internally corroding the life out of your spiritual reality here on earth well here in psalm 32 we're looking at not a young man we're looking at a man that was probably 40s to 50 when this event happened much what our culture would call midlife crisis but in the back of your mind as we open the psalm 32 there's this nagging thought that that people think and that thought is is it possible to be completely forgiven and cleansed of all your sins i mean that's that's one of the things that that is asked over and over again in fact even at cedarville this week when i was meeting with all the students and there were little groups of them and i had to go and answer all their questions and sit in the coffee shop and do whatever it usually gets around to are there some sins there is too bad you know and there it's one of those questions they're hoping that that you will affirm what they hope but they're fearful that that maybe there is one of those but complete forgiveness may seem impossible if you're the type that others would never dream of any kind of struggle you would have with sin you know most people if you see a drug addict you know a convict that through prison fellowship comes to christ we'd say oh they you know they were really bad but they got saved but when a person like david who kind of grew up in it i mean david probably never missed a day in the tabernacle you know he lived in bethlehem he was right there and they were raising all the sheep to be sacrificed i mean he was in the fabric usually it's those kind of people the faithful churchgoer or someone really reared in a godly christian home or just someone who's never been into anything that others would think is really bad what if that person falls headlong into sin the kind where others are tempted to question was that person ever really saved i mean when someone dives into sin one of the initial and it's justified is to say were they ever really converted how could they do that when the godly land in the ditch when someone who has known so much of god's word and falls like david did can they be absolutely sure that god has completely forgiven them and can others around them be absolutely sure that's exactly where david was before he put the pen to the paper the ink to the parchment this is what david's testimony is about in psalm 32 he's talking about the joy of complete forgiveness when you have dived into sin headlong remember a few weeks ago we talked about david in the process broke all 10 of the commandments that's a headlong dive into sin and so psalm 32 is an old testament expression of revelation 1 5. the one that loved us so much that he came to wash us with his blood and to lose us from the power of sin is the same one who offered to david full and complete forgiveness so this evening david says what god wants all of us to know when we celebrate communion he said blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered it's it's it's off the books verse two blessed is a man to whom the lord does not impute payback reckon charged to his account the iniquity the twisted warped things that are done and in whose spirit there's no deceit no more covering no more hiding tonight no matter how far we go as believers no matter how many steps away from the lord we ever take god says remember it's only one step back see that's that's that's why we should preach the gospel to ourselves satan wants us to think that as we go off and skid and slid and slide and go into the ditch of sin that it's going to take you know 12 tow trucks to get us out of there the lord says the one step back the pathway back to god is the choice to repent remember repentance begins right here it's a change in our minds that leads to change in our behavior so the one step back is a choice to repent and then asking god to release us from the power and stain of sin that's what revelation 1 5 is about to to release us from the power that that enslaves us and the staying that that makes us ashamed it's wonderful to know the miracle of complete forgiveness how far can we go away from god far away the path of sin is horrible always remember where david was when he fell even as a young shepherd boy before his sin with bathsheba david had been a living testimony he put god ahead of his personal comforts he confessed in 132nd psalm he had maintained a habit of devotions he said i won't go to bed until i have time with the lord and that was before there were personal copies to carry around he had to have it memorized he made tim time for the lord he longed for even when he was at work to to be with the lord and in psalm 132 he said i have made a covenant of purity so david from a boy had practiced and cultivated holy habits i guess what i'm trying to say is as we get deeper into this that that it isn't like you can bar the door enough that you can walk away from the door and say that's subtle you see it takes daily vigilance it takes daily resistance it takes daily and conscious choices to keep uncorroded i don't know just when david began to diminish his daily caution when david became king of israel he laid out his plan for integrity so he's grown up he's become at least probably in his 20s or thirties he says i want to live a life of integrity i want to never allow sin to build up this is 101st psalm that we studied months back he went through all this reminder to himself he said i'm going to clean out anything in my life that displeases the lord i'm only going to have proper heroes that i hold before my eyes and as wonderful as all those personal private and public commitments may have been in second samuel david drifted away and we don't have to speculate he just did we know he did he got out of touch with the lord and he took what the new testament would would describe as a porneia look over his rooftop porneia means to look with sensual desire at a woman to look at her body as an object and he did that porneia he did it the puritan commentators often say that the wagons follow the ruts and so to the