The Promises of the New Covenant, Part 3 – Hebrews 8:12

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The Church: God’s Divine Construction Project, Part 4 (Romans 12:3-10; Acts 10:34-43)

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Well, prior to the British invasion last week, we were looking at the New Covenant in Hebrews chapter eight. So please turn your

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Bibles to that passage, Hebrews eight. We're gonna read together verse eight through verse 12.

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Hebrews chapter eight, beginning at verse eight. For finding fault with them, he says, "'Behold, days are coming,' says the

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Lord, "'when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel "'and with the house of Judah. "'Not like the covenant which

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I made with their fathers "'on the day when I took them by the hand "'to lead them out of the land of Egypt, "'for they did not continue in my covenant, "'and

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I did not care for them,' says the Lord. "'For this is the covenant that I will make "'with the house of Israel. "'After those days,' says the

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Lord, "'I will put my laws into their minds, "'and I will write them on their hearts. "'And

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I will be their God, and they shall be my people, "'and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen "'and everyone his brother, saying, "'Know the

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Lord, for all will know me, "'from the least to the greatest of them. "'For I will be merciful to their iniquities, "'and

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I will remember their sins no more.'" Let's pray together. Our gracious Father, we thank you for making a new covenant and promising it, and then initiating it by the sacrifice of your

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Son. And we thank you for all of these blessings, of which we've just read. Your law on our hearts, the indwelling spirit, our adoption, sanctification, regeneration, the forgiveness of our sins, our justification, all that is contained in those promises.

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And we ask that as we meditate and think upon the forgiveness of sins and what that means, that our hearts may be moved and we would be sanctified, and that you would use our time and our study here today to glorify your great name and to draw us near to you.

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Grant us understanding and insight into your word, we pray, as it is preached and as it is read, and as we meditate upon it, in Christ's name, amen.

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Well, there are three promises in the new covenant that we've been looking at. We covered two prior to our conference and the guest speaker last week, and those two covenants are general, sorry, those two blessings or promises are general blessings or promises to which a lot of other and smaller promises and equal promises and some even greater promises are attached.

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And the new covenant is basically the fulfillment or will be the fulfillment of all of God's promises to Abraham and to David and to the nation of Israel when it is fulfilled to the very people to whom

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God made those promises and gave that new covenant. And the first of those three promises is the promise that God's law would be written on our hearts.

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And this, remember, is entirely different than the promises of the old covenant. In the old covenant, everything was external.

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The law was written on tablets of stone. The priesthood, the sacrifices, the worship, it was all external.

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Everything was outside of the believer or the believing one. And in the new covenant, everything becomes internal so that now we have both the compulsion as well as the ability to obey the commands of God.

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His law is written on our hearts. We have desires and affections for righteousness and the spirit dwells within us and compels that obedience, sanctifying us and moving us, leading us, as it were, out of iniquity and unholiness and unrighteousness into lives of holiness and righteousness.

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That was something that was demanded by the old covenant but not provided by the old covenant. But in the new covenant, these blessings are granted and given to us, to all those who are in the new covenant.

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The second promise or blessing was that we would be his people and he would be our

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God and all those in the new covenant would have a knowledge of God. So no longer would there be a covenant community that was mixed of believers and unbelievers, people who are part of the community but not actually worshipers of Yahweh.

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Under the new covenant, all those who are in the new covenant know God and know him intimately and are related to God.

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This is the blessing of the new covenant. This was something that the old covenant pictured but did not provide. And now this third blessing that we're looking at today, and this is just in verse 12, and it is the forgiveness of sins.

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Read verse 12 with me. For I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

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Now that has to be the crowning jewel of the new covenant.

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That's the crowning jewel of the new covenant. In the new covenant solar system universe, that is the brightest and most distinguishing star.

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That is something that the old covenant pictured, it portrayed, it promised, it anticipated and looked forward to.

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But forgiveness and payment for sins was not something that the Mosaic covenant ever provided.

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Because all of the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. There was, in the words of Hebrews chapter 10, that perpetual reminder year after year as the high priest would go in and sprinkle the blood and make atonement.

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There was that reminder of sin year after year. And while that sin was covered in a sense, it was out of view as it were, covered by that blood.

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It was never dealt with and taken away. The payment was never fully made. So under the old covenant, the promise of a payment for sin was there, but the provision of that payment was not there.

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Because the blood of bulls and goats could never do that work. It could never take away sin and make it go away, make it paid for.

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The price could never be paid by animals. This is the crowning jewel of it all. This is the best and the greatest blessing that the new covenant provides.

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It is, as it were, the steam locomotive that drags the train of all the other blessings that come to us.

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Because if it is not for the forgiveness of sins, God could not be benevolent toward us. Because he cannot simply dismiss sin.

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He cannot simply overlook sin. Justice must be paid. Justice demands a payment for sin.

