Things That Hinder Fellowship

Known for his unique ability to simplify profound truth so that it can be applied to everyday life, Adrian Rogers was one of the most effective preachers, respected Bible teachers, and Christian leaders of our time. Thanks for joining us for this message.

Here's Adrian Rogers. Would you take God's Word and be finding 1 John? That's back near the book of the Revelation. And we're studying the book of 1 John.

It's a short book, only five chapters. We're entitling this study, The Sweetest Fellowship This Side of Heaven. And when you do what John tells you, the only way that it can get sweeter is for us just to cut out and go to glory. But we're learning how to have fellowship, the sweetest fellowship this side of heaven. And today we're going to be looking at things that hinder fellowship.

And, you know, we can have the potentiality for fellowship, but we can let things come into our lives that will defraud us of the fellowship that is our heritage in the Lord Jesus. A little boy went into a drug store and asked if he could borrow the telephone. The druggist said fine. And the little boy dialed the grocery store in this little town. And when the grocer answered, he said, do you need a stock clerk, somebody who can come in and stock the shelves and carry the packages and so forth and sweep the floor? And the man said, no, we already have a boy who does that. And he says, well, does he do a good job?

Maybe you need someone else. Maybe he's not adequate. And the grocer said, no, he's very adequate.

We're very satisfied with the boy that we have. The little fellow said, well, thank you. And he hung up. And the druggist said, well, he said, I'm sorry, son, that you didn't get the job. No, he said, you don't understand.

I already have the job over there. I was just checking up on myself. I wanted to see if he really appreciated me. Now, what I want you to do today is to check up on yourself and see if there is in your heart and in your life something that is keeping you from having the sweetest fellowship this side of heaven. That something is most likely sin.

It is secret faults that cause moral earthquakes. And we're going to be talking today about secret faults, things that we hide, things that we disguise, things that keep us from fellowship with God. Look, if you will now, chapter 1 and verse 5. This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. 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. 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, and I love that word all, from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, these things write unto you that ye sin not, and if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world and hereby we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him, but whoso keepeth his word and him verily is the love of God perfected, hereby know we that we are in him.

He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked. Now we're talking about things that keep us from fellowship, primarily secret faults, hidden sins. You know, the Bible is the only book in the world that has the answer to the problem of sin and the way to deal with sin primarily with specificity is to recognize sin for what it is. We have a generation today that doesn't even like the word sin. The word sin is out of date. About the only sin today is to call sin, sin.

We want to call sin anything. We want to call it a mistake, a misjudgment, but Jesus did not die for errors. He did not die for mistakes. He did not die for misjudgments. Jesus died for sin.

Now we live in a day of behavioristic psychology where the psychologist says that we're just a sum total of our genes and chromosomes and environment and so man is not wicked. He's weak. He's not sinful. He's sick.

He's not evil. He is ill and so therefore we never really deal with the root of the problem because we never really get to the root of the problem. We've been spurred on by evolution. We've been taught that man was not created, that he evolved from some primordial soup. They never tell us where the soup came from, but we have sort of from a one-cell organism that life spontaneously began in some primordial soup. Well, if that's true, we've come from soup to nuts.

I can tell you that. He did not evolve. Man was created in the image of God and man sinned willfully and sin is not an accident. It's not an incident. It is high treason against God. You see, if you don't understand sin for what it is, you will never ever deal with sin and understand the remedy that God has provided. If you think that sin is merely a problem to be fixed, you're going to be looking for a cure rather than forgiveness and cleansing. You're going to try to compensate for sin or commiserate with sin, but thank God for 1 John that tells us how to deal with the sin problem and to have fellowship with God. Folks, I'm telling you, the boys and girls in school today and many of our adults as I've seen by watching television have lost the concept of sin today. They don't understand what sin is. The evolutionist says we're just on our way upward and time will kill the beast within us. Just give us time and we will progress on and on.

Well, I'm not a cousin of King Kong and you can believe that if you want to. Education says that what we need to do is just educate people and if we get more learning, then we'll be able to deal with the sin problem. Is that true? What about Nazi Germany? They were highly educated, the Nazis. What is happening on some of our universities today?

They have become cesspools of sin and higher learning at the same time. When I was in college, I had a professor who taught psychology and logic. I admired him very much. He was one of the most intelligent men I've ever met.

He had a brain full, but he committed suicide, my college professor. Science says that perhaps by genetic engineering we can just breed this thing out of man until finally we create the bionic woman and the superman and a different race. And we're actually trying to do that now with genetic engineering and parents are trying to arrange the... prearrange the birth of the children. The sociologist says, well, we just changed the environment and then man will be better. Well, if this is true, we would expect people who live in the best environment not to be bothered with sin.

