Adrian Rogers - A Formula for Fellowship (02/07/2026)
In this sermon from 1 John 1, Pastor Adrian Rogers shares a powerful story of a deacon who fell onto an alligator but quickly recovered, illustrating how a true Christian hates sin and seeks swift restoration. Using verses 3-10, he explains God's formula for fellowship: walking in the light, confessing sin honestly, and trusting Christ's blood to cleanse us completely for full joy and restored relationship with God and believers.
The Alligator Story – A Picture of Falling and Quick Recovery
Take God’s Word and turn with me please to First John chapter 1, First John chapter 1, and in a moment I’m going to read to you beginning in verse 3. First John chapter 1. When I was a younger preacher, I used to pastor a church, while I was in college, down in Florida on the edge of the Everglades. And there was a sugar mill out there in the little town of Fellsmere. Wonderful little town. We had a delightful time. And it was our joy, Joyce and I, to serve the Lord in that little church.
I had a deacon out there who would hunt frogs for a living. He was a professional frogger. He would go out at night time in one of these air boats, and gig frogs. And he made a handsome living hunting frogs out there in the swamps. And he told me a story one time, I’ll never forget. He said, “Before I was saved, not only did we hunt frogs, but we poached alligators.” He said, “Actually if you got a big alligator, his hide was worth far more than anything you could get that night for frog legs.”
And he said, “We didn’t shoot the alligators. But actually, we would shine our headlight on them.” And he wore a light between his eyes, a very powerful beam. “We’d see the gator’s eyes and then we would take our boat and come alongside him, keeping that light right on his eyes. And he would stay there on top of the water.” And he said, “We kept a big hammer beneath the seat.” And these men sat up high in that boat on a seat that’s about that high off the floor of the boat.
And he said, “We’d come alongside that alligator and hit him between the eyes with the hammer. We didn’t shoot him, because if you shot him, the game warden would hear, the game warden would come.” So, he said, “We’d just hit him real hard with that hammer.” This deacon brother said to me, he said, “Pastor, I saw the biggest alligator I believe I’d ever seen. I know he was very valuable, I didn’t want to miss him.”
So he said, “I idled my motor and came up right alongside this alligator. And he said, I took my hammer, a ball peen hammer, that I had under my seat,” and he said, “I gave a mighty swing.” Now you’d have to know Neal, he’s a small guy, wiry, muscular. He said, “I gave a mighty swing.” He said, “But when I did, I missed the alligator’s head.” And he said, “The force of that hammer coming all the way around flipped me out of the boat, straddled the alligator.”
This is the part that tickled me. He said, “Pastor, I got back in the boat without getting wet!” I can believe that. I can believe that. I’ve thought about that story many times. And I’ve thought that’s so much like a Christian. You know a Christian can slip and fall into sin. But I believe a true child of God would fear sin as much as that man feared that alligator. And a true child of God, though he may slip and though he may fall, he has a desire for a quick recovery. Just like brother Neal did so long ago.
A Formula for Fellowship – Restoring Joy Through Cleansing
And I want to talk to you about that recovery. What happens when you slip? What happens when you fall? What happens when you find yourself straddling an alligator? Well now listen, if you will, here to First John chapter 1 verses 3 and 4, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.” That’s the reason I’ve called this message “A Formula for Fellowship”.
He’s telling you how to have fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ and with God the Father. “And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” The way to have fullness of joy is to have fellowship with God and with your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Now having said that, he begins to tell you how in verses 5 through 10, “This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light,” L-I-G-H-T, “and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
The formula for fellowship is a cleansed life my friend. Notice verse 8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”
Life is short. Death is sure. Sin the curse. Christ the cure. We know that. We know that sin is what does all of the devastating things in this world. But how do we deal specifically with sin?
Calling Sin What It Really Is – No Excuses Before a Holy God
First of all, you have to understand that sin is just what it is; it is sin. God only forgives sin. God doesn’t forgive mistakes. Now I’m not saying God judges you for mistakes. He doesn’t either judge you, or condemn you, or forgive them. But if you call your sins mistakes, then you’ll never deal with them. We need to call sin what it is.