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So God could in no way be benevolent toward us or be kind to us or dwell with us or dwell in us or walk with us or make us holy.

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He could not be benevolent toward us and lavish us with gifts if it were not for the forgiveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins is the hinge upon which all of these other blessings that we enjoy come to us.

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Everything turns on that. Because if sin is not paid for and if the sin problem is not dealt with, then no other benevolent gifts could be given to us.

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It is because sin is taken out of the way that God can freely, with Christ, give us all things.

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It is only because our sins are dealt with and paid for that he is able to also give us the kingdom and to adopt us and to give us life and resurrection bodies and he can lavish us with earthly blessings and he can lavish us with heavenly blessings.

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It is only because sin has been dealt with that all of the other blessings come to us. So this really, forgiveness of sins, is really the wellspring of God's grace.

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It is the wellspring of all of his benevolent gifts. And though it occurs last in the list of blessings, at the very end of the promises of the new covenant, it is most certainly central to all of the blessings of the new covenant.

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So this is what we're going to be meditating on today, the forgiveness of sins and what that meant to the nation of Israel and what it should and does mean to us.

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The forgiveness of sins, that God will be merciful to our iniquities and that he will remember our sins no more.

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Now imagine this or remember what the context of this is for the nation of Israel. Remember when the new covenant was given, they had been condemned for all of the sin that we read of in Jeremiah chapter five.

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And remember how Jeremiah chapter five ends, the prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule on their own authority and my people love it so.

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In other words, they have cast off all restraint, they've broken through the bonds, they do not listen to my word, they do not listen to my prophets.

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The prophets are off speaking on their own minds, inventing stuff and saying, there's peace and prosperity coming, the

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Lord is pleased with you, don't worry about it, he's not going to judge you for your sin, there will be no destruction, there'll be no sword, there'll be no famine or pestilence or anything,

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God is fine with you, don't worry about your sin, they were prophesying falsely, the priests were doing their own thing, ruling on their own authority, not teaching the word of God, not interested in leading people in God's word or God's way, not condemning sin, not dealing with it in any way, the priests were ruling on their own authority and how did the people respond to it?

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Jeremiah five says, my people love it so. Right, a whole nation, nothing they would rather have more than prophets telling them what they wanted to hear and priests doing whatever the priest wanted to do.

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The people were fine with it. And twice in Jeremiah chapter five, the Lord says, on a nation such as this, shall

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I not avenge myself? I've asked myself that question about our nation for a generation.

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On a nation such as this, shall God not avenge himself? Almost get the feeling that he's starting to.

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On a nation such as this, shall I not avenge myself? Now, if you were a Jew and you had realized that because of our sin and our idolatry, and listen, the

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Jewish nation at the time of Jeremiah, when the new covenant was promised, that Jewish nation had, in almost every way, exchanged the true religion of Judaistic worship of Yahweh for utter and outright paganism.

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Adultery, fornication, sexual immorality, child sacrifice, idolatry, every form, every branch, every nuance of paganism that you can imagine was part of the lifestyle of the

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Jewish nation as a whole. The number of true believers were few and far between, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel.

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They were rare men, rare people who actually worshiped God. And so they had broken the covenant, the

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Mosaic covenant, and as a result of that, God promised, I'm bringing a nation against you from afar. It was the

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Babylonian nation, and they will destroy you, and they will judge you, and that's exactly what had happened. God did avenge himself on that nation.

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They had broken the covenant, they had been exiled from the land, they had been cursed by their God, the monarchy that God had promised them under David was destroyed and lie in ruins.

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The palace was in ruins, the temple was in ruins, there was no more sacrifices going on. It is as if the entire nation had been destroyed, and it is in that context that God says,

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Salvation such as this, shall I not avenge myself? And it is in that context that God promises in verse 12,

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I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. Let me give you a couple other descriptions of the nation's sin,

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Jeremiah chapter 30. Verse 14, all your lovers have forgotten you, they do not seek you, for I have wounded you with the wound of an enemy, with the punishment of a cruel one, because your iniquity is great, and your sins are numerous.

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Why do you cry out over your iniquity? Your pain is incurable, because your iniquity is great, and your sins are numerous.

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I have done these things to you. Jeremiah 32 verse 21, you brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, and with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terror, and gave them this land, which you swore to their forefathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey.

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They came in and took possession of it, but they did not obey your voice or walk in your law. They have done nothing of all that you commanded them to do, therefore, you have made all this calamity come upon them.

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Jeremiah 32 verse 29, listen to the descriptions of their sin. The Chaldeans, that is the

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Babylonians, who are fighting against this city, will enter and set this city on fire and burn it, with the houses where the people have offered incense to Baal on their roofs, and poured out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger.

