Beloved congregation, in our study of the Apostles' Creed, as guided by the Catechism, we continue to study the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've seen, you'll recall, His name, Jesus, Savior. We've considered His official title, Christ, the Anointed of God. We saw also that a Christian is to be a little Christ, an imitator of Him. Last time we considered that he is the only begotten son of the Father and that he is called our Lord. Now in Lord's Day 14, the catechism turns to those words about how he was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. That time of year when we start to think about the birth of Christ again. It was a birth that was not only miraculous, It certainly was, but also unique, one of a kind, because he is the only baby ever to be born sinless, blameless, innocent, From the moment he was conceived, he was without sin. That is unique among the whole of mankind. John writes about that in verse 5 of this chapter we read, and ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins, and in him is no sin. Let's consider this truth tonight with God's help under the heading Christ's Perfect Holiness to Cover My Sins. Excuse me, My Sins, plural. Christ's Perfect Holiness to Cover My Sins. Three points, first, an amazing revelation, second, an awful reality, and third, an abounding removal. First then, an amazing revelation. Our text says that he was manifested. That word manifested means to appear. More accurately, yet it means to appear as you truly are. That is, showing your true character, the real you. John is saying he was revealed in his true character as he really was, sinless. There was nothing fake about him. There was nothing disguised about him. Nothing pretended. He was perfectly holy, and in him was no sin. We can see that in two ways. First, in his conception. Second, in his life. First, Jesus is perfectly holy in his conception. As I already said, every human being that was ever conceived and born into this world received from his or her parents the pollution of original sin. Ever since the fall, that pollution, that guilt is part of our very nature. We can't avoid it, we can't evade it. It's not that one in two million children is born and doesn't have this original sin. No. All have sinned. All are under the sin. This is a universal problem. Every living, breathing human being that ever lived and ever will live has this problem, except for Jesus. When he appeared, when he was manifested, when he was conceived, it was without sin. How did that happen? Well, when the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and bring forth a son, Mary asks him how this can be, because the natural course of having a child, she says, will not be followed. And she is told this, the Holy Ghost, that is the Holy Spirit, shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee. The angel tells Mary that something unprecedented and divine is going to happen in her womb. The Holy Spirit is going to make this happen. And then the angel Gabriel adds, therefore also that holy thing, which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God. Holy. Child that's to be born of you, Mary, you'll be holy. You'll be perfectly sinless. How? Well, that Holy Spirit will overshadow the Virgin Mary and implant in her womb a child, the Lord Jesus. And that means he did not receive the human nature of two earthly parents, but he had a divine, perfectly holy nature, which was joined to the humanity of the Virgin Mary, and the result was that perfect person having two natures, both God and man, not affected by that sinful human nature at all. Wow, what a mystery. The Lord Jesus is perfectly God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and yet the Lord Jesus is perfectly human, made of a woman, made under the law. He took on him the seed of Abraham. Church Father Athanasius had to do battle against those who would assault the deity of Christ, and he makes this statement, he remained what he was, and he became what he was not. You have to hold both those things in tension. God is in the flesh, yet without sin. Yet that enfleshed being, the Lord Jesus, remains God. It's a mystery we can't understand, and yet this is how the Lord Jesus is manifested in the Word, manifested in divine history, how He's revealed to us just as He is, perfectly holy in His conception. Second, we also see that He was perfectly holy in His life. Hebrews 4 verse 15 tells us that throughout his life he was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He never sinned. He never incurred any guilt throughout his entire life. You and I incurred guilt this past week, today. We can't go a day without sinning. He didn't go a day with sinning. You never sin. Take only his childhood. Children, imagine the Lord Jesus being as old as you are. You think of your life, all the frustrations you can have, The wrong inclinations you can feel, and the wrong words that come out of your mouth, and sometimes you can say things that are unkind to people, or you can think things that are wrong. So many things we do wrong, adults do. Jesus at your age, never once, no sin. In Him is no sin. He never started. fight of words or a physical fight. He never gave a dirty look. He never spoke a mean word. In fact, the opposite is true. He always sought peace. He always looked with kindness at others, even if they were mean to him. He always spoke kind and wholesome words, never cutting words. He never cut anybody else down. He always built others up. He was never selfish. He didn't put himself first. He was always sacrificing himself for others. He never had to be at the front of the line. He never needed the biggest piece of cake. He never, never wanted