Now, there are people who are taught that man is just a result of blind force; it all just happened. That nobody plus nothing equals everything. And we’re all just here as a result of blind force. Well, if you believe that then you don’t believe in sin. You believe that what we call sin is just an incident, or an accident, or sort of a stumble upward as man is progressing.
You know they believe we’ve come from some primordial soup and we’re on our way up. Well, we’ve gone from soup to nuts. We are not progressing as a race or anything else. Man started, made in the image of God, in perfection, and it is sin that has ruined the human race.
But if you don’t understand sin for what it is, if you don’t see sin as an affront to a holy God, if you call sin by some other name: a misjudgment, a malfunction, a mistake or a sickness. If you say that man is ill, but not evil. He’s weak, but not wicked. He’s sick, but not sinful. If you say that, then you’re never going to deal with your sin as you ought. And you’re never going to have fellowship with God.
You see, the problem with today’s society is we all have a burden of guilt without a sense of sin. The burden of guilt is there. It shows up in many, many ways. But so many of us don’t see ourselves as sinners needing to be forgiven, we see ourselves as a people who made mistakes who need to be fixed. And so we’re trying to fix ourselves and somehow compensate for the problem, or commiserate with it, without getting cleansed and without getting forgiven.
Why the World’s Answers Fail – Only Christ Cleanses Sin
Well I want to talk to you today about God’s formula for fellowship. Not the world’s formula; the world has a lot of different ideas. The evolutionist, as I’ve already mentioned, he believes man is on his way upward and time will take care of it all. Well, the problem with that is, the longer the society goes on the deeper we sink. And if you believe you’re a cousin to King Kong, well, you can believe that if you want to. You ought to know your ancestors better than I do. I don’t believe that. I reject with all my being Monkey Mythology. The evolutionist never sees sin for what it is.
And then there’s the educator. He says, “Well it’s not time, it’s education that’s going to handle the sin problem.” Well, if that is true then we would think that people with the most knowledge would be the least sinful. Try that one on Nazi Germany. Probably not a nation in the world that has a higher level of education than the Nazis when Hitler took over.
When I was in college, I had a course in philosophy. I so admired my philosophy professor; also taught me Greek. I listened to this man as he taught philosophy and I listened to him as he taught Greek and I said, “There’s a man has a head full of knowledge.” But one day this man went out to a lonely place, spread some newspapers on the ground, and then put a pistol to his temple and took his own life. He was professor of philosophy. He knew the Bible languages. He knew very much. But education for him was not the answer.
Science tells us that man’s problem is just defective genes. That somehow if we could just, by genetic engineering maybe we could solve the sin problem. If we could just marry superman to the bionic woman, then maybe somehow that we would deal with the sin problem. But those who are the most gifted, those who are the most handsome, those who are the most strong, those who are the most intelligent, they still have the sin problem.
The sociologist tells us that the problem is environmental. Well, if that’s true then why aren’t those in the best environment, why haven’t they dealt with the sin problem? Of course, they’ve not escaped the sin problem. None of these are the answer. The psychologist and the psychiatrist, he does his best to remove the guilt feeling, but he cannot remove the guilt. Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer to the sin problem, because through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, God forgives, God cleanses and here’s the wonderful part, God forgets our sin.
How God Handles Our Sin – Forgotten Forever When We Are Saved
Before we really get into the heart of the matter, let me just give you a couple of two or three verses that tell you how God deals with your sin when He saves you, when you get saved. Hebrews 8 verse 12, the Bible says, “Their iniquities will I remember no more.” Now think about that, “Their iniquities,” your sins, “Their iniquities will I remember no more.”
And then Isaiah chapter 43 and verse 25, God says, “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, I will not remember their sins.” Twice God says, “I will not remember it.” Then in Jeremiah chapter 31 and verse 34, God says, “For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”
Over and over again God tells us that He’s put our sin in the grave of His forgetfulness, never, never to come up again. God has forgotten your sin if you’re saved. It is gone, buried, and gone, and forgiven.
