The Complete Forgiveness of Sins – Hebrew 9:22

Now you please turn to Hebrews chapter 9. Hebrews chapter 9.

We're going to read together verse 22. Hebrews 9 verse 22.

And according to the law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

Let's pray together. Our Father, we do ask that you'd give us illumination into your word today as we read it and contemplate the significance of this verse and what it promises and what it means.

We pray that your spirit would be our teacher and our guide and that your word may be first and foremost in our hearts and our minds.

Help us to understand the necessity of forgiveness and the grace and the glory that is what you have provided in Jesus Christ.

And may we revel in that, may we love it, and may you fill our hearts full of affection for him, for what he has done for us to secure us everlastingly for his eternal glory.

And we pray that you would be honored through the proclamation of your word and our meditation and thinking in it. Conform us, we pray, to the image of Christ and sanctify us.

We pray that you would use your spirit and your word and the power of both to do that and to make us more like Christ through our time here, we ask in his name.

Amen. Well, the gospel of the New Testament is a gospel of the forgiveness of sins that is available in Jesus Christ.

And as ambassadors for Jesus Christ, our primary focus in speaking to the world about what

God offers them is to emphasize that they can have their sins forgiven because of what Jesus Christ has done.

Our message, the Christian gospel, is not a message of self -improvement or self -help.

It's not a message of God meeting our felt needs or organizing life around us or us using

God like a cosmic vending machine or a genie to get what we want. The Christian gospel is first and foremost about the forgiveness of sins.

And that is what God has provided for us in Christ. All of the other things may or may not happen to us in this world.

The other things, we may enjoy a good life in this world, a comfortable one, free from oppression or free from persecution and filled with lavish blessings from heaven.

That might happen, but that's no guarantee. And the gospel certainly does not promise that those things are going to come our way.

In fact, the scripture seems to suggest that we're promised trials and tribulations and persecutions and difficulties and sufferings.

In this life, you will have trials, Jesus said, but be of good cheer. I've overcome the world. So our gospel is a gospel of the forgiveness of sins.

And that is primarily what we are called to announce. And that's what we see the apostles in the early church announcing.

Peter's very first sermon on the day of Pentecost after the Holy Spirit was given, Peter stood up in front of the very crowd who had called for the blood of Jesus.

And he said to them, repent each of you and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ because of the forgiveness of your sins.

And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Later on in Acts chapter 10, Peter said to Cornelius of Christ, all the prophets bear witness that through his name, everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins.

Listen to their emphasis. It's on sin and the forgiveness of sins. Paul's first recorded sermon in Acts chapter 13, in the city of Antioch, he said that, therefore, let it be known to you brethren, speaking in the synagogue, that through him, that is

Christ, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Later on, when Paul was giving his testimony to King Agrippa, he described his personal encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

And then he said that Jesus had said to him that God was sending Paul, quote, to the

Gentiles to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me.

That's Acts chapter 26. And isn't the heart and soul of the new covenant promise the forgiveness of sins?

In Hebrews chapter 8, I will be merciful to their iniquities and their sins, I will remember no more. That is the precious promise of the gospel.

Forgiveness of sins. Complete, full, and free pardon for all of our iniquities.

That is the glorious heart of the gospel. And that is the good news that we are called to proclaim. Now, if you have come to an understanding of your sin and the weight of your depravity and your guilt before God, then the proclamation of the good news of a gospel that promises to forgive all of your sins, that is good news.

That sounds blessed to you. That will ring in your ears as the sound of life. That message will smell like life to you.

It will smell like forgiveness. It will be precious. But if you have never come to understand the weight and gravity of your sin and you have never seen yourself for what you are in truth before God as an unregenerate person, the message of the forgiveness of sins sounds foolish because you would say, well,

I don't need that. Why would I need that? I don't need that because I really don't have a sin problem. Our current president was asked one time before he became president if he's ever asked

God for forgiveness. And paraphrasing his answer, he said something, I haven't really done anything wrong. I don't need

God's forgiveness for anything. I try to do what is good and right. See, that is somebody who doesn't understand the glorious gospel of forgiveness because they've never come face to face with the weight and the gravity of their sin.

