December 12, 2021

This transcript has been electronically transcribed. Any transcription errors should be assumed to be due to the electronic format of the transcription and its limitations.  Our passage this morning is the second half of verse seven, but to get there we'll kind of work from verse one down to verse seven. Just a tad bit of review. I don't want to review everything from the beginning because then we'll be here for an hour in review time. But just a little bit of review. Of review is , Paul is speaking to us in this extended section about God's work of salvation, the incredible blessing that is God's work of life in Christ. And he began by talking to us, if you will, of God's work. Before he created time of God's purpose, of God's will, of God's plan before he created anything. And in the mind of God, we were his people in the mind of God. He chose us as his people, and we, from the very first conception in God's mind, were united together with Christ. So God's work of choosing God's work of adoption, all of that took place before God created anything. And that's where Paul begins. Then he moves from the focus on the work of the father. Before the creation of time to the work of the son in time. And so he moves now to focusing on what Jesus did in time in order to bring about what the Father purposed before time, which was our salvation, our life in Christ. So now we moved, last time we moved to the work of the sun and we began with verse seven. In this way, in him, we have redemption through his blood. And we've talked about this glorious truth of redemption. This is one of the, the most beautiful truths of the Christian life, and that is this truth that's wrapped up in this word redemption. What a beautiful word and what a beautiful concept because it speaks to us of a condition. A very undesirable, miserable condition that we are redeemed out of by means of a ransom payment, a propitiation payment made by Jesus on the cross. We are redeemed in his blood. So on the cross, Jesus pays the propitiation price to appease the wrath of the Father, the rightful just wrath of the Father, and he redeems us out of that horrible condition of being enslaved to sin. So that was the redemption in his blood that we talked about last time. This time we're going to move on to the next phrase, which is, we have forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his glory. So that's going to be our focus this morning. We're going to move from talking about one of the most beautiful concepts in the Christian life. To that concept, which is even if anything more beautiful than the, than the truth and the reality of redemption, and that is the reality of forgiveness. There is no teaching of the New Testament that is more fundamental, more foundational, more basic, more ubiquitous than the truth that Jesus Christ did not die a martyr's death. Jesus Christ did not die to show us how much the Father loved us. Jesus Christ did not die as an example for us. Jesus Christ did not die as the result of a long string of unfortunate events. Jesus Christ died to purchase our forgiveness of sin. Sin is only forgiven by the sacrifice of blood. And it is Jesus's blood on the cross that not only redeems us out of that state, but purchases for us, acquires for us the forgiveness of which we will talk about today. So there is nothing in scripture, especially in your New Testaments, that is more fundamental, more basic, more often repeated than the truth, that Jesus Christ did not die as your martyr. He died as your substitute, as your sacrifice. We call that penal substitution, that word penal, of course, what comes from the word punishment, penitentiary. And as punishment for our sin, Jesus substituted himself so that in his blood we have redemption and the forgiveness of our trespasses from verse one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus grace to you and peace from God our Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love. He predestined us to adoption to himself as sons, through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which he made us precious in the beloved. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will. And that should take us, I believe, down through verse eight, a little further than we're going to make it today. Again, the end of verse seven is going to be our focus, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. So last time we looked at this phrase in him, we have redemption through his blood. And we talked a great deal about redemption and we talked about in his blood. And we saw this glorious truth of our condition as being enslaved to the sin and which into which we are born, and into which we cast ourself by our own. Consistent choices through our life, and we saw the blood of Christ redeem us from that, redeeming us from the entrapment, the enslavement of of our sin, the guilt of our sin, as well as redeeming us in the future from all the things that make us miserable in this life now emotionally, mentally, and physically miserable. We are redeemed from this body that's winding down and giving out from these brains and these minds that that have such trouble sometimes remembering things or focusing and concentrating. We are redeemed from our fallen emotions, and all these things feed into this truth of redemption in his blood that we looked at last time. This time we move on to the next phrase, which is a type of a parenthetical phrase. So you noticed in the text, in his blood, we have or we have redemption in him. We have redemption in his blood. The forgiveness of our trespass is comma. So this is a type of a parenthetical phrase, an aside, so to speak. And what Paul's doing here is he's offering further explanation or further clarification for what he just said in him, we have redemption through his blood. Let me further that point by saying the forgiveness of our trespasses. He's for offering to us a little further explanation, a little greater clarity, a little more fleshing out the idea of redemption in his blood. So he's not just repeating himself. The forgiveness of our trespasses is not saying the same thing that he just said. He's, if you will, taking the ball and moving it down the field just a little bit. So we're going to take a look this morning at the forgiveness of our trespasses, and as we look at this concept of forgiveness, this is, again, to say it, it can't be said too many times. This is not only the most foundational and fundamental truth about our life in Christ. But it is probably the most beautiful concept that God has to offer to us in all of our life with Christ, the forgiveness of our trespasses. So we understand forgiveness. We don't need to really spend time understanding that word, but let's take a look quickly at Paul's choice of words. That's translated trespass. That's not the normal word that's used for sin. The New Testament, as you probably are aware, has. Three or four different words that it'll use that's translated in different ways to mean our sin, our trespasses, our iniquity, um, our wrongdoing, our transgressions. A number of different words can translate that concept of sin. Here, Paul chooses to use a word that's rightly translated trespass, which is to say a