The Stained Life Promised Pu..

If you have a copy of God’s Word, I invite you to turn to Isaiah, Isaiah 1. For six years, we went through the Gospel of Luke, and for a little time now, that we have completed that study, we are just going as the Lord leads us to various portions. I was about to say something that we use in homiletics as a criticism of preachers. Sometimes, when preachers would preach, there would be a verse that would be quoted to describe the way they preached, at least at certain sections. And they went everywhere preaching the word. It was not a compliment. The idea was they were meandering from here to there with everyone wondering, “What’s your point?” So we hope that’s not the case. But Isaiah 1 is where the Lord would have us to be tonight.

I’m going to take time; I’m not going to read from verse 1, but I will read from verse 10. Isaiah 1, verse 10:

“Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom. Give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me, saith the Lord? I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

Amen. Ending the reading at verse 20. This, beloved, is the word of the eternal God, a word that you are to receive, a word that you are to believe. And the people of God said, amen. Let’s pray.

Lord, we find such comfort in singing the words of that psalm. Let me think of the backdrop and consider one who had been so mightily favored, yet fell so horrendously into grievous sin. Yet there was still a way for him to be cleansed. “Purge me with hyssop,” he cried, “and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” I pray tonight that should any be here feeling the darkness of their sin, the blackness of their past, they might find in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ all the remedy they need. Help me to explain that. Help me to communicate that. Grant, O God, that it might please Thee to give deepening assurance, even to those who are saved, and who are looking for a fresh sense of comfort, that there is power in the blood of Jesus. So hear us, give the Spirit, Lord. We ask not for the eloquence of the flesh, but the utterance in the Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I don’t know if you have ever read through Isaiah, or if you have ever given any study to this prophecy. But you will find it opens with a scathing indictment against those who are described as the covenant people of God, a people with favor, a people blessed, a people highly privileged with spiritual blessings. And yet they are spoken to, they are addressed by God in language that would appear to be going too far. But the people of God would be likened to even the cities that God destroyed, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s quite a striking thing. And yet this is what we find as the prophecy opens.

God, through His servant, lays bare the spiritual rebellion, likening His people to children that have forsaken their father, rebelling against His good graces and mercy. Though outwardly religious, they were inwardly corrupt. There was all sorts of corruption reflected within their souls and in their practices. Still offering sacrifices, still attending solemn assemblies, yet their hands full of blood. They come to worship as a guilty people who refuse to see their guilt. So God is not confronting ignorant pagans here. He is confronting a people who ought to know better, a people who are living in defiance of the light that God had given to them.

They are called to repentance. They are called to turn. They are commanded to cease from evil and learn to do well. The time is now to change your ways. You might imagine, given the extent of the sin that these people are guilty of, that God might turn His back on them. “You’re self-righteous. You imagine yourself to not need my mercy. You present yourself with a veneer of obedience, and yet there’s just corruption. You’re riddled with corruption.” God should just turn away from them.

But then we come to the parable we know as the parable of the prodigal son. So often we focus on the one who went into the world and wasted his substance with riotous living, rebelled against the Father’s wishes, and entered into a world of sin and corruption. We focus so much on him, and he comes back, and of course, is embraced by the Father who’s constantly, daily looking over the horizon, wishing and praying and desiring for the day that His son might reappear. Sometimes we forget. The Father goes out to meet the other son, the brother, the self-righteous one, the one who imagined himself to be fine, imagined that sin was a problem in the life of his brother, not in his own heart. The Father goes out to him also and bids him come. “Come, don’t stand without in the celebration of salvation. Come in and join us.”

And so it is here. God bids His people. He calls them with all of the fevers and privileges, yet again, He calls them to Himself. You see that language in verse 18. “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” This is an extension of mercy. It’s not meant to be a negotiation. It is a summons. Throw down your rebellion. Stop in your tracks. Turn on to God now.

And so it is this evening. This very evening, the same thing is done. God comes through His Word to this people and invites. For the vast majority here, perhaps everyone, you can testify to multiplied spiritual favors. You have no excuse. You may not know everything, but you know enough. And you know enough of God’s Word that what He bids you to do is to turn repeatedly away from sin, daily turning from sin, never getting to a place where we become stagnant or complacent, but always sensing the inner corruption of our hearts, the natural tendency to unbelief, and the need daily to seek forgiveness.

