But I Promised God I Wouldn't Do That Again — Paris Reidhead

Fellowship in the Light and Confession

I'm going to ask you to turn to 1 John, the epistle to 1 John, and I'd like to read a few verses to you, beginning with verse 3. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with us.

And truly our fellowship is with the Father, with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. As He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just. 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.

Repentance as Renunciation of Self-Rule

We've been talking about salvation, so great salvation, so that salvation as it's taught in the scripture. We have begun by seeing that sin is a crime. It's the committal of the will, the principle, if I'm going to do what I want to do, I'm going to please me.

We also saw that there are some things we do for sinners. We live Christ before them as a sample of His grace. We intercede for them. We witness to them. And we saw some things that God does in Him, bringing that one out of death into life.

First, He awakens the sinner, stirs him up, makes him uncomfortable. Secondly, He convicts the sinner of his crime, turning to his own way. And He stirs his heart and brings him to repentance. That's a change of mind.

Note it well. I wish to emphasize it in perspective, because we're going to see it again in a few moments. He causes us to repent. We didn't lack any ability to repent. The only reason why sinners don't repent is not because they can't repent, but because they won't repent.

It's the Spirit of God moving upon the heart. It stirs sinners to the place that they're willing to renounce their right to rule, throw down the weapons of their warfare. So for peace, I've got stirs, unconditional surrender.

Lord, I'm going to please you in everything. That's the nature of repentance. And it's a precondition for saving faith. There are other kinds of faith, but saving faith that savingly unites us to the Son of God.

Christ said, except you repent, you'll perish. There are some teachers that have tried to say that repentance comes prior, as following, or subsequent to salvation, but they'd make the Lord not to understand this most important of all subjects when He said, except you repent, you'll perish.

And Paul taught repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance is that renunciation of our intent and purpose to rule our own lives and be committal to Him. Now, on the basis of that saving faith, and in the exercise of saving faith, the witness of the Spirit, God finds Himself with our spirit in that renewing work of grace, whereby we are brought out of death into life.

The Spirit's Witness and New Birth

And He tells us, I would call your attention again to the words of Job, who said, There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. For the part of a man that knows the things of a man is the spirit of man that's in him.

The part of you that knows you go to night school on this first Sunday morning in March is not your brain, or your hands, or your feet, or any other part of your body, it's your, or your eyes, all of those things confirm what you know.

But it's your spirit that knows that you're here, that you're married, or you're unmarried, as the case may be. And it's that same human spirit that's quickened by the Holy Spirit. And as you know you're here and know who you are, you know that you're born of God.

If you've known it before you exercised saving faith, you knew you weren't. Now you know you are. And it's that how you know, you know because you know that you know. It doesn't require argument, there are proofs, but the person doesn't need them, others may.

What the Convert Carries into the Christian Life

Now, what did you carry into the Christian life? You've renounced your right to rule, you've thrown down these weapons you've used in fighting against God, you have sued for peace, you've been forgiven, you've been pardoned, you know you're born of God.

What did you carry with you into the Christian life? All the scars that you had from your unconverted days. They did an apodectomy on you before you were converted, you're still going to have the scar after you're converted.

You stretched your hand on barbed wire when you were climbing to the fence and it left a scar, it's going to be there. Cut one finger off when you were playing with your dad's bowers off and you're still going to have a stump, it's not going to be there.

In other words, you don't have a resurrection body yet. One day you're going to have a body like unto his own body of glory, but the day after you're converted, you have the same old model that you had when you first started with such changes as have come.

You've got, you have something else, you have memory, you carried your memory with you into this new life. And you have something else, you've carried all the urges and drives and propensities and appetites that you had before you were converted.

Standard equipment they were on the first model, they've never been changed since. Mother, father had a Mother Eve, gave into the world, made by the hand of God, and he gave them an appetite for food, because that's how they were sustained for knowledge, that's how they learned.

