Message to the Children of God (1 John 2:1-2)

I really appreciate that. Hope y 'all had a good time celebrating the birth of the

Savior with your families and friends. And without Him, there wouldn't really be a reason for us to be here today, would there?

Wouldn't be a need to fellowship around with each other.

I'm so thankful, though, that Christ did come. I'm thankful that He provided that light into the world through His birth, that we can have that hope that we wouldn't have without Him.

It's amazing to see that. And I hope you enjoyed that time around the table with your family.

So before we get started, maybe let's just open up with a word of prayer. Father, we love you and praise you. We thank you so much that you're an amazing

God, that you provided a way for us to know you through the scriptures and through the fellowship that we have with one another.

I'm amazed at the teaching that we see in the Word of God, the purity of it, the exact truth that can penetrate our hearts and our minds and our soul, and just gives us so much clarity when we live our lives.

And that's amazing, and I thank you so much for that. And the birth of our Savior, Him going to the cross, dying there, paying the penalty for our sins, and by believing in Him, we can have everlasting life based on that.

And it's so thankful for that, Father, that we have that hope within us.

And so today, Lord, as we look into your Word, it's our prayer that you would help us to understand this truth and apply it to our lives, that we might be able to become more and more like you and to follow after you and to be able to share the truth that we have with a lost and dying world.

We just commit it to you, Lord, and we praise your holy name, amen. So we've been in the book of 1

John. We've covered chapter one all the way through so far.

Today, we're gonna be looking at chapter two, verses one and two only.

The title of my message today is Message to the Children of God. Message to the

Children of God. That message is gonna come in the way of a few things.

One is that sin has devastating effects. Two, that we have an advocate with the

Father. And three, that Christ is the propitiation for our sins.

So we're gonna be looking at those particular ideas and topics this morning.

And we're gonna be reading the first chapter. We're gonna start in our passages.

We're gonna look at chapter one, verse five, through chapter two, verse six. So if you can open your copy of God's Word to the book of 1

John, we're gonna read those verses right now starting in chapter one, verse five.

This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you, that God is light and in him, there is no darkness at all.

If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.

And he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

By this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. The one who says,

I have come to know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

By this, we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked.

That's our kind of a lay of the land for what we're gonna be looking at this morning. The book of 1

John is really an interesting book to me. It's relevant, obviously, to any age that we live.

And John has a number of purposes when he writes the book. He proclaims the eternal life.

That's what we talked about in the first chapter. He's addressing the Gnostics that the physical world is evil.

And so to do that, he confronts that error with truth that Jesus Christ is both

God and human flesh. And he has a physical body.

This time of year, that's important for us to understand, isn't it, to remember the birth of Christ. And we just celebrated that.

God in human flesh arrives on the scene to provide hope to the nations.

I mean, without that lightning rod coming into the world, I mean, what does that say for us?

It provides that hope and that light that we need. He dies, he's resurrected, he lives forevermore to make intercession for us.

Without this perfect sacrifice, we just don't have that same access to the Father. We just don't have that.

It's Jesus that provides our salvation. It is of his doing.

He draws us. He grants us repentance. He secures us with the

Holy Spirit, seals us till the day of redemption. It says our inheritance is locked in.

It's guaranteed. We know we're going to receive that. We'll spend eternity with him.

And that's a hope that we have, isn't it? It's amazing. John also says that God is light.

The beauty of light is that it reveals truth. As we look into the scriptures, you can probably attest to that yourself.

As you read it, all of a sudden, that illumination is there and you begin to grasp the concepts and it penetrates your heart and your mind and it propels you on to live for the gospel.

All of life comes from the God who is light. He provides us that life.

We need that. But light also exposes darkness, doesn't it? Exposes darkness.

It exposes sin in our lives. That's a terrifying concept.

Don't really want that, but it is there and it's relevant and we need to identify with it and understand it.

Sin has consequences. And we looked at the first chapter there in verses five to 10.

If you look at verses six, eight, and 10, they all start off the same way.

If we say, if we say that we have fellowship with him, verse six says, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Our walk, he says, should be consistent with the things that we say about our faith.