The full promise of the gospel is free, full, and glorious forgiveness for all of our sins provided for in the sacrifice of Christ, not in the sacrifice of bulls and goats or the bloodshed of another, but in the shedding of one blood, a better sacrifice, a better blood, a better offering by the sinless and perfect, holy and righteous

Son of God. That is the glorious promise of the gospel. His death was necessary, verse 22 says, because without the forgiveness of, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

Now you'll notice that in verse 22, it's stated negatively. Without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness of sins, but that leaves open the possibility, does it not, that with the shedding of blood, not just any blood, but the right blood, that with the shedding of a certain blood, that there can be forgiveness of sins?

That's really our blessed hope, that with the shedding of a certain blood, a better blood than Abel, a better blood than the

Old Testament sacrifices, a better blood than bulls and goats, that we can have forgiveness of sins. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness, and we, of course, know that with the shedding of blood, there is forgiveness with God because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

So in the last couple weeks, we've been looking at this passage in Hebrews 9, and we've been looking at the context and when the events that the author describes here, when those events were originally, took place back in Exodus 24.

We spent two weeks on this passage, and you might think, well, there's really nothing else we can get out of that, except there was some stuff in verse 22 that I felt like we hadn't covered that we needed to focus on and spend some time on.

So we're going to do that this morning. We're just looking at verse 22. We're going to explore that, and we're going to consider three things from verse 22.

First, our need for forgiveness. Second, the basis of our forgiveness. And then third, the nature of this forgiveness, the need for it, the basis of it, and then the nature of forgiveness.

First, our need for forgiveness. Our need for forgiveness is almost assumed in Scripture. If you notice that, Scripture doesn't really try and argue and to convince us that we're in need of forgiveness.

It's almost as if God just assumes it. Out of the gate, if you read the first three chapters of Genesis, any thinking person who has two brain cells to rub together can see that the first three chapters of Genesis give us a great apologetic for why we need forgiveness.

There was a fall in Adam. And after Genesis 3, our sinfulness is written on every page of Scripture.

Our sinfulness and our need of forgiveness is written everywhere. It's all over the place. It's evident in all of the events of human history, from the fall in the garden all the way up until the final consummation of all things at the end of time in the book of Revelation.

We need forgiveness because we fell in Adam. And this is one of those self -evident truths, something that really doesn't need to be argued for, something that just is evident to us.

The fall of humanity is everywhere. Look at the news. And we see the sinfulness all over the place.

And then we look at our own hearts and we have to see sinfulness. We have to see that there is a need for forgiveness.

And we have to come face to face with the knowledge of who God is and what He demands and His holy law. And then when we look at the

Ten Commandments, we see that we have violated those commandments. And we look in Scripture and it says that the soul that sins, it shall die.

That the wages of sin is death. The proof that you are a sinner is the fact that you are going to die.

God told Adam in the garden, the day you eat of that tree, you will surely die. And Adam's fall in the garden ruined all of his progeny, all of us.

We are ruined and undone in our sin. Our sinfulness is everywhere. Every aspect of our humanity is tainted and corrupted by sin.

Our minds are warped. We don't think right. Our reasoning is affected. We don't reason right. Our emotions are affected.

We don't get emotional over the right things at the right times for the right reasons. Our affections and our loves are corrupted by sin.

We love the things that we should hate, and we hate the things that we should love. And of course, I'm not describing believers here.

I'm describing those who are in Adam and have never repented of their sin and been born again. This describes us.

We are born as slaves of Satan, slaves of sin, and slaves of self.

There is no such thing as self -determined free will. We are born in bondage to all things dark.

And in fact, Scripture says we love darkness and we hate the light, and that's why we don't come to the light. Our affections are so warped, and we are so ruined, and we are so undone in our sin that we can do absolutely nothing to remedy our condition.

And Scripture doesn't even tell us to try and remedy our condition because we can't. There is nothing we can do to merit eternal life or to merit

God's grace. So ruined, so undone, so corrupted, so fallen, and so unable that our only hope is a rescue from outside of this fallen creation.

That's what we need. That is the necessity of our forgiveness. And that sin in which we all participate and in which we are all born, that sin demands punishment.