deviation from the path, a failing to stay on the path, a wandering away from the path in this context, the path of righteousness, the path of truth, the path of God. It's a wandering from that. And so in my mind I picture it like if you can imagine a a, a piece of land that's not yours, but then there's this easement that goes across the land, and as long as you travel along that easement, everything's fine. But if you leave the easement, then you are no longer on your property, so to speak, but you are trespassing on another's. And so that's the idea that the word has behind it. The idea of leaving the path and instead wandering onto another path that is the path of trespass, the path of iniquity or the path of wrongdoing, or the path of missing the mark. Sometimes we might say, so Paul chooses this word, which admittedly has a whole lot less bite to it, doesn't it? Trespass, doesn't sound nearly as bad as iniquity or even sin. So trespass is one of those words that you might say almost sort of softens the blow of what Paul's speaking about. So why does he choose this word trespass? It is not the most common word for sin. In fact, outside of the Apostle Paul, we only, we find the word in the New Testament about two dozen times. But outside of the Apostle Paul, we only find it used twice. And that's by Jesus, of course, in the model prayer, forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, but nowhere else in the New Testament do we find this word, except in the writings of Paul. And Paul likes this word in particular. He likes this word when he is explaining precise theological concepts. The other occasion that the word shows up with great regularity is in Paul's letter to the Romans, particularly the section of Chapter 5 67. In that section, if you're familiar with Paul's letter through Romans, that is a section of scripture in which I'm not here yet, in which Paul is explaining something very detailed and very precise, and he's using this word trespass in Roman, as we say in Romans ch chapter five on the screen here. The free gift is not like the trespass for as many die through one's man. Men's trespassed much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for meaning. That's one of the places throughout that extended section that Paul used his word. So if you notice here this word trespass for as many die through one's man's, one man's trespass. Paul is putting together two concepts, the concept of right death and trespass. It almost doesn't seem right to us that if somebody trespasses on your property, you shoot him. Does in fact kind of seem like a punishment that doesn't fit the crime yet Paul chooses specifically this word, and I think the point that he's getting across to us is this. You need not think of your sin as the most heinous, depraved sin of mankind in order to be deserving of eternal death. And the words of Paul, just the trespass, just the leaving of the path, or to use another word, just the missing of the mark, is enough to cast us into eternal nation. So the point here to make is we need not be considered this, the, this most depraved and the worst of sinners in order to stand in such desperate need of the forgiveness of God. Now, this is an important point to give. In the words of Thomas Watson, who wrote a few centuries ago. Or until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet. Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet. Now, this phrase right here is worthy of your committing to memory because this phrase is enormously helpful. The concept behind it is enormously helpful to help us to see the blessing of forgiveness, because here's what I want to say to you. No human being apart from the work of the spirit ever sees your own sin as necessarily heinous apart from the work of the spirit of God. Every human being sees their own sin as understandable. Justifiable, not really that bad. Sure I'm not perfect, but. That's how every human, apart from the work of the spirit sees their own sinfulness as something that is understandable, something that is justifiable. And Thomas Watson wisely says to us, until the work of God comes into your heart, until the spirit of God works in you, to show you the deep depravity of your soul, Christ is not going to be sweet. His forgiveness is not going to be precious to you until you see, and I'm going to say not see one time, but see on a daily basis until the work of the Spirit works in you daily to teach you again and again. My trespass is a heinous, blasphemous sin against the maker of the universe. That is the work of the spirit. And so if you see your sin in that way, praise God, that's the work of his spirit. But make it your prayer on a daily basis. Lord, show me, open my eyes to my own depravity cause me to see. The bitterness caused my own sin to be bitter in my thoughts, bitter in my mouth, so that I will see the redemption of your son, the forgiveness that your son has purchased for me as sweet. Until you see sin in that way, forgiveness will be nothing more for to you than a concept. Nothing more than a theological doctrine, the theological concept that's nice, nice to know about. We're sure glad that Jesus did that, but until you see your own sin in that way, which is a work of the spirit for you, you will not see his work on the cross as precious to you. So I think this is why Paul is using this word trespass. We can put it in whatever terms we like. Trespass, missing the mark, but it's all heinous iniquity before the Lord our God, our maker, whose image we have, blasphemed. That's the first thing to see is this word trespass. But then let's also spend just a moment, and let's just clarify for ourself the concept of forgiveness as opposed to the concept of pardon. You know, sometimes we will, we will use the phrase, forgive us of our sins, but then don't we also use this phrase, pardon our sins, or God pardons our sin or God specifically Jesus purchased our pardon on the cross. How many times do we sing? Something like that? So let's just pause for a moment and ask ourself this question. Is the concept of pardoning our sins, a new New Testament reality? Does the New Testament teach that God pardons our sin? And as you might suspect, the answer to that is no. The word pardon is not found in our New Testament. It is an Old Testament concept. The Old Testament will speak of God pardoning our guilt or pardoning our sin. But the New Testament never uses the word pardon. It will only use the word redeem or the word forgiveness. It will not use the word pardon Because pardoning of our sins is not a New Testament concept. Now this is important to see, but it's also easy to see because even the English words tell us of the difference. What's the difference between forgiveness and pardon? We can think of maybe a criminal who has been rightly convicted of committing some crime. And the sentence, the, the punishment for that crime might be life in prison or 30 years in prison, or maybe the death sentence or whatever. And along comes a governor that will pardon the criminal or a president that will pardon the criminal. And what happens? They are not declared to be not guilty. They are declared to have their sentence commuted. The punishment removed. The punishment is