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Indeed, the sons of Israel, the sons of Judah, have been doing only evil in my sight from their youth, for the sons of Israel have been only provoking me to anger with the works of their hands, declares the

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Lord. Indeed, this city has been to me a provocation of my anger and my wrath from the day that it was built, even to this day, so that it should be removed from before my face, because of all the evil of the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger.

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They, their kings, their leaders, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, they've turned their back to me and not their face.

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Though I taught them teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction, but they put their detestable things in the house, which is called by my name to defile it.

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They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben -Hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Moloch, which

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I have not commanded them, nor had it entered my mind that they should do this abomination and cause Israel to sin.

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On a nation such as this, shall I not avenge myself? It is in that context that God says,

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I will be merciful to their iniquities and their sins I will remember no more. That's the promise to the nation of Israel.

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Do you know what that promise would have sounded like to a Jew in Jeremiah's day? As they felt the weight of their sin and saw their nation destroyed, do you know what that promise would have sounded like to them?

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It would have sounded just like that promise sounded to you when you first became aware of your sin and you saw the weight of it and the guilt of it, but you heard that there is forgiveness and remission of sins in Jesus Christ.

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What relief, right? What relief to feel the weight of the burden of our sin, but then to know that in spite of all of the weight and burden of our sin, that there is a forgiving

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God who forgives that iniquity and remembers our sins no more. And ironically, do you know when it is the most difficult to believe that God is a forgiving

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God? It is at that very moment when we feel the weight of our sin so keenly and so severely.

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That is when we tend to doubt God's forgiveness. If you walk out on the street and you ask your run -of -the -mill

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Joey Bag of Donuts, whoever he is, and you just ask him, do you think God's a forgiving

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God? You know what he'll say to you? Oh yeah, of course God's a forgiving God. You know why he says that? Because he really doesn't think that he himself has done anything to warrant

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God's justice or to warrant God's wrath. And because he doesn't feel the weight of his sins, he thinks, of course

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God is gonna just overlook a few of my little peccadillos or my little indiscretions from time to time. Nobody's perfect, and God knows that nobody's perfect.

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And because God knows that nobody is perfect, he's just gonna overlook my few little transgressions that I have against him.

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And because he doesn't feel the weight of his sin, he is quick to say that God is a forgiving God, because he can't imagine that there would be a

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God in heaven who would punish him for his few iniquities and his few little sins that he has.

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But make that same person tremble before the law of God and shut off the windows of God's mercy and grace, and make the windows of God's forgiveness close to him so that all he sees is the darkness of his sin and the depravity of his own heart.

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Use the law to show him just how much of a sinner he is. And I promise you, it is then that he will begin to wonder if God really could forgive a sinner such as I.

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It is then that God would say, shall God not avenge himself on a sinner such as I?

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See, it's when you feel the weight of your sin that one begins to doubt whether God can really, truly forgive.

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And the law is the thing that does that work. It's the law that condemns us. The law says thou shalt not, and we have done every last thing that the law says thou shalt not do.

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And the law demands this, that, and the other thing, and we have failed to do all that the law demands of us. So we have sinned in two directions.

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We have done those things which are prohibited by the law, and we have failed to do those things which are demanded by the law.

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And so we stand before God as unrighteous and unholy. And we look at the law that says thou shalt not sin, or thou shalt not lie,

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I mean, and we have lied and we have told lies. We see the law that says thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain or carry his name in vain, and what have we done?

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In our lying, we have blasphemed God. We have used his name as a swear word to express disgust or excitement.

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We've used it flippantly. And then we have, in all of our other sins, we have carried God's name poorly and dishonored him in that respect and dishonored our parents, so there we violated another commandment.

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And all of our lust is accounted as adultery, and all of our hatred is counted as murder. And all of our failure to love the

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Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is accounted as idolatry and self -love and self -worship. And we have failed to love our neighbor as ourself.

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We failed to do all that we are commanded to do. And so the law comes in and crushes us and says you're guilty and you're a sinner.

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And so the law shows us all of the various ways that we sin. Each one of those commandments, you could take a whole sermon or a whole series of sermons and unfold all of the commandments that are in God's word.

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And you could see all of the various ways that we break each and every one of those commandments, each and every day. So the law shows us the variety with which we sin.

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But then we have to stop and we have to count up the number of our transgressions. And when we look at the number of our transgressions, is there any one of us that could honestly stand before God when we just look at the number of our sins?

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Let's say for instance that we just start counting your sins from the age of 15. That's being very generous because I can promise you that I sinned before I was 15 years old.

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But let's just say we start counting your transgressions when you're 15. And let's say that we only postulate that you have violated the law of God or transgressed five times every day.

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Just five. Now I know that that's being overly generous and conservative because there are people here who you can rack up five transgressions before your feet hit the floor in the morning.

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But before you have your first cup of coffee, you've sinned more than five times. So let's just be really hyper -conservative and just say it's five transgressions a day since you were 15.

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That's 1 ,825 and let's just round down and call it 1 ,800 transgressions per year, 365 days in a year.