anything by stepping on someone else. It's actually really hard for us to imagine someone being like that 100% of the time, isn't it? We've never met someone like that. But the people in Nazareth growing up with him, they met him, they knew him daily. Remarkable, just like that. But not only as a child, also as he grew older and as he began his public ministry, and we see him in the Gospels. He's enduring trials and afflictions, tests of patience more than anyone had ever experienced, and yet he did so without sin. He faced even more trials and temptations than you and I do. But he endured them perfectly, without any trace or hint of wrongdoing. And even when his enemies came to him, and they rudely and cruelly accused him of being a great sinner, of being in fellowship with sinners, being in fellowship with the devil even, they called him Beelzebub, and he's doing the works of Beelzebub. Oh, it's enough to make your blood boil the way they talked about him, but he never once sinned. He never lashed out at them. Oh, he spoke harsh words, strong words, true words, just words, but never sinful words, never lost his temper. There were also those, besides those who tried to tarnish him with their words, who spoke well of him, who bore witness of him. a witness that was not biased or prejudiced. It was honest. It was genuine. What they say is remarkable. The people spoke of him, and they said, he maketh both the blind to see and the ears of the deaf to hear. He makes the lame to walk. He heals the lepers. He has done all things well. Did you hear it? The testimony of the people about Jesus was that he has done all things well. When we come to Pilate, the last day of his earthly life, before his crucifixion, the highest earthly judge of the day, he makes this statement, this man has done nothing amiss. He couldn't justify crucifying Jesus, even though later he did, under pressure from the Jews. But Pilate knew, he confessed, this man's innocent. Even Pilate's wife calls Jesus a just man. And the centurion at the cross said, certainly this was a righteous man, and him is no sin. And yet, right there with him, There is sin, not in him, but on him. He's bearing it. John talks about that. He says, Jesus was manifested to take away our sins. Not his sins. The word in the text is our sins. It's plural, possessive. Our sins, many sins. And those sins, they stand in our text in contrast to his sinlessness. Our sins, sitting in this text, present an awful reality, our second point. Our sins, these two simple words, which even a child can read, communicate to us an awful reality. that we are not perfectly holy like the Lord Jesus Christ. Far from it. We have sins. We have many sins on our account by nature and in our actions, our words, and our thoughts. The Word of God condemns every one of us The Scriptures contain general sweeping statements in many places expressing this awful reality of sin, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, Romans 3. Isaiah 53, all we like sheep have gone astray. Psalm 53, which we sang from, there is none that doeth good, no not one. That's a general truth. that all are guilty on account of their sin. But this truth is not only general, it is that, but it's specific, it's personal. That means every single one of us in this room, head for head, have personal sins. I'm not telling you something new, but it is something awful. Notice the plural, sins. The word for sin John uses has to do with the heart. the source of our desires, that which is within us, producing sinful acts. It's a reference to the sinful nature that produces all kinds of sinful deeds, that breaks out into the manifestations of that nature in our actions. That sinful nature, congregation, precludes any possibility of fixing outward behavior and being free from sin. If you can just get rid of a few main sins you're doing in your life and then work your way down to clean up the little ones, like weeding your garden, you start with the big ones, then you hoe out the little ones, maybe you spray the rest and you're clean. No. There's a nature within you you cannot get rid of. Only God can change that nature. That sin nature is our root problem. It's like part of who we are. Think of a machine that is not calibrated properly. It's always going to produce false results. If a scale, like a truck scale, is broken, it's always going to give a wrong reading. That's what we're like. Broken. Sinful. Anything we do, anything we produce is tainted with sin. And that makes all of this an awful reality. Why are our sins so awful? Well, there was once a minister, his name was Ralph Venning. He lived in Puritan England, right in the middle of the 1600s. And at that time, when he was alive in 1665, the great plague of London broke out, bubonic plague. 15% of the population dead, over 100,000 people. into coffins buried, a terrible time in London. Now this man, he began to write a book, a book about a plague. He published it four years later and he called it The Plague of Plagues. He was talking about sin. In his book, he describes how awful and how terrible and how repulsive sin is, not only to God, but also it should be that to us. And the problem is we don't see it. And so he tries through this whole book to explain line upon line of paragraphs and words, how evil, terrible sin is, the evil of evils. Far worse than the bubonic plague. Oh, he says, we avoid the bubonic plague, like the plague. but we embrace sin by nature, which is far, far worse. Let me tell you some things he says. He says sin is so evil, sin is worse than affliction. Sin is all evil, only evil, always evil, which no affliction is or can be. God sends afflictions. He even intends good to them, not sin. He