And so I trust this morning that you will be a little bit encouraged with the matter that is before us, that you will see the good things that God has for you in it. Open your Bibles to 1 John chapter 1, will you? 1 John chapter 1. Let's fall for prayer. Father God, we thank you now for your word. We thank you that it's true, every word of it. We thank you for giving us the privilege to be able to have the Holy Spirit of yourself within us to teach us and to help us to understand these things that are in your word. We pray that you would encourage us by this this morning and that you would send us away ready and willing to serve in every capacity that this week may present to us by way of opportunity. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Looking through his telescope, an astronomer was making observations of the setting sun. But as he did, he was adjusting his lens when he noticed a hill several miles away. And on that hill were two little boys that were stealing apples from an apple orchard. The one was up in a tree, shaking a branch, trying to get some of the apples to fall down on the ground. And the other one was down there on the ground, keeping watch, so to speak, to be sure that nobody was looking and catching them. But the astronomer, of course, he saw every move that they made. How much more does the all-seeing eye of God, who knows everything and sees everything and that nothing can be hid from, how much are everything in our life, public or private, open to Him? This is a disturbing thought. to know that God knows not only what we do, but even what we think. It could lead to despair, but I want to tell you, I have good news for you today. Not only does God see and remember, but God forgives and forgets. And that's the message of the Word of God. The Lord promises us at least nine different things when it comes down to the subject of forgiveness, as to what He does with our sins. We don't have time to look into all of those things this morning, but we'll look as far as time will allow us to look and see what we come up with. So come with me on a wonderful and an exciting journey through the Word of God, as what we're going to be talking about this morning is not all found in any one passage. But there's a verse here, a verse there, that gives us insight as to what it is that God does for us and how He takes our sins away. I read once of a psychiatrist who was working in a mental institution, and he counseled with patients there. And his conclusion, after having been there for a year or so, was that if I could convince all of these people there was a possibility that every one of their wrongdoings could be forgiven, he said I could release 85% of those patients today. That there's freedom, there's real freedom in realizing and believing, understanding that your sins, no matter how terrible they may have been, they can be forgiven. They're all under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So see, the matter of forgiveness is an extremely important subject. So let's first look at the details of these promises that we have just mentioned, where God promises to do certain things when we confess our sins. The first of these is found in 1 John 1, if you've opened your Bibles there. And that is, he promises to forgive us of all of our sins. Notice what it says. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now someone says, well, how can I confess all of my sins to the Lord? Just answer without raising your hand, we don't want to embarrass anybody. But just answer to yourself, in your own mind. When was the last time that you went before God and asked Him to forgive the sins that you have committed since the time before that that you asked forgiveness? Was that this morning? If it was, guess what? You have more stuff you've got to confess since then, right? How about, was it yesterday? Or last week? Or last month? Well, let's say that it's been two weeks since you last asked the Lord to forgive you. as you name those sins, you would confess those sins and admit of it that you sinned. How are you going to remember every thought, every word, and every deed that you have done that would be wrong in God's sight? You can't do that, can you? But that's one of the wonderful things about this particular verse of scripture. This verse says, if we confess our sins, That is, if we confess the sins that the Holy Spirit of God is convicting us about and showing where we have erred, then not only do we receive forgiveness of the sins that we confessed as prompted by the Holy Spirit, but we're also cleansed from all unrighteousness. You see that there? If we confess our sins, that is, the things we are aware of, the things we know about, if we confess those sins, God will forgive us those sins, but he'll do something else. You see the writer on this verse? You have an insurance policy? You know that if you die, your mate gets $10,000 or $20,000 or $1,000,000 or however many dollars. And then it has a writer on it. And the writer is, let's say that you're killed in an airplane crash. Then it's called double-idemity, and your wife will get twice as much. So there's a writer on this verse. