Please turn with me to 1st John, 1st John chapter 1, found in page 905 in the Bible I'm holding here. I'm going to be looking at the first chapter and the first two verses of chapter 2, reading chapter 1 through chapter 2, verse 2. As John is writing this letter, he is making sure that the people understand that there is a certain, that there is truth, not a certain element, but there is truth in what he speaks. What he has seen, what he has heard from the Lord Jesus Christ, he imparts to the people. There were teachers at this time, the time of John's writing of this letter, that were claiming that one had to come to a secret knowledge through another source, through other writings, through ceremonies, through various means. John wants to end any idea that there is truth outside of God's word, that there is truth outside of Christ's teachings. Therefore, he writes this letter, and we have these words recorded for us here this morning in 1 John 1. Starting then at verse 1, this is the word of God. Pay close attention to it. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched. This we proclaim concerning the word of life. The life appeared. We have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you. God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not only for ours, but also for the sins. of the whole world. Here ends the reading of our text, God's Inerrant and Infallible Word, this morning. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, I've entitled my sermon, No Hope Without It, this morning. I wanted to focus on the truth about Christ's death on the cross, particularly focusing on verse 2 of chapter 2, that Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. I want to look at what that means as we consider the teaching in many of the churches surrounding us today, the broad evangelical churches. The dying words of J. Gresham Machen, a great theologian, he dictated to another in a telegram sent to John Murray. His words were these, I'm so thankful for active obedience of Christ. No hope without it. These are beautiful words. There is a beautiful comfort expressed in these words. Only in Christ does one have hope. Only as one is found connected through faith in the active obedience of Christ does one have hope. Hope that the promises of Scripture will be fulfilled. That our loved ones who have died before us, who have gone before, will one day be raised again. That we will be reunited with them. That we ourselves will have our sins forgiven for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is tremendous peace in these words. One of the reasons for that is it is a knowledge based upon truth these words that John speak are true he says that which was from the beginning we read in verse 1 that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked at and our hands have touched this we proclaim concerning the word of life this is not some fanciful creation of John's This is not some mystical teaching that needs to be found in a secret room somewhere. It is not to be found in some lost scroll in the deserts of Africa. It is found right here for us. The very words, the very life of our Lord Jesus Christ, inscripturated. Our faith is founded upon these words, for they point to the one in whom is truth, Jesus Christ. He is the one who brings us into fellowship with God. John says, I want you to have fellowship with us. And he's saying, for that to happen, you need to know the truth. For only as you know the truth can we be assured that you will have fellowship with us and with God the Father. You and I are not left without hope. Christ is the Savior, and he atones for sins. He atones for your sins and mine. We have no hope without him. John removes any false sense of assurance. He talks about the various claims that were being made during this time. Verse 6, if we claim to have fellowship with him, yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. Put away your false sense of security, brothers and sisters. If you claim to have fellowship with God, then He is your Lord. He directs your very steps. He guides you in paths of righteousness. If you are living in sin, greedily in sin, seeking to do that which is evil when others aren't around to correct you, yet claim to have fellowship with the Lord. You're fooling yourself. You're lying to yourself and you're lying to others. There's no hope. There's no comfort in this. John says in verse 8, If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If you claim that you're without sin, John states very clearly, you are deceiving yourselves. now it is easy to look at the newspapers today to compare ourselves with those who are in the newspapers to look at the records of murder to look at the deadbeat dads the unfit parents the criminals who have gotten out of jail and are roaming our countryside and to say well at least I'm not like them and finding some sort of self-righteousness in that comparison finding some hope that because we seem to be more holy than they are, somehow, for some reason, we can almost claim to be without sin. Brothers and sisters, the standard by which we measure our lives is not by the standard of the world. We measure ourselves according to God's law. That's why we read the law from Sunday to Sunday. It is that standard to remind us of our need for the Lord Jesus Christ. There is one teaching going around called the victorious Christian life. Living victoriously. That