Resolved: Rest, rejoice, repeat
Notes
Transcript
How many of you have ever looked at the instructions on a bottle of shampoo?
While brands have become more creative over the years, the instructions usually boil down to “Lather, rinse, repeat.”
Some of you are realizing, perhaps for the first time, that the shampoo company says you are actually supposed to wash your hair twice when you do it.
Apparently, that comes from the 1950s when people only washed their hair about once a week.
Whether that is actually a good idea or simply a ploy by Big Shampoo to sell more product, this poorly worded phrase could cause a problem.
If you follow those instructions, you would literally never stop washing your hair!
This morning, as we wrap up our Resolved series, I want to take that phrase and change it a little for us:
In 2025, I want you to resolve to:
Rest, rejoice, and repeat!
We have spent the last few weeks looking at some resolutions we should make about our walk with Christ for 2025.
We started with the reminder that our beliefs should guide our behavior which then shapes us into the people God wants us to become.
Last week, Jeff walked us through how God challenged him during his quiet time as he reflected on the “if’s” of 1 John 1:5-2:2. We were challenged to live as if those things were true. Jeff was also giving us a picture of what our own time with the Lord can look like
What we want to do this morning is to revisit those same verses for one more resolution for the year, so open your Bible up to 1 John 1:5–2:2.
We want to look at what Christ has done and rest, rejoice, and repeat it over and over.
The majority of the message is going to be about us taking a closer look at these verses to see what cause Jesus’s work on our behalf gives us to rest and rejoice, and we will talk about the repeating part at the end.
Let’s read the passage again…
To understand what we are resting, rejoicing, and repeating, we need to take a closer look at the “if” statements Jeff talked about last week.
Did you notice how John arranged them?
The “if” statements alternate between bad states and good states, if you will.
Let’s put them side by side so you can see this more clearly. <<show slide>>
In verse 6, John writes that if we say we have fellowship with God and still walk in darkness, we are lying.
As the rest of the passage makes clear, John isn’t talking about perfect obedience here. He is referring to the overall course of our lives.
There is a difference between tripping while walking in the light and continuously walking in darkness.
If we claim to be walking with God and yet our deeds show otherwise, we are lying and don’t even have the truth in us at all.
If, like verse 7 says, however, we are walking in the light, we have fellowship with each other and have been cleansed from our sin.
The order here is really important—walking in light shows that we have been cleansed from our sin it does not cleanse us from sin.
We will see that more clearly in a minute, but the cleansing happens first and then our lives demonstrate that we have been cleansed from sin.
Now look at the pair in verses 8-9… If we say we don’t sin, we are deceived. If we are willing to confess our sin, though, we have forgiveness and cleansing.
Now look at the last pair in verses 10 and 2:1 - If we say we haven’t sinned, then we are making God a liar. If we do sin, though, we have an advocate who has sacrificed himself on our behalf.
Again, hold onto that thought, and let’s just dig deeper here.
What do you notice about these pairs?
Each of the negative statements (6, 8, 10) revolve around lying—we are lying, we are self-deceived, and we are calling God a liar.
Each of the positive statements (7, 9, 2:1-2) point to forgiveness, cleansing, and righteousness.
What does that tell us?
It tells us that if we aren’t honest about the fact that we have all sinned and fall short of God’s glory, then we are lying liars who lie! We are lying to ourselves because deep down, we all know that there is something deeply wrong with us.
We are lying about God because all through his word we see the picture that God created us for a relationship with himself, and that relationship involved standards of right and wrong that stemmed from the nature of God himself.
We chose to reject that, and the Bible calls that sin. For us to deny that we are sinners who have sinned and do sin is to deny the truth and call God a liar.
The negative “if’s” make it clear that sin is real in each of our lives.
Interwoven through all of those statements, though, are the other “ifs”—If we walk in the light, if we confess our sin, and if we will recognize our need for forgiveness and cleansing, the very same God whose law we broke is so loving and so gracious that he will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Last week, Jeff said that these if’s “remove hangover guilt and leftover shame.”
That is really clear in this passage, especially in verse 1:9…
When we confess the sins we know about, Jesus is faithful to forgive of all the sins we confessed and cleanse us from every last trace of unrighteousness in our life.
That’s why Paul was able to say boldly,
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus,
Putting this all together, then, we see that denying the fact that we are sinners is a lie, but so is denying the reality that he has cleansed us and forgiven us.
You see, this is what we are resting in and rejoicing in: Although I have sinned, if I have come to Jesus, confessed that sin and trusted in him, then I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my sins are forgiven and I am clean in the eyes of God.
Now, don’t get the wrong impression about what that means. Right after reminding us that we are clean, John reminds us that forgiveness doesn’t give us permission to just keep sinning.
The goal would be for us to walk more and more in line with who God calls us to be, but to do so out of a life that is resting in what Jesus has done and rejoicing in the privilege I have of walking with him.
Unfortunately, we will continue to sin, but there is such great comfort in these words.
How does that cleansing happen? How can God forgive our sin?
John said in verse 5 that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin, but in chapter 2:1-2 he explains how by giving us two different roles Jesus plays for his people.
First, he says that…
1) Jesus is our advocate.
1) Jesus is our advocate.
This is a really interesting phrase because John is the only biblical writer to use the term “advocate” that we see here.