says sin is worse than death itself. Sin is worse than the devil. Sin is worse than hell. He says, these four things, affliction, death, the devil, and hell, they are terrible things. We pray God to be delivered from. Yet none of these, he says, nor even all four of them together are as bad as sin. He says, many people have thanked God for their afflictions, but no one ever thanked God for sin. The Lord encourages us in suffering. He never encourages us in sin. When you think of sin compared to death, death separates soul and body, but sin separates soul from God. Death is the king of terrors, striking fear to man by nature. But the cause of this fear, and even of death itself, is sin. Sin caused death, and that makes sin worse. Sin is the very worst thing that ever existed. The awful thing is, we carry on with our lives, and we baby sin, and we don't think sin's half as bad as it is. Rob Fenning says, there's more evil in sin than there is good in the whole of creation. And if sin does us more hurt, then all the creation can do us good. Sin, he says, evokes the hatred of God, not just against sin, but against man who commits it. God does not hate afflictions or pain or suffering, but he hates the works of iniquity as well as the workers of it, Psalm 5. Murder against man is homicide. Sin is deicide, that is God murder. At the root of sin is this cry coming from the heart of man that if he could, reverently speaking, blast the Almighty off his throne, he would do it too. That's what lives in my heart. That's what lives in your heart. That's the awful reality of sin. It's a try to un-God God. Sin is evil in its motives, evil in its intents, evil in its activity, evil in its fruit, evil in its end. Sin brings no honor, only dishonor. Sin contains no pleasure in its true sense. Pleasure is drawn from satisfaction and contentment in your mind. That's pleasing. When you're at rest, when you've done a job well under God's blessing, when things are going well, sin never does that. Sin always ends in disaster. It never satisfies, it never makes you content. Sin is highly unreasonable. Sin is madness. Sin is insanity, moral madness. Fenning says, sin costs you dearly but it gives you nothing. What a bad deal sin is because by it you purchase, you buy your own damnation. Sin is deceitful. Sin lies to you. He says it's like the pleasure of the man who receives much money. He's so happy, he's getting all this money, just coming at me, money, and then he realizes at the end it's all fake money. That's the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is truly the evil of evils, and then to think that we, all of us, have sins in the plural. Our sins. you know that he was manifested to take away our sins. But what a wonder the gospel message is in light of this awful truth, this awful reality. What a wonder that God has mercy on sinners like us. Look at verse one of this chapter, behold. Behold, he says, what manner of love You have to think in the background, all this evil sin, all this rebellion, all this vileness and wickedness and evil of evils in our hearts, what manner of love the Father, the good, holy, perfect, pure, righteous Father has bestowed upon us, the ones who have those our sins of verse five, that we should be called the sons, the children of God. Behold what manner of love that he sent forth his Son, who our text says was manifested, appeared in all his true colors, the one who is without sin, manifested in order to take away our sins. And he does that abundantly, our third point, in abounding removal. The text says he was manifested to take away our sins. The word take away means to lift up, to carry away. He lifts up and he carries off, John writes, our sins, all our awful sins that we've accrued before the sight of God. He removes them. He makes it so that all of them disappear. He's manifested for this reason, that our sins would no longer be manifested before God. He removes them. There's a beautiful picture of this in the Old Testament. You'll remember how there in the Old Testament, Leviticus 16, the Lord prescribed that the high priest would put his hands upon the head of a goat called the scapegoat. And he would confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, their sins. And then that scapegoat was taken by the hand of a fit man and he was led off into the wilderness. And he took him far, far away into the wilderness, and he let that scapegoat go, and he chased it away, and then the man returned back to the camp. The goat was never seen again. What was the message? The message, as far as east from west is distant, he hath all our sins removed. Every year again, what an encouraging message for God's people there in the wilderness. Here they had all these sins again for another year. And here's this ceremony, there's this scapegoat, all the sins go on the scapegoat, and he's taken away and he's gone. And a picture in all of that was found in the second goat. He didn't leave the camp, he was killed, and his blood was shed. Also, for the sins of the people, picturing the cross of Christ. Takes away our sins. Not just the deeds, the expressions of our sinful heart, the manifestation of that sinful nature, but also that governing principle of sin in our hearts, the inward elements producing those acts. That is, he makes the prophecy of Ezekiel a reality that a new heart also will I give you. And a new spirit will I put within you. He's dealing with that root problem of all of us, that nature. He begins to change that nature. Oh, in this life, it's never all the way changed. God's people know this all too well. When they're young, they're sinners. As they get older, they're still sinners. Yet the Lord begins to change. He puts