But what happens, many of you will know this, from experience you will know it, that you may drift into periods of coldness, of indifference, periods where complacency marks your spirituality, and you’re no longer looking daily for forgiveness. No longer are you naming your sins and running swiftly to the cross for pardon. Do you find yourself negligent?

See, in our salvation, what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us is not for us to go to the cross once and never revisit. But as we sing, as we sang today, “Jesus, keep me near the cross.” We are brought near the cross in Isaiah 118, where the Lord in His invitation to His people invites them to come and be cleansed.

I’ve titled this message “The Stained Life Promised Purity.” The Stained Life Promised Purity. You may look at your life, and by an honest assessment, you will say it is a life that is stained. This verse promises purity. The stains can be dealt with. They can be removed. No matter how dark the blot may be, no matter how extensive the period of sin may have gone on, there’s a promise, a wonderful promise, that it can all be put away.

Note first the call of grace. The call of grace, “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” Wonderful way to begin, isn’t it? “Come now.” The urgency is not lost by throwing it into the midst. It’s put at the head so that you see it. The urgency is there. The urgency is seen even in the placement of the invitation to come. Right out of the gate, the invitation is, “Come, come. Come now.” Any notion that the recipient may have of needing to improve yourself before coming to God is put aside by this invitation. Any thought that God might be reluctant and I need to figure certain things out before I come is set aside entirely by God presenting this clear wording, this beckoning to men: “Come now.” He is not reluctant. He comes to you, He sees the sin, and He urges you to bring that sin, bring that guilt, bring that shame you carry to Him.

Like a father pleading with a wayward child, knowing he can help if the child will only come. And through his tears and brokenness, he appeals, “Daughter, just come.” The Lord summons His people, and He does so in a way that demands immediate response: “Come now.” The urgency is easy to see. It’s as if He would say to them, “Why will you remain? Why die under the guilt? Why perish under this weight of sin? Why? I am here. I am ready. I will save you now.”

The language depicts something of a courtroom scene. God inviting the sinner to present their case. Their guilt is beyond dispute. There’s no challenging of the condition they’re in. God is coming, proposing terms of peace. And see how He proposes. He’s not looking for penance. He’s not looking for years of groveling in the mire. He simply says, “Come.” There is more theology in that word “come,” when it is uttered from divine lips, than could ever be plunged.

God says, “Come.” And this language, though spoken many years ago, is still as relevant today. Nothing has changed. God still beckons sinners to Himself, still reasons, as it were, shows the folly of clinging to your cherished sins, makes it plain: “All you need to do is come.” If you desire My favor, if you seek for pardon, just come. He does not stand as a tyrant, pointing His finger in some way that makes you feel like He can never be placated. As we shall see, He has set the terms, He has met the demand in His Son, and He beckons then the sinner to simply come. There could be no greater news.

There’s no religious ceremony here. There’s been mention of religious ceremony in Isaiah 1, speaking of the Sabbath, the various observances of feast days, and so on. All of that has been explained; it was appointed by God, it served a purpose. But they were coming and engaging in that, and the language used of “treading the courts”—that is, they’re walking into the religious space, they’re coming into the court of public worship—but their hearts are still riddled with sin and unbelief. God says, “You need to come, not just come into the building, come to Me.” And not come when you like and sometime later, but come now.

Oh, that man were as urgent to be pardoned as God is urgent to pardon. To think that God, in His concern for souls, reflects this urgency rather than just throwing out an invitation, take it or leave it, just throws it out there. You might stumble across it, like some scholarships or bursaries and things that are available to businesses or students or so on, and they’re out there, available, but you almost need some expert to show you the way and navigate to actually get the benefit of it. Not so with the gospel invitation. It is put before you with such clarity. There can be no ambiguity, no misunderstanding. The language exposes any who may be tempted to blame God. “God is withholding grace.” No, to the earnest seeker, there is this opportunity to be pardoned. Come now. That’s the language.

You struggle? You struggle spiritually? Do you struggle with a sense of cleansing and pardon and reconciliation with God? This text would say the struggle is in your part, it’s not with God. God’s willing. God will cleanse. God invites. God bids you now, and all you have to do is come. Come now.