what is banished from the person. The person remains the convicted felon or the convicted criminal. , there's a young lady by the name of, , Claude Colvin, may have heard about her in the news. Claudette Colvin was a teenager in 1955. She was 15 years old in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, and she was an African American. She proceeded Rosa Parks by, , I think about nine months in doing the same thing Rosa Parks did, which was refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white person. So Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat for a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. She never reached the fame and notoriety. No, not notoriety. There you go, of Rosa Parks. But she was convicted of the same crime. She was sentenced and never served any of her sentence. Within, within the last couple of months, I believe, this past summer, Claude Colvin, who's an elderly, elderly woman now has petitioned the court to have her conviction expunged, removed from the court's records, so you can clearly see the difference there. She was convicted and sentenced, but never served the sentence. In other words, she was pardoned, but she remained the convicted criminal for all these decades. Now she says, well, I shouldn't be the convicted criminal that I've been. So I wish to now be, if we want to use that theological word forgiven, which means that the offense itself is removed. And so here, when we have one of the glorious truths of the New Testaments teaching to us of life in Christ, God does not just harden sin. The far richer, the far deeper truth is that God, Forgives sin. Forgiveness is a removal of the guilt. Forgiveness is a banishment of the guilt. Pardon is just a banishment of the consequence. It's a banishment of the sentence. It's a banishment of the punishment for the sin, which you are rightly guilty of. Forgiveness is a removal of that guilt. The guilt, the responsibility of the sin is moved from you to Christ. He becomes responsible for your sin. Second Corinthians 5 21, he becomes the sin that you are so that you are not just pardoned. You are forgiven and the guilt is banished from you. Even the thought of that guilt is banished from you. So many times. The scriptures teach us about how? About how the thought of our guilt is banished from the mind of God. Take a look with me at some of these passages in scripture. Hebrews eight, verse 12. I will remember your sin no more. Isaiah 43 I. I am he who blots out your transgression. I will not remember your sins. Jeremiah 31. I will forgive their iniquity. I will remember their sins no more. Now be clear about this. God forgets nothing. It is not true to say God forgets our sin because God is incapable of losing the memory of something. God does not forget our sin. In fact, you do not want a God who forgets your sin. Think about this for a moment. If God forgets your sin when he forgives you, what might happen? He might remember it again one day. You don't want a God to forget your sin. You want a God who banishes the thought of your sin, and that's what God tells us He does. His memory is not faulty. He doesn't lose the recollection of events. In fact, he retains those. But what he says to us is, my forgiveness is so complete and so total that the thought of that guilt is banished from my mind. And I remember your sins no more. Look at the completeness. Psalm 103 in verse 12. So far he does remove our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the West. Micah, chapter seven, he will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sin into the depths of the sea. Corey 10 boom used to say that God casts our sins into the depths of the sea and then puts up a no fishing sign. He cast them into the depth depths of the sea. Acts three, he blots them out. Verse John one, verse nine. He cleanses us from all our iniquity and all of our unrighteousness. The point here to make is that forgiveness is so much sweeter than simple, pardon or overlooking of our sins, or saying that the punishment is banished or remitted. Instead, God remits the blemish itself. The sin itself, the responsibility of that sin itself is moved from, from us Unto, unto Jesus. The righteousness of God's holy law ceases to be hostile to us and God in his mind, here's what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is God changing his mind towards us. Repentance is our changing of our own mind towards, towards ourself and our sins. Forgiveness is God's changing his mind toward us. It's God's saying, I banish from my mind the guilt that is rightly yours. I have taken that guilt. I have put it on my son and I have punished it to the fullest extent of the righteousness of my law. And so I therefore banish it from my thoughts in relation to you. God has changed his mind toward us and there is a certain resentment that has gone. You know, that's what forgiveness between people is all about, isn't it? Forgiveness between people is all about this maybe a, a feeling of resentment that we put away. There is a wrongdoing, there is a sin between friends or between spouses. And there is this certain feeling of resentment and forgiveness is a putting away of that resentment. In a sense that's also God's forgiveness of us. It's his putting away of his righteous resentment toward the sinner who has declared war upon him and upon his image and God's rightful resentment is then put away. So that is, in essence, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Let's just pause for one moment, and this is not in the text, but just it's worth our time just to pause for a minute and just reflect upon what the what the, what the scriptures teach us that is required of us. In order for this redemption, for this forgiveness, for this banishing of our guilt to take place, so we don't need to chase all these scriptures down, but just we can look real quickly at these four requirements, and you can sort of break these down differently if you want, maybe come up with three or five or six, but you get the basic idea first. In order for the forgiveness of our trespasses to come to us, the Bible teaches us that the sinner must be convicted and convinced, I'm sorry, in their mind, that they have sinned against God. It is not enough to be convinced that you have sinned against a person, so you, you cannot go to God with genuine repentance when all that your soul is convicted of is sinning against a person. If I sin against you, Miranda, and I go to Ms. Sharon and say, Sharon, will you please forgive me for what I said about Miranda? You would say to me, that's ridiculous. You need her forgiveness, not mine. And so if in our hearts we are only guilty of sin against a person and we go to God for forgiveness, without the sense, without the understanding that it is against God, we have sinned against his image, we have sinned against an image bearer, then the Bible tells us that that is not full and genuine repentance. Secondly, the sinner must also have a sincere, holy and earnest resolved to never commit that sin again. Regardless. Regardless of the difficulty, regardless of the strain, with, regardless of the resolve that it requires, I'm going to guess that everybody in the room can resonate with what I'm