I beg your pardon (Baptisms)

Welcome to the wedding tabernacle, the tab this evening. If you're here for the first time, we're very glad to have you here. And if you've come with one of those who's going to be baptized this evening, we're very glad that you've supported them in this way.

And I know your friend or your family member will be. Now, I hope you're going to be able to relax. We're not going to jump on you or make you do anything you don't want to do.

And as the service goes on, we trust it will be a meaningful service to you, and it's your sense that God is here. Now, at the tab, we are Jesus-centered. We worship him.

We focus on him. And so to start with, we're going to sing three songs. The first one is an old one, a hymn, and then two more modern songs in praise of the Lord Jesus Christ, because he has done everything for us.

He is our Savior. He is our Lord. He is our God.

So to start with, we're going to sing in hymns of faith this book, 1-1-0. All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall.

Bring forth the royal diadem, that's the crown, to crown him Lord of all. And we'll sing verses 1, 4, 5, and 6. 1, 4, 5, and 6. Let angels prostrate fall. Bring forth the royal diadem, that's the crown, to crown him Lord of all.

And we'll sing verses 1, 4, 5, and 6. 1, 4, 5, and 6. And read of Jesus' dealings with one lady in John chapter 8. He's just the same Jesus today as we've heard so abundantly clearly, but here he is when he is on earth dealing with people, sinful people. John 8 verse 1, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered around him and he sat down to teach them.

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law of Moses, we are commanded to stone such women.

Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, if anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.

Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said.

Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin. Well, such a lady as those who have just been testifying to us just now could sing the next song.

It's 100 in the white supplement. It's Reconciled. I am reconciled.

I am reconciled to God forever. We know what it is to be reconciled, don't we? When two people make up and they make their peace one with another. And the wonderful thing about those who come to God through Jesus Christ is that we make our peace with God through him.

And then the next verse is, Hallelujah, I'm justified, justified. That means that we're declared righteous, we're declared perfect by God, put right with him just as if I'd never sinned. Hallelujah, I'll magnify his name forever.

I'll make the name of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, bigger and bigger as I tell others of what he has done for me and who he is. So let's stand and sing this song. Hallelujah, I'll magnify his name forever.

I'll make the name of God, of the Lord Jesus Christ, bigger and bigger as I tell others of what he has done for me and who he is. I'll magnify his name forever. Let's remain standing and I'd like you to turn to 49 in hymns of faith.

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father. We'll sing the second and third verse, and as we do so we'll receive an offering for the work of the Lord here and abroad. Verse two.

Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness. Holy, holy, holy, hear the angels' voices sing. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Great is thy faithfulness, alleluia. Father, we do want to thank you so many of us here for your goodness, for your grace. We remember that secular song that talks about one thing in this world we can be certain of.

We rip it from its context and we plunge it within the sea of your word. And this so many of us have come to realize. We can be confident in you.

We can be certain in you. Help us all to grasp that fact as we pick up and underline some of the things that have been testified to during the service that's already gone by. In Jesus' name, amen.

Please do sit down. It's a little late, but don't worry too much about the length of this address. I have to be in Manchester later on this evening, so you'll not be here for terribly long.

But here's a verse of scripture, Micah chapter 7 and verse 18. Who is a God like you who pardons sin and forgives transgression? Micah 7, 18. Who is a God like you who pardons sin and forgives transgression? Here's another verse for you to consider, for you to chew on.

Isaiah 55 and verse 7. I'm going to link together the NIV and the AV translation. Let the wicked forsake his way. Isaiah 55, 7. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the evil man his thoughts.

Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him. And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. I beg your pardon.

No, I'm not apologizing. I don't think within the last ten minutes I've done anything that should have offended anyone. But I want to take that little phrase which we sometimes use and hoist it up and use it as if you please the title of my address tonight.

I beg your pardon. You see, there is a sense. Now just shake your heads and get those little cogs working at the back of your mind because I want you to think this one through with me very, very carefully.

And for some of you this will be a thought that's never crossed your mind. Because some of you here, and we're so glad to have you, especially if it's the first time you've been in the tab. You've got a wrong conception about what churches and what Christianities are.

What Christianity is. What Christians are. If you want a definition of the church, here it is.

The church is the community of those who have been pardoned. The community of those who have been pardoned. The most absurd notion is that people go to church because they're super spiritual.

It's not the super spiritual who go to church, it's the super spiritual who don't go to church. Because the people who come to a service like this are people who recognize, well, that they can't get through life on their own, that they have failed. So I say that the church is the community of those who have been pardoned.

And you've had an illustration of several pardons this evening that have been granted to almost a random selection of society today. You see, one of the things that causes me to rejoice in a service like this is that you listen to ordinary folk tell you about what the Lord has done for them. Now if you've got a jaundiced opinion of the clergy, and a lot of people have, and maybe we deserve it, you might feel that coming into a church, well, you would expect the clergyman, the vicar, the priest, call him what you will, to say religious things.

But you've heard a bunch of people say religious things, and yet their background was not really a religious background. And they didn't come and tell you just how great they were and how successful they had been. Rather, they emphasized, and I guess there was very little that went on beforehand in terms of exchanging what they were going to say.

They were all worried about their own little contribution without being concerned about the others. But there was this common denominator that each one of them had failed in some area. And it was for that reason that the Lord Jesus came into the world.