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By the time you are 20, you will have sinned and counted up 9 ,000 violations of God's law by the time you're 20 years old.

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By the time you are 25, it's doubled. You're at 18 ,000 transgressions.

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Your rap sheet is getting pretty deep. You're file in heaven. The charges and crimes against you that you have committed against God, the charges against you are numerous, 18 ,000.

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And again, I'm being hyper -conservative. By the time you are 30 years old, you have to give an account before God for 27 ,000 transgressions.

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By the time you're 40, 46 ,000 transgressions. By the time you're 60, 82 ,000 transgressions.

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By the time you are 80, 120 ,000 transgressions of God's law. Now that's being hyper -conservative.

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I promise you that I had reached 120 ,000 transgressions of God's law before I was out of high school.

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I promise you that. So you begin to see the variety of the ways in which you sin. Then you see the number of your sins and it is then that as sinners we have to ask ourself on a person such as I, should he not exercise vengeance?

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Should God not avenge himself on a sinner such as me? Since I have sinned against so good and so benevolent and so kind and so great a king as the one that we serve.

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Since I have sinned against one of such infinite value and worth and I have tread his law under my feet.

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I have spurned his grace. I have abused his name. I have violated my oaths. I have violated his word and transgressed him thousands of times in reality each and every day.

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Thousands of times, not five, thousands of times. On a person such as I, should he not avenge himself? And it is there and it is then that we begin to doubt can

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God really truly show me mercy? We look at other people and we think surely there is grace for them but not for me.

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There is payment for their sin but there cannot possibly be payment for mine. God can forgive them but me, my sin, my transgression, too many, too numerous and too varied.

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And whatever the transgression is, when we feel the weight of it, that's when we begin to doubt. Can God honestly say of me that he will be merciful to my iniquities and remember my sins no more?

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And listen, that act of doubting God is just as hideous of a doubt as the act of doubting

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God the other direction and doubting whether his word is true. And the sinner who doubts that he really is a sinner and needs grace and forgiveness, that's one sin.

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The person who sees his sin and doubts that God can forgive it, it's the same doubt. It's the same act of pride.

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It is the same unbelief that has to be repented of. When God says you are a great sinner and you don't know the half of it, and we don't, and then we begin to feel that and we're tempted to doubt that he can forgive it, it is then that we have to stop and say,

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I'm doubting now his forgiveness. At first I doubted I was a sinner, now I doubted that I can be forgiven as a sinner.

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It's the same act of doubt. We should not doubt either one. And here's his promise, for I will be merciful to their iniquities and their sins

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I will remember no more. This describes his forgiveness and the death of Christ. And we'll come back to the death of Christ here in a moment and how that brings and purchases forgiveness.

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Now as we've been going through these promises of the new covenant, we've been trying to do two things. Acknowledge to whom the covenant was originally made, the house of Israel and the house of Judah, and understand that we in some way benefit by the blessings of that.

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And so in weeks past I've described to you how these promises are going to be fulfilled to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, that there will be a national salvation because there will be an individual salvation for every

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Jew alive when God brings in the kingdom and fulfills the promises of Abraham and the promises of David.

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So I don't wanna go back through all of that because I've done that in recent weeks, so I'm not gonna rehash that. Today I wanna look at this text and what it means to us that God remembers our sins no more and shows us mercy for our iniquities, us individually.

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We know that this will be fulfilled to Israel in the future, but in the here and now we experience the blessing of this salvation, that God remembers our sins no more, that he does not credit to us our transgressions, but instead he shows us mercy for our iniquities and mercy for our sins.

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So what does this text mean when it says in verse 12, I will be merciful to the iniquities and I will remember their sins no more. I wanna make four observations here.

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Number one, I want you to notice that God's forgiveness in this passage is likened to him forgetting our sin.

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It's likened to him forgetting our sin. This I think was magnificent. I read a sermon by Charles Spurgeon on this passage this last week, which

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I thought was very helpful, where he spent half of his sermon just unfolding this point, which I think is magnificent, that God forgets our sins and our transgressions.

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And here's what's most interesting about that phrase. Do you notice that the forgiveness of God is described in terms of God doing something that he cannot do?

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Do you notice that? He forgets or remembers our sins no more. He forgets our sin.

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It's impossible for God to forget anything. So how is it then that he forgets my sin?

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What does the passage mean when it says he forgets my sin if God cannot forget anything? Because forgetfulness, as many of you older folks are starting to realize, forgetfulness is not a virtue.

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Forgetfulness is not a strength. It is an infirmity. It is a disability. It is a weakness, and God has none of those.

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The fact that we do not and cannot remember every last thing is not virtuous for us. But God can forget nothing because he knows everything, and he knows every contingency.

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He knows everything that has come to pass. He knows everything that is coming to pass. He knows everything that will come to pass.