one by one we can take each command of the Lord and gradually work on it and gain victory over it. That we can somehow gain a life without sin in this life. the only thing that brings is despair. Because as adherence to this teaching will tell you, it brings tremendous guilt. It leads them to despair because they again fall into those sins which they thought they had mastered, which they thought they had gained victory over, which they had been told by their Bible teacher they could gain victory over. But there is only deception to be found there. John says in verse 10, if we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar. Again, if we make that unhealthy comparison with the world and say, somehow, through my rationalization, through my logic, because I'm not as bad as they are, I'm basically good enough to be saved by the Lord in and of myself, we're making God out to be a liar. John is saying, my dear children, you are sinners and there is no hope for you apart from Christ. Admit your sinfulness and accept God's remedy. The truth is that sin must be paid for and has been paid for in Christ. The one who is resting on him can have true peace. The solution is not to rewrite or deny the truth of Scripture. That brings no hope. One of those denials that we focus on this morning is the idea of Christ's death as an atoning sacrifice. It's a sacrifice which pays the price of sin. Today in the Evangelical Church in North America, many ministers seek to rewrite the Bible in their teaching or to deny its message. And that is how they give comfort to their people. They seek to give comfort to their people through deception, through lies. Many deny that God is really angry with sin and with sinners. They stress God's desire to have a relationship. A desire that God must have a relationship with his creatures. That is central to who God is. A sort of family room theology. And they eliminate any talk about God's justice. About his anger against man's sin. about the gap, about the chasm that has been created because of man's sin between God and man. This family room theology stands in contrast to the Bible's picture of God's justice, of God's payment for sin, the judicial nature of the relationship between God and his children, that we need to be declared righteous in order to be reconciled to God. Man must come through Christ. It is not God's desire to have a relationship with his creatures as though he was lonely without us that drives him to send his son to the world to die. But he sends his son to die that sin's demands, the curse of sin might be paid for in Christ. Talk of God's justice is almost non-existent in many evangelical churches today. The emphasis is upon God's love. The God displayed in many churches today is a God who winks at our sin and thinks it's cute. Oh, you got away with another one. Try harder next time. He is seen as a God who needs a relationship with his creatures in order to just even exist as though he would fall into a sort of depression. if he was not able to relate to mankind, to have them as his friends. God has been reinvented in the modern church. Oh, it is not a new heresy. It's an age-old heresy with new packaging. They say that he no longer demands payment for sin. The biblical God who demands that sin be paid for through the death of his son has fallen out of favor with many evangelical Christians today. This picture is too cruel of a picture of the loving God that evangelical Christians have grown comfortable with today. But the fact of the matter is that though God does seek to reconcile lost sinners to himself, he only does so after his righteous demands are met. What does John say in verse 5? God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. God is righteous and holy, and there is nothing evil or false in him. He will not give up his attribute of justice in order to have fellowship with man. He will not separate himself from certain attributes in order to have that relationship with man. He maintains his justice. The good news of the gospel is that Christ is the atoning sacrifice for sin. The good news of the gospel is that if we put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, claim Him as our Savior and Lord, we have been made a friend of God. We have been reconciled to God. No longer an enemy. The good news is not to change the situation and claim that somehow we've been duped all this time past church history. We've been learning the wrong message that God never really did demand payment for sin. Somehow that teaching came along and now we've all accepted it as true, this denial of the truth. There's no hope in that. That is simply a lie. It is deceiving. So then we look at Christ's atoning sacrifice this morning, the necessity of this sacrifice. God purifies us through the blood of his Son so that we might have fellowship with him. We read that in verse 7. We have fellowship with one another. The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin if we walk in the light. His justice demands that he purify us through the shedding of Christ's blood. We read in Exodus 34, verse 7, that God will not leave the guilty unpunished. We read in Psalm 5, you are not a God who takes pleasure in evil. With you, the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies, bloodthirsty and deceitful men, the Lord of horrors. The Lord punishes the sinful. He destroys the wicked. You see, sin has created a great chasm