about to say. Do you know what it's like to be convicted of a sin? And to repent and go before God and in the darkest corner of your heart that this is a sin that you love and this is a sin that you're torn. You want to give it up, but then there is just a part of you that loves it and in your heart you confess that sin and you proclaim to God. I will turn from that sin. But down deep in your heart, what you mean is until the temptation reaches a certain point, I will then give in again. You know what I'm talking about? To know deep in your heart that you will choose that sin again, it just needs to reach a certain level of temptation. That's not genuine repentance. Genuine repentance requires that the sin resolve in their heart. Now, resolving in our heart and doing in reality are two different things, but resolving in our heart come, what may I turn from that sin for now and forevermore. So that's number two. Number three, the center must possess faith that God can, will, and here's the key desires to forgive your sin. We do not come before God with genuine repentance, with this idea that we are somehow convincing God to forgive us or coercing God to forgive us, or, , , pleading with God to change his mind and forgive us. The sinner who comes before God with genuine repentance, knows, has faith, believes in their heart. God wants to do nothing more than to forgive the repentance sinner. God wants to forgive the repentance center so deeply that he gave his son in order to make that doable. So we come before God, understanding by faith that not only can he, not only will He, but he wants to forgive us. LA And then lastly, number four, the center must be in a state of forgiveness towards all who have sinned against them, or at least the earnest desire to be in a state of forgiveness to all who have sinned against them. We know this from the teaching of the New Testament, where Jesus teaches us that if we withhold forgiveness from others, then our father is not forthcoming in his forgiveness to us. We can talk much more about that, about how all of these, all of these are a byproduct of forgiveness. However, the New Testament does teach us that if we hold sin in our heart against others, then God will not be forthcoming in his forgiveness to us. So those are just an, a side note that's right for us to point those out as we are talking about the forgiveness of our trespasses. And so that, that completes for us the first phrase, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Now, the second phrase, and this is where, this is where the real pay dirt of this section of scripture is according to the riches of his grace. So Paul has just told us we have redemption in his blood. And that redemption is not just the purchasing out of slavery to sin, but it is also the forgiveness of our trespasses. In other words, the sin that puts you into bondage, you are not just removed from the penalty of the sin. You're removed from the guilt of it. Then he says, according to the riches of his grace. In other words, Paul is giving us a measurement of the extent of the forgiveness of God. He's saying to us, this is the extent, this is the measurement. This is how we quantify the forgiveness of God. The qualifying, quantifying, measuring aspect of God's forgiveness is the riches of his grace. No other letter than New Testament. Talks to us about the wealth of God, like Ephesians, the riches of his grace, his immeasurable grace. Later on, Paul is going to say, God, who is rich in mercy, no other, just the next phrase that we're going to get to next, next week, , that he has lavished upon us. The letter is filled with words that bring to us this imagery of a God with immeasurable wealth. Not just physical wealth, of course, but the wealth of his character, the wealth of his grace, the wealth of his mercies. So that's the measurement of God's forgiveness, of his ability, of his willingness, and of his desire to forgive sinners. And the measurement is not a human yardstick. It's not a human scale. It is the measurement of the riches of his grace. If we want to give something to someone, maybe there is a hungry family in the neighborhood, in the area, and you want to give them something for Christmas, then what you have to do is you have to look to what resources you have. We don't say, oh, there's this family, this really precious family that just, I would just love to give them a million dollars. Let's do that. We first must look and say, what can we do? What are our resources? What can we give? And that is true for all of humanity, for God to extend forgiveness to us. He does the same thing, but he looks to his character, he looks to his grace. How much can I forgive, says God. Well, let me look and see how much grace I have and the supply, the resource. Knows no limit according to the riches of his grace. Look at Isaiah 55 and verse seven. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord. By the way, what's all that language about? Let the wicked forsake his way. The unrighteous man forsake his thoughts returning to the Lord. That's all repentance language, isn't it? All of that is repentance language so that he may have compassion on on him and to our God. And here's the point for he will abundantly pardon. So in your notes here, I just put some thoughts down. These are what the forgiveness of God is not measured by. The forgiveness of God is measured not by the character of the repentance sinner. The character of the person seeking forgiveness puts no limitation on the forgiveness that God gives. The genuineness of the repentance, the genuineness, the heartfelt genuineness of that repentance puts no limitation on God's forgiveness that he gives. You can't be more genuine in your repentance and then earn more forgiveness if you have a terrible sin to confess. You don't need a greater measure of genuineness in order to receive forgiveness because God's forgiveness is not measured by the authenticity of our repentance. It's not measured or not limited by the quantifiable life change of the center. We are not forgiven of more. Because our life has changed for the better. God does not forgive us with greater grace because our life has shown more change. The public confession of the sin, our, our, our forgiveness is not measured by our public confession. Esau, we're told in the book of Hebrews sought repentance with tears, and it was not granted. So the publicness, the, the desperate confession of the sinner or the reparations made by the sinner to the one who sinned against Judas, took his money and gave it back. Whatever reparations we might make for the consequences of our sin to those whom we have hurt does not gain us the forgiveness of God. That's a, that's a Roman Catholic concept. That's the Roman Catholic concept of penance. You do penance and you receive forgiveness. For this hogwash we can bring to God mountains of gold, we can bring to God truckloads of silver, and that is not the measurement of his forgiveness towards us. Now, let's be clear about this. All of those things are the result of forgiveness. All of those things should result from forgiveness, but none of those things are the measurement of what God does forgive. What is the measurement of God's