He gave them an appetite for pleasure, that's how they enjoyed his creation. He gave them an appetite for status, that's how they were going to rule over that which he had made. He gave them an appetite for sex, that's how the family were managed to be increased.

All of these appetites that when he had given them, he looked at them, that Father Adam, and he said, it is good, you're converted. And you carried into the Christian life appetites, those urges, or drives, or propensities.

Learned Responses and Habitual Sin

You carried them in, they're still with you. You carried something else, you carried into the Christian life of the learn of response, this life situation, that was conducive to your learning early, all the principles that govern this system, this world system, into which you've come.

Appetites, and urges, and drives, and then there were splendid examples, what not to do, I'm beside you on every hand. So, with natural drives, natural urges, natural propensities, you also acquired a whole structure and system of how to, how to handle the situations that you encountered.

So, for instance, you probably early learned that the best defense was a strong offense, and so we cultivated how to be as offensive as possible in those early years of our life, and some of us were more successful at it than others.

But it was something that we had, someone said something about us in school, the only way to handle it was to say something about them. Do unto others before they do unto you, or after they do unto you, but do, became the rule that we followed.

The virtue of habitual use, the synapses of the brain, I know a lot about physiology and about neurology, because I read the Reader's Digest regularly, and I get all my science there. So, I want you to know you're listening to an expert.

When I say synapse, I've said more than I know, I don't really know what it is, but I remember reading this article in the Reader's Digest by scientific authority, and it said that as you repeat certain actions, certain responses, it's almost like, well, just sort of making a little road, a path through the yard or through the woods, easier to go that way than some other way.

You carried all of those into this new life. So, what's happened? What's the event that took place back there at the point of repentance from the day on, God, I'm going to please you, sincere, earnest, genuine, witness of that, the Spirit of God, bring into your heart saving faith and witness that you were born again.

You said, Lord, I'll never do that again, I'll never think that again, I'll never say that again. Each instant perfection in purpose, purpose was to please God. That's the essence of repentance, the perfect purpose to please God, please God.

That's the purpose of my life, to please Him. And on the basis of that and that alone, that change of attitude, be quick in faith. Now, you're in the Christian life, you've been there two weeks, and something happens.

Somebody comes along behind you, beside you, in front of you, confronts you, do something unexpected to illustrate it, they haul off and slap you. Now, maybe it's not physical, maybe it's in words or in looks or something else, but it's offensive.

What's going to happen? Remember, your purpose was to please God, that's three weeks old, two weeks old. But for all these many years, when somebody did something to you, you turned around and gave them as good as that you got.

And so what happens? What's going to be the first thing? You're new in the Christian life, you turn around and you give them just what they gave you. Why? Remember I talked about that little path in the brain that was there, that something that you had carved into your responses, that habituated response, and it takes over.

Now, you know it's sin, you know it's wrong, no sooner have you done it, then you're filled with grief, and you said, but God, I promised I'd never do that again, and I've done it. And it's going to fill you with remorse, it'll fill you with a sense of guilt, maybe even a sense of questioning.

Am I really saved? I told God, if he'd forgive me, I wouldn't do that anymore. And now, I've done it. What am I going to do? Just pardon my past sins? If he'd just forgive me, I would not speak that way anymore, I wouldn't talk that way anymore, I wouldn't do that anymore.

And I've only been a Christian for two weeks. If you're smart, you're going to go to the scripture, and you're going to find that the scripture has anticipated this possibility. In fact, it's anticipated the strong likelihood that this is going to happen.

And you're going to discover that all of the warnings in the New Testament, of the teachings in the New Testament, and in the epistles especially, and all of the exhortations in the New Testament, were given not only to born-again, but to spiritual people, because in the New Testament, that's all you got to have.

Self-Judgment, Forsaking, and Confession

It is pretty explicit. And the scripture tells us exactly what to do. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, about the abuses in connection with the Lord's Supper, was very explicit. He said, yourself, that you be not judged.