But that's just not true. Sin is no respecter of environment, whether it's the ghetto or the high rise. And I remind you that man fell in the Garden of Eden.

You can't have a better environment than that. The psychologist and the psychiatrist are just saying, well, these are feelings that we've generated within ourselves and we need to get rid of the guilt feelings. That's not the guilt feelings we need to get rid of. It's the guilt that causes the feelings. Thank God for this word. I'm telling folks, listen to me.

Listen to me. The only book, the only book, the only book, the only book that has the answer to the sin problem is God's Word. Now, this is what we're dealing with today is the sin problem.

It is the secret faults that cause the moral earthquakes. Now, how does God deal with sin? Well, when I receive Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, when I repent of my sin, I trust him, I receive by faith the Lord Jesus Christ, I am born again, and then as a result of that, sin judicially, judicially, now listen to the word, judicially, legally, is dealt with forever and ever.

Hebrews 8, verse 12, For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their iniquities. I will remember no more. When you get saved, every sin past, present, and future is buried in the grave of God's forgetfulness.

Now, you need to understand that. Isaiah chapter 43 and verse 25, I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake. I will not remember thy sins.

Folks, that's good news. That is the gospel of grace. Jeremiah 31, verse 34, For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. Isaiah 1, 18, Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Now, when God says that he will remember our iniquities no more, does that mean that God cannot recall them?

No, no, no. God is not talking about an intellectual remembrance. God says, I will remember their sin against them no more. God remembers our sin, but he remembers them as sins that have been forgiven and therefore forgotten as sins. And in the same way, I can never forget the sin that I have committed intellectually, but when I remember that sin, I don't remember it as a sin held against me. I remember it as a sin forgiven and forgotten by the grace of God.

Thank God for that. Now, that's the way God deals with us judicially. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. If God would have put one half of one sin on my judicial record, one half of one sin would be enough to damn me and doom me forever. Therefore, I cannot behave my way into heaven. If I'm going to be saved, I've got to be saved by the grace of God.

You agree with that. Now, that's the way God deals with our sins judicially. But then how does God deal with our sins day by day? If I'm saved by grace and kept by grace and no sin will ever be brought up against me anymore and my sin is buried in the grave of God's forgetfulness, how does God deal with me, Adrian, day by day when I'm proud or arrogant or when I tell a lie, when I exaggerate, when I have a lustful look?

How does God deal with me day by day? Not as judge, but as Father. As Father. Now, we're not talking about legal judgment, but we're talking about in this chapter God dealing with us in a parental way. You see, we have two vital relationships as a Christian.

One is sonship. When I'm born into the family of God, sonship is established and sonship will never change. In a parallel way, I was born into the Rogers family. Nothing can ever undo that. Conceived, born, I am a Rogers.

I'm Adrian Rogers. When the sun, the moon, the stars have grown cold, what happened when I was born still is an event. It can never, ever be undone. That's the way it is when you're born again, that once you're born into the family of God, you're in the family of God. That relationship we call sonship, but there's another relationship that can change and that is called fellowship. Now, John here is not talking about sonship. John here is talking about fellowship. You see, I am my father's son and when I was growing up, I always had relationship, but I didn't always have fellowship. There'd be times when my dad would tell me to do thus and thus or not to do thus and thus and I would do what he told me not to do and didn't do what he told me to do and there would be sometimes a rupture in fellowship and my dad would carry me out. We didn't have a woodshed, but we did have a pump house.

Carry me out to the pump house and apply the board of education to the seed of knowledge. And my dad, don't get the wrong idea, he never whipped us on an empty stomach. He just turned us over. And there's where he did it. Now, he did that because he loved me. As a matter of fact, the Bible says, whom the father loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. Sonship is established by birth. Relationship, fellowship rather, by conduct. Now, what John is talking about here in this book and the forgiveness of sin and the cleansing of our daily sins, he's not dealing with us as judge, but he is dealing with us as father.

This is the way that the father deals with his son. For example, look, if you will, in verse 3. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that you may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. So he's not talking about judicial or legal forgiveness here.

He's talking about parental forgiveness. Even as Jesus Christ taught us when he taught us to pray, our father forgive us our trespasses. You see, this is a family prayer. We're talking now about how to have fellowship with God. Many of you are saved.

You're on the way to heaven, but you're going second class because you are not enjoying that fellowship, that koinonia that we were talking about so long ago. Now, having set the stage, I want us to see now how we can restore that fellowship, how we can get rid of those secret faults, those hidden sins that divide us from the father's smile in the father's face and have that sweet, wonderful fellowship with God. Now, the first thing I want you to see is how God convicts of sin, how the father convicts of sin. Notice in verse 5, look at it. This then is the message which we have heard of him and declaring to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. 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. Now, take your Bible, and I want you to look at some verses here.