Now that doesn’t mean that God forgets it intellectually. That doesn’t mean that God cannot recall it. That isn’t what that means at all. God could never, ever truly learn anything or forget anything. Because He knows everything and nothing escapes His knowledge. So when God says He will forget our sin, it doesn’t mean that He doesn’t remember it any more intellectually. God cannot forget or remember anything in that sense of the word. If He did, He would change, and He says He doesn’t change.
I sometimes ask people, “Has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?” I mean, God is God. So what does he mean when he says, “I will remember their sins no more? He says, “I will remember them against you no more.” God does not remember them as sins, but God remembers them as forgiven sins.
Now listen to this, God remembers them as forgiven sins. And therefore what God has forgotten as a sin, I can forget as a sin. I can remember my sin intellectually. You say, “Adrian, can you remember when you told a lie, or you had a lustful thought, or when you lost your temper, or when you were full of pride?” Yes, but thank God I can remember it as a forgiven sin. I can remember it as sin buried in the grave of God’s forgetfulness.
So, when we get saved, when you come to the Lord Jesus Christ, when you’re born again, all of your sins are forgiven. “And though your sins be as scarlet, they become whiter than snow.” Isaiah 1:18. And they are put in the grave of God’s forgetfulness.
Sonship vs Fellowship – Eternal Security but Daily Cleansing
Now, that happens and your sin: past, present, and future, will never ever be brought up against you anymore. We talked about this last week. Romans 4:8, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” He will not do it. He’ll never put it on your account. It, that sin, is gone, it is forgiven. Not only sin that you have committed, but sin that you will commit. So far as coming up against you punitively. If God were to mark one half of one sin against your account, you’d be a lost sinner and on the way to Hell. You understand that don’t you?
God has forgiven you. God has cleansed you. God has made you. Not only where your past is forgiven, but your future is secure. There is never a time when God will ever mark any sin to your account so far as a lost sinner is concerned.
But now, having said that, I want you to look very carefully. Look in First John 1 verses 6 and 7, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
Well you say, “Pastor Rogers, I thought you said that when we get saved all of our sin is buried in the grave of God’s forgetfulness, and now he is mentioning sin in the life of a child again.” You have to understand that the child of God knows God in two ways. That is, there is the matter of sonship.
Look in verse 6, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie.” Sonship is the relationship that we have when we’re born again. When I am born into the family of God, I become a son of God; that is settled. You’re born into God’s family you can never ever be unborn.
But there’s also fellowship, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” Now, I became a Rogers when I was born into the Rogers family. I can never be unborn. No matter what I might do, I’m my father’s child. When you’re saved, you’re born into God’s family. You can never ever be out of God’s family. Got it? That is sonship.
But if you disobey your heavenly Father, then there’s the matter of fellowship. Sonship is once for all. Fellowship changes. I was born a Rogers, I am a Rogers. And that was and is sonship. I will be all, for all eternity. Nothing can undo what happened that moment that I was conceived and born into the Rogers family. That is fixed, that is an eternal fact, and it can never be changed.
But there were times when my dad would tell me to cut the grass and I wouldn’t cut the grass. Or my dad would tell me to clean the garage and I wouldn’t clean the garage. Or he would tell me to do this or not to do that, and I did it or didn’t do it, as to whichever was the wrong thing to do or not to do. And folks, fellowship would change. Sonship didn’t change, but fellowship would change.
And my dad, he knew too how to apply the board of education to the seat of knowledge. And, of course I tell people facetiously, Dad never whipped us on an empty stomach, he turned us over and that’s where he whipped us. But, he knew how to do it and he did it well. And I didn’t like it then, because the Bible says in Hebrews 12:11, “No chastening for the present time seems to be joyous but grievous. But afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those that are exercised thereby.”
And so, God, like a loving Father, chastens those whom He has received. And so, sonship, that is fixed by birth. But fellowship, that is determined as to whether or not we are obeying the Father’s instructions.