forgiveness? His character, his character, his grace, his character is the measurement of what God can, will and desires to forgive. What about this, the forgiveness of the Father? What's, what does it. What is it limited by? What is the extent of what God can and will forgive what limits his forgiveness? Well, it's not the length of time spent in sin. Heard a story just before the service about, , a young man who just passed away after living a, a terrible life, or we know the story, the thief on the cross spent his entire life up to the last hour or so, or whatever. The apostle Paul, what, what about the heinousness of, of our sins prior to our repentance? The Apostle Paul put Christians to death. The heinousness of our sin does not limit God's forgiveness, nor does the strength or the vitality of the sinner's faith. God's forgiveness is not limited by how much faith we have. The scriptures tell us that all we need is a faith as a. Mustard seed, or the woman thought that all I've got to do is just touch the hymn of his garment. It's not limited by our faith. We can't believe to a greater degree and receive forgiveness that we would not have received without faith. To that degree, it is limited only by I, the character of God and the sacrificial death of the Son of God. That's another way of saying the forgiveness of God. That which God can, will and wants to forgive, knows only the limit of his immeasurable character, his immeasurable grace, and the limit of what Jesus did on the cross. When the blood of Jesus reaches its limit, that's the limit of God's forgiveness. In other words, there is no limit. Spurgeon said this, God will be none the richer if he withholds his forgiveness and he'll be none the poor if he gives it to the entire world. If God were to forgive every sin ever committed, if every sinner repented and placed faith in Jesus Christ and God forgave every sin ever committed, he will be no poorer. He would have no less grace. He would have no less resource to forgive if no sinner ever repented. If Jesus dies on the cross, sheds his blood and nobody ever believes and nobody ever repents and nobody ever receives forgiveness, God is not richer because he didn't extend any forgiveness. Because his forgiveness is immeasurable. We must look to our bank accounts and see what we can do. God looks to his character and sees no bottom to that. Sees no limit to that. It is according to the riches of his grace, God's forgiveness is far wider. It's far deeper, it's far more comprehensive, and it's far freer than we often lead ourselves to believe. All right, so that is in a nutshell. Th those are, those are the things that the text bring to us straightforwardly. What I want to do is I want to push the implications and the application of the text just a little bit further by asking the question. It's an, it is a question that we've already asked. We've already asked the question, what is God's forgiveness? Not, but let's ask that question a little more pointedly and let's let the text lead us into what I believe are some very important implications about the forgiveness of God that is extended to us to help us as the forgiven sinner of God. To do battle against sin in this life, understand our life in Christ more fully, and scorn the cunning efforts of the enemy because we have an enemy who seeks to sow tears, not only in the ch, the Church of Christ, but also in our mind. He seeks to sow tears in our mind, tears that will cause us to make false connections between what the forgiveness of God is and what the forgiveness of God does for us and what it does not. We have an enemy that seeks to lead you to believe that the forgiveness of God is promised to do things that it is not promised to do, and his tactic is this. Once you believe that. That creates disillusionment in your heart. It create, creates disappointment. It causes you to doubt the forgiveness of God. It causes you to doubt your own faith. It causes you to doubt God's willingness to forgive. Why? Because the enemy has caused us to have unbiblical expectations for the forgiveness of trespasses. Okay? So that's what we're going to talk about for the remainder of the time. And there are basically, there's more than three, but there's basically three that I want to let the text lead us into exploring this morning. First of all, the first thing, well just, let's take a look at how I phrased this. The forgiveness, the forgiveness of sins is not necessarily, now what I mean by this, and I'll repeat this just to make sure we get it. The forgiveness of God is not necessarily what that means is as we talk about some of these things, this doesn't mean that God doesn't do this, that God doesn't extend these gracious blessings to us. But what it does mean is that our forgiveness is not contingent upon these things. Okay? That'll make more sense as we go on. So number one is this, the forgiveness of sins is not necessarily the end of our disappointment in ourselves. The forgiveness of our sins is not necessarily the end of your disappointment in yourself. Now, disappointment in ourselves is something that's, that's common to all of the human experience. I doubt there's ever been, if there's ever been a human that lived without disappointment in themself, then they were a sick person because all of us know this feeling of disappointment in self. Here's the thing though, for the Christian disappointment in self, it's like it takes steroids. It gets ramped up into a whole different level, and here's why. Disappointment in self is fed. It's nurtured, it's grown by the Christians. Increased awareness of sin, increased sensitivity to sin, and increased understanding of the severity of sin. Those things come together to cause the Christian to struggle with great times of self disappointment. So disappointment in self when we are forgiven, when we are, when we stand before God as the forgiven sinners, that we are in the body of Christ, and then there is moral failure in our life. That moral failure. Can then cause us to enter into this tailspin time of self disappointment. One of the places to see this in scripture with the greatest of all clarity is Romans chapter seven. In Romans chapter seven, Paul is just being so transparent with his own struggles with self disappointment. Listen to his words. And as I read these words, these are, these won't be in the screen, it's too long. But in Romans chapter seven, just listen. Just listen to Paul's words of self disappointment. I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me, I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law, God in my inner being, but I see in my members, in other words, in the members of my body, I see another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. And Paul goes on from there, oh, who is going to deliver me from this body of sin? And that leads him, of course, into one of the most glorious chapters of scripture. Romans eight. But can you hear Paul's disappointment in himself? Can you hear how Paul is just struggling with the evil that he says Lies far? No, he says it's right beside me. That's right with me. Can you hear just his words? He is the forgiven child of God, and yet he wrestles so deeply with this sense and disappointment