For he that is judged is jacent of the Lord, that he should not be condemned with the world. But if you want to avoid this being jacent of the Lord business, you better judge yourself. Right away. Don't wait.

Right now, judge it, judge it, judge it. What's that mean? Well, that means you're the judge. You sit down on the bench, and you get the book out here, the law book, and you get the bailiff, which is you, to bring the defendant, which is you.

And you have a court seat, and you confront you, and you look right straight into the eye of you and say, what is this you did? And you, as the one that's judging yourself, says, I did this that God told me not to do.

That's what the scripture says. Judge yourself. Don't wait for somebody else to do it. You do it. Now, the second thing the scripture tells us is to forsake his sin. That's a principle of the Old Testament in the New as well.

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man is thought to return to the Lord and have mercy. I go out and abundantly pardon. But no pardon and no mercy unless there's a forsaking of the way.

So we judge it to be what God said it is, and we forsake it. And then we read here in verse John the third step, and that is confess it. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin.

To confess means to say with God what God said. To say with God what God said. And to call it by its name. That's the word, calling by its name. Now let's think for a moment. Here we are, children of God.

The Consequences of Sin in a Christian's Life

We come into the Christian life. We have the witness of the Spirit. We burst through to the Spirit. We've done something that isn't right. It's disobedient to the Word of God, which said. What's the consequence?

Consequences of sin in the life of a Christian. Pretty important. First thing that happens when a child of God sins is that fellowship with God is interrupted. The sweet sense of his presence is interrupted.

You see, he said God is light and he is no darkness at all. If we walk in darkness, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another. So what's the first effect of sin in the life of a Christian?

Interrupted fellowship. Sweet sense of his presence. We've grieved the Holy Spirit. That grieving, that hurting of him is reflected in interrupted fellowship with the Lord. Is that very painful? Well, it just depends on whether you've had any or not.

Maybe you've been so long since you had any, you didn't know whether it's interrupted or not. But if you've had it, it's interrupted and it's painful and it hurts. And then the second thing that happens when a child of God sins, prayer is unanswered.

David said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. And for me to permit in my life that which brings God means that I have foreclosed the possibility of having prayer answered. Now, maybe if you're in a position where you don't have anything to worry about, full security, perfect health, no possibility of sickness or need, no problems with family or friends, it isn't terribly important that you be on what the old-timers used to call praying ground.

I haven't arrived there yet. I'm still living day by day, breath by breath on the basis of prayer. So anything that's going to interfere with answered prayer is awfully costly. I can't afford it. Can you?

I just can't afford it. Because David said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord won't hear me. Then that's get out to the light. That's how sensitive it is. God looks on the heart. The third thing that happens when a child of God sins is that God doesn't use him or her.

They may go on using God, but God doesn't use them. See, God, oh, I think the best illustration comes from the life of F. B. Meyer. I read this years ago. F. B. Meyer bought a fountain pen. It wasn't early.

Back in the late 1900s. And it was going to carry me. You know, up until that time, everybody who traveled had to carry a stick pen, nibs, and sand to blot or blotter. And he had to have that little bottle of ink.

But they got a fountain pen where you put the ink in the pen. Only problem with his first fountain pen that F. B. Meyer had, it short wrote. The ink came out of the end of the pen. But it also came out of the sides and out of the top.

And every time he wrote anything, he got his hands all blue. So as soon as new pens were made that were guaranteed to leave proof, he took that pen and put it in the drawer. And he said he could get him to go on a trip.

And he'd feel in the drawer to take some pens with him. And he'd feel that first, and still hold it, still in his drawer, still belong to it. And but when he felt that pen, instead of pulling it out, to put it in, he'd push it back further in the drawer, get one of them.

And the little pen was supposed to, in this illustration of Meyer's, be able to think and respond. The little pen says, well, I felt his touch. I still belong to him. I'm still in his drawer. He hasn't told me where it burned me yet.