One of the saddest things to behold as a preacher is to have some insight into the knowledge that an individual may possess about the gospel, and find them quoting Scripture and rehearsing their understanding of God’s Word, all the while clutching to their sins. I have a few memories of my own. When you walk away, you ask yourself, “How is it that they can know so much and be favorable towards it? They’re not rebelling. They’re not saying, ‘I know it and I reject it.’ They know it. They assent to it. But they cannot grasp Christ.” Not because of the unwillingness of the Lord, but because their hands are filled with their pet sin. Tragic.

Through the Scriptures, we find individuals who were like those described in Isaiah, engaging in offering burnt offerings of rams and so on and so forth. As I was thinking about this, I thought of Saul, Saul’s offering. He wouldn’t wait for Samuel to come. He arrives and Samuel has to rebuke him. He tells him, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. Do what God has told you to do. Get the main thing right first.”

So you might get caught up in details about what’s the right way to worship God? What are the particulars about this thing and that thing in terms of outward practice? All the while, you still haven’t come to Jesus Christ. You can debate, maybe some of the college students here, and you debate other college students on matters of doctrine, and you love it. You love the back and forth and the banter of the debate. But do you know God?

God calls you to be reconciled to Him everywhere. Micah 7:18, “Who is a God like unto thee? Who is a God like unto thee?” What do you mean? “That pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of His heritage. He retaineth not His anger forever, because He delighteth in mercy.” Here you have it. He delights in mercy. “Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Come, let’s work this matter out. Let’s get this problem solved. Let’s address the issue of your sin. Now, don’t wait until it’s too late. Don’t delay. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t hold off.”

Don’t imagine you have a future occasion in which to get right with God. The time God says is now. When you think about it, the only one who knows the future is God. So if God is speaking to you and telling you to do something now, He’s saying that in the knowledge of what the future holds for you. And you might want to think about that. You might want to think about the only one who knows the future saying there’s something you need to do now. Why might He say no? He knows the future. We have been struck by tragedies this week, tragedies we were not expecting to learn of or to see.

Come now.

Note also the condition of guilt, the condition of guilt. “Though your sins be as scarlet…” Though your sins be as scarlet. Then it says, “Though they be red like crimson.” Scarlet and crimson. The language used here is to convey the sense of the stubbornness of sin and the impossibility of its removal. Sin is as something double-dyed, like wool dipped in dark red dye, and this is how sin is portrayed. It penetrates every fiber. There’s no removal of it. If it’s there, it’s there for good. And this is how we are. You, me, sinners by nature. Sinners by practice. Every one of us. The problem of sin goes deep. It goes to your very nature. You are a sinner by nature. And therefore also by practice. You will do what comes naturally to you, which is to sin. And so it’s described in this way, as something impossible to change. It can’t be undone. It cannot be reversed. Your sins are as scarlet. They’re red like crimson. There’s no removing it.

So in this, we see the depth of the stain, don’t we? We understand the depth of the stain. It is deep, too deep to change, too deep to be recovered. Eliphaz, one of Job’s friends, when he comes to Job and begins his speech in Job 15, he describes man in verse 16, “How much more abominable and filthy is man which drinketh iniquity like water.” Man, drinking iniquity like water.

I know this isn’t the kind of thing we necessarily come to church to hear. I know many of you understand its importance, though. Because until we recognize the problem, we will not go for the solution. Until we grasp our plight, we will not run to Christ, the power of God, the one who will save and redeem. The kind of language that is used about our sin shows, first of all, that sin is deeply ingrained in human nature. Just as drinking water is natural, necessary, throughout human history, one of the ways of survival, isn’t it? Find a source of water. Wherever you are, you must have a source of water. This is man. It’s part of his being. It’s necessary for him. It’s part of how he exists. Sin also is consumed eagerly and without hesitation. Water is consumed by man. He’s thirsty. He drinks it eagerly, desperately, frequently, just as we indulge in our sin daily, instinctively, without restraint.

Now, the world out there wants to make you out to be, “You’re not so bad.” Compare yourself to others, and perhaps you look great, but you come to God’s Word and the story is different. God is no biased here. He cannot be bargained with. There’s no bribery. He states it as it is. This is the way you are. Sin is also habitual and constant. We always are going to water. We need it all the time. So it is with our engagement with sin and practice of it. “Your sins are scarlet. They’re red like crimson.” You can see also not only the depth of the stain, but the breadth of the problem.

Within the context, there are a number of things that can be seen in Isaiah 1. We can note, first of all, the rebellion. Verse 2, just look at it. Take your Bible and look at it. Isaiah 1, verse 2:

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.”