in me, in Paul, in the forgiven sinner for the forgiveness of God brings to us a new sharpness in our perception of sin, a new awareness of the depth of our depravity, and a greater understanding of the severity of that sin, and those things can come together to cause your sense of self disappointment to be working overtime. Now, God's forgiveness when God's forgiveness is given to us. Does the scripture teach that that's removed and taken away? Pop psychology would tell us. So I would suggest to us this morning that if, if we were to take a poll, maybe get 10 Christians in a room and take a poll and say, of those 10 Christians, how many of you believe that when God forgives you, that the self-disappointment should go away? How many of those 10 do you think would say, well, yeah, I think that's biblical. We know a lot, but Joel Osteen that would say, yeah, self-disappointment has no place for the Christian. However, that's not what the scriptures teach. The scriptures teach that if anything, the forgiveness of God makes that struggle harder. Why? Why wouldn't God just take that away? Because God uses that to create within us. A deeper longing for his friendship and a deeper enjoyment of his grace. God chooses in his wisdom to allow those, that sense of self disappointment to continue driving you to the cross, which is the place in which you are given the joy of the Lord. You are given the enjoyment of his grace, and you are given the gift of the spirit, which causes you to long for his friendship. You know that apart from the work of the spirit, you will not long for the friendship of God. If you are longing, yearning for the friendship of God, that is the work of the spirit in your heart because no human does that apart from God. So that is, that is God's goal. That is God's work to do that in our heart. Instead of freeing us from our ongoing battle with sin, God's forgiveness, in a sense, even makes it harder. Now. That's the first one. Number two is this, the forgiveness of sins is not necessarily the removal of our feelings of shame. Now, shame, remorse, regret for the past again, is probably one of the most universal of human experiences that every single one of us could say I could do without. I doubt there's anyone who would ever say, well, boy, that embarrassment from when I said that thing, or, I did that thing, or the shame for when I acted that way. I'm glad I've still got that. No, we don't say that because shame, remorse, regret from our past moral failures is something that we would just assume, never think about again. Once again, Pop psychology is going to say to us this, this pop psychology, which has infiltrated the teaching of the church, says to us when God forgives you, he doesn't bring that sin up again, does he? Who's ever heard that? Who's heard it said that once God forgives you, he never brings that sin up again. You got a chapter in a verse for that, right? That's what we point to. He remembers their sin no more. He banishes the thought from who Himself, not from us. In fact, what the scripture teaches us in regard to our past memories that bring shame and remorse from past moral failures, what the scripture teaches us is far more nuanced than we would. Tend to believe. Here's what the scriptures teach us in regard to our own remembrance, our, the, the undesirable thoughts of our past moral failures. Here's what scripture teaches us. We find places like Matthew 1220, , Matthew 1236, where Jesus says, , you will give an account for every idle word that you say. Scary thought. I mean, it's scary enough for me to give an account for every meaningful word that I said, much less every idle word, but we're going to give an account and so will you in order to give that account. Well, you got to remember it. Okay? So the scripture talks about giving an account, which means necessarily that those things have not been wiped out of memory. Okay? But then we also find other areas in scripture in which we seem to have this. Nuanced approached to what the, what the Christian is to remember and see from the past. We find places like Philippians three brothers. I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on now that seems to say to us what's in the past needs to stay there. Don't dig it back up. Your, your future is, and, and if I sound like a TV preacher here, your, your life is the future, not the past. That's what Paul seems to be saying there. But then just in the next chapter of Ephesians, we find this balanced by things like, therefore don't forget. Remember at one time you were alienated from God and hostile in mind. Or, or Paul says to the Corinthians, you know, there's not going to be liars and homosexuals and adulterers in heaven and such were some of you. In other words, I the Apostle Paul writing under the inspiration of scripture or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, want to remind you of what you used to do. So we have this nuanced approach to our shame of the past, our remorse of the past. Look with me in your notes, this is way too long to be on the screen, but Ezekiel chapter 36, let's take a look at this. This is an extended section of scripture in which I put this extended section of scripture just just to make sure we have a proper context for it. So look at beginning from verse 25. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols. I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart. And a new spirit I will put within you. And I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you. And I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I give your fathers, and you shall be my people and I will be your God and I will deliver you from all your uncleanness. I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant, et cetera, et cetera. Now what, what does all of that sound like? That sounds like new covenant language, doesn't it? And that's the reason it's there. So that we don't mistake what God's about to say with some sort of old covenant, pre cross understanding of life in Christ that was somehow not as full, somehow not as rich, somehow not as vibrant as, as life post cross is, right? So all that is there to say. The prophet Ezekiel is not talking about some sort of old Testament way of living for God that was much more legalistic than our freedom in Christ. Now, because this is full of new covenant language and new covenant imagery, this is God talking about his new covenant in Christ. What does he say? Immediately next? He says, after all of this, putting my spirit within you, taking your heart of stone, giving you the heart of flesh, after all of this God says, then you will remember. Your evil ways and your deeds that were not good and you will, what's that word? Loathe yourself. I don't think we're going to hear that in some of the television preachers, sermon circuits. This idea of the new covenant believer loathing themselves, and you will allow yourself for your iniquities and your abominations. You will be ashamed and confounded in your ways. If that surprises you, that God would say in the context of life in Christ, the believer will think of their sins and loathe themself. If that surprises you, I could point to six, at least six other places where the scriptures