Look at the times he talks about lying here. Look in verse 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, just to underscore that. Then look, if you will, in verse 8. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Then look in verse 10. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar. Each time he says, if we say, if we say, if we say. Now, what he's saying is this. We're saying one thing and doing another. We are pretending here. And what he's talking about here is what I want to call the evolution of a lie.

I want you to notice the three steps that follow each one of these if we say. First of all, we may lie to deny sin, verses 5 and 6. If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie. Now, that's what happens in church. Look around.

I mean, here we are. Every one of you looks so holy. Every one of you looks so clean. Each looks so happy in Jesus. But do you think everyone has his or her heart right with God this morning?

They're not. I've been preaching long enough to know that is not true. I've been preaching long enough to know that people can come in church, hold a Bible in their hands, sing the songs, nod their heads and say, amen, and down in the heart, things are not right.

If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie. There's some living lies sitting on seats in this building this morning, and you know in your heart that you are playing a game. You're playing the church game. You're playing a role.

But that's what happens. We get sin in our hearts. It may be big. It may be small, but it is there, and we come to church. We go to Sunday school. We teach the class. We sing in the choir. We do whatever we do, but there's that secret fault.

There's that secret fault. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie. Now, what happens when a man does that? After he does that for a while, do you know what happens to him? He gets to believing his own lie.

Now, notice what he says here. Look at the next step here in verse 8. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

When you set out to deceive somebody else, do you know who you're going to deceive most of all? You are going to deceive yourself, and there are many of you who have begun to say to yourself after you've stonewalled God for a while and after you have moved in and out of the fellowship and nothing seems to happen, you still sing in the choir. You still teach the Sunday school class. You still are in the congregation. You still shake hands.

You still buddy with all the people. What do you say? Well, maybe it's not sin at all. Maybe I'm all right. Maybe it was just an error.

Maybe it's psychological idiosyncrasy. Or maybe God doesn't call that a sin, and maybe I am a pretty good fellow. And so you begin to smooth over your sin, and the second step in the evolution of a lie, first of all, we deceive others. Then we deceive ourselves. And then finally, we lie to God. We lie to others, then we lie to ourselves, and then we lie to God.

Look, if you will, here, down in verse 10. He says here, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. Well, you see, when we call God a liar, we're the ones who's lying. Isn't that true? Because God cannot lie.

And so God brings us under conviction, and we say, oh, no, no, God, you're wrong. It was a mistake. It was an error. It was a glandular malfunction.

It was the environment. It is legitimate resentment. It is righteous indignation. Whatever it is, and we don't let the Holy Spirit of God convict us of that sin. First of all, we lie to others, then we lie to ourselves, and then we have the unmitigated gall and audacity to stonewall God and to lie to Almighty God. We lie to deny sin.

We lie to deceive self, and we lie to defy the Savior. Now, when we do that, fellowship is completely broken. It is gone. We've stepped out of the light. We're over in the darkness. Now, how does God bring us back? Well, God will not bring us back unless we expose ourselves to the light.

You stay over here in the darkness, there'll never be any conviction. But if you as a child of God will just step back into the light, God will shine the light of His holiness upon your life, and God will bring you under conviction. Now, it is very important, very important, listen to me, it is very, very, very important as a child of God that you learn the difference between Holy Spirit conviction and satanic accusation. Now, the devil is the accuser of the brethren. The Holy Spirit is the one who loves us and convicts us.

And so many times people do not know the difference between Holy Spirit conviction and satanic accusation. Now, the devil is very clever. Before you sin, do you know what the devil tells you? The devil says, go ahead and do it, you can get away with it. And after you sin, you know what the devil tells you? You'll never get away with it. That's exactly what he'll do. He will entice you to sin and then condemn you because you did. Oh, you can get away with it.

You'll never get away with it. That's accusation, that's accusation. That's not the Holy Spirit of God. Let me tell you how the Holy Spirit of God convicts you. When the Holy Spirit of God shines that light upon you and there's nothing purer than light, God is light. And when the Holy Spirit of God who is light shines upon you, you will come under conviction as a child of God.

If you will just turn to the light and face up to the light, he will pull the veil of darkness back of those lies that you've been telling others and telling yourself and telling God. He will expose that sin. Now, let me tell you how the Holy Spirit of God will convict you. First of all, the Holy Spirit of God will convict you legitimately, legitimately. And you say, what do you mean by that, pastor? He will never convict you over any sin that has been confessed and cleansed. If it comes up again, it is not the Holy Spirit of God doing that. It is the devil who is going back into your past, bringing up some sin that has been cleansed, forgotten, and put in the grave of God's forgetfulness, and he brings it up again. One man told his pastor, pastor, I can't get peace.