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins. And once we've done that, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is all of the things that we have done that we can't even remember. So 1 John 1.9 presents the strongest reasons to dissuade us from attempting to hide or deny our sins. and the strongest encouragement to humbly and heartily confess those sins. There's a verse over in Proverbs 28.13 which says, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, and whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. And so the promise here is that when we sincerely name our sins to God, admit them, agree with Him, repent of them, that we will receive this wonderful forgiveness that he speaks of here. Well someone asked, well now if Christ has already forgiven me of all of our sins when he died on the cross, why does John then tell us to confess our sins so that God will forgive us? You see, the issue here is not, it's fellowship, it's not relationship, it's two different things. You see, our relationship with God, when we accept Christ as our Savior, is resolved. It's settled once and for all. It never has to be repeated again. It cannot be lost. You're eternally secure if you've accepted Christ as your Savior. That's relationship. You never lose that. But I'll tell you what, every time you sin, you lose your fellowship with God. And so that's the issue in the matter of confessing our sins. We don't confess our sins in order to get saved again. You can't be saved again. You can only be saved once. That's why you can only be baptized once. I know of places where they say that if you were baptized in a church of a certain denomination, when you come to our church, you've got to be re-baptized. There's no such a thing as re-baptism. You can only be truly baptized once. So let's say you're not saved, and you come forward in the service to be baptized. But you think you're saved. So I take you up there, and I dunk you into the water, and you come out again, and then two weeks later, you realize, well, you know, I was never saved. And you accept Christ as your Savior, and you're wonderfully saved. Well then, we need to baptize you, because see, the first time, we just got you all wet. When you're baptized, what that signifies is, you are addressing the people in the congregation, and telling them, that in this act I died, was buried, and rose again with Christ. And you have identified your hope of salvation strictly and exclusively in what He has done for you, not dependent whatsoever on anything that you have done to gain His approbation. And so therefore we're talking here about fellowship. When I confess my sin to God, my fellowship with Him is restored. And so, thankfully God adopts us into his family. We're born into his family. We're even called the bride of Christ, you see. Every kind of a way you can think of that you can get into a family. You get in, in your spiritual family. How is it that your mother or father are your mother and father? You were born to them. But there are some people who can call somebody mother or father that wasn't born to them, because they were adopted by them. And then there's somebody like I call this lady down here in the front, I call her my wife. She's a part of my family. But you see, she was born of a different man and woman than I was. So there are three ways you get into a family. You get into it by being born into it, by being adopted into it, and by marrying into it. And you know what? When you accept Christ as your Savior, you get into the permanent family of God by all three things. You're adopted, you're born again, and you are a part of the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can't get any more secure than that. You can't become unadopted, unborn, or whatever. So therefore, it's not a matter of relationship, this confession of sin, it's a matter of fellowship with God. Now John explains that God in doing this is both faithful and just. You see that in 1 John 1.9? That God is faithful means that He is dependable, and He keeps His promises. In other words, when God says, if you confess your sin, that He will forgive your sin, that's a promise. So if you confess your sin, and you're not forgiven by God, what does that make God? Does it make Him a liar? Untruthful? He is faithful. God in all things, in all ways, at all times is faithful to His Word, to His promises. You know what? He never broke a promise. And He never will, because God cannot change. God is the same always. The Bible puts it in explicit terms. It says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so when He makes a promise, He keeps the promise. And He says, if you confess your sin, He will forgive you of that sin. Therefore He is faithful to keep that promise. But not only that, notice here it says that He is just. I say God cannot overlook my sin. It's got to be dealt with. And you see that's why Jesus Christ went to Calvary to die for me in my place. To receive the punishment for the sins that I have committed in his own body on that tree. Therefore God can be judged in forgiving my sins because my sins were paid for by Christ on Calvary. So therefore it says he is faithful and just and then the word forgive just simply means a cancellation of death. A cancellation of all charges. And the word cleanse is referring to the working away in sin and restoring the holiness. And those who have confessed their sins to God can trust in His forgiveness because they can trust in His character. Now, you know, we all need forgiveness. Is there not a person in this building that doesn't need forgiveness? Because every one of us, the Bible says, has sinned and come short of the glory of God. The Spanish have a story about a father and his son who became estranged. The son left home and the father later set out to find him and he searched for months but with no success. So finally he decided to try the newspaper. So he went down to the local newspaper office and he put an ad in it. And the ad simply said, Dear Paco, meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you. Dad. On Saturday, 800 young men named Paco showed up looking for forgiveness from their fathers. You see, the world is filled with people that need forgiveness, and I'm one of them. And the only way I'm going to get it is I'm going to have to personally go to God and confess my sin. I say, what does it mean to confess your sin? To confess your sin means you name