Rebellion. You see also their willful ignorance. Verse 3:

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know; my people doth not consider.”

You see them living in sin. Verse 4:

“A sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors.”

You’re not likely to hear language like that on TBN, I’ll grant you. That’s what the Bible says. That’s how God describes man. God is describing these people. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger. They have gone away backward. They refuse correction. Verse 5:

“Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.”

They’re always revolting, pushing back, refusing the correction that God sends. They corrupt, verse 6:

“From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.”

I can’t ever read that verse without remembering a story that Dr. Paisley told on occasion when he was engaged in his evangelistic endeavors in Northern Ireland and preaching the gospel in this particular place, and he was confronted by a very self-righteous religious lady after this particular gospel meeting. She was upset at him because of the way he was preaching, and how dare he, you know, say the things that he was saying. And she felt this self-righteous anger rising up within her, this is awful, I’m a good person, and so on.

And as she went off on him, he just replied, “You know, I have a picture of you in my pocket.” Of course, you know, the bizarre kind of response, “A picture of me in your pocket? What do you mean?” And he pulled out the Bible. And he opened, and Isaiah 1, verse 6, he said, “Here’s a picture of you. From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores.” And it’s true. It’s how God depicts man in a sinful state without the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is received only by faith. This is how man stands.

You see more of their problem here. You see the wickedness of their leadership. “Ye rulers of Sodom, give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah,” talking about the rulers. They have hypocrisy, verses 11 through 15. Their prayers are not heard because of their sin, verse 15. They oppress the weak, verse 17. There’s bribery and corruption if you go down to verse 23. There’s murder and violence if you look at verse 21. Twelve things, actually, the breadth of the problem. Twelve matters are addressed in this section.

And you might look at it and say to yourself, “Well, it’s not me. That’s not me.” And in the specifics, that may be true. You may not be guilty of murder or some of the other things that are said here. But that does not do away with its application to you because you have your own breadth of sin. It may manifest differently in the particulars or in the degree, but secret lust, vengefulness of heart, pride, unbelief, the sin may differ, either in the particular or in the degree of it. But sin is real in your life, and there is a breadth to it.

You’re not coming into this church tonight and saying, “Well, I only have one little problem here. I have just this one little problem.” James actually addresses people who are of that nature. He tells them plainly, “Whoso keepeth the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” So there’s no escaping, right? We come on the Lord’s Day morning and we review the law of God, acknowledge our shortcomings in that way. You don’t get to come some Sundays and say, “Oh, I’m off this week, I’m fine.” Doesn’t apply to me. If you think that way, you are deluded. There is a depth, a breadth, I should say, to the problem in us all.

And yet despite all of this, the awfulness of this, yet God still speaks with such encouragement: “Come now.” I know your sins are as scarlet. I know they’re red like crimson. I know. Yet I still bid you come. Come now. See, He has no problem dealing with the worst of sins, addressing the worst sins. This is good news. It’s good news because God puts His arm around all the problem of sin, and there’s no saying that I’ve gone too far, I’m a hopeless case. God says, “Come now, let Me address the problem.”

Don’t try to clean yourself up first. Don’t do that. No, no, no, no. No, you don’t try to get better. Jesus put it that way: “But not trying to get better before you go to a physician.” You realize your sin and you run. You run to God. He is the only one who can address the problem.

And then thirdly, the cleansing of God. The cleansing of God. We see the call of grace, the condition of guilt, the cleansing of God. “They shall be white as snow. They shall be as wool.” Yes, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. He’s not just going to scrub away at it. Sometimes that happens. I’ve had that. Some little thing, little mark that’s on a white shirt. And my diligent and loving wife will see the mark, and it’ll come out of the wash, and it’s there, and she’s, “What’s that?” I said, “I don’t know what that is.” And so she gets to work on it. Thankfully, on many occasions, she’s successful with the various concoctions she has to try and address the stains. Sometimes not. Sometimes it is not the case. It will not go away.

God is taking to this task of dealing with an impossible stain. He is asking you to trust Him to deal with this impossible stain of your sin. Don’t step back, don’t hold off, don’t imagine there’s some alternative, just come now, come to Me. I will address the problem.