The righteous character of God demands punishment for sin because He is righteous, and He is a good judge.

And because He is a righteous judge, and He must see to it that guilty people get what guilty people deserve.

So His justice demands that that sin be taken care of, and when God judges in the future,

He will do so in perfect righteousness because His righteous character and His righteous nature demand that it be so.

See, the big question in Scripture is not how can a loving God punish sinners. It's not the big quandary in Scripture.

It's not how can God love and yet wipe out the entire world with a worldwide flood and save only eight people.

Biblical authors and biblical people who live back in Bible times, they didn't wrestle with why does

God send sinners to hell? That just seems so unfair. You know what the big quandary in Scripture is? How can a just God love wretches like you and me?

That's the big quandary in Scripture. How can God show grace and mercy and favor and save wretched, lost, miserable people without compromising

His justice? How can He do that? See, we read that verse, Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated, and we think, oh now we need to apologize for God that He said

Esau I've hated. We have to find some way of tiptoeing around that difficult language that God hated

Esau. Listen, I don't struggle with the fact that God hated Esau. I struggle with the fact that God loved Jacob.

That's the part of that verse that needs to be explained. How is it that a holy God could love Jacob? That deceiving wretch, that sinner, how could

God show him favor and make a covenant with him and promise him the land and him the descendants and pour out on him all of those lavish blessings?

Man, that guy was a wretch. It's like you're a wretch. See, that's what Scripture wrestles with.

Not how can a loving God judge sinners, but how can a just God show grace to sinners without compromising

His justice? And we live in a Christian culture that says we are so lovable, so lovable.

And God is just mad about us. He almost can't stand the thought of living for eternity without us.

And He needs us to fill that gym -shaped hole in His heart that He desires this fellowship with us.

And because we are so lovable, we can just understand why it is that God would send His Son to die and to save us from sin so that He could finally have that thing that He cherishes that's just so cherishable, you and me.

That's the Christian culture we live in. Because we don't understand our sinfulness. We have heaped up a sin debt, friends, that we cannot even begin to comprehend.

Do you understand that? We cannot even remember all of our sins. And even if we could remember them, we could never count them.

And even if we could count them, we could never understand the depth of them and the severity of them and the hideousness of them.

In God's sight, we could never do that because we cannot comprehend fully His full righteousness and His full holiness.

And because we cannot get into God's mindset of perfect holiness and perfect righteousness, we can never appreciate the debt of our sin.

We can't even number our transgressions. This is why David said, Blessed is the man to whom the

Lord does not impute his iniquities, but takes all of our transgressions out of the way. Isn't that glorious news?

When you got saved, you didn't even understand a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of your sin debt or your sinfulness or your lostness or your hopelessness.

I didn't understand any of that when I got saved. I understood I was a sinner. I understand that I need a Savior. I didn't understand how grave my sin was and how much

I deserved an eternal grave for my sin. None of that I understood. That is our need for forgiveness.

It is deep. It is wide. It is profound. It is hideous. The weight of it we cannot even understand and the weight of it we cannot bear.

We need to have that sin debt taken and wiped away. That cannot happen without the shedding of blood.

That brings us to the next point, the basis of our forgiveness. We read in Scripture not just of God's holiness and His righteousness and His justice against sin, but we also read in Scripture of His seemingly bottomless ability and willingness to forgive sinners.

Let me give you a few passages of Scripture. Psalm 32 verse 1, How blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

You see, that can only be said by somebody who understands the depth of their sin. How blessed is the one. This is almost beyond words.

How blessed is the one whose transgressions are taken away, whose sin is covered. How blessed is that person.

It almost defies description. Psalm 65 verse 3, Iniquities prevail against me as are transgressions, for You forgive them.

Psalm 85 verse 2, You forgave the iniquity of Your people. You covered all their sin. Psalm 86 verse 5,

For You, Lord, are good and ready to forgive and abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon You.

Psalm 130 verse 4, But there is forgiveness with You that You may be feared. Daniel 9 verse 9,

To the Lord our God belong compassion and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against Him.