your sin. You specifically say, now Lord, I did, you fill in the blank. Some of you the blank is that long, and for others of you the blank is from that window to that window, but however long it is, you name it to God. You admit it. You agree with God. You agree that it's sin. You know what the problem is? You know what the problem is, don't you? Don't sit there and look like you don't. The problem is you. Not your husband, not your wife, not your mom, not your dad. You know, it all started in the Garden of Eden, didn't it? Adam and Eve decided, hey, we're going to go out and this looks like fun, I'm going to sin. And so they go out and they take the peach off the tree. Now, you thought it was an apple, didn't you? I don't know if it was a peach either, but whatever it was, they went and they got a piece of that fruit and they ate it. And then God comes down and He says, what have you done? Adam, you've sinned. Oh, it's not my fault. That woman you gave me. Does that sound familiar to today's society? Huh? It's her fault. She gave to me and I did it. So God looks at Eve and he says, Eve, what have you done? Ah, don't look at me. Satan did it. How many of you have ever said Satan made me do it? Huh? I hear that all the time. Satan never made you do anything. You did what you did because you wanted to do what you did. So don't blame people. You see, when you confess, you don't blame, you don't rationalize, you don't minimize. You agree with God, what he says about what you have done, and you admit to God that you did it. That's what it means to confess. And when you do, you are truly forgiven. Now a companion verse to this is 1 John 2.12 where it says, I read unto you little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake. This is simply a statement of fact. Your sins are forgiven. In other words, they already are forgiven after you confess them. It's not something that happens when you get to heaven. I want to tell you, friend, it's true right now. When you confess your sin right now, right then and there, on the spot, in a split second, you are forgiven of your sin according to the promise of God when you confess it. And that's what we need to understand and believe and practice in our life. On Trinidad Island, there is what is called the famous Pitch Lake. It's a mineral deposit that's filled with asphalt. And although here and there gas escapes, and bubbles to the surface, it's hard enough to walk on. Workers dig great chunks of tar, weighing 50 to 100 pounds each day and load them on trains to other parts of the world. They've been doing that for 70 years. They've been sending trainload after trainload on its way, yet it never runs empty. It's said that no matter how large a hole is made in this great crater, no cavity will remain longer than 72 hours because it fills up again from underneath. Workers have drilled down as far as 285 feet into the lake and have found that this black gum-like substance is at least that deep and there seems to be an unlimited supply. This seemingly endless deposit of pitch can be seen as a picture of God's grace. No matter how bad you have been, no matter how horrible your sin may have been, no matter how many times you may have done it, God is always there to forgive it if we come and confess. You can never exhaust the love of God. God says through Paul in the book of Romans that sin is awful, but God's grace is greater than our sin. God's forgiveness, God's mercy, God's love is greater than anything that you are or that I am or that we could possibly have. God forgives our sins. Now, he's quite different than we humans. You know the way a human being forgives sin? You got that figured out yet? Well, let me put it this way. How do you forgive sin? Have you ever heard the expression, I'm going to bury the hatchet? Have you done that? You know what that usually means, don't you? I put the hatchet in the ground and bury it, but the handle is sticking out. So that the minute you do something wrong again, I can go over there and grab that hatchet and run after you again. We have another expression. We call it skeletons in the closet. Familiar with that one? What does that mean? That means I've forgiven you, and I put that skillet in the closet, but I have the key to the door, and boy, oh boy, oh boy, you just do that same thing again. I'm going to open up that door, and I'm going to grab that skillet, and I'm going to wag it around in front of your face. Now friend, when God forgives, He forgets. Now He doesn't forget like He has a lapse of memory. That's not what He's saying. God can't forget in reality, but what He's saying is He won't remember it. He won't bring it up again. It's gone. It's under His blood. It's over with. It's like it never happened. Now there's a difference between justification and pardon. Let's say you go out and murder somebody. You ever done that? No? Okay. You go out and murder somebody. And you're about ready to be executed on death row. And the governor pardons you. What does that mean? That means they have to let you out of jail and you're not going to be executed. Right? But you know what? You're just as guilty of murder as you were before the governor pardoned you. Aren't you? And so therefore you're still not acceptable in decent society. Now justification. That is another matter altogether. In justification, Not only do you have the pardon, so to speak, whereby you don't have to pay for your sin, and where you're set free from it, but God makes it, and don't ask me to explain it, because I don't understand it, and I don't know how to explain something I don't understand, but I can believe it because God said it. Justification is when God makes that sin as though I had never committed it to begin with. Now that's kind of hard to understand, kind of hard to believe, but