Now your sin will never be brought up against you in order to condemn you and cast you into Hell if you’re saved, if you are truly saved. But your sin can interrupt fellowship with the Father. That’s the reason that the Bible says First John 1:7, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ God’s Son cleanses us from all sin.”
So, it’s one thing to have sonship, it’s another thing to have fellowship. And what I am talking to you about today is a formula for fellowship. How to know that you’re right. How to know that you’re cleansed. When you stumble, when you fall, when you’re straddle on an alligator. How do you get back? Well, that’s what we’re talking about.
Three Steps to Stay in Fellowship – Expose, Express, Expel Sin
Now there are three things I want you to learn. And I want you to look in First John because they are all three right here. These are three very wonderful things that you must learn if you want to get in fellowship and stay in fellowship with God your Father.
Number one: your sin must be exposed to the light. I want you to see something very interesting here. Look if you will in First John 1 verse 6, do you see the little phrase, “if we say”? Look in verse 8, do you see the little phrase, “if we say”? Look in verse 10, do you see the little phrase, “if we say”? Each one of these verses begin with that little trinity of words: “If we say, if we say, if we say”.
Now what’s he talking about? Well he’s talking about people here who somehow deny their sin. You’d think that the Apostle John was in a testimony meeting and he could hear people standing up and saying one thing when he knew that the other thing was true in their life. And this is the evolution of a lie. Let me show it to you.
Look if you will, first of all, when a child of God gets sin in his or her heart many times they begin to lie to other people. Look in First John 1 verse 6, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.”
Now what happens is this. A man, a woman, a boy, a girl who is truly saved, been born again, his sin is forgiven and forgotten. Then he lets some sin get in his heart and his life. And he comes to church on Sunday morning. And he sits here and we sing these songs and he sings too. We study the Bible and he says “Amen”. People meet him and say, “How you doing?” “Fine.” “You walking in victory?” “Yes I am.” Ta, da, ta, da, ta, da. He’s just lying, he’s just lying. And he knows it.
But, he begins to lie to others because he cannot confess what is in his heart. And there are folks like that sitting here. I dare say there are hundreds, hundreds right here. And many listening by television. You know that your heart is not right with God, but you don’t want the person next to you to know it. I mean, you know it. You know that your heart is not right with God, but you don’t want the person next to you to know it. You don’t want your wife to know it, your husband to know it, your children to know it, your mom and dad to know it. And so you’re just acting like everything is just fine. A lot of folks just like that here this morning.
So, you begin by lying to others. Now look in First John 1 verse 8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” Now, if you tell that lie long enough you’re going to begin to believe it. You’re going to begin to say, “Yeah, that’s true. I’m alright.” You make some allowance for your sin and you deceive yourself. You become a spiritual schizophrenic. You lie to yourself; that’s the way really to depression and a mental breakdown.
But it’s not finished yet. And then look in verse 10, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.” We end up in controversy with God, we end up lying to God. The Holy Spirit says, “That’s a sin.” And we say, “It’s not a sin.” So you make God a liar. You’re calling God a liar, really.
And so what you do, what you do, you just try to hide your sin. And that’s the most dangerous thing we can do, is to conceal our sin. To say to others and to say to ourselves, and to say to God that there is no sin in our lives.
Now, what we need to do is to expose this sin to the light. And that’s what I want you to do today. Not in order to condemn you. You say “Pastor, you’re trying to make me feel bad? Dredge up my sin?” No. I’m trying to show you today how to have fellowship with God. I’m trying to show you how to walk out of this place leaping and dancing and praising God. To say “I’m absolutely, totally, wonderfully cleansed and clean, and I have fellowship with God and fellowship with one another.”
Now that sin therefore must be exposed to the light. It says, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.” And so what does light do? Light just simply reveals what’s wrong. You see, the closer you get to a bright light the more imperfections show up in any object. If you want to know whether there is any sin in your heart and in your life today, just expose it to the light.