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He knows everything that could come to pass if everything that came to pass came to pass differently.

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He knows all of that. And furthermore, he had known it from eternity past, and he will know it all the way through to eternity future, and he can forget nothing that has happened.

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There's no way that God can forget in any real sense or any genuine sense our sin. He cannot forget anything.

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There can be no gaps in his memory. And yet the forgiveness of our sins is so full, so final, so complete, and so comprehensive that the author has to use words that describe something

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God cannot do to describe the breadth of it, that he will remember them no more. And you read that and you think, how can

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God not remember something? He has to remember everything. Well, this is an anthropomorphism.

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It's when we use a human type of a term to describe an attribute of God in human terms so that we can understand it.

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We say the eyes of the Lord roam to and fro throughout the earth, watching and observing us.

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We know that God doesn't have literal physical eyes, but it's an anthropomorphism. We see through our eyes, so it's a human quality attributed to an attribute of God, his omniscience, to describe something that is true of God in terms that we can understand it.

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It is the same here. You and I understand what forgetfulness means, right? We've all forgotten more than we can remember at any given moment.

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We've all forgotten that. Even the youngest among us has forgotten more things than they will ever remember. And that will be true of us for the rest of our lives.

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So we understand what it means to forget something. It is to experience something in the mind, forgetfulness, as if it never happened, because you don't recall it.

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It's not in your mind. So it's an anthropomorphism. God's forgiveness is described in terms of something that he does which he actually cannot do.

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That is how the author wants you to understand it. We understand that in reality, God cannot forget anything, but listen, judicially, in terms of God's relationship to us, judicially, he forgets it and he remembers it no more.

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Charles Spurgeon said this. Of course the Lord remembers the evil doings in the sense that he cannot forget anything, but judicially, as a judge, he forgets the transgressions of the pardoned ones.

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They're not before him in court and come not under his official perception. That's what it means.

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That in the court of God's law, even though he's well aware of our sin, that in the court of God's law, before the bar of God's justice, it is as if they are forgotten.

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He does not call them to mind. This has to be a deliberate, intentional, willful, and full act on God's part.

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To treat us as if we have never sinned. Do you understand that? That he remembers them no more.

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He shows mercy toward our iniquities and he puts our sins out of our mind. Now I want you to contrast that with the unbeliever.

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The unbeliever's sins are written, as it were, with an iron pen engraved in marble for all of eternity.

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God forgets not one of their transgressions. Nothing that is happening on any of the streets of any of the major cities in our nation today, nothing of it is outside of his purview.

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Nothing of it is missed. Nothing of it remains unseen. And these people who are committing these atrocities, when they stand before the bar of God's justice, they might not remember the flat screen

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TV they took or the cheesecake they stole from the cheesecake factory or the stereo that they ripped off or any of the other things that they looted or destroyed.

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They might not remember it, but when they stand before God, every last transgression and every last iniquity will be brought up before them.

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And the unbeliever will stand there unaware that even unrecognizing and not remembering the very things that he did, but when

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God brings it up before his law of justice, before his bar and his tribunal at that great white throne, every last sin and every last transgression will be called to account.

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And there the unbeliever will say, oh yeah, I forgot about that. But God will say, I haven't forgotten about anything.

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Every last sin is under, he sees it all. It is naked and open before the eyes of whom we have to do.

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He knows it all and he sees it all. And for the unbeliever, those sins are etched forever.

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And they will suffer the wrath of that forever. If you're in Jesus Christ, you have escaped that by God's grace.

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Because your sins, your iniquities, he remembers no more. It is as if they never happened.

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Past, present, and future. It is as if they have never happened.

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Remembered no more. So full, so comprehensive, and so free is his forgiveness that it is as if you never committed those sins.

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He doesn't remember them. Second, this forgetfulness or this forgiveness means that God does not think over our sins.

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See, this is how our memory works. When we remember something, maybe some wrong or transgression that has been committed against us, we store it up in our little memory basket and we carry it around with us everywhere we go.

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And every once in a while, we pull that memory out, that wrong or that's been done against us, and we polish it up and we go over it again in our mind and we remember exactly how we felt at the time that this person sinned and grieved me in that way.

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And we look at it from all the different angles and maybe we even make up some offenses that we didn't see before. We kind of add them to that little memory and then we put it back in our memory basket and we carry it around for a few more years and bring it out again.

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We do the whole process all over again. We think about it, we meditate on it. In the words of Spurgeon, we brood over it like a hen broods over her chicks.

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In fact, this is what Spurgeon said. I have known persons to brood over an offense as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings.

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The wrong grows worse as they think it over. They carefully observe the offense from different points of view and whereas they were indignant at first, they nurse their wrath and make it so warm that it turns to fury.

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At first, they would have been appeased, satisfied with an apology, but when they have brooded over the injustice, it seems so atrocious that they demand vengeance on the offender.