Isaiah 55 verse 7, this is a precious one. Not that all Scripture isn't precious. Isaiah 55 verse 7,

Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have compassion on him and to our

God, for he will abundantly pardon. Are you an abundant sinner? Have you heaped up an abundant sin debt?

This is good news. Our God is a God who will abundantly pardon. Can you out sin

God's grace? You cannot. Is the weight of your sin too much for Him to bear or for Him to forgive?

Not according to Scripture. Blessed is the man whose iniquities are taken out of the way. He can rejoice in the fact that his sin is covered.

Our God is a God who delights in showing mercy. He delights in forgiveness. He is abundant in forgiveness and abundant in lovingkindness.

But that can only happen by the shedding of blood. For as 9 verse 22 says, Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

With the shedding of blood, there is forgiveness. But not the blood of bulls and goats. It has to be a better blood.

It has to be the right blood. Not just any blood, but a blood that is able to provide atonement and to provide forgiveness.

God's willingness to forgive is evident all over Scripture, and it is even evident all over all of the

Old Testament sacrifices. The Old Testament sacrifices demonstrated that God was a righteous judge and that He demanded justice.

He demanded a substitute to pay the price for sinners. But it also demonstrated, those sacrifices also demonstrated that God was willing to forgive, and that was good news.

Because they demonstrated the weight of our sin, the gravity of it, death, blood, suffering, and innocent victims suffering in our stead.

But it also revealed the glory of God's forgiveness and His willingness to forgive. His ability to forgive.

He promised to forgive any who would come to Him on the basis of that shed blood and offering a sacrifice.

And so every Israelite, every Jew, anybody could have comfort in the fact that though God was a just God, He was willing to forgive, and He provided a path for that forgiveness.

So then we see in Christ how the justice of God and the love of God come together. In Christ, at the cross, mercy kisses justice.

So that in Christ, as He has punished Jesus and laid upon Him all of our sin, justice can be done at the cross.

And because justice is satisfied, God can turn around and show mercy to guilty sinners.

So though we are guilty in our sin and undone, God can take all of our sin debt and lay it upon an innocent, perfect, and infinite substitute so that that substitute bears the full weight of all of my sin, all of your sin, so that God, whose justice has been satisfied at the cross, can turn around and show mercy to undeserving and unable and lost sinners.

At the cross, mercy and justice meet. So the quandary of Scripture, though, it is not, how can a loving

God punish sinners? Instead, it is, how can a just God show grace to sinners?

That is what boggles the mind. Here is the answer. A just God can show grace to sinners because the justice of God has been satisfied in that one atoning death.

Because of that blood and that sacrifice, there is forgiveness. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

With the shedding of the right blood, there is an infinite provision of forgiveness to any and all who will come and embrace it on the terms of the one who is offering the forgiveness.

That is good news. That's the gospel. God has laid on Christ the iniquity of us all.

Now, you'll notice in verse 22 that it says, one may almost say that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

The word almost there kind of admits an exception, does it not? Interesting that the author doesn't say, one can confidently say that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, or one may certainly say, absolutely say that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, but he says one may almost say that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.

It sounds like there is an exception to that, and there was under the Old Testament law.

This is where the author of Hebrews is demonstrating his knowledge of the Old Testament as well as being absolutely precise in the wording that he uses.

The exception is in Leviticus chapter 5. You don't need to turn there, but I'm going to read to you a couple of passages from Leviticus chapter 5.

The beginning of the passage lays out all of the ways that we can be defiled and all of the sins that we can commit, and then in Leviticus chapter 5 we read this, he shall also bring his guilt offering to the

Lord for his sin which he has committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat as a sin offering, so the priest shall make atonement on his behalf for his sin.

So, that was the standard procedure. You bring a lamb or a goat, a female from the flock, and you bring it to the priest and he makes the sacrifice and on the basis of that there was the forgiveness of sin.

But there was an exception to the lamb or the goat, and that's later on in Leviticus chapter 5 verse 7.

There was a provision made for the poor. Here's the provision. But if he cannot afford a lamb, then he shall bring to the

Lord his guilt offering for that in which he has sinned, two turtle doves or two young pigeons, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering.

Two young turtle doves or two young pigeons. You say, well, hold on a second. If those are sacrificed, that's still what?