We may think of the how of this cleansing. How? How is it possible? How can He promise such a thing? Your sins be as scarlet. And again, you think of the surrounding context, the sins that we have dealt with. Everything from murder to rebellion and contumacy and prayers that are being offered that won’t be heard again because of sin. All these things. You think of all of that. And yet He’s saying, “I will put away it all. I will deal with all of it. I will address it. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Now, I don’t know how much you may have moved around rural areas. You have a couple of disadvantages here. You may not have close to Greenville, a lot of pasture that have sheep in them. That’s one issue. The other issue is that very often you don’t have snow, and if you have snow, it doesn’t stay very long, and even if it did, no one goes out in it anyway. They’re all hunkered down, they’ve got their month’s worth of milk and bread that they’ve gathered up, and they’re going nowhere. But one of the things you see, I grew up in a place where, like I grew up in Northern Ireland. Those occasions in winter when the snow falls and the sheep are out there, and those sheep that in the summertime appear so white. Oh, how white they appear. It’s quite stunning to see the contrast with the snow.

And I think that illustrates, though here in the context it is illustrative of both, you have both snow and wool as reflecting whiteness and purity and cleansing. I think sometimes we look at our lives and we imagine ourselves to be cleaner and whiter than we really are. I hope that’s not true of anyone here. I trust, please God, let it not be, that there’s someone here measuring themselves against other people and determining, “I think I’m fine.” You need to measure yourself against God’s standard. And when you do so, you’re going to find that you need cleansing. A cleansing you cannot provide yourself.

So how does God do this? How? Again, it’s not through ritual. It’s not through moral resolution. He’s going to address it in His own way. The sole remedy, hear me now, the sole remedy is the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. All of the sacrifices, everything that was given, those things that they were engaging in but had no sense of the significance of their meaning. The solemn days and the feasts and so on, they were all pointing to the need for a substitute. That atonement, that is reconciliation, comes only through the shedding of blood. And they were just waltzing in, engaging in that worship without reflecting upon their need for cleansing through shed blood.

It typified for them, it pointed forward, it told them, and they should have, they needed to pair it together. The first gospel promise: “The seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent.” That immediately eliminates the blood of animals. The hope can never be in the blood of an animal. It’s the seed of the woman that’s going to crush the head of the serpent. It’s the seed of the woman that must take on the task. It’s the seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, made flesh, who takes our sin, has that laid on Him, sheds His blood for the remission of our sins.

Hebrews 9:22, “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” 1 John 1:7, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” Ephesians 1:7, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace.” Romans 5:9, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Hebrews 13:12, “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.” Revelation 1:5, “Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.” 1 Peter 1:18-19, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.”

So the how is through the shedding of blood. What a marvelous thing this is, that it’s through the shedding of Christ’s blood. And so, Isaiah is going to have the—Not unique, that wouldn’t be the correct word, but certainly an elevated, privileged opportunity to be what we describe as the evangelical prophet. Isaiah gets this task of being one who communicates the gospel with perhaps greater clarity than any of his contemporary prophets or those who served in a similar capacity. And so you go through the prophecy of Isaiah and you see this depiction of the servant of Jehovah. And our sins are laid on Him. We see Him being the burden-bearer, carrying all our sins.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way. Yet the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is the one we are to look to, to depend upon—that’s the how.

And so you get to the cross, my friend, you get to the cross. Tonight, when God says, “Come now,” when Jesus used similar language, we’re invited: “Come, we’re encouraged in the parable, come for all things are now ready.” We invite people to come to Him now. “If any man thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” It was to find in Him the answer, the sole answer for the problem of sin.

The when of this cleansing. When are you going to get it? When can you have it? Well, the moment you believe, right? We don’t have a little place where we take you aside and we say, “Sign up here and I’ll contact you, and we’ll go through a program, and if you get a high enough grade, then you’ll be fine. You’ll have that cleansing.” No, you can have it now. You can have it before the sermon ends. You can say, “I’ve heard enough, Lord, I’ve heard enough.” And you can shut out the rest of what I say and just close yourself in before God. And even now, here He’s saying, “Come now.” And you say, “Lord, I’m coming. I confess my sins.” And you are faithful and just to forgive my sins, and You will cleanse me from all unrighteousness.