It's still here. But he never uses me. Once I knew his thoughts before any others, once I helped him communicate with all as he would see with now, why doesn't he use me? And the answer that comes is, oh, little pen, little pen, you still belong to him.

But he can't use you. Because when he does, you get it dirty. God never uses the life that gets him dirty. They go on using God, but God doesn't use such a life. The fourth thing that happens when a child of God sins is pretty dangerous and very, very threatening.

Resisting the Devil's Foothold

The scripture is so explicit, it says, give no place to the devil. Now, there's a reason for that. Because the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour. Only problem about that is you don't understand much about lions.

Lions roar, but only after they caught the prey, not before. So a lion that's hungry and hasn't gotten his supper yet, roaring is said to be the lion's way of saying grace. He's got the supper, and he's just telling God, thank you for a good meal.

But he never says grace till he's got the meal in front of him. He just never roars till he's got his supper in front of him. Now, what is hunger, supper? I tell you, he's a pussycat. He does you never hear him.

He walks without cracking the grass. He's sniffer. And he comes around in your life, and you've got a fence there. See, the angel of the Lord, it happens about then to fear him. And the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.

But when you become friends to evil, and you don't hate it anymore, but you consent to it, it's like having a high board fence. And you go along, and you kick the board loose. Now the devil, like a roaring lion, keeps snooping around.

And he finds that board loose, that unconfessed, unforgiving sin. And he just pushes it aside with the paw, and he gets his paw, claws in, pulls another board. First thing you know, he's in. Trying to think it's fun.

Well, I just lose my reward, someone said. I'm trying to tell you, there's a lot more than losing reward about this sin in the life of Christian people. If I do anything about it, I just sort of like cure our interest in it.

Lose our appetite. Lose our enthusiasm. Raise the place where we do it like God does. And the fifth day, they hit that on a clincher. The other four are bedding up, but the fifth one, boom, that's that day.

God's Chastening of His Children

You see, the scripture says that he scourges every son and chases every child, but he never lays a finger on the devil's family. Have you ever heard anyone say, well, I know a Christian who's living in sin, and he's not been chased, or anything happened to him.

You don't know, that person is not to be identified as a He's a professing Christian. You see, the Lord knoweth them that are his. He's the only one that does besides this. The Lord knoweth them that are his and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

And here's someone that names the name of Christ and departs from iniquity. Scandal in church. And nothing's happening to him. Brand. That isn't proof of anything other than God says, that's not my child.

He scourges every child and chases every son, but he never lays a finger on the devil's family. You know why? Because this is all the hell the devil's family is going to have. And when they die, it'll be hell forever.

But for the child of God, this is all the hell forever. And when they die, it's going to be heaven forever. So he's chasing his own family, but he doesn't throw any grit and sand into the mess upon it for which the foolish people sell their souls.

That's not nice. They've sold their souls for it. He isn't going to throw grit in it. It doesn't happen. But it's children. I have news for you. If you'd like, I can show you some scars to prove exactly how faithful and loving and tender and gentle and zealous God is about that chasing business.

I've had it a time or two here and there. And I'd like to just recommend that if you've got an alternative course, you take it. And the alternative course, judge yourselves, is chasing. That is years ago.

A Testimony of Sin, Repentance, and Restoration

I just got to know the Lord three weeks before. We're living in Anoka County, Minnesota. We had a 360-acre sand pile, latinly called farm. We had 60 acres of one field that we planted in the corn, which gave a little bit of corn.

If you had a lot of rain, we didn't have any rain. We're just trying to save the crop. We were going to cultivate it, cultivate it to death, stir it up. They had an idea that if you cultivated the soil, it would bring the water up.

But all it did was let the water evaporate. Well, we should have done is left it there, but we did everything wrong, including that. It was hot. Oh, it was so hot. We had to get up at 2 .30 in the morning.

I harnessed my team in the car, got it out to the cultivator. I was in the field waiting for the first ray of light so I could see little green shriveled up of the stuff we called corn. It started to keep down there.