That's still the shedding of blood. But there was even a further exception, Leviticus chapter 5 verses 11 through 13.

But if his means are insufficient for two turtle doves and two young pigeons, then for his offering for that which he has sinned, he shall bring the tenth of an ephah, a fine flower for a sin offering.

He shall not pour oil on it or place incense on it for it's a sin offering. He shall bring it to the priest and the priest shall take his handful of it as its memorial portion and offer it up in smoke on the altar with the offerings of the

Lord by fire. It's a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him concerning his sin which he has committed from one of these and it will be forgiven him.

Then the rest shall become the priest like the grain offering. So there was an exception for the poor. And what was the exception? If you were too poor to afford a lamb, you could bring two turtle doves and two pigeons.

But if you were too poor for even those animals, if you were absolutely destitute, you could bring a tenth of an ephah, a fine flower, and you could present that to the priest.

That was the minimum. Almost anybody could afford that, a handful of flower. And the priest would take his bit and then he would put that on the other sacrifices.

He would put the flower on the other sacrifices that were burning before the Lord, the blood sacrifices, and he would offer the fine flower on that sacrifice.

So was there an exception to the rule that without the shedding of blood there was no forgiveness of sins?

There was an exception. It was a very rare exception for people who were very destitute of money.

And the exception was that they could offer flower. But I want you to catch something. This is a technicality. The flower was a substitute for what?

Blood. So even the flower symbolized what? Blood.

The blood of the sacrifices symbolized what? The blood of Christ. So the flower was a symbol for a symbol of the offering of Christ.

And flower was something that everybody associated with life and sustenance. Because if you didn't have flower, you couldn't eat bread.

You didn't live. So even the offering of flower was symbolically an offering of the very thing that sustains our life.

There are basically two elements that they associated with sustaining life. Your life is in the blood and without bread, if you don't eat bread, you die, you perish.

So even the offering of flower was a symbol of the blood. So there was this narrow little exception in the law for the absolutely destitute, which is why the author says one may almost say without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness of sins.

But even the almost was a symbol of the blood. So really we can say that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.

But he's not talking about forgiveness outside of Christ. He is talking about forgiveness in strict confines of the

Old Testament law. Somebody could object and say, hold on, somebody could have their sins forgiven by flower. So he has to say almost, but in reality what he is laying down is this principle that all the way through the

Old Testament, even in the exception itself, all the way through the Old Testament sacrifices was this principle.

There is no cleansing, there is no forgiveness, there is no remission of sin without the shedding of blood.

But with the shedding of blood there's what? Forgiveness. You can say it next time

I ask that question. With the shedding of blood there is forgiveness. That is the glorious good news of the gospel.

So we looked at the need for our forgiveness and then the basis of that forgiveness, that is shed blood, specifically the author has in mind here with the new covenant in the context, the shed blood of Christ.

And third, let's look at the nature of this forgiveness, the meaning of the forgiveness.

The word that is translated forgiveness here is not the word that is translated forgiveness everywhere in the New Testament. There were various words that were used that had different nuances of meaning for the idea of forgiveness.

This word is a word that stresses the release of forgiveness, a release, like the discharge of a debt.

It stresses the relieving of a burden that comes with forgiveness. And I'll give you an illustration of this.

In Luke chapter 4, do you remember when Jesus was in the synagogue in Nazareth, his hometown, and he got up in the synagogue and he opened up the scroll of Isaiah and he began to read from the scroll of Isaiah, the prophecy concerning himself.

And he read this in Luke 4, 18, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed.

To set free, that is the word translated forgiveness here in 922, to set free those who are oppressed.

This word forgiveness has to do not just with the I'm forgiven, the idea that we associate with forgiveness, but the complete dismissal or release of a debt that could be charged against somebody.

So the word meant to pardon, to release, to discharge, to let go, or to dismiss. It meant to set free from a debt or to release somebody from an obligation.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no release from the obligation. What is the obligation? What you owe to the justice of God, to his law for your sin.

That's your sin debt. Remember I told you we cannot bear it. We cannot understand it. We cannot comprehend it.

We cannot stand up under it. That weight, that obligation that we have to divine justice, we cannot bear that obligation.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission, no removing of that obligation that we have to divine justice.