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That's not how God does it. God doesn't look at your sin and bring it up every few years and brood over it again and stir up the fire of his wrath over your transgression and feel like he felt originally when you committed that sin against him.

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That's not how God's memory works. It is as if in the memory of God, your sin as if it has never happened.

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That is how he deals with those of us who are in Jesus Christ because he has promised that he will be merciful to our iniquities and our sins.

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He will remember no more. Third, it means that God will not recall our sins to his mind.

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He will not recall them. Have you ever had something happen? This happens to us. This is how our memory works where something happens or someone says something and it instantly reminds you of a whole bunch of other things.

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Maybe you smell something that takes you back to your childhood. You see a car or you see a movie clip or you hear a song on the radio that takes you back and floods your mind with memories that you probably would have been unable to recall until something happened that brought that all back up again.

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Have you ever had that happen? It happens for good and for bad. It happened for good to me this last week. I was sitting with Deidre and I was eating a bowl of orange jello salad that she makes.

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It's the one with cottage cheese in it and whipped cream and mandarin oranges and orange jello. And I was eating that and thinking about how much

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I enjoy that. It's kind of a summer salad for me, at least I associate it with summer. And then I started thinking about other summer salads and it reminded me of another salad that I haven't had for a long time, a summer salad called

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Watergate salad. Now Watergate salad also has jello in it, but it's not jello, it's pudding. But you put jello pudding.

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So I know jello and pudding are not the same thing, but it's all Bill Cosby stuff. And so the jello kind of triggered pudding for me in my mind and I thought of the

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Watergate salad and that was another summertime salad and that has whip cream in it or cool whip in it as well.

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And then that made me think of another thing that I haven't had forever, glorified rice, which is another summer salad. Now, I know that this is not the most entertaining and the best illustration that I've ever used, but bear with me to the end, because I, well,

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I can't guarantee it's gonna pay off, but just bear with me to the end. So in my mind, something happened eating one salad made me think of another salad that was similar, which made me think of another salad in it.

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And all of those salads in my summer salads came back to my mind. Now, if you had asked me 20 minutes before I dished up the orange salad, if you had asked me to name your favorite, your top 10 favorite summer salads,

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I wouldn't have named glorified rice or Watergate salad at all. I might not even have named the orange salad among my top 10.

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But in that series of things that happened, my mind was flooded with all of these memories and things

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I had long forgotten and couldn't have pulled up out of my memory banks if I had wanted to, all of a sudden came back to the surface.

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That's how our memory works. That is not how God's memory works. When you do something and you commit a sin, God doesn't say, oh yeah, that's just like the time he did that.

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And now I feel that pain and that anger and that wrath all over again. That's how we think.

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Somebody does something to us and we think, yeah, that's just like the time they did this to me. Or that's just like the time I experienced that other pain or that other hurt.

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That's not how God's memory works. At no time in God's dealings with you will something happen, you do something or say something that will cause him to drudge up all of your sins and bring them back front and center before him so that he can brood over them and feel towards you the wrath and indignation that you deserve.

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At no time will that happen. Not only does he not remember them, he puts them willfully and intentionally out of his mind and treats us as if they have never occurred, but he does not brood over them, he does not turn them over in his mind and he chooses not to ever recall those sins in any of his dealings with him.

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So that at no point in the future can we do something that will change how God feels toward us. Because right now if you're in Jesus Christ and your sins are forgiven, guess how

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God feels toward you? He feels toward you exactly as he feels toward his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, because he sees not your sins, all he sees is the righteous deeds of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And his righteousness. So he loves you like he loves his son. At no point in the future ever can that change, never.

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And there's nothing you can ever do to change that. There's nothing you can ever do to tarnish that righteousness. There's nothing you can ever do to transgress or forfeit that forgiveness.

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At no point ever in the future, even if you should live 10 ,000 years and transgress 10 ,000 times, at no point will

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God ever look at you and feel any differently toward you than he did at the moment you first believed.

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Never. Because he doesn't recall it. Willfully, intentionally, forgiven, out of his mind.

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Never to affect his dealings with us, ever. He doesn't turn it over in his mind.

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He doesn't drag it up. And fourth, God will never demand a payment for that sin.

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You know why? Because it has already been fully paid for in the Lord Jesus Christ. No more atonement is necessary.

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One sacrifice for all time. And he sat down at the right hand of the

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Father where he intercedes for us. This is why Paul in Romans chapter eight says this. What shall we say then to these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all, how will he, not with him that is with Christ, freely give us all things?

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Who will bring a charge against God's elect? That is a question that can only be followed by eternal silence.

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Who will bring a charge against God's elect? Those chosen ones whom he has called, whom he has chosen, whom he has justified.

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Who can charge them with wrongdoing? Can anyone? Paul says, who can bring a charge against God's elect?

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And the only thing that can follow that is silence. And the very next phrase is, God is the one who justifies.