Just say as the Psalmist did in Psalm 139 verses 23 and 24, “Holy Spirit of God, search me, try me and know my heart. And see if there is some wicked way in me.” “Turn the search light of Your holiness into my heart and into my life.” And the Holy Spirit of God will convict you of any sin that’s in your heart and in your life today.
I’m not talking about sin that will condemn you and send you to Hell. I’m talking about sin that will ruin and destroy your fellowship. Just open up your heart to the light of God. Right now, just say, “Here I am, Lord. Look into me.” You don’t have to do morbid introspection on yourself. Just simply open yourself up to the Lord and ask God to show you. Ask God to reveal that sin to you.
Holy Spirit Conviction vs. Satanic Accusation – Know the Difference
Now that’s Holy Spirit conviction, when the Holy Spirit of God reveals what may be wrong in your heart and in your life. Point, and a good point, I want you to listen to it very carefully. Listen very carefully, everybody here. You need to learn the difference between Holy Spirit conviction and Satan’s accusation.
Now, listen very carefully, because at this point if you don’t get this point you’re going to miss something very, very important. The Holy Spirit of God convictions you of sin; the devil accuses you of sin. There’s a vast difference. It’s not only the Holy Spirit who will bring up your sin, the devil will bring up your sin also.
Now let me tell you the difference. How does the Holy Spirit of God conviction you of sin? When you just open up your life to the light, when you say, “Here I am, Lord, here I am.” How does the Holy Spirit of God convict you? Well first of all, the Holy Spirit of God will convict you legitimately. Do you have that? The Holy Spirit of God will convict you legitimately.
The Holy Spirit of God will say, “This is the sin that has come into your life that has not yet been confessed and cleansed.” Now the devil will accuse you illegitimately. You see, the devil will bring up that which has already been cleansed and already been forgiven. He will bring that up and bring it back to your remembrance again.
Now the Bible says, if it has been cleansed, it will never ever be brought up again. “God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin,” First John 1 verse 9, “and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Now, suppose you told a lie. Let’s suppose that you told your wife a lie and the Holy Spirit of God convicted you of that sin. And you confessed it. You said, “God I’m sorry. Forgive me and cleanse me.” Well what happened to that sin? It is gone, it is forgiven, it is cleansed. Never ever to be brought up again.
If it comes up again it is the devil this time accusing you. You know, in Revelation 12 verse 10, the devil is called “the accuser of the brethren”; he accuses you before God and he accuses you before your own conscience. And the devil will say, “You remember when you told that lie to your wife?” And he’ll bring it up again to torment you with it.
Now you see, listen, before you sin, the devil says, “Go ahead and do it. You can get away with it.” And after you sin, the devil says, “You’ll never get away with it. You’ll never get away with it.” He leads you into sin and then he accuses you for doing what he led you into doing.
But the Holy Spirit of God will only convict you of sin legitimately. If that sin, let’s suppose that you’ve not yet confessed it to your wife. Let’s suppose you told a lie to your wife and the Holy Spirit of God says, “You lied to your wife.” And you try to have fellowship with God. And you know you don’t have fellowship with God. The search light of God’s holiness is telling you that you told a lie to your wife. Well that is conviction; that’s Holy Spirit conviction. And it is a legitimate conviction.
So, the Holy Spirit of God will convict you legitimately. Let me tell you what else he will do, He will convict you specifically. Now when the devil accuses you, if the devil cannot accuse you of some sin that’s already been forgiven. Well then the devil will just accuse you generally. He’ll just say to you, “You’re no good. You’re unworthy. You have just a vile, sinful nature. God couldn’t love anybody like you.”
There are a lot of people just like that. They’re under oppression of the devil. The devil has given these people a negative view of themselves. And they’re under satanic oppression. But the Holy Spirit of God does not convict you generally. He convicts you specifically.
Your sin nature, that’s all under the blood of Christ. Your Adamic nature. You have become a partaker of the divine nature. But the devil doesn’t want you to understand that. So he just says, “You are no good.” He makes you feel bad mostly all over. But the Holy Spirit is like a skilled physician. He puts his finger on the sore spot and he pushes. You say, “Oh, that hurt.” That’s where the sin is.