It should be matching up. And if they don't, he says, we lie and don't practice the truth.

Verse eight says the same thing in a similar way, but a little different. If we say that we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

To deny sin is really to deceive ourselves. Can't deny sin in our lives.

If we say, in verse 10, it says, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and the word is not in us.

Then to say that we have no sin, that we are perfect, I mean, that's just crazy talk.

Who says that we have no sin? In Proverbs 20, verse nine says, who can say

I have cleansed my heart? Who can say I have cleansed my heart? I am pure from sin.

I don't think anybody can say that. But yet, some people try to live that way and it's just not possible.

Nobody is free from the effects of sin in our life. And John says in verse nine of the first chapter, he says, because sin is in our life, because a believer is affected by sin, he says we're supposed to confess our sin, supposed to get it out there, have a short list of our sins because it affects our fellowship with God and with other people.

We're not supposed to harbor that. Remember that John's up in years when he wrote this book.

He's around 80 years old. He's the last living apostle. He is writing to Asia Minor, the believers in that area, to the churches that had been scattered abroad.

He speaks, one, with kind of that fatherly tone, that pastoral tone.

He speaks to his readers with affection. You can hear it in his voice almost when he says, my little children.

It's like as a little child, you grab their little faces, you know? And my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

And you think about that. That sin has really devastating effects, doesn't it?

The effects of sin are devastating. Whether you're a believer or an unbeliever alike, it is impacting.

Sin can either destroy you or it can humble you.

Sin can shake its fist at God or it can put a person on their knees. It just is impacting.

And it's how you look at it and how you deal with it. But everyone has to deal with it, don't they?

God is not selective in saying that some have sin and others don't.

I mean, think of Adam and Eve. I mean, Romans 5, 12 says, "'Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world "'and death through sin.'

"'And so death spread to all men because all sinned.'" We don't have a choice. We have a sin nature and it is destructive.

And we have to deal with it. Says in, from the very beginning of time, sin's on the scene.

Sin is often described as something that comes out of the heart, isn't it? Romans 17, nine says, "'The heart is deceitful above all else "'and desperately wicked.

"'Who can know it?' I mean, it comes out of the person. Sin never produces anything good.

The only time I can think of it as anything good is that it humbles you to the point of finally looking up, finally seeing that there is a

Savior and that there's hope. But even that, the scriptures say, God draws that person, right?

It's not really us doing it. So sin never produces anything good in our lives.

The Bible is filled with story upon story of the devastating effects of sin.

I mean, we can sin against God. I mean, you see the story of Moses going to the mountain to get the 10 commandments and people are clamoring, where's

Moses? And next thing you know, all the people are bringing the gold before Aaron and he throws together a golden calf.

And it says in Deuteronomy, "'And I saw that you had sinned, "'you had indeed sinned against the

Lord your God.'" That's Deuteronomy 9, 16. I mean, we can sin against other people.

We can lie to them, we can steal, we can do a lot of things. There's also unintentional sin that affects us.

We don't even know we're doing it. Numbers 15, two says, "'Also, if one person sins unintentionally, "'then he shall offer a one -year -old female goat "'for a sin offering.'"

I mean, it's devastating. Even our health, the scriptures say, is affected by sin.

Our health is affected by sin. Psalm 38, three, "'There is no soundness in my flesh "'because of your indignation.

"'There is no health in my bones because of my sin.'" Wow, that's amazing.

It affects even our health. God provided a way for the people to deal with their sin though, right?

Through a mediator. In the Old Testament system, we see that the high priest, you know, acted as a mediator between the people and God.

The sacrificial system was really created as a way for people to deal with sin.

I mean, there's every kind of offering, it seems like you can think of for sin. I mean, there's guilt offerings, there's burnt offerings, there's grain offerings, sin offerings, wave offerings.

There's all these ways in the Old Testament that they could deal with their sin.

The people of Israel had a high priest to do that, that stood there on their behalf. Nobody could approach

God without any kind of a mediator. Well, in the New Testament, I mean,

Jim's been covering this in Hebrews a lot, that Jesus is our high priest. I mean, he's our mediator now.

