“My Sins Are Gone” Conclusion

Transcript of message from TV Broadcast 912 -- taken from Closed Captioning Text

-- Brother Phil Enlow: One sacrifice took care of it all. But do you see that this morning? I mean is that real to your heart? I pray…I can’t make it real with my power to speak. I don’t have any. But I’ll tell you, I pray that the God Who is here this morning will take this simple truth and will so grip your soul with it, you will see it and I will see it as we have never seen it before, He died for you once for all! We can be free! He took all of my sin, all of my guilt…from cradle to the grave!

( congregational praise ).

It’s gone! I can be free to love Him. Yes, if I’m conscious of something that I do wrong, I can come to Him and say, oh Father, forgive me. I sinned. I messed up. But I know that what you did back there is still at work. The blood will never lose its power.

( congregational amens ).

It’ll never run out. You’ll never out-sin it. If you love Him, you won’t want to. There’ll be something different there. Oh, praise God!

So he says, “By that will, we have been made holy….” (NIV). There’s a past tense. There’s a completion to that work. We have been set apart for God. That’s a past action that has a present reality to it. That’s the sense of the Greek right there. We have been made holy.

What does holy mean? It’s a separation unto God. We are no longer…we no longer belong to ourselves. We no longer belong to the world and its system. We belong to Him and His kingdom. We’ve been set apart, taken out of all of that, all of this world and all that it stands for, and we belong to Him. He’s put His mark upon us. He’s sealed us with His Spirit. He says, that one’s mine.

Has God ever said that to you? That’s what He wants to do for every soul that He brings to Himself, where you know on the inside of your heart that He says, “You are Mine. I have bought you with the blood of My son and you are Mine.” Has He said that to you? Praise God! I know there’s many people here who can tell, who know what that’s like. I’m so thankful because boy…Carl, when I look in the mirror too, I see the same thing. I see someone that I would be glad to be rid on. He’s just needy.

But oh, look at the Word of God and I see a Savior who’s taken all of that upon Himself. And He’s talking about this being made holy as a past, completed, solid thing that I can rest my hope upon…not any thing that I can find in myself. There’s nothing there, but I can find it in Him. All that I lack is in Jesus. Once for all. Praise God! I’ve been made holy.

“Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins….” Over and over he says the same thing. I sense that this…the writer here…we don’t know for sure if it was Paul or not. I don’t know. I don’t care. God wrote it. But you sense the burden of the writer to get them to see this. He keeps saying, once for all, once for all, once for all. Do you get it? Do you understand this, he’s saying to these people. Don’t you know that that could never do the job? This was what God was after. He’s done it. It’s once for all. It’s done! If you could ever see it, you can rest in what He did. As long as you don’t see it, you’re gonna be struggling and carrying a terrible burden.

You know, how many times have we spoken about Pilgrim’s Progress when the…Christian, I guess, was his name, was on that pilgrimage. And what was his condition when he started, those of you who have read it or had any acquaintance with the story?

( congregational response ).

He had a terrible burden on his back and it represents God having convicted him that he had a need that caused him to begin to cry out and say, oh God, how can I get rid of this terrible burden that I’m carrying? And he went on and on. He asked and finally found Evangelist who pointed him to the way and to make a long story short, he got on the way. But it was when he came to the foot of the cross, he came to a hill and there was a cross on that hill, and as he climbed that hill, what happened to the burden?

( congregation inaudible ).

It fell off. He could never have removed it, but it simply fell off in the face of the reality of the cross. Praise God! You know I remember the testimony, perhaps some of you will, of the man up in Brooklyn who became part of the church up there. Danny Velasco, was that his name? He’s passed on now. He’s gone to be with his Lord. But his testimony when he was a messed up, drug-addicted, sick, dying man and someone tried to witness to him. He just couldn’t make sense of the idea that a man who died on a cross 2000 years ago could make any difference in his life.

But oh, when he came down to that moment of need and there was nothing left to do, he just cried out, “Oh, Jesus help me,” and Jesus helped him! The demons that had been tormenting him left. He was forgiven! He knew in an instant he was loved, he was forgiven! Not because he deserved it…we don’t because we deserve it. It’s just because we see that what He did was once for all. It is a singular event of human history, is when God judged our sins in the person of another so that we can go free. We who have put our trust in and humble ourselves before Him and fall at His feet, we can be free! Are you free, this morning? You can be.

( congregational amens ).