But with the shedding of blood, there is forgiveness. That's the good news of the gospel. So this is the removal of a debt.

It means to put away the debt, to have it wiped clean. It's to have that rap sheet, your past history, your rap sheet.

If God kept track of all of your sins and your transgressions, every lustful deed, every lustful thought, every lie, every act of blasphemy, every act of ingratitude and unthankfulness, all your coveting, your slandering, your evil tongue, your words and deeds done in darkness.

If God were to keep track of all of that, how long would your rap sheet be? A couple pages?

Mine would be a couple pages just getting past my name. More than just a couple of pages.

It would be more than we can bear. With the forgiveness, with the shedding of blood, there is a complete erasing of all of my rap sheet.

Every last sin and transgression is wiped away and blotted out by that blood. That's the idea.

It is the removal of that debt. That debt to divine justice that I owe and that you owe because of the death of Christ, that obligation is completely taken away.

So here is what forgiveness then means. It means that forgiveness, when God grants us forgiveness, it is complete forgiveness.

Complete forgiveness. God doesn't divide up our sin and say, okay, I'll forgive you for everything you did before you were 20.

You have to burn off and pay off everything you did after you were 20 because you knew those things were wrong.

Before 20, you might be able to make an excuse. But after 20, you most certainly sinned against a well -informed conscience.

So we'll divide it up. I'll take everything prior to your 20th birthday. You take everything after your 20th birthday.

That's not how the forgiveness of God works. He doesn't divide up our sins. He doesn't say that I will take certain kinds of sin.

He doesn't say I'll pay for all of the sin or I'll wipe out all of the sin that dealt with me, where you sinned directly against me by taking my name in vain or worshiping another

God, and I'll let you pay for all of the sin that you committed against other people when you lied to them or you lied about them or you stole from somebody.

God doesn't divide up our sins that way. The forgiveness that God provides for us in Jesus Christ is complete forgiveness.

It is for every single sin that I have ever committed and that I will ever commit, they are laid on Jesus Christ and paid in full.

The danger of that message is that some people will then think if all my sins, even my future sins, are paid in full then

I can sin freely, right, and do whatever that I want and there will be no repercussions for that.

No, my sin still has an effect and anybody who understands the weight and the gravity of all their past sins being laid on Christ and taken completely out of the way, anybody who understands that would never think to themselves this then is my license to sin.

If you think that that's a license to sin, you do not understand grace. I promise you, you do not understand grace.

It actually is a motivation for me to not sin. That's how it should serve. Psalm 103 verse 12, as far as the east is from the west, so far has it removed our transgressions from us.

God doesn't divide up our sins. He doesn't forgive part of them. The blood of Christ is not just sufficient for a few of our sins, a certain number of our sins, like the first 100 and then we take the rest.

That's not how it works. It's complete forgiveness. That's good news, isn't it? Second, that forgiveness is not just complete, it is a present forgiveness.

Eternal life is something that we have now if you have it now. Eternal life is something you can have now.

It's not something that we are looking forward to in some future time. If you're in Jesus Christ and you've repented of your sins and you've trusted him, eternal life is your present possession.

The life that you now possess, the spiritual life that you now possess is an eternal life and it will go on forever.

The forgiveness that you now have is forgiveness that will go on for all of eternity. God will never revisit your case.

He doesn't wipe off the slate of sins against him and then say at some future time when you really screw up in some fashion, he doesn't go back and say, you know what,

I think we need to revisit that dossier. They need to revisit your criminal file. Let's pull that up again and see how that works.

Let's go over again those sins. God doesn't do that. He doesn't go back into our past and take our sins and then threaten us with judgment in the future for them.

He doesn't hang that over our head as something that we ever have to deal with in the future. It is a complete forgiveness and it is an eternal forgiveness and he will never revisit our case ever.

There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. There's no exceptions to that.

If you are in Christ, there is no condemnation to you. You never need to fear the frown of God ever.

That's good news. It's complete forgiveness. It is eternal forgiveness and it is present forgiveness.