between God and man, a gap that cannot be bridged by a mere apology. A change in status must occur, as we have heard in the adult Sunday school over the last few weeks. You and I must be declared righteous before God. Seen in Christ as righteous, so that we can once again be restored to true fellowship with God. This is true comfort. This is where true hope is found. This is where confidence is found. Confidence is found in knowing that God's justice has been propitiated or turned aside. True comfort comes only from a proper understanding of biblical truth. Our comfort comes when we see that Christ's death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice. Christ's death turned away God's wrath by paying the price for sin. As we said earlier, many evangelicals don't look favorably upon this teaching. Their response to such a teaching is horror. My God would never demand such a sacrifice. He would never demand such a payment for sin. As a result, we hear this development of this two-God theology, the God of the Old Testament who demanded blood sacrifice, and the God of the New Testament who sent His Son to show His love for the world and that His Son would then show people how they ought to live and point them to God. Brothers and sisters, the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. He is the God who was, who is, and who is to come, the never-changing God. He sent His Son to show His love for the world, John 3.16. We see it at all the football games, don't we? For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Yes, that is true. But go on there in Romans chapter 3, verse 25 says, God presented him, he presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Christ had to die to fulfill God's righteous demands against sin. This death, what was this death? Was it just simply a display? No, it was an atoning sacrifice. We read it here in verse 2 of chapter 2. And all we need to do to further gain support for this is look at how the New Testament writers understood this same death, Christ's death. They saw it as a sacrifice. The writer of Hebrews speaks of Jesus' death as a sacrifice which has made us holy, Hebrews chapter 10. In the same book, in chapter 8, we read that Jesus gave his body as a sacrifice. In chapter 9, we read of Jesus offering himself up to God so that we might be forgiven of our sins. He was sacrificed once for all to take away the sins of many people. Why is this so significant? Why understand the sacrificial language as being tied to Christ's work? It is necessary to stress this point so that we can see that the same God who demanded blood sacrifice in the Old Testament is the same God who demanded the ultimate sacrifice in his Son in the New Testament. The Old Testament sacrifices were only pictures of this perfect sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. The significance of Christ's sacrifice can be seen when we see what the Old Testament sacrifices were set up to do. They were seen as substitutionary and as expiatory or paying the penalty for sin. This can be seen in a number of ways. First, the occasion for presenting a sacrifice in the Old Testament was sin, either particular or habitual. Sacrifices were not empty rituals. But they had meaning behind them and they were to remind the people of their need to have their sins paid for. Second, in the offering of the sacrifices, the hands of the one offering the sacrifice would be laid upon the victim's head, signifying a communication of sin onto the victim. This showed the substitutionary nature of the sacrifice. The animal was to suffer the punishment for sin in place of the actual sinner. third we see the price being paid in the slaying of the animal in the Old Testament sacrifice as it says in Hebrews 9.22 without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness a life was given that the sins of the people might ceremonially be forgiven and fourth we see the concept of sacrifice and the declared result of the offering we read in Leviticus of the burnt offering in which the people bringing the offering the person bringing the offering was to lay his hands on the head of the burnt offering and the Lord would accept it on his behalf as making atonement for him we read that in Leviticus 1 Christ's death was a fulfillment of Old Testament sacrifice and therefore the substitutionary payment given by God his death was a substitution on our behalf and the death which paid the penalty of sin this is the beauty of the cross for it is here that God's righteous demands were paid and at the same time his love was displayed. Christ's death on the cross reconciled lost sinners to God. He accomplished what the Old Testament sacrifices could not. Some want to say that the offering of Christ on the cross was given by God only as a means to convince us that he really loved us. Nothing more. What I mean to say is that some see this display as being given that we might be convinced of the seriousness of sin and therefore decide in ourselves to love God after such a display of love from Him. Others teach that Christ's death on the cross was a result of necessity, that God had to save some of His creatures in order to maintain His integrity and honor. What we must recognize is that God's decision to save us arose from His love, yes. But there was more than just a display of love at the cross. justice, the demands that the law placed upon the sinner were met in Christ. The