within you that new man, that spirit nature, the spiritual man that begins to fight against sin. It's that promise. Taking away the stony heart out of your flesh and I'll give you, he says, a heart of flesh, a heart that beats for God. The Lord addresses all these things. sin and the sinful nature to. And he does it in his person and in his work as revealed to us, especially in the gospel. You see him there, manifested congregation to carry out his saving purpose, manifested in the streets and on the roads of Israel, meeting sick, sinful, needy people in their trials, in their pains, and their sins. And he says to one of them, son, thy sins are forgiven. And he says to another, go and sin no more. He deals with the hearts of these people. Manifested to invade the realms of the kingdom of darkness, to destroy sin. Verse 8 says it, look at verse 8, verse 8b. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, same word, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Beautiful verse. Sin is the proper work of the devil, death and bondage too. You see him manifested, appearing, revealed before your eyes, there in the gospels, as he enters the garden of Gethsemane, and there with strong crying and tears, falls on the ground in an agony to suffer and to take upon himself the sin of his people, there surrendering himself to his father so that he might take away our sins. You see him manifested for the world to behold him on the cross of Calvary lifted up. And I, if I be lifted up, he says, will draw all men unto me. Why? Because all those men are sinners and they need a savior. And there he is manifested to take away, John says, our sins. And dear child of God, that's the truth of it. or your conscience accuse you that you've grossly transgressed all the commandments of God and have kept none of them? What a comfort. Yet this is true. The Lord Jesus gave his life for an abounding removal of all your sins. When he cried out, it is finished, it really was finished. It doesn't have to come down and be crucified again in the year or whatever in the future. No, it's done. It's finished. All the past sin before that time and all the future sin of all those who would come to believe on His name were paid for on that cross. And that comes very close to home when you think of the particular sin signature that you have. Paul writes about the handwriting of our sins. He took that handwriting, that custom signature of the sin pattern, if you will, in our lives, he took that and he nailed it to his cross. It's custom work in a beautiful way. Because it's not just him dealing with the concept of sin. He's not just dealing with the theory of sin. He's dealing with, the text says, our sins. And that's your sins too, personally, child of God. The sins of your youth. The sins of your old age. The sins of every single day of your life. The sins of omission, the things you should have done but didn't do. I can bother you sometimes, can't it, when you should have been there, you should have said that, you should have prayed, you should have read, you should have done, you didn't do it. The sins of commission, the things you've done wrong in thought, word, and deed. Sins in your mind. Sins of ignorance. Sins of presumption, presumptuous sins. Sins against light, sins against grace, sins against better knowledge. He carries it away. Paul gets very detailed with the Corinthians. He writes to them in 1 Corinthians 6 about their past sins. He says they're fornicators. He says that neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God." Then he says this, such were some of you. That's what some of you were doing. These are the kinds of sins that Jesus forgives. Because he says, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. He takes away sin of every stripe and color. Be encouraged, dear one, if you're here tonight and you're thinking, well, what about my sins? Let it be clear. But we know, ye know, it says here, that he was manifested to take away our sins. And do you see any qualifier there? He says in the previous verse, for sin is a transgression of the law. Any transgression of the law is not saying only certain types of sins, only certain kinds of sinners, only certain amounts of sin, only certain times of life in which you've sinned. There's no qualifier. Your sin can be right here in this text. Are you struggling with your sin? Are you worried about where your sins will be on that last day when you must leave this world? You take those sins tonight and you go home. You open this chapter again. You puzzle those sins right into this text and you say, Lord, our sins, my sins, and plug them in there by faith. The penitent heart turning to him, trusting in him, Park your sins in this verse. And then leave them there too. Because you may fear the condemnation for your sins. But when this text is true for you, then Romans 8 verse 1 springs to the fore. And it says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus because of this. No condemnation. He takes it away. He took that condemnation on himself, and the guilt of sin, and the stain of sin, and the power of sin, every sin. What a glorious Savior, who takes that awful thing that is our sins, and He deals with them by way of abounding removal. And then, as the saying goes, life goes on. And guess what? Those awful sins continue. By God's grace, they grow less, and yet, in God's people, their experience often is, while they may sin less, they become more sinful in their own estimation. You need more and more cleansing. It doesn't get any easier. It's not as though you coast off into the rest of your life, because now we're saved. No, it's not easy. Satan's working very hard to discourage you and to cause