You and I have it now. Complete and full forgiveness is our present possession. Now there are some people who would say it seems a bit presumptuous to suggest that right now

I can know for certain that all my sins are forgiven. That's kind of presuming on God, is it not? I don't think that's presumption at all.

I think that's taking God at his word. Isn't it presumption rather to assume that you know better than God and that if he says there's no condemnation for you, that you know better and that you can assume that there might be condemnation?

Or is it not faith and belief and trust in the word of God to say if he says there is no condemnation, there is no condemnation.

If he says I have life, I have life. If he says all my sins are forgiven because his blood is shed and I am in Christ, then all my sins are forgiven eternally so, presently so, and completely so.

That is the blessing of forgiveness. He does not bring it up. He does not threaten us with our sins in any future sense.

Spurgeon said this, when God forgives, he displays the riches of his grace on a grander scale than your finite mind can comprehend.

Ten thousand sins of blackest dye, sins of a hellish hue, he doth in a moment put away for he delights in mercy and judgment is his strange work.

There's no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ. Paul says it in Romans 8, who's going to bring a charge against God's elect?

Who's going to do that? It's God who justifies. It's Christ who has died in our stead.

So who on the final day is going to charge you believer, you Christian, who's going to charge you with any sin or wrongdoing?

Who shall put that to your account if the one who sits on the throne of judgment has already dismissed your case and acquitted you?

If he has already forgiven you, nobody can bring a charge against you forever. That is the promise and the power of forgiveness.

Spurgeon said this, who shall resuscitate judgment against me when I have been condemned in the person of my savior?

Who shall commit me to the flames of Gehenna when Christ, my substitute, has suffered the tent amount of hell for me?

Who shall lay anything to my charge when Christ has had all my crimes laid to his charge and he has answered for them, expiated them and received the token of quittance from them, and that he was raised from the dead, that he might openly vindicate that justification in which by grace

I am called and privileged to share? What was Spurgeon saying? If somebody else has already suffered all of my punishment in my stead, then how shall

I suffer anything for all of eternity? There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Who will ever bring a charge against God's elect? None. It's full forgiveness, it's present forgiveness, and it is eternal forgiveness.

That's the nature of God's forgiving work. Now I ask you if you are here and you are not a believer, why would you ever neglect so great a salvation?

Why would you not turn to so precious a savior, so gracious a savior? He invites you to come, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest.

You thirst? Come to me and I'll give you the waters of life. You hunger? Come to me, I'm the bread of heaven. Those were his promises, those were genuine invitations.

Come to me, look unto me and be saved, all ye ends of the earth. That is the promise of scripture. You want living water?

He can provide it. You hungry for spiritual bread? He's the bread of life. Do you realize that you are dead?

He is the living one. He can give you eternal life, that is his promise. He invites you to come, it's a genuine invitation, it's a loving and gracious invitation and further he commands you to come.

He commands all men everywhere to repent because he's fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness. Why would you not, why would you neglect so great a salvation?

Do you think that you are unforgivable? Do you think that your sins are too much? Do you think that the weight of it is too much for God to bear?

Do you think that he is too impotent, too powerless, ungracious and unforgiving that he can't forgive you for the full weight of all of your sin?

Do you believe that about God? Do you think you're a greater sinner than God is a savior? Or do you think, for instance, that you shall find atonement and forgiveness for all of your sins someplace else?

That you can neglect Jesus Christ and not turn to him but that maybe through your repentance you will be saved.

Maybe if I feel enough sorrow from my sin and I do what I can to stop sinning, I don't need

Jesus Christ but I'll just stop my sinning and then God will show me favor. Listen, I tell you this, you can cry a river full of penitential tears and they will not wash away one sin because without the shedding of blood there's no forgiveness of sins.

Repentance is a good and holy gift from God. That is not what washes away sins.

It is the shedding of blood that washes away sins. Or maybe you think, well, maybe my prayers will remit my sins.

Maybe if I pray enough or I pray more God will forgive me for all of my sins. If all of the saints on earth and all of the saints in heaven did nothing but pray for you at this moment, it could not wash away one of your sins because it is without the shedding of blood that there is no remission of sins.

Not by prayer. Or maybe you think that if you clean up your life you'll be forgiven of your sins.