clearly teach that. So what is God saying to us? What God is saying to us is this. He uses. Remember what Paul's going to say just a couple chapters later in Romans chapter eight. For those who love God, all things work together for your good. He uses even your shameful remembrances of your past failures. And in fact, not only does it use them, he often brings them up. He often is the one to say, now listen, Corinthians, such were some of you. Listen, Ephesians, remember you were once hostile to God, even to Paul. He's going to say Paul over and over again, will never get over the fact of what he used to be. He brings it up some six times in his letters. This is what I used to do. I used to kill Christians. God will even bring that up to once again, teach us of the preciousness of his grace to cause us to yearn for his friendship. And to cause us to live in a place of great, great joy because we are the forgiven center. Now, I want to be quick to point this out too, that God uses our past shame. The forgiveness of God does not erase that. But God uses the shame of our past for good purposes in our life. But the shame that he uses in our life is not a shame that's mixed together with fear of being cast out. That is where the line must be drawn. God never brings to remembrance our past sins in such a way to cause us to fear. That he might just cast us out. Take a look with me in the scriptures at John First John chapter four in verse 17. By this is love perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is also, we are in the world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out Fear. For fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not been perf perfected in this has not been perfected in love. In other words, what John here is saying is that the love of God as it grows in our hearts, not his love for us, but our love for him, as that love of God grows in us, it's enemy, the enemy of our love for God is our fear that he'll cast us out if we think in our, in the back of our mind, you know what? God might just one day get really tired of us. He might just exhaust his patience with us. Maybe his grace is not truly immeasurable. If that exists in our heart and in our mind, then that fights against the love for God. And our love for God only grows and blossoms as our heart in faith knows He will never, by no means will leave our cast us out. If we are in his son, there is no punishment for our sins because our, his son has suffered the punishment for all of our sins, right? So the shame that God wants to bring to us of the remembrance of our moral failures is not a shame. That should create within us the fear that he will cast us out. Instead, it's the type of moral remorse or regretfulness that is the seed bed for the joy of the Lord, for the the experiencing of the grace of the Lord, and for the yearning, the deep yearning for the friendship of God. That's the fruit that it produces. Take a look with me again in your notes, Romans chapter six. On the next page, Romans chapter six. This is a type of shame that God's forgiveness brings to us that's mingled together with security. Put that in your mind, the idea of shame and security together, because in the human experience, what does shame mean? Shame means insecurity. When you are ashamed, you feel insecure. However, with God, it's the reverse with God. When he brings this sense of awareness of our past failures, it's not one that's coupled together with insecurity, but instead it's coupled together with security. Take a look at Romans chapter six, but what fruit were you getting at the time from the things of which you are now ashamed? In other words, Paul says to the Romans, you remember that time sounds like a theme, doesn't it? Do you remember that time when you were living in such Ani inequity? Do you remember that time when your sins were so great and you were so far from God? Do you remember that Paul says, What fruit did those things bring for you? He says, for the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, in other words, that was before your forgiveness. Now, before your forgiveness, all these things that you used to do and think and and say, what fruit did they bring you? They brought you no fruit. They brought you death, but now you've been forgiven. And Paul says, the fruit that you now get leads to sanctification and its end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God, the free gift of God is life in Christ, right? So Paul says there's a fruit that comes from your sin, from the shame of your sins prior to forgiveness, that fruit was death. Post forgiveness. Now that you have been forgiven, that fruit is life sanctification, security. Growth in Christ. Increased yearning for his friendship, increased appreciation for his forgiveness. Increased love for the Father William Greenhill wrote back in the 17th century. God's forgiveness teaches us to say, what have we done? How we have sinned against a God of love, mercy, and graced. We must not do it again. This couples together perfectly. If we had more time, we could take a look at the be attitudes at how Jesus is teaching of being poor in spirit of mourning and hungering and thirsting for righteousness. This is exactly what Jesus was talking about. So the forgiveness of sins the world would teach you, I'll use that phrase again. Pop psychology, or let me use this phrase, pop theology. That's a good one. Pop theology would teach you that God's forgiveness. Means the removal of shame. Remember the scapegoat? The scapegoat was all about taking the guilt away, right? And once God forgives you of a sin, he never brings it back up. But the scriptures say something different. The scripture says that our God, in love and in mercy will use everything at his disposal to make you more like Jesus, to make you love him more, to make you yearn for his fellowship. More. Lastly, the forgiveness of God does not necessarily bring feelings of peace. Once again, we were to get together 10 Christians and ask them, does the complete genuine forgiveness of God always producing you feelings of peace? How many of those 10 do you think we would say? Yeah, the Bible teaches that probably a great, great many, if not all. So here's what I did. I spent a number of hours chasing down everything that the scriptures say about repentance and what repentance produces forgiveness, what forgiveness produces, and feelings of peace where they come from. This took me a little while, but I chase down everything that the scripture says. First of all, about repentance. What do the scripture say? Repentance always brings, if the scriptures say that repentance, which brings to us forgiveness of sins. If the scriptures teach us that, that brings a feeling of inner peace, guess what? Then we can rely on that. We can count on that. If we have genuinely repented and the spirit of God is in us and we are forgiven of sins, then we will have a feeling of inner peace. Guess what? Not there. Here's what the scriptures do. Say that repentance brings joy, fruitfulness, cleansing. It brings the gift of the Holy Spirit, the healing of the healing of our land life. In Jesus' name. Proverbs 28 even says, it brings prosperity. It brings our own forgiveness. Of