It says in Hebrews 4, 14 to 16, it says, "'Therefore, since we have a great high priest "'who has passed through the heavens, "'Jesus, the

Son of God, let us hold fast our confession, "'for we do not have a high priest "'who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, "'but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, "'yet without sin.

"'Therefore, let us draw near with confidence "'to the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy "'and find grace to help in time of need.'"

Wow, he's our high priest. So when we get to 1

John 2, we're gonna look at our first verse there. "'My little children, I am writing these things to you "'so that you may not sin.

"'And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, "'Jesus Christ, the righteous.'"

I mean, the sin's devastating effects need to be dealt with in some way, shape, or form.

So John says here that we have an advocate. We have an advocate, the

Lord Jesus Christ. And that word is translated, it's a Greek word. And it essentially is, it's called a paraclete.

And it's similar to the Holy Spirit, but this word refers to one who comes alongside of another.

Comes alongside of another, one who is basically summoned to the assistance of another, a counselor, if you will, a defense situation.

The idea really is that of a courtroom where you have a prosecutor, you have a defense attorney, and you have a judge.

And so that's the idea. An advocate is one who essentially comes to our defense.

He is a pleader and an intercessor and our defender before a holy

God because of sin's devastating effects and something that we cannot deal with on our own abilities.

We often think of Jesus dying on the cross for us, right? We say, Jesus died on the cross for my sins.

We have that idea in our mind, it's God and us, or Jesus and us. Well, in this context, in 1

John 2 .1, it's a different context. It's not necessarily talking about Christ dying on the cross for our sins.

Look what it says. It says, and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father. The context here is Jesus and the Father.

This is the idea. It's not talking about Jesus and us. It's God's direct communication with the

Father in this matter. Jesus represents us before the Father. He's our advocate.

We're gonna talk about the reasons why that's important here in a minute. But the same word paraclete is often used of the

Holy Spirit. You might have heard this before, that the Holy Spirit is our helper.

Similar idea as an advocate. It's not exactly the same translating it, but it's similar.

If you think of John 14 .6, it says there, I will ask the

Father and he will give you another helper. One that will come alongside you to help you live your life.

The Holy Spirit is here as your helper. That he may be with you forever.

That's the idea, that he may be with you forever. John 16 .7, but I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away.

It's to the advantage of us that Christ went away. It's to our advantage.

Why? He says, for I do not go away, the helper is not going to come. So Christ leaves, the

Holy Spirit comes to help us and guide us. The paraclete, the one called alongside of us who provides guidance and comfort is left behind for us.

That's the idea. Romans 8 .26 and 27 says this, in the same way, the

Spirit also helps our weaknesses. For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the

Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

So you can see the connection there. We have an advocate in Jesus.

The Holy Spirit also intercedes for us. There's a connection there. But moving along into our text a little bit further, in verse one, my little children,

I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father. With the Father. If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

Father. With is the Greek word prose, and it means facing the

Father. Facing the Father. So in the courtroom scene, Jesus is face -to -face with the

Father in heaven advocating for us, you see.

He's there now. The Holy Spirit, though, is interceding for us here on earth.

That's the difference. The Spirit was given to us to be our helper because Jesus left this earth to go be with the

Father. Right? Jesus is now our paraclete in heaven. He's there.

This is the courtroom scene depicting Christ as our advocate. That's what it's representing.

Jesus himself standing face -to -face with the Father, representing us, and our sin is ever before him.

Defense attorneys argue their case, don't they? They argue their case whether they're guilty or not.

I don't know how anybody could be a public defender, but we need that service. It would just be hard for me to do it because you're representing people that you know are 100 % guilty, but yet you're trying to prove them innocent.

In this case here, Jesus is not trying to prove our innocence, but to confirm our guilt.

That's the difference. There's a big difference in that. Jesus does not defend our innocence at all, but rather proves our guilty and our need for a savior.

Our sin requires an advocate that can go to the Father on our behalf because we can't do it on our own.

We don't have the ability to do it. If sin happens, which is the cause, then the paraclete,

Jesus, is there with the Father for us, which is the effect. That's how that goes.