If you’ll cry out to Him with faith and actually believe that what God’s promise to you is…believe it as true, God will make it real to your heart if you’ll call upon His name with all your heart. And if you’re a Christian, you’re laboring under guilt, you need to see once again it was once for all. It covers your need today. Don’t let the devil pull that trick he tries to pull on every one of us. Oh you’re different. You know too much. You continue to have this need and this problem in your life and now it’s different. You’ve got to do something. You’ve got to do penance. You’ve got to do something. It’s once for all.

( congregational amens ).

All means all. I don’t see any qualification there, do you? He doesn’t say once for all ‘except.’ It’s once for all! That means you. That means me. That means now. Praise God!

“But when this priest…” That’s Christ. “…Had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.” In other words, there’s something going on. There’s a reign. He ascended to a throne and He’s reigning to bring about a certain end. And when He comes, I’ll tell you, His enemies will be under His feet. Every enemy, the last enemy…what’s the last enemy?

( congregational response ).

Death itself will have been conquered. Oh I’m looking forward to that day when He comes. If we’re in the grave we will rise to be with Him and instantly we will have the same kind of body our Lord did when He came forth from the grave. Sin will no longer be able to touch us. We won’t be dragging this fellow around any more. Oh, thank God! And for those who are alive and remain to that moment there will be a change in the twinkling of an eye. Faster than you can think about it…you’ll go from being like you are now and probably a lot older…you’ll go from that point to being completely made like Jesus. Death will have been conquered completely. That’s what He’s waiting for.

It says, “…Because…” And He’s doing this waiting for His enemies to be made His footstool, “…Because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.” We’ve emphasized this before. It’s that past sacrifice that has guaranteed the end result of the process you and I are in the middle of. So don’t you be discouraged by the process. Don’t you look and say, it’s too hard. I can’t make. He’s tired of me and 1001 negative thoughts that will grip your mind if you’d let it. Don’t you let the devil beat you down. We have. I’ve sensed it in my own spirit and in others. We need to rise up and say, devil, “You’re a liar!”

( congregational amens ).

Jesus paid it all! And it’s now! And it’s for me! I don’t have to live under this cloud. I can have Jesus and be free before Him. I can talk to Him and He can talk to me and we can have the fellowship that was broken in the garden because of sin. He has made it possible. And so what He’s done is guaranteed by of that one sacrifice.

Think of all that accomplished. It didn’t just accomplish the blotting out of my sin. That was great--that’d be great enough, but to actually guarantee that He’s going to be able to take me, and change me, and get me ready to live in a holy, perfect world. That one sacrifice did that! It’s done in the mind of God. The full provision is made in Jesus Christ. Boy, we have no other message. I mean we can talk about different areas of teaching and doctrine in life and we should, but our message is always Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

( congregational amens ).

And I’ll tell you, I don’t know any other answer for rising above the oppression of the enemy than to lift up Jesus Christ. And to begin to fix our eyes on Him, and to get our eyes above all this stuff down here, and say, Jesus is on the throne. He’s there because He did a work that’s complete. And yes I’m in the middle of experiencing that work but He’s guaranteed it. Because He that has begun that good work in me, what does the Word say?

( congregational response ).

He’s going to perform it ‘til the day of Jesus Christ. Thank God. Thank God! “The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord.” Now see he’s jumping back into the Old Testament and this is Jeremiah, I think. It was one of the prophets anyway…Jeremiah or Ezekiel. It says, “This is the covenant…” the prophet said, “…I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds. Then he adds: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we’d just forget ‘em? Bring ‘em to the cross, learn, grow, but leave them there. Do you try to come to the cross and get forgiven, and then you go away and you still take the cloud with you? You haven’t seen that it was once for all…that we can be free. Thank God!

“…Where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.” If the need that you feel, if this didn’t take care of it, then why isn’t God going out and giving another sacrifice? This was it! This was God’s provision! You don’t need Him to go back and do it again! You don’t need to beg Him. You need to come and just thank Him for what He’s done for you.

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”

I’ll tell you, there is a full and complete salvation that you and I need to rest our hope upon. “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” Let us hold unswerving unto the hope that we profess. Why? Whose faithfulness are we depending upon here? Whose faithfulness?

( congregational response ).

His faithfulness. He is faithful who promised! That’s my hope today. Not that I can live it. I can do this. I can somehow live up to something. It’s that He’s faithful. He doesn’t ask me to be strong, He asks me to believe in His strength. He doesn’t ask me to establish my own righteousness, He gives me His. He doesn’t ask me to put away my own sins, He’s already done that. He did that long before you and I got here. Thank God!

So, I don’t know where you’re at today. But if there’s a cloud hanging over your heart and your mind, it doesn’t need to stay there. You need to look the devil in the eye, like the song that said, He has forgiven me.