you to trip up. Go back to him again and again, because also your ongoing and remaining sin is included in this beautiful verse. Again and again. And when your sin discourages you, you may go to him. that to that fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. Struck again this morning as we read the forum for baptism. What a beautiful forum that forum is. It adds there those words that if we sometimes through weakness fall into sin, what's the instruction it gives us? Very wise, very pastoral advice, very biblical, gospel advice. It says we must not therefore despair of God's mercy. That's what we're inclined to do, and the form knows that. The people who wrote that form, they were spiritually mature, our forefathers. They said we must not therefore despair, but we should also not continue in sin. Why? Since baptism is a seal, an undoubted testimony that we have what? A 10-year agreement with God? No. A 50-year agreement with God? No. A 99-year leap? No. It's an eternal covenant of grace with God. There we can rest. There is peace. Notice the catechism, it says, that with his innocence and perfect holiness, he covers in the sight of God my sins. Same thought, different language. I just want to think about that phrase for a minute. Jesus covers in the sight of God my sins. How is that possible? What does that mean? Is it possible to remove something from God's knowledge? Isn't he omniscient? He is. Hebrews tells us that there is not anything that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Well, here's a wonder, indeed. Christ takes away my sins, burying them himself, so that, as Lord J. 23 puts it, and this is the meaning of this, in the sight of God. It's as if, in the sight of God, I never had had, nor yet committed any sin. What it's saying is, when God looks at you, child of God, he sees no iniquity in his Jacob. No sin in his Ephraim. It's as though God is looking up and down your file and he's looking on the back page. There's no sin. Spotless. He covers in the sight of God my sins. How is that possible? Because Christ removed them. The verb in the original in our text, is in the subjunctive. You know that he was manifested that he might take away our sins. You could read it that way. It leaves a door open to something, doesn't it? It's certainly not teaching universal atonement. That he might take away our sins leaves the door open, as Jesus himself also said, that some of you, he says, want nothing to do with me. He says, you will not come to me that you might have life. It's an awful thought. Possibility that he might not. Why not? Why might he not? Didn't he say, him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out? Yes, he did, and that promise is true. But when our hearts turn away from him, and we do not believe, and we reject this truth, and we neglect so great salvation, what happens? And it's not true for us. Then you're in hot water, because then all those awful sins are not covered in the sight of God. You don't wanna think about that. What happens when God sees upon you all those sins, and you're not covered by the blood of Christ, what's he gonna do? He's going to blast you away from his presence forever, and you will perish according to his word. The only reason will be because you did not believe. He that believeth in the Son of God hath life. but he that believeth not the Son of God hath no eternal life. John adds, but the wrath of God abideth on him. Congregation, there's only one thing you must do. Turn with all your heart to this Savior. All your sin is the only way to be saved. Ask Him to indeed also remove your sins from you, and He will do so. He promises to do so. He promised it already in your baptism. What a comfort. Don't turn from Him. The words in our text say, and you know. Yeah, you do know. Because it's been evidently set forth before you, congregation. We know, it's been told us. Let not that knowledge testify against us, but let it comfort us, let it draw us to him who is our life. And who, in his sufferings and death, opened up an abounding removal for all sin, for all who turn to him. But in spite of all your shortcomings and your sins in the day of days, when you stand before God, you may be acquitted. What a mercy to then hear, not guilty. Why? Because there Jesus will stand, the perfectly holy one, covers all your sins. Then you'll know in full the meaning of those words, far as east from west is distant. He has all our sins. Remove. May God bless His Word. Amen. Let's pray. O Lord, our God in heaven, how we have to confess time and again We don't see the awful nature of our sin as we should. But, O Lord, it's again been set before us tonight, and we pray, grant, that it would cause us to hate and flee from sin. That, Lord, we would not be deceived by it, that we may flee because of it. To this dear Savior, Whom it is written, He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him is no sin. Yes, Lord, what a glorious thing it is that even as He removes the sin from His people, that He takes it on Himself. And it's still true that in Him is no sin. Lord, and then it will be in that last day, a perfectly sinless gathering of his people. And they will sing unto him that loved us and has washed us from our sins in his own blood. Lord, forgive our sins. bind sinners to this Savior even tonight. Add Thy blessing to Thy precious Word. We thank Thee for it, Lord. Go with us now this night and this week. Watch over and keep on. Pray for Pastor Overdune as well as Pastor DeVries as they bring the Word here next week. Bless, we pray thy word, also as we may study it throughout the week, as we gather together for that purpose. Pray this in Jesus' name, in the pardon of every sin. Amen.