blameless one, the one who was without sin, took our sins upon himself and gave us his righteousness that we now can call God our Father. Because of God's perfections and the nature of sin, it was necessary for Christ to die on the cross to accomplish God's plan of redemption. There was no other solution to the situation. So we've looked at the necessity of the sacrifice. We've looked at the nature of it, the atoning nature, the nature in which it pays for sin. What does this mean to us? What does it say to us? Well, it keeps in perspective the truth of the matter that God is angry with sin and with the sinner. But through the atoning work of Christ, the sinner can be assured that he is saved from that penalty, that penalty of eternal damnation. You and I can be assured that if we have put faith in Christ, we need not fear God's judgment. We can have confidence, as we heard this morning in the Adult Sunday School, we can have confidence that we stand before God and we will receive the declaration not guilty as we are found in the Lord Jesus Christ. For we are seen as righteous in Him. Christ's death has fully paid for our sins. We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Hebrews 10, verse 10 states, We know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that we were redeemed, but we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect, the perfect sacrifice, the acceptable sacrifice before our God. So then when the world, the flesh, or the devil seeks to accuse you, seeks to challenge your peace, your confidence, by accusing you of being a sinner, you can respond with the Apostle Paul, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. Christ has satisfied for your sins and redeemed you with his own precious blood so that you are no longer your own, but that you belong to him, as the catechism states, that you are not your own, but belong body and soul and life and death to your faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Again, when the accusations come in the form of these words, but you are a child of wrath and an enemy of God, you can respond, yes, I am indeed a child of wrath by nature and before my reconciliation. But I have been reconciled to God and received into His favor through Christ's death on the cross. The words of accusation may come, you are still captive to sin and beware lest you think that you are without sin. Whereas we read in our passage today, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And furthermore, If we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar. And his word has no place in our lives. It's either or, not both and. Either we make God out to be a liar or we accept the truth that we are sinners, saved by grace. But John goes on to remind us that when we do sin, we can rest assured that if we confess our sins, God will forgive us of our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. For we have one who speaks to us, or who speaks to the Father on our behalf, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. You have been delivered from bondage to sin. If you have put faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been given eternal life. You have been given liberty. You have been given freedom to choose for that which is right. Formerly you were bound in sin. Now you have been freed to do that which is right. For Christ's active and passive obedience have been imputed to you so that you are no longer under condemnation as we read in Romans 8 this morning. If you have not trusted Christ for your salvation, no amount of denial, no lie will give you the peace your soul longs for. To you I say, seek the Lord while he may be found. Call on him while he is near that you too may have peace, that you too may have confidence before the Holy God. that you may look forward to that day of judgment with hope, awaiting those words, well done, good and faithful servant, as you are covered by the blood of Christ. What a comfort we have as God's people, knowing that in Christ we no longer have to live in fear of judgment or be bound by guilt, but we can live assured that in Christ we are not our own, but our identity is tied up with Christ, so that we are sons and daughters of God, And that is what we are. Amen. Let us pray. Almighty, righteous, holy, heavenly Father, we stand before you with righteousness that is as filthy rags. We claim that you would accept us through your Son, Jesus Christ. Assure us that in Christ we have the title of sons and daughters of yours. Strengthen our faith, O Lord, as we are attacked from all sides, from our own flesh, from the world, and from the devil. As these components, these parts, seek to attack our assurance, may we recognize the words, the glorious words, And if you confess your sins, you are faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness so that we no longer stand condemned. May we have gratitude in our hearts, Lord, for this declaration, for this status which you have conferred upon us by your grace. May we share it with those who are bound in sin, Those who are suffering under guilt, may we share with them the good news in its fullness, in its truth. Not denying the truth of the matter. Staring the truth straight in the face. Also giving the gospel message which declares that we are free. Free from condemnation. We thank you for the precious blood of your son, Jesus Christ. And we pray all these things in his dear name. Amen.