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He is the one who declared you righteous. Who is the one who condemns? If God has justified you and said, no, you're righteous, no, you're forgiven,

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I remember your sins no more. If God has done that, then tell me, who will bring a charge against you? Who can condemn you?

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Who can stand in the courtroom of God's justice and charge you with any wrongdoing if you're in his son?

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Nobody can. Because he remembers your sins no more. He shows mercy toward your iniquities.

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And so Paul says, it is Christ Jesus who has died, yes, rather who was raised and who is at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us.

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He will be merciful toward our iniquities and he will remember our sins no more. This is

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God's justice. This is God's forgiveness. So full, so final, so free, and so unchanging that the only way that God can describe it is to describe him doing something that he cannot do.

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His forgiveness has to be so intentional that we have to think of it in terms of him forgetting as if it has ever happened.

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I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but I have, where somebody has come up to me after years or days or weeks and they'll say, look,

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I said something or I did something, let's say last week, this has happened to me. I said something to you last week and man,

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I felt horrible about it. You had every reason to take offense to you. I said X, Y, and Z and I didn't mean to do that to you. And I've had that happen.

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And my response is, brother, sister, I don't even remember that happening at all. Like I vaguely remember that we had this encounter.

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I don't remember the conversation. I don't remember you saying that. There is no offense there because it's not even in my memory bank.

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I have no recollection or record of that event ever transpiring. So therefore, there is nothing for which you need to be forgiven.

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There's no offense that I could ever take because I don't remember that it happened. That is the sense in which God does not remember our sins.

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Though he knows of them, he does not bring them between us and him so that they ever have to be dealt with because they have been dealt with.

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He shows mercy toward our iniquities and our sins. He remembers no more. And why is it that God does this?

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Is it because he is truly forgetful? Is it because his memory is poor? Is it because our sins and the horrificness of them begin to fade over time, as if time sort of washes out the transgressions and they become less and less over the course of time?

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Is that why it is? Is it because God is not a just God and he just chooses to turn a blind eye and pervert justice and just pretend as if it never happened?

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Is that why it is? It's not due to any of that. It is because the full price of our sin has been paid in Jesus Christ.

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That is why he remembers our sins no more. It's not because he's forgetful. It's because the price has been paid.

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So there is no payment to be made. There's no sacrifice to atone for it. There's no need to pay any more for what we have done because the price in full has been paid.

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In fact, all of our sin and iniquity has been laid upon another so that Isaiah in Isaiah 53 could say, "'Surely our griefs he himself bore "'and our sorrows he carried.

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"'Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, "'smitten of God and afflicted. "'He was pierced through for our transgressions.

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"'He was crushed for our iniquities. "'The chastening for our well -being fell upon him "'and by his scourging we are healed.'"

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And Peter echoes this in 1 Peter 2 verse 24 when he says that Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds we are healed.

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It is not that God forgets our sins because he is forgetful. It is not because he perverts justice but because he has fulfilled justice.

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He has fulfilled the just demands of his law in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the perfect and infinitely holy one who gave his life to provide righteousness for you and to bear all of your sin if you will believe upon him.

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It is because the price has been paid that God can treat you as if those sins have never happened.

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The judge in the courtroom, if the price of the fine has been paid, he can exact no more penalty of the guilty criminal.

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And it does not matter who pays that penalty or who bears that fine if justice has been satisfied in terms of the judge in his courtroom it's as if it never happened.

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Once justice has been met, in the sacrifice and the atoning work of Jesus Christ, perfect justice has been met.

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This is where love and justice kiss is at the cross of Christ. That the love of God can be shown in providing atonement for guilty sinners, mercy can be extended to guilty sinners because the price has already been paid in full.

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And it is because of that that he can show mercy toward our iniquities and remember our transgressions and our sins no more.

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It's not that God can forget, is that he chooses to put them out of his mind because justice has been satisfied.

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So I ask you, sinner, are you pardoned? Do you know that your price has been paid?

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Do you know that God will be merciful to you and your transgressions and that he will remember your sins no more? Or will you stand before him and have all of your sins brought to bear upon your head because you did not avail yourself of the substitute?

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Are you pardoned and do you know that you're pardoned? God is so willing to freely and fully forgive you, even now, that he extends to you opportunities to receive his grace and his mercy.

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Do not doubt God's ability to forgive your sin. I hope that if you're not in Jesus Christ, that you feel the full weight of your transgression and your iniquity, that the law has done its work, that you realize that your hundreds of thousands, dare

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I say millions of transgressions, deserve his eternal wrath because you have sinned against so benevolent and gracious a king.

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And I pray and hope that the law of God and the word of God would do that work in your heart so that you feel the weight of it, but then that you do not doubt

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God's willingness and ability to forgive and to forgive you freely and to forget your sins forever because he is willing to do that.