And the Holy Spirit will call it by name. Don’t ever try to deal with sin this way and say, “Oh God, if I’ve sinned forgive me.” That’s just a waste of breathe. Say, “Lord, I told a lie. Forgive it.” Or, “Lord, I was cruel, forgive it.” Or, “Lord, I was dishonest, forgive it.” Or, “Lord, I was watching something I should not have watched and it was wrong. Forgive it.”
And you see, you name it specifically and that’s where you get forgiven, because that’s where the Holy Spirit of God will convict you. Now you don’t have to go around just saying, “Oh, I must be guilty. Lord, forgive me for all of my sins, whatever they were. I don’t know, I haven’t got any idea. But I just feel terrible.” That’s the devil making you feel terrible.
The Holy Spirit will only convict you of sin that has not yet been confessed, and the Holy Spirit will tell you exactly what it is. He’ll put a name on it. He’ll put a face on it. He’ll put a time on it. He’ll put a date on it. And that way, you can know that it is cleansed and forgiven.
Now here’s a third way that the Holy Spirit convicts you. Not only does he convict you legitimately, and not only does he convict you specifically, but the Holy Spirit of God will convict you redemptively. You see, the Holy Spirit of God convicts you so that you will confess and come to fellowship. He, God wants you to have fellowship with Him.
When God deals with you as a son, He’s not trying to get even with you, He is trying to restore you to fellowship. He hates it when the fellowship is broken, so He’s trying to bring you back to fellowship. So He will name the exact thing. He’ll say, “This is what you’ve done and now come to Me and I will forgive you and cleanse you.” Now He convicts you redemptively.
The devil accuses you destructively. The Holy Spirit wants to draw you to confession and forgiveness and fellowship. The devil wants to drive you to accusation and despair and away from God.
So, just open up your heart to the Holy Spirit of God. That sin must be exposed to the light. That’s all you need to do today. Just say, “Lord, here I am, here I am. If there is any unconfessed, unforsaken, unforgiven sin in my life, just turn the search light of your holiness on to my life.” And the Holy Spirit will legitimately, specifically, and redemptively say that’s where the problem is.
Confessing Sin – Agreeing with God Immediately and Specifically
And then what do you do with it? Well first of all, it must be exposed to the light. Secondly, it must be expressed to the Lord. Now look if you will in verse 9, look in First John chapter 1 and verse 9, and look at it, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Now you must confess your sin. Well how do you confess your sin? Well the word confess here is the word homologia or homologeo and it means “to say the same thing”. A confession of sin is not just an admission of sin. It is an agreement with God about that sin. You say about that sin, what God says about that sin.
To confess that sin means to name it and nail it. To agree with God. When the Holy Spirit of God says, there is the problem. He puts his finger right on the sore spot. Then you call that sin by name. You confess it. You say what the Holy Spirit has just said. That means to agree with the Holy Spirit to confess, con-fess.
Even in the English it means the same thing. Like we say ‘fess up. And the word con means with. So, say the same. Agree with God. When the Holy Spirit of God legitimately, specifically, redemptively says, “There’s the problem in your life”, just simply agree with God and say, “That is right God. There is the problem in my life and I judge that sin.”
Now how do you do it? Very carefully, you must do it immediately. The word confess is in the present tense. Don’t just save up all of your sins and at the end of the day, or worse at the end of the week, say, “Now Lord, I’m going to get right with You again.” Oh no. If we confess, it’s present tense. It’s something that calls for immediate action.
When you get a speck of dust in your eye during the day, you don’t say, Well, I’ll get that out at the end of the night. Or, I’ll get that out maybe in a week from now.” No, you say, “Hey pardon me, I’ve got something in my eye. I need to get that out. It’s an irritant.” That’s the way you do with your sin. I mean immediately, immediately.
I do this all the time. I say, “Lord, that was wrong.” Or “Lord, my attitude was wrong.” Or “Lord, I did this or I did that.” The Holy Spirit puts his finger on the sore spot and immediately just like that I can say, “Lord, forgive me and cleanse me.”