He uses it four times in the Gospel of John to say that the Holy Spirit is our “counselor”.
Here, Jesus isn’t just our counselor, he also the one advocating for us.
What does that mean? Where our sin would make us condemned, Jesus stands in the gap and intercedes for us.
Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.
Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for them.
For those who are in Christ, our sin would condemn us, but Jesus pleads our case for us.
He declares that we have been cleansed from our sin, forgiven, and that we are not condemned any more.
For some of us, we hear that Jesus forgives us and we simply trust.
For others, though, you might have noticed a problem.
We have said that we are all sinners and that to say otherwise is lying.
That means we all stand condemned in our sin and cannot make that go away.
Yet somehow, Jesus, the righteous one, can stand up and say, “This one is clean and cannot be condemned!”
How can God just declare that we are clean and righteous? Does he just sweep our sin under the rug and say, “We are just not going to look at that anymore?”
No; verse 2 goes on to tell us exactly how Jesus can stand and intercede for us; because…
2) Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
2) Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Remember, sin isn’t something that is just a bad idea that needs correcting and then we get better.
That’s not the picture God gives us in his word at all.
The picture the Bible gives us is that sin is a violation of God’s law that goes against the very nature of who he is.
Sin doesn’t just make us wrong, God says that sin makes us dead:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.
You can’t reform something dead, and you can’t get that stain out on our own.
Here is where we see that Christ isn’t an advocate who simply says, “What Sean did wasn’t that bad; just let him go.”
No, Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for sin who took the punishment I deserved, died in my place, and offers me his life.
This is what our cleansing is based on.
We stood guilty before God and had a debt we owed him that we could not pay.
Jesus, because of his great love for us, took that debt and paid it completely.
Stop and think about that for a minute: Jesus took every drop of punishment I deserved for every sin I have ever committed. He endured my shame, died my death, and paid my debt.
When God drew me to himself and saved me and transferred me from darkness to light and all those beautiful pictures the Bible uses, it was not based off me cleaning up my act or God just deciding to ignore it. My cleansing was based off Jesus’s death in my place where he took my punishment upon himself.
That’s why God can be just and forgive our sins—because Jesus became the atoning sacrifice who was offered in my place.
Do you see how Jesus can advocate for us, then?
He can say, “This one—right here—has nothing left to condemn. I washed him clean with my own blood.”
Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers in the English language, said it this way:
Morning and Evening (Morning, March 30)
Now, when the sinner is brought to the bar, Jesus appears there himself. He stands to answer the accusation. He points to his side, his hands, his feet, and challenges Justice to bring anything against the sinners whom he represents; he pleads his blood, and pleads so triumphantly, being numbered with them and having a part with them, that the Judge proclaims, “Let them go their way; deliver them from going down into the pit, for he hath found a ransom.”
That is what all those “if’s” have been about.
If we haven’t received Christ, then are sinners who stand condemned, and to say otherwise is a lie against God and ourselves.
If, however, Christ has drawn us to himself, and we are now in the light as he is in the light, then we have been cleansed. Our sin has been paid, and now we can live with a joy that is almost inexpressible.
This is what we rest and rejoice in.
I don’t have to clean myself up because I couldn’t. Instead, I have an advocate who was my atoning sacrifice whose blood made me clean.
My future is secure in Christ, my purpose is settled, and I have assurance that should I don’t have to worry about a lot of existential dread because Jesus has resolved all of that.
That rest spills over into joy, like David said in Psalm 32:1–2:
How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity and in whose spirit is no deceit!
The joy that I find when I realize my sins are forgiven leads me, then, to want to walk with God more closely, walking in the light as he is in the light, and do so out of gratitude and joy and a settled rest, knowing that he has forgiven me.
This year, you and I need to repeat these truths to ourselves over and over by reading God’s word, worshiping, getting together with other believers, and more.
But there is one more way we need to repeat these truths…
Look at the last part of 2:2…
Jesus didn’t just atone for my sins; he atoned for the sins of the whole world.
That means that this message isn’t just for those of us in this room who have come into a relationship with Jesus.
If you are here this morning and you have never come to Jesus for cleansing and forgiveness, then you can! If you confess your sins, he will be faithful and just to extend the same cleansing to you that he he has to all of us.
He will be your intercessor, your advocate, and through the Holy Spirit’s work in your life, he will help you walk in his light and leave that old life behind.
This message is too good for us to keep just in this room, though!
Jeff challenged our members last week in our Member’s Meeting to share Jesus with joy this year, and that’s exactly what I would challenge us to do today.
Share Jesus with your roommates, your co-workers, your kids, and that annoying neighbor down the street.
We have folks going to Hungary to share the gospel, some may be going to Cyprus and Turkey this year, and a couple getting ready to plant their lives in Guatemala so people can know that Jesus died for them. Would you be willing to join one of these teams and take this message to people who haven’t heard it?
Think of the joy that you feel, knowing that you are loved so deeply by a God who shed his blood and stands to defend you—Don’t you want your friends to know that same joy? Don’t you want to tell the world about that same God?
In 2025, we want to equip you to tell everyone about Jesus, but you don’t have to wait for us! Start praying and sharing what you do know.
In your own heart, rest and rejoice because your sins are forgiven and you have been made clean. Repeat these truths to yourself over and over, and repeat them to others who need that same joy.