puritans as they comment on the life of david they said that the deeds of immorality are always preceded by repeated secret thoughts along the lines of the impurity so whether david on the rooftop looking down whether it was his first look or not we know the thoughts were there because he had had in his mind brought him to the place that he had thoughtfully decided on that woman that wasn't his own and david fell headlong into sin his fixation on the naked form of a woman he was not married to is closely mirrored by what goes on today around the world around the clock our culture has risen to the point where what david did at night at a certain instant can be reproduced endlessly how did david get into such a place spiritually that he fell so fast and so far like a terrorist the powerful addiction that pornography can produce overpowered him you see no matter how many times he looked that image in his mind of bathsheba overpowered him don't forget that that david the man after god's own heart was overpowered by an image he would not let go of in his mind that's the essence of what pornography does whether a believer or an unbeliever anyone who is not vigilantly denying ungodliness on a daily basis succumbs to what what i'll share from this study from wheaton is that pornography works by hijacking the brain now you remember hijacking i remember the first time i consciously ever remember hijacking was you know the plo the achillero and they took that leon klingenhofer in his wheelchair tied him to it and threw him overboard and he drowned and they hijacked the boat this cruise ship and and basically the idea of terrorism is hijackers always work by slipping in innocently and then overpowering an unsuspecting crew be it an airplane cruise boat whatever that is what happens the world over online as satan uses easily accessible media to slip in innocently and to then overpower this is an analysis that that i share with you of the recent study from wheaton college and i'll be uh reading 583 words of it and they're very interesting words and i've read it over and over again and tried to cut out as many things as i could without losing the message of what they're saying we are fast becoming the pornographic society over the course of the last decade explicitly sexual images have crept into advertising marketing and virtually every niche of american life this ambient pornography is now almost everywhere it's from our local shopping mall to our prime time television and by the way since this article was written the u.s federal communications commission decided last week that they will no longer find stations for nudity it used to be you weren't supposed to do it and if you did it you fine now they said we're not going to find anymore so that's like saying no trespassing but if you trespass it's okay it's just it's just an open door continuing to the study to no one's surprise the vast majority of those who consume pornography are males that's not a new development as ancient forms of pornography attest what is new about all this is the access today's men and boys are not looking at line pictures drawn on cave walls and they have found that i mean way back in caveman times a generation or two after the fall of man and woman from the garden of eden the decline downward i'm sure that there became people that that left the civilized world of of cain's city and and went to the caves and and after the flood there were lots more of them but instead of line drawings and cave walls today's men have almost instant access to countless forms of pornography in myriads of forms william m struthers of wheaton college a psychologist with a background in neuroscience and a teaching concentration in biological bases of human behavior writes in his study men seem to be wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long lasting effect not only on their thought process but their lives the simplest explanation for why men view pornography or solicit prostitutes is that they are driven to seek out intimacy the urge for intimacy is a god-given essential to the male but it is easily misdirected as men are tempted to seek a shortcut to their pleasure via pornography the problem is our culture has made that shortcut easily accessible in a fallen world pouring pornography becomes as addictive as any poison and this is this is his analysis viewing pornography is not an emotionally or physiologically neutral experience it is fundamentally different from looking at a black and white photo of the lincoln memorial or taking in a color map of the provinces of canada men are reflexively drawn to the content of the pornographic material as such pornography has a wide reaching effect to energize that man toward intimacy it is not a neutral stimulus it draws them in porn is a whispered promise it promises more better and endless pleasures pornography is a poly drug boredom and curiosity lead many boys and many men into experiences that become more like a drug addiction than we are willing to admit you know people kind of have sympathy on a drug addict and they smugly smirk when they hear of of a hollywood actor going into a clinic in palm desert for his addiction to immorality but truly what he's saying is they are addicted as to drugs why men rather than women as strothers explains the male and female brains are wired differently over time a man's exposure to pornography takes him or a boy deeper along and i like this a one way neurological super highway where a man's mental life is over sexualized and narrowed this highway has countless on-ramps but almost no off-ramps amazing pornography is visually magnetic to the male brain these experiences with pornography and pleasure cause their hormones to develop new patterns in the brain's wiring and repeated experiences will formalize a rewiring of the mind well when enough is never enough is what they find if it takes the same dose of a drug over and over for my body to begin to tolerate it i will need to take a higher dose of