By 6 o 'clock, we had feed the horses, nose bag, give them some water, come into the barn, have breakfast, milk six cows, each of us, three of us, and back into the field as near 7 as possible. By 8 o 'clock, my team was so exhausted they weren't walking.

They were just sort of falling to one end of the field and the other. I didn't even die when I took the corvation jar off the back of the old spring sheet and started up the pump and pull and let the burlap sit around it.

When I came around the corner of the house, the door opened, my mother came out. She saw me, and she smiled, and she said, oh, call me by family nickname. Sonny, I'm so glad to see you. I've got some errands I need done.

Well, right then, I think the thing I needed least in all this whole fat world was errands. And I did something that I'm sure none of you will know anything about, but you just try to imagine, sassed my mother.

You know what sassing is? Well, see, I didn't know anything about it. I sassed my mother. And she drew back, so I hit her. She spoke again, and I sassed her a second. And she said something else, and this time, and she just looked at me as though she'd been stung with a bow and arrow, and she said, Sonny, I was wrong.

And she turned around and walked to the kitchen. I walked up, and I took my jar of water and set it down under the pump. I walked out of the hay mower down between the acres and up the ladder and the wall of the hay.

I found a valley of hay. I threw myself down, sobbing like a baby. I remember crying out, oh, God, I don't know what this has done to me, whether it's unsaved me or what, but I hate it. I hate it. You see, the thing God used to show me that though I was a church member, I was lost.

I dishonored my parents. I was disobedient to my parents. I disobeyed my parents. And now, I had done it. All telling God what a sin this was, and how I hated it, and I didn't know what it had done to me.

And I just stopped sobbing, and I just laid there, and I began to hear way back in my mind, the old cat-meatish hymn that they'd sung down there when I had come to know Christ. Peace, perfect peace in this dark world of sin.

The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. And I confessed it to Him, and I knew forgiveness, and I knew cleansing, and I knew restoration of joy. And I went down the ladder and out and found my mother and asked her to forgive me.

I did her errands, and I picked up my jar, filled it with water, went back to my horses, and the whole thing was less than 25 minutes. But in that 25 minutes, I discovered something. I'd carried into the Christian life a traitor that would betray me if I gave it a chance.

And not only did I discover I'd carried a traitor into the Christian life, but I found out who the traitor was. You know who? Me. That I that I am by nature. That Paul says, I am crucified with Christ, that I, that me.

And all those urges and drives and propensities and habits of response. I knew cleansing, I knew forgiveness, but I'd also learned something else about me. That as long as I lived, day by day, I was going to have to find a way to have victory and find a way to have cleansing.

Keeping Short Accounts with God

But God, I promised if you'd forgive me, I'd never do it again. He was sincere. He's made a provision, and it's best that you take that provision because the alternatives are so costly. It behooves us to keep consciences void of offense toward God.

Shall we bow in prayer? With our heads down, our eyes closed, let's ask ourselves a few questions. First, have I kept short accounts with God? Things that I've done in my life that have breathed the Spirit, that I've dealt with, have I judged them and forsaken them and confessed them to know the cleansing of the blood?

If I haven't, the best thing in the world to do since we've been reminded by the Spirit this morning through the Word is to deal with it. Heavenly Father, your purpose, as we read in the scripture, was that our joy might be full.

And we know that if we have consciences that are aware that we grieve Thee, that there's unconfessed, unforsaken, unforgiven sin and heart of life, that the joy is interrupted. Wouldn't Thou spot our joy to be full?

And so, Father, we're asking that for our own sake, as well as for the glory of Christ, each of us here this morning, I invite Thee to deal with us in any and every place that Thou see work. We need to judge and forsake and confess that which grieves Thee, that our joy might be full.

Breathe upon us, Breath of God, that Thou work in our hearts and our lives to the end, that in everything we might bring joy and satisfaction to Thy heart, that He might joy over us and He sees that the land that was slaved to us is receiving the reward of His suffering.

We ask in His name and for His sake.