course, it produces rejoicing in heaven. Jesus says that the angels in heaven rejoice over the repentance of one sin, a time of refreshing. It brings us despairing from disaster that's coming. It brings us the compassion of God. It brings us the knowledge of the truth. But guess what? Nowhere that I could find in the scriptures tell us. Repentance brings a feeling of inner peace. Sometimes it does. But to believe that without that inner peace, we haven't been forgiven. Can you see how that would damage your faith? Can you see how that would weaken the roots of your faith when God himself has not said that? This is always what I do. So then I came at it from a different angle. Well, if there's no clear connection between repentance and an inner conscious peace, then maybe there's a clear connection between forgiveness and inner peace. Well, here's what the scriptures say that comes to us from receiving forgiveness. Scriptures say it's a state of blessedness. It's, , it brings to us purity from unrighteousness. It brings to us the empowerment to forgive others. It is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It teaches us to have the fear of the Lord, and it gives us a deep love for Jesus. But nowhere does it say forgiveness. Necessarily results and a sense of inner peace. Well, what about the teachings? , that, that, where, where does the scripture teach that our feelings of inner peace come from? I mean, it is a wonderful blessing that God would give us this sense of, of peace, of consciousness. Where does that come from according to the scriptures? Well, that can come from living in harmony with the, with others in the body. That can come from defeating anxiety through prayer that can come from God's protection. That is the gift of God. It says a righteous, it can come from a righteous life. It is a fruit of the spirit. It is, it comes, comes to us. Isaiahs nine verse six. From the birth of Jesus, it can come from being a member of the body of Christ. It is our, a result of our justification. It is a result of the spirit's rule over our thought life. It can result from, , steadfast and trusting mind, and it can result from loving God's law. But guess what? There is no clear. Connection between feelings of inner peace and the forgiveness of God. So there is a difference between God being at peace with us and we being at peace with ourself. Now, how many Christians would say, if we are at peace with God, then you necessarily must have peace with yourself. Yet I can find no scripture that teaches that. But there's a difference between God being at peace with us, between God forgiving us and our being at peace with our own self. The enemy has infiltrated the teaching of the church, and the enemy has taught the church that the forgiveness of God, if God has forgiven you, you will have a feeling of inner peace. And I think the Apostle Paul would say to us this morning, I never said that. In fact, what I said was that sometimes God will prevent that feeling of inner peace because he has even greater work of grace and love and mercy and compassion to do within our hearts, and he will only do that depth of work in the soil of a disquieted heart, a heart that is still struggling with our own moral failures. That's still trying to come to terms with that. We have a lot of manmade theology, don't we? And I think probably the greatest manmade theology in the church perhaps might be this. Okay? Nod your heads if you've ever heard this. I know God has forgiven me, but I just can't forgive myself. Now I spend a lot of time searching the scriptures. I invite you to spend as much time as you want, searching the scriptures and find the concept of self-forgiveness in there. I can't find it. The reason I can't find it is not only because it's not there, but because this manmade theology of self-forgiveness is really code for restoring respect. That's what self-forgiveness really is. Self-forgiveness is the term that we use when we as believers who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit experience, the sharp pain of seeing our own moral failures. And a resulting lack of respect, mostly self-respect that results from that, that rightly results from that. We don't like that, and so we return it into forgiving ourself. I know God has forgiven me, but I just can't forgive myself. Oh, really? So we're more righteous than God. Now, our standard of morality is higher than God himself. God himself can find it in his heart to forgive us, but our morality is so high that we just can't forgive ourself. Or maybe Jesus' work on the cross wasn't quite good enough. It was good enough for God to forgive us, but it wasn't good enough for us to forgive ourself to hear the ludicrousness of that manmade theology. Let's call it what it is. The worship of self-respect, the sinful worship of self-respect. Because when we experience that acuteness, that sharpness of seeing our own heart, seeing it in our actions, hearing it in our words, then our heart revolts at that. Meanwhile, God is lovingly and gently holding the mirror and saying, I want to use this to grow your love for me, to grow your dependence upon me. Meanwhile, we're saying, no, no, no. Let's redefine that. Let, let's baptize that. Let's give that a nice Christian name so that we can go on feeling that way. Go on rejecting the deeper work of God. We're folks, we're talking about the deep work of the spirit in us, not superficial work where the Holy Spirit wants to get deep into your soul and he wants to make you like Jesus. But in order to do that, no pain, no gain. He's got to bring that pain to us and he's got to say, this is what I've forgiven. This is what I loved when I died. This is what I gave myself for. Do you see it? This is what I gave myself for. Look at it. And we want to say, no. That's the deep work of the Holy Spirit. In the forgiveness of our trespasses, we must not, when God forgives us, we must not allow. , a continued feeling of a disquieted heart or maybe the, the continued thoughts, the unpleasant thoughts about our shame. We must not let those thoughts cause us to doubt his forgiveness. That's the enemy's goal. He wants you to doubt God's forgiveness. And if we attach these unbiblical requirements to God's forgiveness, we will, we will think of his forgiveness as partial or maybe, maybe we really haven't repented. Will you, you feel like that you feel like, well, I guess I just haven't repented good enough. Why? Because these, these feelings are still here. I haven't forgotten about my sin, so maybe I haven't repented deeply enough. Oh, the enemy loves to get you onto that little. Tail spin. That little, like the little hamster going around and around. He loves to get you on that. Repent harder, repent harder. Repent more genuinely. Maybe God will forgive you. Then all the while God is saying to us, child, I've forgiven you, but I want to take you to another place. I want to equip your heart for eternity in a way that I cannot equip it. If you just turn your face from what it is that I loved and what it is that I died for, never doubt his forgiveness. Never doubt his willingness is desire to forgive us. There is nothing that God desires more aside from his own glory than to forgive his children.