You can have it now. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.” When we come, simply come. And what’s the duration of this cleansing? The rest of your life. He will keep on cleansing because you keep on coming. You can’t not. If you’re truly His and you have come to Him, you haven’t come to Him to say, “How do you do?” and make some formal introduction and then turn your back on Him and walk away. No, once you come to the feet of Jesus, you say, “Here’s where I want to be.” You’re like that demoniac of Gadara who was wonderfully delivered from his problem and his bondage and the chains and so on of sin that so enveloped him. When the Lord saw him and addressed his problem and gave him deliverance, he just wanted to be with Jesus. He wanted to follow Him wherever He would go.

The Lord, of course, told him, He said, “No, go home to your friends. Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord hath done for thee and hath had compassion on thee. Go and be a witness in your home.” But he wanted to be there. And the woman in Luke 7, at the feet of Jesus, weeping and sobbing. She just wants to be there at His feet. She wants to be near Him. Mary, who wanted to be near the Lord, sitting at His feet, choosing that better part.

God’s people, they come. Those who truly come, come to stay. When God says, “Come now,” He never turns away. And you come now, you stay. You stay there. The Christian lives a life coming, staying with the Lord and abiding there in His presence and in the shadow of Calvary, seeing the answer for all daily transgression, and knowing yet it still reveals for me that precious shed blood.

The silver and gold may corrupt, but the blood of Jesus still cleanses from all sin. And you as a believer may find yourself guilty of sins worse than when you were an unbeliever. Still, you will come and find the blood of Jesus sufficient to wash away all your sins. So you come, you keep on coming. That’s in the sense of the language and the grammar. “Him that cometh to me, I shall in no wise cast out.” It’s not saying come once. “Him that cometh to me” keeps on coming to me. He will never be cast out. The language is underlined here.

Oh, I say to you, why hold on to your sin? Why? Why are you letting these scarlet things keep you from pardon, and forgiveness, and freedom, and joy, and knowing you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ? Why? What is the attraction to that sin? And in nearly every case, it’s one particular thing. It’s one thing. You have many sins, but we tend to have a particular pet sin that keeps us. It’s the thing that we won’t give up. It’s the thing we battle to let go of. You hold on to it with white-knuckle grasp.

And there are countless millions who have gone into God’s hell grasping onto that sin, when they knew if they would just let go and seize on Jesus Christ, they would be pardoned and forgiven. Do you not feel the condemnation of your own soul? Why hold on to your darling lusts? Why harbor corruption in your soul? Why let it worsen, bleed out into other areas of your life and ruin you and ruin those next to you?

This is what has happened, isn’t it? The little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump, a young person seizing on to sin, won’t let go of the lust that’s in the heart, holds on to it, thinking it’s not too big a deal. It’s a problem that I have within myself. But that problem begins to fester. That young person gets married, and it still festers. It begins to bleed into the marriage. It begins to bleed into family life. It begins to bleed into other areas. And then you wonder why things fall apart. You wonder why things aren’t as you dreamt they would be. Because you were holding on to sin. This corrupting influence polluted everything gradually, but surely.

Why? Let me ask you why. What is the reasoning here? God says, “Come now. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Just come now. Seek the Lord. Seek Him today. Seek Him in this place. Be born again. Know that the seeking of Him will not be in vain. He will pardon. He will fully forgive. Jesus has dealt with worse sinners than you, greater problems than you. Don’t make yourself a special case. Don’t say to me, “Well, I know He’s fine for all those people in this church, but they haven’t walked the path I’ve walked.” That’s the devil’s lie. He wants to make you think you’re a unique case that can’t be addressed, that Jesus is insufficient to address your peculiar issues, but He is sufficient. He is the master par excellence of dealing with sinners and reconciling them to God, giving them peace. You can trust Him. You can trust Him.

Let’s bow together in prayer. I will ask you for the final time today, are you saved? You can be saved here tonight. You may just be six or seven or eight years of age, or you may be 80 years of age, and you’ve been living a lie, deceived, and you’ve never come. Whatever your age, whatever your background, whatever your condition, hear this, God says to you tonight, “Come now. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” If I can help you, please let me know. Lord, bless Thy Word. Please bless Thy Word. Thou knowest the hearts of all. No one can hide from Thee. Thou dost see. Let us know. And I pray that those yet to come may even now make their way by faith to Thee. Defeat the devil. Remove the lies. May Thy Word run a free course and be glorified. Bless our fellowship. Be with Thy people through this week. Give us God-consciousness and zeal for the lost and for Thy glory. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of the people of God, now and evermore. Amen.