the drug in order for it to have the same effect that it did with the lower dose the first time when men are stimulated by ambient sexual images and then by explicit pornography it increases the effect something about pornography pulls and pushes at a male's soul an image begins to pick up steam and no longer does he just look at it it gains momentum and he can reach a point when it feels like he is a tractor-trailer truck rolling down the hill with no brakes but struthers does not leave his argument to neuroscience nor does he use the category of addiction to mitigate the sinfulness of viewing pornography sinners always look for fig leaves to hide their sin and biological causation is often cited as a means of avoiding moral responsibility but the addict is always responsible for his addiction look back at psalm 32 because the addict at whatever level david had gotten to explains his responsibility for his addiction because david took that road back to god when the initial consequences remember the the the that which precipitated second or i mean psalm 32 is second samuel 12's confrontation by nathan the prophet and when that initial consequence of guilt and shame multiplied david finally came to the end of himself he repented and sought god's cleansing from the power and stain of sin that's why he says how blessed is he who's not his his neurological or or addictive behavior that he's not responsible for no he says whose transgression he said that it was it was my personal choice to defy god's law that's been removed why because he took responsibility for it the second line whose sin again i have missed the mark god says this is where i'm supposed to be that's where i am that was my choice to miss the mark my sin he says in the second stanza verse 1 is covered it has had the revelation 1 5 as we would look at it the blood of christ to wash and to loose him david had deeply reflected on his sin he had had one of his most loyal friends murdered he took that friend's wife as his very own he angered her family which included two of his most trusted bodyguards and one of his most senior advisors see david's sin was far more than just bathsheba and uriah it just rippled through the entire court of the king it it took his life into a a complete downward spiral not only inside but with those around him and now god has revealed to the whole world why his baby died why his loyal friend was killed and what david had been up to when everybody else was out of town see that was the ultimate humiliation of david but david no matter how stricken with guilt and with his pride being crushed david longed for god's forgiveness but in the back of his mind david who had known the lord so well so close wondered can i ever be completely forgiven that's why the second stanz he said blessed is the man in verse 2 to whom the lord does not impute doesn't log it in the record book doesn't charge it to the account of the one that commits it blessed is a man to whom the lord does not impute iniquity you know that word iniquity we study means warped behavior david says this was warped david says in light of my horrendous sin will god completely forgive me and that's what psalm 32 becomes it's a place to flee if you ever find yourself wondering what david wondered the last part of verse 2 in whose spirit there is no deceit usually hand in hand with corrosive sin is deceitful behavior to cover it is is this internal hardening of the heart as as it's covered and covered and covered i always remember when i was running uh um taking bibles into north africa the muslim countries that we had to act like tourists and one time we went to a leather factory where they took stacked camel hides you know when camels i don't know whether they wear out and die or what but boy those were huge hides and they would have them stacked and they looked like sheets of plywood their hides and they would be taken one at a time and thrown into a series of multicolored pools where tanning solutions were used to first clean anything off the high that was still of of the meat that was left and then to slowly soften it and to get it just right and when it finally made it through all these pools at the other end they'd tell you this the softest leather you ever had seen from the camels well in our little tour around those moroccan um leather pits i remember clearly being in fascination that they used no machinery it was all humans and it was men who would jump up and down in these pools and they were just wearing shorts and they were just jumping up in blue and pink and red and green all these different colored agents that were the process of tanning and the guide i said does that hurt him he said it doesn't really hurt him but he said it does do something to him and and just saying one of the men was standing next to the pit he said just he said just you know and he said something in arabic he said just touch he said his leg and so i remember poking that leg and it felt like a countertop it was it was it was something had happened the the chemical that softened the leather hardened the leather workers skin so that there were there was a hardness that that was that was not like muscle tone it was just like plastic and i thought about that that just like deceit softens up a situation and and takes away the the the potential damage we'll get in the process of up us softening the situation it hardens our hearts and that's why in the second verse david says there's no more deceit no more covering i don't want any more hardness of heart david experience what we celebrate at communion the miracle of salvation is that the one who loved us and loosed us from our sin has completely forgiven us he does not impute he doesn't write in the record book a record of our sin he says it is forever gone the gospels record 37 specific miracles that jesus performed during his life uh 60 of those he performed around the sea of galilee in fact 60 percent of them he performed in the northwest corner of the sea of galilee