( congregational amens ).

Look the devil in the eye and say, “Devil, He has forgiven me.” Praise God! Has He forgiven you this day? Have you seen it? Have your spiritual eyes been opened? This isn’t something that a speech can somehow inspire. This is something where God’s Spirit has to talk to you one-on-one and say, look, you have a need, but I have the answer. Will you put your hope in my answer, in my Son, and give your heart to Him? He will take your guilt away, and you will feel a freedom you just didn’t know existed. You didn’t know it could be that way. That’s what God desires.

So I pray, I don’t know who this is for this morning. You see, I came in this morning I didn’t know what exactly was gonna happen and I trust the Lord is in this. But I believe with all my heart, this is the heart of everything. If we want to draw near to God, we cannot live under a cloud as though there’s something separating us from Him. God has done everything necessary for you to be able to come with perfect freedom into His holy presence, if you’ll just put your whole hope and trust in that and come to Him with an honest heart. He will never turn you away. Praise God!

That’s what He’s looking for. Those who are humble and contrite in spirit, He dwells with them, doesn’t He? Well, praise God! All I can do is put this out and say Lord, just touch the heart of anyone this is meant for this morning. The words are scattered and poor, but Your promise is rich and it’s enough to do the job, if we’ll believe the Words that He has spoken, not the words I have, His Words. If you believe Him, He will fulfill His promise for you this morning. Praise God!

-- Brother Ben Johnson: Praise God! I appreciate this, this morning. How I agree. I believe this really is Spiritual Warfare 101. It’s the foundation for it. You know we talked a little while back about the Scripture that says, “If God be for us, who can be against us?” (KJV). Well, you know that all hinges on that question. Is God for us or it isn’t He? Because without Him, we can’t do anything, but if He’s for us, there’s nothing we can’t do, you know. So everything hinges on that question. Do we have His love and His forgiveness?

And I appreciate the Lord showing us this morning how much He does love us. And I was just thinking, you know, as Phil was talking there, of an illustration of what he was talking about…the difference between the law and the new covenant. You know, I remember when Philip was little sometimes he would…it wasn’t very often, but sometimes he would decide he was gonna clean his room, you know. So he would tell you he cleaned it, and you go in there and his idea of cleaning was you pile it all up somewhere. If it’s off the floor, if it’s in one place, it’s clean. No matter if it was organized or not, just kind of pile it up on the bed, or in the closet, or whatever. You know that was clean.

Well, that’s kind of what the law was like. It was like, you throw all the sins in the closet and you close the door, but they’re still in there. And everyday you’ve got to go and you throw some more in there and you shut the door before something can reach out and grab you like the boogie man. You keep shutting it but you know those sins are in there. It’s not clean. It’s not gone. But you just keep the door closed.

It’s a covering. It’s just exactly what the first sacrifice was for. When He killed that animal for Adam and Eve, its purpose was to cover them. Well that’s what the sacrifices did, it covers them, but it couldn’t take it away. It was still in there. So you tiptoe around it and you try not to go in there and look at it. You try not to think about it, but you know it’s there.

But I’ll tell you what, the blood of Christ, it’s clean. it’s gone. You open the closet and there’s nothing in there. There’s no skeletons, there’s no anything in there. That’s what the blood of Christ did for us. And that is absolutely the foundation of spiritual warfare, because every other step you try to take in the Kingdom of God, if we are not on this foundation, the devil can just…all he has to do is show you the mirror of what you are and whatever you are trying to do is gonna fail. Whatever Scripture you trying to lay hold of, whatever you’re want to go do to help somebody else, all of a sudden all you see is you and what’s wrong with you and your lack of adequacy and that just falls right by the wayside.

God is putting our feet on the solid rock this morning, that we can stand on what He said. I thought about this song, I wanted to get one of these choir books here so I could read it. I thought about one of our songs that we sing. It’s a song we sing…we’ve sung it a million times and yet the Lord is making this real to us this morning. There’s a need for us to understand better what we’ve sung probably 1000 and maybe we’ve never really entered into parts of this. But it’s a song that says my sins are gone.

It says, “You ask me why I’m happy, so I’ll just tell you why…” Well that presupposes that we’re happy, doesn’t it? Because nobody is gonna be asking us why we’re happy, if we’re not happy, if we’re under this cloud of guilt. Well, praise God, we’ve got a reason to be happy this morning! That’s what we’ve heard. The Gospel is good news. That’s why we can say how beautiful are even the feet that bring the Gospel. This message is peace. It’s joy.