Why? Well, I did a terrible, horrible thing. Pastor said, have you confessed it to God? He said, I've confessed it a thousand times.

He said, that's 999 times too many. Confess it once, praise him a thousand times, friend. If it comes up again, it is the devil trying to bring you into double jeopardy, and the devil will accuse you of sin already forgiven and cleansed. The Holy Spirit will convict you legitimately. He'll never come into your past and deal with something that's already been dealt with. And if that happens to you, you just tell the devil, I'm not going to take that stuff. Number two, not only will the Holy Spirit of God convict you legitimately, but the Holy Spirit of God will convict you specifically.

Now, if the devil can't go into your past, and drag up something that's already been dealt with, the devil will just convict you vaguely. Just make you feel bad. Just make you feel unworthy. Just make you feel no good. So many times you hear Christians pray, I know I'm just a poor, old, unworthy sinner. Mmm.

Where'd you get that? You're not some poor, old, unworthy sinner. You're the righteousness of God in Christ. You're a child of God. You're a prince and a king. You're next of kin to the Holy Trinity.

Jesus is not ashamed to call you his brothers. The devil wants to just make you feel that you're no good, that you're unworthy. You feel bad mostly all over. That's just accusation.

You don't have to take it. Let me tell you how the Holy Spirit of God will convict you. The Holy Spirit of God will convict you with specificity. If you do something, and it has not been cleansed and buried in the grave of God's forgetfulness, the Holy Spirit will say, hey, that was a lie you just told. Hey, Adrian, you were rude to Joyce just then.

No, yes, you were. And he, like a good doctor, will put his finger on the sore spot and push. Ha! Does it hurt there?

Believe me, it hurts right there. That's the way the Holy Spirit of God does. With legitimacy and with specificity, he will convict you of that particular thing. That's Holy Spirit conviction. But not only will he convict you legitimately and with specificity, but he will convict you redemptively. Do you know what accusation does?

It discourages. Accusation drives you away from God. Accusation says there's no way, woe is me, I'm done for.

I might as well quit. I've had it. Holy Spirit conviction says here's what you've done, but if you come to Jesus, he'll forgive you and cleanse you and come on back into the fellowship you loved. That, my friend, is the way that God convicts of sin. And you don't have to take this mess from the devil who is the accuser of the brethren, who is accusing you night and day before the throne and is accusing you to your own face.

That dirty devil. Thank God for the precious Holy Spirit who is light. Now, we're talking about the conviction of sin. Let's talk a little bit more about the cleansing of sin. Once the Holy Spirit of God shows you this particular sin in your heart and in your life and he does it now with specificity and he does it legitimately and not condemningly to draw you to Jesus. Now, notice what he says here in verse 9.

Take your Bibles and look at it. If, here's another if. You notice he says, if we say, if we say, if we say.

But now he says another if. If we confess our sins, not stonewall God, not deny our sins, but if we confess our sins, he, God, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, notice this is not the judicial cleansing that we got when we were saved. This is talking about fellowship with God.

This is talking about God dealing with us as children. Now, we confess our sins. Now, the word confess is an interesting word. It is the Greek word homo legao, which means to say the same, to say the same. That's literally what the word means, to say the same.

Two words, one word meaning to say and the other word homo, meaning the same, to say the same. A confession of sin is an agreement with God. It is saying with God what God says about that sin. It is not just saying, well, I did it, okay. That's not a confession.

That is an admission. A confession of sin is to say about that sin what God says about that sin. Over here is the sinner I've done wrong. I've sinned against God. The Holy Spirit of God puts the finger on me legitimately, specifically, redemptively, and I then confess my sin. I come over here with God and I say with God what God says about that sin.

I agree with God. I get off the side of my sin. I get over here on God's side and I say with God what God says about my sin. I've confessed my sin then, okay. Now, how should I confess my sin? I need to confess my sin immediately. If we confess our sin, that in the Greek language is in the present tense. It's not talking about something that you have done. It is something that you do. I looked it up in one translation and it literally says if we are continually confessing our sins. That is, it is to be a habit of our lives. You don't just confess your sins at the end of the day, much less at the end of the week, much less during the annual revival meeting. If you get a speck of dust in your eye, when do you try to get it out at the end of the week?