So moving on a little further, read verse two there. Says, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins.

You've probably heard this word before. It's a long word, but it's a good word.

It really conveys a lot of meaning. It has a lot of depth into it. It's a translation of a

Greek word. It means to appease or to satisfy. Christ's sacrificial death on the cross satisfied the demands of God's justice, therefore appeasing his holy wrath against believers' sin.

So it's an appeasement, it's a satisfaction. It averts anger by offering a sacrifice, and it always denotes the removal of wrath.

So propitiation denotes the removal of wrath. We need an advocate that is qualified to satisfy the wrath of God Almighty.

We have to have an advocate. At the end of verse one, it says that we have an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. The righteous. Jesus is personally qualified for his role as our advocate.

Isn't he? He's perfect. The one who is sinless. He has no guilt.

Nothing, no imperfection within him at all. He's perfectly qualified to do it.

If you're going to pick a defense attorney, wouldn't you want the one that was the most qualified to do it?

Well, you can't get any more qualified than Christ, that's for sure. There's good news in this story and this message today, and there's also bad news.

The bad news is there's God's wrath, and people are under that wrath, and that's a struggle.

And we see it so prevalent. If you were to read John 3 .36, you would find these words.

He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the

Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. The wrath of God abides on him.

Anyone who trusts Jesus has eternal life, don't they? But the one who rejects

Christ, the one who says, I don't want anything to do with Christ, it says here that God's wrath abides on you at this very moment.

The wrath of God does. This wrath is very real and is very present in our world today.

It's not something that we are looking in the past for, because Romans 1 .18 says, for the wrath of God is, that's present tense, is being revealed, it says, from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in righteousness.

Did you know that you can suppress the truth of God? You have any idea?

To suppress is to hold down the truth. That's what it means, is to hold down the truth.

It's like the image of a beach ball at the beach and you're trying to push it under the water.

What happens when you do? It wants to come up, doesn't it? It wants to come up.

But in order to keep it under the water, you gotta keep holding it down. That's the idea. The wrath of God is coming to those who hold down the truth of God, those that replace

God's truth with any other kind of truth out there. That's suppressing the truth in unrighteousness and the result of that is that it requires wrath.

Romans 2 .5, but because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you're storing up for yourselves, storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

I mean, I read these verses and it's chilling to me. Eternal life is available, but because of stubbornness and an unrepentant heart and pride and all these things that keep us away from the

Lord, it's chilling because as a believer, you know the impact of that.

You know the result of pride and someone not accepting the

Lord Jesus Christ as their savior. And you know, people do this for many kinds of reasons, don't they?

They try to deny Jesus for a lot of reasons and unfortunately, none of them are valid because the truth is revealed in Christ and in our

Bibles and we have to recognize that. Romans 2 .8

says this, but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath, and indignation.

Selfishness has no room for God. A person can be ambitious, they can go out there and seek all the material things this world has to offer.

They can live their lives, though, in the wrong way. And if they do not obey the truth as it's laid out here, that God has revealed to us the only reward after death is the wrath of God.

That's a weighty subject and I don't say that with any kind of joy at all.

It is a struggle to think about that because we all have loved ones that we want to come to know the

Lord. And so it is with a humble heart that I can even say this and it's a struggle.

Ephesians 5 .6 says, let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes.

That's, again, present tenth. Wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience.

Well, what things is he talking about there in Ephesians? Well, just before that verse,

Ephesians 5 .3 and 4 says, but immorality or any impurity or greed must not be named among you as is proper among saints and there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting but rather giving of thanks.

That's the things. It's sin that requires some kind of, or merits wrath,

I should say. The wrath of God to me is terrifying and it is imminent.

And I would say to anybody, don't wait till tomorrow to seek

Christ. Find him today because no one knows about tomorrow.

No one knows whether we're even gonna be here or not. We don't have time to play games and to seek after the one that can remove this wrath.

We should seek him with everything that we have. Because it is coming.

Revelation chapter six, verse 16 says, and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, fall on us and hide us from the presence of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb for the great day of their wrath has come and who is able to stand?