“You ask me why I’m happy, so I’ll just tell you why…” Well here’s the only foundation anybody ever has for truly being happy. “…Because, my sins are gone.” Praise God! Not covered but gone, the new covenant…they are gone.

“And when I meet the scoffers, who ask me where they are, I say, my sins are gone.” Well do you know when the devil accuses you to your own mind? That’s a scoffer. This doesn’t just mean people out in the world that mock the Bible or the Gospel or whatever…this is for the enemy. When He comes to your mind to scoff and ask you where are your sins…what about this thing that just happened? What about that? Where’s that sin? Well, you know what the answer is? “I say, my sins are gone.” Praise God! That’s the only answer we have to give him, because our Lord took care of it.

And it says, “There’re underneath the blood, on the cross of Calvary, as far removed as darkness is from dawn; In the sea of God’s forgetfulness, that’s good enough for me.” Well that’s the question this morning, is that good enough for you? If God says, I’ve forgotten them. They’re in My sea of forgetfulness. Is that good enough for us, or isn’t it? Can we not lay hold of that and say, praise God! That is good enough for me. My sins are gone. Praise God!

It says, “’Twas as the old-time altar where God came in my heart and now my sins are gone; The Lord took full possession, the devil did depart, I’m glad my sins are gone.” Well, I’m glad, too, but I’ll tell you what, the devil doesn’t give up his territory that easy. He…just like with Jesus, he may have left Him for a season but he’s coming back and this is gonna be a battle we’re gonna have to fight. This is God’s armor to fight this battle this morning.

It says, “When Satan comes to tempt me, and tries to make me doubt….” Tries to make me doubt where we stand before Him, to doubt whether He really loves us. “I say, my sins are gone.” You see how simple the answer is? It’s not complicated. We don’t have to get into a great debate or be able to quote 100 scriptures. We have to know the foundation of what we heard this morning. Jesus paid it all. My sins are gone. He has forgiven me. It’s just that simple once we know why we stand on that foundation.

It says, “You got me into trouble, but Jesus got me out, I’m glad, my sins are gone.” Praise God! Jesus got us out back there. He got us out when He said, it is finished. Now it’s an ongoing process for that to be out-worked, but there’s no doubt in God’s mind how it’s gonna turn out. Jesus got us out of trouble at the cross and it’s been finished ever since. We can just enter into that and enjoy that.

Then he says, the last verse says, “I’m living now for Jesus, I’m happy night and day….” Well, praise God, this world…I’ll tell you what people in this world are not happy night and day. If we can enter into what the Lord is telling us this morning, we’re gonna have something that’s gonna speak to hearts and lives that we run into.

I was just thinking about…Beth was telling me yesterday about her mom. The school where she teaches there, she was talking to another young teacher and she’s in her twenties…her and her husband…just talking about some of the problems they were having. They’re having some marital problems and some financial problems and some other things.

She was just talking to Jody and kind of got in the conversation and that’s one of the things she said. I don’t know how you do it. You just always seem happy. Everyday there’s something in you that just seems bright. You don’t come in down like what I see in myself. There was something there. There was a difference there she noticed and she wanted to know why that was. She’s even asked them if David and Jody could go to their house and talk to them about some of the things they’re having in their marriage. So just pray for ‘em in that, that the Lord would lead them in that.

But I’ll tell you, that’s an example. There’s a testimony there when we have the joy in our heart and we’re not living under this cloud, because this world knows they need something. Even if they don’t know what it is, they know that they’re lacking something. But we can live for Jesus and be happy night and day, because my sins are gone. Praise God!

“My soul is filled with music, and with all my heart I say, I know, my sins are gone.” I think that’s the Lord’s message to us this morning. Don’t say it with half our heart. Don’t say it ‘cause we know mentally somehow it’s true. Let’s say it with all our heart. Say, my sins are gone. The Lord died for me. I can claim that and I can stand and you welcome me. God…it’s not just that He tolerates us now, where He would have crushed us before and now He’ll tolerate us. We’re His children. He loves us. He longs for us to commune with Him. He longs to see us. He longs to hear from us.

And when the accuser of the brethren comes, I’ll tell you what…I’ll read this real quick in Romans 14. You don’t even have to turn there because we’ve read it before and it’s just one Scripture. But it’s Romans 14:4. It says, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls.” (NIV). This is what we need to tell the enemy when we’re feeling this, when he’s coming against us. Who is he to judge the servants of God. It’s to our Master we stand or fall. It’s to our Father, He’s the judge. But look what it says here. “To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” That’s what we stand on. Praise our God!

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