So many of us, we just ride a roller coaster. We’ll come to church and we’ll be way down like this. And the preacher will preach and we’ll hear truth, and we’ll get right with God and we’ll confess our sin and we’re up here. And then we go down, we’re way down here. And we go along for a long time. And then we have another revival and we’re up here. Then we’re down here. And mostly these are much longer than these are. And we’re just riding that roller coaster. Have you ever ridden it? A lot of folks just ride that roller coaster.
Now let me tell you what the spiritual life is. The Spirit-filled life is not a life where you can never sin. First John 1:8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and truth is not in us.” But here is what the Spirit-filled life is. It’s not riding this roller coaster like this.
You get up here and you get right with God, and you’re going along and you’re aware that some sin comes into your life and you start down. But immediately you confess it. And you say, “Oh God, that’s wrong. I’m sorry. I agree with You.” And so here’s your life. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Just like that. You just stay up here. You don’t get down here and ride that low part of that roller coaster for a long time.
It is a life of confession of sin, agreeing with God. You do it immediately. And I want to say secondly, you do it, friend, specifically. Now if the Holy Spirit of God convicts you specifically, then you confess specifically. You don’t say, “Lord, just forgive my sin.” He says, forgive my sins. Look, “If we confess our sins.” Name it, call it by name.
We sing that song, “Count your many blessings, name them one by one. And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.” Count your many sins, name them one by one. It’ll surprise you what you’ve done! When you begin to say, “Lord I did it.” But oh what a relief there is, oh what a relief there is when you say, “God I should not have watched that. I am sorry. It was wrong. I agree with You. I call it by sin. The Holy Spirit has convicted me it is wrong.”
Do it immediately. Do it specifically. And friend, do it confidently. Listen to First John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” Don’t you love that? “He is faithful and just to forgive our sins.” If God did not forgive you and cleanse you, He’d be a liar and a crook. He’d be unfaithful and unjust. He is faithful and just.
Why? For those sins Jesus died. And you can be absolutely, wonderfully, totally, cleansed. And what God calls clean let no man call unclean. It will be gone, never ever to be brought up against you anymore.
“He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That’s a wonderful way to live. Because when we’re clean, what happens? When we’re clean, we have fellowship with God and fellowship with one another. And there’s nothing like just being clean with God.
You know how you feel when you brush your teeth in the morning? How your mouth feels? You’ll feel that way all over. You can feel that way all over! Just to be clean and right with God. “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us. And to cleanse us,” hallelujah, “from all unrighteousness.” That’s so simple. It’s so wonderful.
Sin must be exposed to the light, expressed to the Lord, and then it will be expelled from the life.
Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Lord, thank you for Your Word. And oh Father, I pray today that many in this building just might know the joy, the joy of that burden of sin lifted and gone. The devil loves to accuse, but Lord, You love to convict and to cleanse and restore. Thank You for that.
And now while heads are bowed and eyes are closed, would you just let God love you a little bit right now? You’re His child. If you’ve been out of fellowship with Him, He wants to call you back to Him. And He wants to do it right now. Thank Him for His mighty love for you. Oh how He loves you and me.
If you’re not certain that you’re saved, would you like to be saved, would you? Would you like to know that you really do have life? Jesus said, “I’ve come that you might have life.” Could I lead you in a prayer? We’ll call this prayer the sinner’s prayer. And you can pray and accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. You can do it right now.
Would you pray this prayer? “Dear God, I know that You love me. Thank You for loving me. And I know that You want to save me. Jesus, You died to save me and You promised to save me if I would trust You. Jesus, I do trust You. I believe You’re the Son of God. I believe you paid for my sin with Your blood on the cross. I believe that God raised You from the dead. And now I receive You as my Lord and Savior. Forgive my sin. Cleanse me. Come into my life. Take control of my life and begin today to make me the person You want me to be. And Jesus, give me the courage to make it public. Help me never to be ashamed of You. In Your name I pray, Amen.”