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But you must come to God on his terms. That's repentance and faith. You need to see your sin for what it is in all of its hideousness and its horribleness and turn from it, that is to repent, cry out to God for mercy and believe upon the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And his promise is he will forgive you, he will save you, he will give you eternal life, he will cleanse your conscience, he will cleanse you from your sin, he will be merciful to your iniquities and your sins he will remember no more.

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That is why there is only one path to God. That is why Jesus could say, no one comes to the father except through me. That is why there's only one name given under heaven whereby men must be saved and that is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Because only one person has paid that price, only one person has borne the wrath that you deserve and only one person lived a perfect life in your stead so that he could credit to you all of his righteousness.

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And this is the glorious truth of the gospel. Not just that our sins have been forgiven and wiped away and that God remembers them no more, but even more glorious and equally glorious is this, that he sees our righteousness before him.

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He sees the righteousness of his son. So not only does he look at me and you, if you're in Christ and see you as if you have never committed any transgression, it's even greater than that.

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He sees you as if you have done only righteousness your whole life, that you have only obeyed the law of God perfectly at every turn and every opportunity, every moment you have lived, because Jesus Christ did that.

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And he did that in our place so that we get his righteousness and he takes our sins. This is the most glorious gospel in the world, is it not?

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That he would be merciful toward our inequities and he would remember our sins no more. And further, that he would treat us as if we are infinitely and perfectly righteous.

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And that he would willingly and freely do this forever. What better offer can you have, sinner, than that?

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Come to Christ now, come to Christ today. Have your sins forgiven so that he remembers them no more.

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Christian, this is what you enjoy if you're in Jesus Christ. This is your glorious inheritance.

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Not only forgiveness for all of your transgressions, past, present, and future, but infinite and perfect righteousness.

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Perfect righteousness that avails before the Father so that he sees us and can treat us as if we were

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Jesus Christ, all by his grace. And when we come to the Lord's Supper to partake of communion, that's the very thing that we celebrate, it's the very thing that we observe and remember.

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For the Lord's Supper. That because of the sacrifice of Christ, his broken body and his shed blood, all of our sins are taken away, paid for.

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Justice has been satisfied in that one atoning death. So that all of our sins, paid.

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The full cost, the full burden, the full wrath, he drank all of it in, so that God will exact from us no future price and he will see us as righteous because we're in his

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Son. That's what you have, Christian. That's the benefit of the new covenant.

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He'll be merciful toward our iniquities and our sins he'll remember no more. What a glorious promise that is.

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That's challenging to believe. We have to embrace that by faith and we have to understand that the blood and the body of Christ purchased that on our behalf.

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Undeserving and unwilling to believe it and to love it and to earn it, we were. Undeserving and unmeriting that in its entirety, he did that all for us in his

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Son. So as we partake of the Lord's Supper today, I'm gonna bow my head and we will pray silently.

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Let us confess our sin to the Lord, acknowledging our iniquity, acknowledging the need that we have for God's forgiveness, for God's atoning work, remembering, calling to mind our own sin and understanding that that sin, even as we know it and understand it and are aware of it, has been paid for on the cross of Christ.

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We acknowledge that and we confess that to the Lord, for we know that it has been paid for in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. So bow our heads and individually confess our sins and then I'll pray corporately.

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And if you are an unbeliever, I would just encourage you to not partake of the cup or the bread when it is passed.

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Unless you are a believer, this is only for believers. If you're an unbeliever and you would like to talk about the state of your soul, after the service today there will be people at the back that will be willing to talk with you.

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Let's bow our heads. Our gracious Father, if it were not for your goodness and grace toward us, we would have every reason to despair, to despair because of the weight and the variety of our transgressions.

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Our sins are too numerous to count and we could never pay the full cost of sinning against you and your law if it were to rest upon our heads.

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Even eternity in separation from you and from your goodness and mercy and eternity in full conscious torment could never pay the full cost of that sin.

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And so we feel the weight of that and we thank you for the mercy that you have shown us in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

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For you have not dealt with us according to our transgressions, you have not dealt with us according to our sin, but you have shown us mercy and you have given us your righteousness.

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You have paid the full price and satisfied divine justice on our behalf and we thank you for that. So we confess our iniquity, we confess our transgression.

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We know that in these unredeemed bodies of flesh, we still fall short, we still fail. We fail to do all that the law demands and we still violate the commandments of God and your righteousness.

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And we know that we will mortify and fight against sin as long as we are on this earth until you take us home and make us perfect.

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We know we will fight sin because that is our duty and because that is our lot here until we are fully and perfectly redeemed and made just like your

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Son. We long for that day and we look forward to it and we pray that in the meantime today that you would continue to be merciful to us.

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We know that you will, we know that that is your will and that you show that mercy toward us. We thank you for your forgiveness which is in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and in him alone. He is all our hope, he is all our stay, he is all our righteousness and we gladly confess and own him as our