There it is. Who is able to stand? No one is able to stand against this wrath.

And it's why we need so deeply to tell everyone we possibly can about our faith in Christ because we want them to have this removed.

But I wanna get back to the idea of propitiation here. It's to avert anger by offering a sacrifice. And again, it always denotes the removal of wrath.

It's to satisfy the wrath of God. Jesus himself, our advocate, came and he satisfied the wrath of God.

Picture the scene in your mind. Jesus enters the heavenly courtroom.

He's there. But you know who also is there? Satan, the accuser is there.

Because in Revelation 12, 10 it says that Satan accuses us before God day and night.

That's what he does. He is there. Satan himself opens his briefcase, pulls out the documents of the case.

In those documents are listed every sin that we have ever committed.

The most vile, ugly sins that you could ever think of are presented there.

Our advocate agrees with these charges because he knows that we're guilty. He's not trying to prove that we are innocent.

He definitely knows that we are guilty. Jesus doesn't point the finger, though, at us and says, you know, he doesn't say,

Father, pour out your wrath on my people. No, he doesn't say that.

He says, pour out your wrath on me instead. Wow. I can't even fathom that.

He pleads with the Father face to face on our behalf and the wrath that should go to us, he's asking and he's requesting that he take that.

And he does so. God does so because Jesus is worthy. He is righteous and he's able to do that.

The reason why he's able is because Jesus' death on the cross for the sins of mankind appeased

God's wrath. It satisfied God's wrath. His people, once and for all, have that removed to those that believe on him.

God's righteous anger has been turned aside by Christ's sacrifice.

God punishes sin and because of that declares us righteous. God is obligated to judge sin.

He punishes sin because of that righteousness that he has within him.

I read something from Stephen Lawson on this and he said this, God demonstrates his justice by not punishing sin but by punishing himself in the person of God the

Son serving as our substitute. You think about that, wow. That's pretty amazing that God would do that for us.

But you know what? There's good news in some of this. It's not all wrath, it's not all bad.

There is good news and God's not destined us for wrath. It says in the scriptures in 1

Thessalonians 5, 9, it says for God has not destined us for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our

Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't want us to have that wrath. Sinners are to turn to God for salvation, aren't we?

That's the only way we can really avoid the wrath. We need to throw ourselves down at his mercy.

We should be seeking his face. We should be turning from our wicked ways.

We should be repenting of our sin and showing a godly sorrow over sin.

The scriptures talks about a worldly sorrow and a godly sorrow and we should be moving away from the worldly sorrow into the godly sorrow which is really a grieving over our sin and how that affects our relationship between a holy

God. And we need to walk in a manner that's different. That's the idea.

When we are saved, we walk in a manner that is different from before. We don't stay in our sin.

We don't walk exactly as before. There should be some kind of a change in our character and in the way that we walk our lives.

We walk as Jesus walked now. Follow his commands, his ways, his truth.

It's not my truth anymore that I follow because my truth is all selfish.

We need to flee wrath. We need to run into the arms of God. There is no other way to avoid the coming wrath.

Matthew 3 .7 says this, but when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Well, I have no idea who warned them of the wrath to come but I am here warning everyone in this room and anyone listening online to flee the wrath to come, to make a decision to seek

God and lay your life down at him. And I pray that God will open up his life and heart to you because without it, we are lost.

Salvation through Christ is the only way to avoid this wrath. Romans 5 .9 says much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

The message of the cross is simple. Place your faith and trust in him. It's very simple, but it's very difficult to do, isn't it?

It's very difficult to live once you have it. But it is the only way to avoid wrath and we need to seek him.

Romans 5 .9 says this, much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

Saved from wrath through Jesus. That's how it works. The result of salvation is that Jesus bore the wrath of God on our behalf.

What a blessing that is to sit here and think that the wrath and the destruction that we so rightfully deserve,

Christ bore that for us on our behalf. What a blessing. Righteousness of Christ, his sacrifice on the cross has made it possible for you and I to have peace with God.