No, immediately. Be sensitive to sin. Now, you know what many of us do? Many of us, we're down here living on such a low plane, way down here, and then somehow we hear Adrian preach or we'll get in a revival meeting or we'll read a book and we get right with God and we have, oh, we have a religious spasm. We're up here for a while and then that lasts about that time and we get down here in the valley again and we're riding in the valley and then we come up again and then we're down again. Have you ever ridden that roller coaster? Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down. Oh, yes, Lord, but most of the time, you're down more than you are up. That's not the Spirit-filled life.

Get off that roller coaster. Let me tell you what the Spirit-filled life is. Let me tell you what the victorious life is. The victorious life is not living without any temptation, any fault, any failure.

We all sin. That's what James is, that's what John is telling us, but here's the victorious life. We learn the truths that we're talking about today.

We get up here on a higher plane. We get right with God. We're walking in the light and when we're walking in the light, the minute we sin, the Holy Spirit says, you did wrong. That moment, what do you do? Confess it. That moment, the moment that happens, at that time, that moment, that self-same moment, you confess your sin. Do it immediately. Nobody else may even know you've done it. I mean, you may be at the dinner table and said something or done something. You just say, oh, God, in the name of Jesus, forgive me. He does.

He does. You do it immediately. And number two, you do it specifically.

Specifically. You see, look, he says, if we confess our sins, not our sin, our sins, he puts it in the plural. We're not talking about the sin nature. We're not talking about the whole body of sin. We're talking about what you did particularly.

Call it by name. That's the painful part. You know, you ever in these prayer meetings, they say, Lord, if we sin, forgive us. Lord, forgive us all our sins.

From my opinion, you're just wasting your breath to pray that kind of a prayer. I'll tell you, if you want to do business with God, you say, God, forgive me for reading that dirty book. I dishonored you. I dishonored my wife. I dishonored my own body.

God, I put filth in my mind. I'm so sorry, God. I shouldn't have done it. God, I won't do it again. Forgive me.

He will. Forgive me, Lord, for that lie. Forgive me, Lord, for that selfishness. Forgive me, Lord, for that pride.

You name it and nail it. Let me tell you another thing. You do it confidently, confidently. Look, if you will, in verse 9. If we confess our sins, he is, listen to this, faithful and just to forgive us our sins. Faithful and just. If he didn't do it, he would be a liar and a crook.

He would be unfaithful and unjust. If you agree with God, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Not some, all, all, all, all, A-double-L, all. You like that?

I do. Sometimes the devil will tell you, you've done something so bad now you can't get forgiveness. That's a lie out of hell. There's no sin that the blood of Jesus Christ cannot cleanse.

Listen. Listen to what the Bible says. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. That's verse 7. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I have that confidence. Thank God for the precious double detergent of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ because not only does he forgive, he cleanses. He cleanses. He washes out the stain. He takes the inward part.

It is gone, forgotten, washed whiter than snow. Look in chapter 2, verse 1. Do you think because cleansing and forgiveness is by grace and all you have to do is ask for it, that God is just encouraging us to sin by writing this down? No, he's not encouraging us to sin. He is encouraging us not to sin.

Look at it. My little children, these things write I unto you that you sin not. He's not saying to sin. He's saying don't sin. But he says if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And that word advocate, that's just a fancy word for lawyer. I have a savior who's interceding from me and the Bible says he ever lives to make intercession for us, presenting his precious blood. Thank God for that.

Hallelujah for that. And the Bible says, and he is the propitiation for our sin and not for ours only, but also for the sin of the whole world. That's the reason I don't believe in any limited atonement. He died for everybody.

Everybody, the whole world he died for. And he is the propitiation for our sin. What does that word propitiation mean? It means he's the satisfaction for it. He satisfies the demands of a righteous and a holy God and that's the reason he says in verse 9, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

Why? Because he is the satisfaction, he is the propitiation for those sins he died. Thank God for that. But he isn't saying therefore just to be light and cavalier about your sins. You read on down there a few more verses. He talks about when we live with him in us, the love of God is perfected. A slave serves because he has to.

An employee serves because he needs to. A child of God serves because he wants to. I mean there's the love of God that God would save me to begin with and then cleanse me. Do you think that encourages me to sin? No, my friend. The desire of my heart is never to sin again.

I mean never, never again. But if I sin, thank God I have an advocate and he's the propitiation for my sin. What a Savior that we have. You know, it seems to me if people understand what we have in Jesus, you couldn't keep them away with a machine gun. But yet those stubborn hearts, there's so many people just stonewall themselves against God. John is saying in verse 4, chapter 1, he's writing this that you might have fullness of joy, that you might have fellowship with God and fellowship with one another. And that's why he's writing this fellowship this side of heaven.