that's what God says. He says, He takes it and He does away with it, and makes it just like I never did it to begin with. And you know what? Right now, as God looks down upon us, who know Christ as our Savior, we have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I didn't earn it, I don't deserve it, but I have it, because that's a part of the package that I get when I'm saved, in salvation. And so, therefore, as God looks down on me, I'm not being blasphemous. As God looks down upon me, He sees me as good as Jesus Christ. Do you know that? Why? Because I have His righteousness. He's not looking at my righteousness. I don't have any. God says all of my righteousnesses are His filthy rags. But I have His righteousness. Why? Because I have been forgiven, I have been justified, and to be justified means that all of my sin is like I never did it. Now let me give you a second thing, if you'll turn over to Micah chapter 7. There's a wonderful verse there that's in a part of the Bible that few people can hardly find the book, much less know what the verse says. But not only does God forgive our sins, but here we read in the Bible that God casts our sins into the sea. That's a very significant thing. Notice Micah chapter 7 in verse 19. Micah 7, 19. He will turn again He will have compassion upon us, He will subdue our iniquities, and thou will cast all their sins in the depths of the sea." It says here that God will cast all of their sins into the depths of the sea. That means our sin will never rise again to view. They are buried out of sight in eternal oblivion, not merely by the shore side, but in the depths of the sea. Never again will they appear before me. They're gone. They're gone. As a matter of fact, don't bother to turn, but just let me read to you Jeremiah chapter 50 and verse 20, which says, In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found, for I will pardon them whom I reserve. Isn't that something? Your sins are so gone that they can't even be found anymore in heaven anywhere. Now again, the last portion of Micah 7.19 says, And thou will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. This is not talking about a half-pardon from God, but it says that all of our sins. Now what does all mean? Is that three little letter words? You understand what the word all is? You know what the best word to substitute for all is? All. All means all. All means every single one of them, not one excepted. He takes all of our sins and casts them into the sea. Now the casting of our sins into the sea. There's a little thing about this verse where the Hebrew language in which it was originally written, you don't quite pick up in the English. It says here that He will cast all of our sins into the deepest part of the sea. That's significant. And the casting of our sins into the deepest part of the sea to take away our sin out of sight, never to see any of it again. One of the customs on the Day of Atonement was to take bread and go down by the seashore. As a matter of fact, I just read about this in the LA Times about a month ago. Or maybe it was more than that when the Day of Atonement came. And they cut the bread up into little itty-bitty pieces. And then everybody in the congregation takes little pieces and they throw them into the sea. Why? Because the bread is meant to represent sin. And fish would come up and eat the bread. And guess what? The bread would never be seen again. That's their custom. And then the priest would stand and he would preach from Micah 7, 19. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us, he will subdue our iniquities, and now will cast all of their sins into the deepest part of the sea. Now the deepest part of the sea that we know about in modern time is six miles off the island of Guam. It's a place called the Marriott Trench. It's so deep that you could sack 28 Empire State Buildings, one on top of the other, and the one on top wouldn't even be shown above the water. That's deep. They say that the pressure at the bottom of the trench is 200 tons per square inch. Now, I'm sorry, but I don't understand that. What is 200 tons per square? I have no idea. Maybe you understand that. If you do, Lord bless you. But we are told that anything, no matter what it was, that ever made it to the bottom, could never come back up again, because that kind of pressure won't allow it to come back up again. When I found out that the deeper the water, the greater the pressure to keep it down, I remembered Micah 7.19. where we are told that God took our sin and buried it in the depths of the deepest sea, and if the point of that verse is that anything that goes down to the deepest part of the deepest sea, the pressure will keep it from ever coming up. I'll tell you what, the devil doesn't have a fishing pole long enough or strong enough to get down there and get that fin back up and wag it in my face, because it is gone, buried, never to be seen again, ever. Praise the Lord, he can't fish out what Jesus put under the blood. in the depths of the sea. What's the benefit of forgiveness? Our sins are gone, they're forever buried in the depths of the deepest sea, and for that we can praise God. There's a third thing that he promises to do, if you'll turn over to Isaiah chapter 6. Not only does he promise to forgive us our sins, and to cast our sins into the depths of the deepest sea, but we have a third thing here that's very clearly stated, and that is that he takes our sin away. Isaiah 6-7 and he laid it that is apparently Isaiah had a cursing or swearing problem and it says here and he laid it there was a coal we don't have time to read the whole passage but he laid the coal upon my mouth and said lo this is such thy lips and thine iniquity is taken away and thy sin purged when it says thy iniquity is taking