but of those 37 recorded miracles all of them were wonderful but sadly if you analyze all 37 every one of those were temporary every one of those paralyzed people jesus restored the usage of their limbs by the time they got to the end of their life they were back to impairment every set of eyes jesus restored the blind by the time they got to in their life they were starting to fade and on week ago the food that jesus miraculous created to feed thousands was consumed and used up and their hunger returned the next day every miracle jesus did was temporary but the greatest of all christ amazing miracles was the one that has never faded in fact it's the one that people that have died and are around the throne right now are singing about the one who loved them redeemed them forgave them the greatest of christ's miracles is the one that jesus still performs every day it's it's the miracle of psalm 32 1 and 2 complete forgiveness now for us it's very hard to think of complete forgiveness because we attach to to people that sin against us a hurt that's hard to forget but jesus said i have taken the penalty upon myself so i have been hurt but my hurt for you is because i love you and i was hurt by your transgressions in my body i was pierced through for your iniquities and the stripes that that pummeled my body are what heals you but he said i did that because of my love up until the moments just before psalm 32 a distraught david was uncertain about the total forgiveness that god would give but as the spirit of god moved upon him and as in his heart he believed the truth that a substitute a sacrifice that was not guilty would be offered in his place and david looked beyond that lamb and that altar and he saw the promised one david trusted in another to take his place psalm 32 was david's song of testimony it was his joyful heart praising god for complete forgiveness you know the the greatest miracle that jesus performed was every time he would solve the physical thing but he'd say to those that he healed go and sin no more or your sins are forgiven you you see that's the ultimate touch of jesus and and that's the touch especially in light of revelation 1 5 that all of us need to remember because satan wants to say you have sinned one too many times and you can't get out of that ditch and jesus extends his hand and says let me touch your life i love you let me loose you and wash you and free you from your sins again remember what it says in hebrews 7 he saves us to the uttermost that means he keeps coming to the ditch when we go into sin and keeps pulling us out washing us up clothing us a noon afresh so that we can come before him boldly i think about how bill gaither many years ago when i was a little boy wrote a hymn that that most of us know shackled by a heavy burden neath a load of guilt and shame then the hand of jesus touched me and i am no longer the same he touched me oh he touched me and oh the joy that floods my soul that's what david was feeling the joy that comes of the healing touch that made him whole one more verse for you to turn to as we go to the new testament is john chapter 8. now i'm this is not intentional but this is another one of those verses that you might have to find in your bible in the footnotes okay in fact i got a sweet facebook uh note from a college student here in the church and they said you keep quoting that 11th verse and it's not in my bible i said look at the bottom and oh they found it down there it's in the footnote but look at john 8 and verse 11 and it's the the story of the woman taking an adultery and it says in verse 11 or actually jesus said in verse 10 and jesus raised him up and saw no one but the woman he said dear woman where are those accusers of yours has no one condemned you that is such a beautiful verse accusers that's one of satan's proper names he is the satan the accuser the the one who accuses us the adversary of the old testament satan is is the devil the the accuser of the new testament he says where's yours accusers has no one condemned you remember there is now therefore no condemnation romans 8 1 says so jesus says where where are your accusers and then verse 11 she said no one lord and jesus said to her neither do i condemn you go sin no more go leave your life of sin repent receive my cleansing receive my freedom from the binds that sin had on your life go god's forgiveness is always based on sins penalty being paid that's what we celebrate at communion we celebrate the penalty payer only an acceptable payment can satisfy god's holy justice a substitute a perfect sacrifice has to die in each sinner's place so it had to be the perfect chosen substitute and the only one who could qualify was jesus as the lamb of god and that's what we celebrate tonight salvation both in the old testament with david in the new testament with us is always based on christ's sacrifice and when we come to god convicted like david was by the holy spirit that we can't ever undo what we have done we have sinned against god we have transgressed we are warped we we are deceitful when we come agreeing with god about what we have done god promises us a forgiveness when we believe when we believe what well when we remember the truth of what forgiveness is all about modern tragedy is that so many christians are depressed about their sins and failures which causes them to start in kind of like a an endless cycle of of feeling bad sinning more coming out feeling bad sinning more and they just get into this spiral that satan wants them to be kind of like pilgrim and pilgrim's progress in doubting castle doubting god can really forgive me and keep me they operate under a false notion that god still holds some or all their sins against them they always seem to forget what the scriptures say real quickly look at revelation 13 with me here's a little theology of forgiveness revelation 13 right in the time of the introduction of the antichrist we see a truth about god that that affects us to this moment those misguided