Romans 5 .1, we probably all know that one. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. The peace represents the hostility from sin that stood in the path between you and God.

It's that sin that has been removed, that friction, that sin, because of that hostility has been removed.

You are no longer under wrath, but have peace. That's beautiful. It's like a relief, isn't it?

Inside our soul, we're not fighting against God anymore. Our sin and the wrath we deserve has been taken care of by our advocate.

The result is a calming, it's a peace. You all might be able to think back to when you were saved.

I mean, hopefully that peace of God came over you, recognizing that your sin was out of the way and you were able to share in his fellowship.

No matter what happens on this earth, nobody can take that peace away from a believer.

Anything external can be happening. You can't take that away from us.

They can take my home and my car and everything I have, but they can't take peace because that is something that God provided for us.

Our last point today dealing with our passage is the meaning of the word world. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, verse two says, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

Well, what is meant by the world here? It sounds like universal salvation, doesn't it?

Spoiler alert, if you've listened to any of Jim's sermons for the last three years, you can know that that is no.

That is not universal salvation, not gonna happen. But yet many teach this truth.

I mean, I remember Rob Bell's book a few years ago called Love Wins, right?

Where you can do whatever you want, you know, you can live your life and at the end, doesn't matter, we all go to heaven.

Well, that's not what the scriptures teach. You know, he had a focus on God's love, but not his justice.

The goal of universal salvation is to make allowances for sin, isn't it? Because if I can do anything

I want in my body like the Gnostics taught, where my physical body can't really be held accountable because it's evil anyway,

I can do anything and not be worried about it. That's a love wins principle.

I can just do anything, I can sin my whole life and I don't have to change.

I don't have to follow the commands of Christ. I can do whatever I want and at the end, we all go to heaven.

That's the idea of it all, but that's not what the Bible teaches at all. I mean, in our passage here, the whole world refers to the children of God who have personal relationship with him that are scattered throughout the cosmos.

It's the ones that have believed and accepted him. For if Christ's propitiation was effective for all, then everyone would be saved.

That's not a concept that you find in scripture because we clearly see that God has a people for himself.

He has a people for himself and it's not just anybody that goes to heaven.

God died for all, but not all receive him. We see that in scripture. Second Corinthians 5, 14 and 15 says, for the love of Christ controls us.

Having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died and he died for all so that they, not all, they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

We see that and we see it again in Hebrews 9, 28, the many.

So Christ also having been offered at once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time for salvation.

Doesn't say all. It says salvation without reference of sin to those who eagerly await him.

God gives Jesus some, not all for salvation. John 17, six, I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world.

They were yours and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. John 17, nine,

I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me.

Those you have given me for they are yours. It's not all. It's those that the father has given

Jesus. John 5, 28 and 29, do not marvel at this.

For an hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and will come forth.

Those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to the resurrection of judgment.

Not all are saved. The teaching in the Bible is strong and it is very clear that Christ's death actually satisfies fully and eternally the demands of God.

His wrath has been removed because of that perfect sacrifice. Jesus' death benefits only those who trust in him.

For only those who serve him in faith receive cleansing from this sin. So think about this.

Sin has devastating effects. You can see it all over our world.

Remember that the Gnostics brought in that aberrant teaching into the church, saying that the body was sinful and all kinds of devastation came as a result of that.

But we have an advocate with the father, someone that entered heaven on our behalf and paid the penalty for our sin.

Christ himself bore the wrath of God on himself for us.

I mean, that to me is the ultimate gift. Wow.

To be able to think that Satan accuses us day in and day out before the father, reminding him of all of our sin, and yet Christ bore that wrath for us to remove it, that we might have this relationship with him, that we might have an idea to move in to relationship with one another here, and one day we're gonna be with him in eternity.

And all this world that we have and the struggles within it are gonna be gone, and we're gonna spend eternity with our perfect, holy, and righteous

God. What a blessing that is. Let's pray. Father, you alone are worthy to be praised, and we thank you so much for watching over us, for guiding us, for giving us your strength.

Just go before us in this service, help us to glorify you in all that we say and do, Lord, and just commit it to you now, in Jesus' name, amen.