away, it's saying you're freed from it. A church youth group was taking a canoe trip, an overnight deal, for two overnights, and one of the canoes was a counselor for the seventh grade boys' class. And he was discussing with Scott, the 12-year-old from the church, his experience with trying out snuff the other night. with two other boys. He said, I really got sick on the stuff, said Scott. And the counselor said to him, well, what do you think of the whole experience? And Scott said, well, I would never try it again, but please don't tell Bill, the camp director. The counselor says, but God knows what you did. What's the difference between God knowing and Bill knowing? And Scott said, why, God won't tell my parents. That's the way God works. You confess it, it's gone. It's all over with. He don't bring it up again, why do you? Don't raise your hand. I don't want to embarrass you. As a matter of fact, if I ask you to raise your hand if you're a Christian, a Christian for a while, every one of you would have to raise your hand probably on this deal. Have you ever sinned, asked God for forgiveness, and the next day, the next week went back and confessed the same sin that you confessed I'm not talking about if you did it again. I'm saying you go out, you sin, you confess the sin to God, and the next day you didn't feel very forgiven, you were still guilty about the whole deal, and so you ask God again to forgive you of the identical sin that you didn't commit again, that you already asked Him to forgive you. You ever done that? You know what you've done when you do that? You're calling God a liar. It's kind of like another sin. Because when you confess your sin, brother, you had better believe that God forgave you that sin, because that's what He said He was going to do. He says He's going to take it away. That's how God does it. You confess it, He forgives it, and then He frees you from it forever, just like it never happened. 1 John 4.10 says, Herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Now the word propitiation is one of those 25 cent theological terms that you can chew on all you want. But you know that same identical Greek word is translated elsewhere in the New Testament by the term mercy seat? You know what the mercy seat was, don't you? In the tabernacle and later in the temple, they had this place, a little room, called the Holy of Holies. And inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. And inside the Ark of the Covenant there were three articles. a pot of manna, the Ten Commandments, and Aaron's rod, the Buddha. And each of these three things spoke of a different occasion in which Israel sinned against God. And so the three items in the Ark of the Covenant represented sin. Now on top of the Ark of the Covenant, there was a cover that was made out of pure gold, called the Mercy Seat. At each end of the mercy seat there was a likeness of a cherubim, and in between this cherubim, above the mercy seat, they said that God had a special presence. Now God is everywhere present at the same time. He's here, He's over there, He's on the moon, He's everywhere at the same time. But He had a special presence that related to Israel. And that special presence was above the mercy seat, he could look down into that box called the Ark of the Covenant and he could see all of those things that represented our sins. And he's got to judge sin. I heard one day how the snow cleanses the wool of sheep better than anything else that man has ever found. Men may boast themselves and vary a sheep dish that they have invented, but they can't beat Mother Nature. We never can. The article points out that when the snow is rubbed into the wool of the lamb, it wipes it like no other bleach of preparation can do. It concluded that apparently snow contains something that man hasn't yet discovered, doesn't know what it is. Now I know That may be hard to believe, but that's the way that it is. But when I read about the effect of snow on wool, I understood for the first time the latter part of Isaiah 118. It says, Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as wool. It means that though our sins are red like crimson, that they will be as wool cleansed by snow that no man can make, only God can make it. I can't forgive your sins. I can't forgive my own sin. God does it, and He only, and it's all based upon the blood that His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, shed on Calvary for that sin. One of the greatest and most exciting verses about God taking away our sin is Psalm 112. You might want to turn there and look at that as I share it with you. Psalm 103, verse 12. Psalm 103, verse 12. Now notice what it says there. As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. There has never lived a man, and never will, who fully understands the love of God that would do such a thing in order to provide us for forgiveness. Countless sermons have been preached on it, numerous hymns have been written about it, But yet its unfathomable depths cannot be plumbed. Its measureless, its most superlative descriptions of it are pitiably feeble in expressing the measure of God's love. As we would talk about this subject, we realize that we can only touch the hem of the garment. We can only dip our feet in the shallows of the endless depths of the sea of God's love. Now notice David does not say, as far as the North is from the South. Do you see that? He says, as far as the East is from the West. Why? Well, you see, the North Pole is only about 12,000 miles from the South Pole. So if you started at the North Pole and journeyed for 12,000 miles, you'd be at the South Pole, and then if you kept going, you would be heading back toward the North Pole. And 24,000 miles after you started, you'd be right back where you began. And so that's not very