I'll stop sinning, stop smoking, stop lusting, stop with the pornography on the computer. I'll clean it up.

I'll clean it up and then I'll be forgiven. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness and even if you were to live a perfect life from this moment forward and never sin against God, you still have a rap sheet that you cannot even possibly comprehend that has to be dealt with.

Those sins have to be atoned for. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

Not to mention the fact that your refusal to turn to Jesus Christ and be forgiven for your sins and your seeking of forgiveness and eternal life through any other means is itself more sin.

Because you neglect the blood that is shed and you will not embrace the righteousness of Christ for your salvation, that in itself is a continual sin from which you will not be forgiven unless you repent of it and trust

Christ for salvation. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Do not neglect so great a salvation.

Unbeliever, I have described it to you from Scripture, your own ruin. I have warned you from Scripture of the wrath that is to come.

I have shown you in Scripture of the remedy that has been provided for you in Jesus Christ and I have invited you from Scripture to embrace that remedy and trust in Him for salvation.

God has commanded you to turn this day from your sin and to believe savingly on Christ. If you will not come and you will not lay down your arms and you will not repent of your sin and believe upon that Savior, then your ruination rests in your own doing and you can never blame

God for that, for you have neglected the way of salvation and your damnation will be just. I promise you that.

Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. But with the shedding of blood, you missed it, there is forgiveness.

Glorious, infinite, free, complete, eternal and present forgiveness with the shedding of that blood.

So Christian, what do we do with that? We can know that our sins are forgiven.

We can rejoice in that. As we partake of the Lord's Supper together we are reminded again that these elements that we are partaking of, they do not bring salvation, they are symbols of what has brought us salvation.

There's nothing salvific in communion. You can eat every piece of bread up here and drink every bit of juice up here, it will not wash away your sins.

You can be baptized a thousand times, it will not wash away your sins. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins and that blood and the merits of that sacrifice are appropriated by repentance and faith.

So if you have never trusted Christ for salvation, I beg of you not to partake of these elements if you are not in Jesus Christ because you're eating and drinking judgment to yourself.

But Christian, this is a glory for us. We eat the bread and it reminds us of the broken body of the

Lord Jesus Christ. We drink the juice and it reminds us again of the blood that was shed. It is a symbol of the blood of the new covenant that was shed to atone for our sins and to give us eternal life.

So as we partake of the Lord's Supper, let's bow our heads together. We will confess our sin as we rejoice in and meditate upon this great sacrifice which has purchased for us complete, eternal, and present salvation.

Forgiveness of sins. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, but with the shedding of His blood there is forgiveness for any and all who will come and trust

Him. Let's bow our heads. I'll have a time of silent prayer and then I'll pray together. Our great and forgiving

God, we bless Your name for Your abundant and infinite grace.

We are so thankful that though our sins were many, Your mercy is even greater still though our iniquities were stacked up upon us and the weight of it was more than we could bear, we do know that You have provided for us salvation in Jesus Christ and we rejoice.

We thank You for that. We thank You for that sacrifice, the blood of the new covenant, which has washed away our iniquities and placed our sins as far as the east is from the west away from You and out of Your sight.

And we thank You that there's no condemnation for us because of the forgiveness that has been granted to us so freely and so fully in Your Son.

Lord, we thank You for this grace. We thank You again for this reminder of that sacrifice. We confess to You that we're in these bodies of sin and death and we do not do the things that we desire to do.

We do instead those things which we hate to do. We hate being wracked by the sin that this body and this life and this world create in us and cause in us and into which we fall.

But we thank You that there is free and full forgiveness in Jesus Christ and that we never have to worry about Your frown of condemnation upon us for our iniquities.

We thank You that they are taken out entirely and away from us entirely in Jesus Christ. And so we are we gladly confess this and we confess our sin, acknowledging it and desiring instead the cleansing of our relationship and the restoring of that with You.

We thank You for that grace that You welcome us with open arms and that we find in You a God who is willing to forgive all our iniquities and to welcome us back.

We thank You for the righteousness that You have provided in Your Son all through that sacrifice and the forgiveness as well.

We love You as Your people and we pray that You would fill our hearts with affection this morning as we partake together of these elements in Christ's name.