believers who forget what forgiveness means forget that god looked down the corridors of time even before he made the earth and he placed the sins of the world on the head of his son the lamb of god look what revelation 13 8 calls jesus it says slain from the foundation of the world see god's plan was for christ to be the perfect substitute and so jesus at calvary took the sin of all who would believe an eternal distance away from them i carefully said that that jesus on calvary took the sin of all who would believe because the only limit the scripture gives on the atonement is unbelief jesus said you believe not on me you will die in your sins he only attached as a limit to the atoning work he would do on the cross belief in that sacrifice and then finally one more verse before we go to communion tonight is romans chapter 8 because jesus christ who loved us and loosed us from our sins can soon not be as powerful in our lives when we forget the fact that romans 8 affirms christ promises us to never condemn us when jesus comes into our lives as savior and lord he says to us there is no condemnation to you you are in me you are in christ jesus and verse 2 because the law of the spirit of life in christ has made me free from the law of sin and death i never forget when i was counting down the days to be married to bonnie i spent 96 days traveling the wrong way to the wedding i i traveled with a group for 96 days we went to 36 countries and until we got past india we were going the wrong way we were going away from bonnie finally after about oh maybe the 80th day we got to india and finally the airplane was going the right direction toward home but i'll never forget longing for that airplane to take off in new delhi and our little tour group was on it and if you know anything about india you can sit in a jet airplane and look out the window and you see cows now they're just at the end of the runway but they don't you know they're sacred so they let them be out there and i remember sitting in that 747 if you've ever been on an air india flight they pack them too full and it was shuttering you could just feel them pushing and shoving stuff into the bottom of that airplane and it seemed like the wings were drooping and finally it they said okay you know take your seats in the most uncomfortable and upright position we're going to take off and so we did and that thing started lumbering down the the runway and it went too long in fact i could see the end of the runway and we were still looking at the cows and i was worried i would never get to mary bonnie when all of a sudden look at verse 2 the law of the spirit of life in christ that's that we can rise has made me free from the law of sin and death that's the downward law and it's like gravity pushing that 747 down all 860 some thousand pounds of it was overcome by the law of lift and that plane actually groaned and just at the very end of the runway it went and we couldn't see the cows anymore did you know that's exactly what jesus wants us to remember at communion that romans 8 2 the law of the spirit of life in christ is more powerful and can set us free and lose us from the law of sin and death the law of sin is sin stains and death cannot be avoided but the law of the spirit of life in christ if we will trust and believe and and cling to him all of a sudden lifts us up above that downward path of sin and death never forget christ promised to never condemn us and that when he comes into our lives he sets me free from the law that sin and death have to forever enslave me communion is a time when we hear jesus say do this in remembrance of me and tonight we celebrate christ's power to set us free from anything i mean i think living here in kalamazoo that just up the road in in grand rapids is a monument to mel trotter one of the most notorious drunks who who took his baby shoes off their feet in the time to sell it to get one more drink who terribly terribly abused his wife and family and children and and what a testimony that that mel trotter mission is as to what christ can do when he sets us free he has the power to set us free but at communion it's also time to renew our desire to abstain from every lust from not like david found to allow our minds to fixate on an image until that image overpowers us like a terrorist and hijacks our mind to start that downward spiral through the bread and the cup tonight we get to thank the one who loves us and who has once and for all and will over and over again remind us that he has come to rescue us from the ditch of sin clean us off again and get us back on the trail with him let's bow for a word of prayer and as we bow the men are going to prepare to serve communion to us but let's prepare to partake of communion and the way we do that preparation is making sure that we have clean hands and a pure heart and this evening if there's any unforsaken sin if there's any uh exposure to evil that we have not repented of jesus said change your mind about that cry out to me for help and i will save you from the power that sin father in heaven i pray that this truly will be a celebration of oh the blessedness as david said of the one whose sins are forgiven [Music] to whom those the record of those sins is not recorded in the books anymore oh lord how i pray that we will worship you with clean hands that you have washed with pure hearts that you have renewed and with a settled assurance that there has no temptation that's going to chase us through life that you have not already overpowered and you have made an open door of escape may tonight be that renewal of our our promise to you oh lord we will take that way of escape we want that wonderful loving and loosing that you have done to operate in our lives thank you for this bread and bless us as we worship you together tonight in jesus name [Music] amen you

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Id: ImfYSlKss3k

Length: 44min 9sec (2649 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021