far, but the distance between the East and the West That's different. There's no East Pole, and there's no West Pole. Just how far is the East from the West? That's important in understanding this verse. Because that's how far God has separated our sins from us. I don't know about you, but I want to be sure they'll never find me again. Has anyone ever traveled from the East until they've reached the West? But where did the East begin and the West end? In New York, Michigan is West. In Michigan, Iowa is West. But in Iowa, San Francisco is West. In San Francisco, Hawaii is West. In Hawaii, China is West. In China, the Middle East is West. In the Middle East, Europe, France, England is West. And when you get to England, guess what's West? New York. And you're still going West. You've never traveled from the East to the West, even though you've been all the way around the world. And you can go around the world a million times, West to East or East to West, and you will never leave the one and get caught up with the other. And friend, that's the best news you'll ever know. Your sins are so forgiven that you'll never meet them again. That's true encouragement. That's real joy in knowing of that. God's forgiveness is awesome. He is said to remove our sin from us as far as the east is from the west, and to cast it into the sea and remember it no more. He treats the guilty but penitent child as though he had never committed any sin. No record of guilt is preserved, none can be found, even if the enemy searches for it. Praise God, his sin is not to be found. But he himself needs no more to think about it, because God has forgotten about it, and he can also forget it. Did you hear what I said this morning? God promises to forgive our sins. Second, He promises to cast them into the deepest part of the sea out of which no man could ever get them. Third, He promises to take away our sin as far as the east is from the west. Now, there's six other things that God does with our sins. Would you like to stay here until four o'clock this afternoon and hear about it or what? And the other things are no less important. But there's just no time. It says, for example, that He's blotted our sin out. Oh, wow. He's blotted our sin out. You see, all of these different verses that bring up this different language, they all bring before us a very similar idea, that our sins are gone. They're taken away. They're blotted out. They can be remembered no more. They're forgiven. It's complete. It's victory at its most incredible level and height. And God has done it all because He loves us and He's a God of mercy. He's just And he's faithful to his promises. Therefore, we can be absolutely certain, based upon our belief in the Word of God, that our sins are forgiven. So let's learn to get into that habit of confessing our sins, taking them to God, and letting him do away with them by his grace, and giving us that satisfaction and inward joy and acceptance once again of ourselves, of knowing that we are forgiven. even though we've been wrong. Let's bow for prayer. Father God, we do want to thank you that you have given us your word that forgiveness is a reality, that sins can be taken away, that sins have been taken away. We pray that each one here today might be faithful in the matter of bringing their sins before you and confessing those sins so that by your grace that we might have fellowship restored with our wonderful Savior, that we will leave this place with a new understanding of exactly what it is to have our sin taken away and being under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Page 183 in your hymn book, 183. stand with me as we sing, will you? And if we can have the men come and prepare for the communion while we're singing this verse, and if you have any decision you'd like to make for the Lord, we invite you to slip out and come and just come down here and pray. Will you do that as we sing together? The. The. You may be seated. And as you do, may I just read to you a few verses from 1 Corinthians 11. It says, Therefore I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread. When he's given thanks, he breaketh and said, Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup. When he had stopped saying, This cup is a new testament in my blood, this do you as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death until he comes. Whosoever, wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink of the cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and still let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." The instructions are so clear. You're so familiar with them. Maybe there are those who are not. If you know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you're part of His family, and this is His table, and He invites you to it, whether you're a member of the Church or not. He does make a stipulation. He says that before you partake, if there is sin in your life that hasn't been confessed, you need to confess that quietly, privately, before God. You see, the word communion means fellowship. And as you partake of these communion elements, you're saying, I am in fellowship with God. Now that means two things. Number one, that you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior. And number two, that before you took of the bread, that you confessed your sin with God. Thus your fellowship with God is intact while you partake. But the Bible says if you eat or drink unworthily, and by eating and drinking unworthily, we do that by taking it when we're not saved or when we haven't used 1 John 1.9. So we invite you, as the elements are being passed, to go before God quietly and privately and allow Him to do the work that He wants to do in your life. And Brother Don, we do thank the Lord for his body that was broken for us.