They say that you know a man by the company he keeps. Well, do you know what the slander was that they directed at Jesus, the founder of the Christian church? Here's a man who has social intercourse with sinners and tax collectors, people who were not very popular in those days. They meant it as a libel.

Jesus took it as a compliment. That's right, that's exactly for whom I have come. Not those who generally go to the synagogue, not those who are generally in at the temple, certainly not the official religious people.

They had very little to do with Jesus, actually. He said, I've come not to call the righteous, but the sinners. And you know, his ministry was so unique in this area, and it was so mind-blowing that he got a little proverbial expression attached to him.

They referred to him as the friend of sinners, the friend of sinners. And as I say, that's a good description, a good illustration of what our Lord Jesus came into the world to do, to be the friends of those who failed. There's a hymn that we sometimes sing that says, who is a pardoning God like thee? I don't know how many of you read the Guardian.

There was a terrible article yesterday, terrible in terms of its pathos. A young girl in Thailand, British, went through the customs, across to the aircraft, and she was arrested. They found in her luggage several pounds, maybe as many as 30, I forget the exact amount of drugs.

Actually, the researcher in the Guardian reckons that it was a plant, and that is possible. We have problems with one of our missionaries in Pakistan, who in Karachi airport had drugs planted on him, and he spent several months in jail. And this young lady, to cut a long story short, she was almost bamboozled into pleading guilty, because had she pleaded not guilty in the rather blunt way that the law is applied in Thailand, she would be dead now.

As far as we can establish, she was not guilty. Contact was made with the king of Thailand as to whether he would give a royal pardon. He agreed, but he hasn't thus far.

And at the moment, amongst the European members of parliament, there are just a little group that are pressurizing Thailand to let this girl go. She's only about 18 or 19 years of age. Reluctance to pardon.

Now, there is no reluctance to pardon on the part of God those people who come to Him and ask for forgiveness. And one thing that we all have in common here, I speak to those who are 7 and those who are 70, is the need to be pardoned, to have our sins forgiven. When Gerald Ford became the President of the United States of America, he went to church for an hour or so, contemplated on what his first action should be, and decided that he ought to pardon Richard Nixon, who had been impeached for exploiting his presidential office.

Whether he was right or wrong, I don't know. But he was certainly right in saying this, that Nixon needed to have his crime dealt with in some way. The Bible says, all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Now, that's not a very sobering thought, but here's one that's even more appalling. The soul that sins, it shall die. In other words, there are probably a goodly percentage within my congregation, who as far as God is concerned this evening, are on death row.

You say you don't like that sort of talk, well, I don't apologize for it, but it's not initiated by me. It's my reading of the Bible. The soul that sins, it shall die.

In other words, if you die unforgiven, if you die without a pardon, then you go not into extermination, but rather you go into the presence of God to face Him, to answer for the sins that you have committed. Therefore, I put it to you, thinking men and women, there is a need for everyone here, to consider the offer that God has at this point directed towards them of being pardoned. An old Puritan preacher, I love the Puritans, they preached three or four hundred years ago, he said this, it would tire the hands of an angel to write down all the pardons God would bestow upon true penitent believers.

The need for pardon? How about the nature of the pardon? Well, my text, at least the second one says, let us turn to our God for He will freely or He will abundantly pardon. In other words, what God is prepared to offer comes from a source or a supply that is never failing. There's an old hymn that says, grace is flowing like a river, millions there have been supplied.

I put it to you that Pontius Pilate is one of the most pathetic characters in the whole of human history. And he was never more pathetic, it seems to me, that when he dangled before the crowd, with Barabbas on one side and Jesus on the other side, the possibility of pardoning of one of those men, because while it was an official feast of the Jews, an imperial Rome allowed once a year a man to go scot-free even though he had transgressed Roman law. Pilate had just one pardon up his sleeve.

But the Lord Jesus who stood in front of him had pardons unnumbered for the likes of ordinary men and women who had sinned and come short of the standards that God wanted them to attain. The nature of the pardon, it flows from a never failing supply. It covers every shortfall.

We had a pastor back in my home city in Sheffield. He was from Ireland. He wasn't the greatest of preachers but he was the greatest of men.

Others have come and gone but they've remembered Pastor McGee simply because of the love that was in his heart and the fact that sometimes he'd cry with his people. I speak about the years just after the war when there was terrible need and so forth. And he used to have stark expressions and one of them was this, and I can remember him saying it even as though it was yesterday.

He would say of our Lord Jesus, he saves from the gutter most to the uttermost. You get that almost every third address on a Sunday night, from the gutter most to the uttermost. And he's right, he does.

That's the sort of God that Christian people worship. Sin has many varieties. It can cause a man to cruise around London's red light district betraying his wife.

Putting his job on the line. Acting in a reckless fashion. It can cause one medical colleague to slander his own colleague.

It can cause someone in trust in a council to embezzle funds. It can cause a person to split a church by an uncontrolled tongue or temper. It can make a man hooked to pornography.

It can involve a person, however unpalatable it may seem to some of us, to abuse his or her child. There are as many sins as there are insects in the jungles of Bolivia or Borneo. But not one, hear me, not one is such that he cannot pardon.

Because it's the nature of our God to offer pardons. Pardons that come from an unflowing supply of grace. Pardons that cover every shortfall.

Pardons that deal with the multiplicity of sins within the sin. Sin does not exist in simple form, did you know that? It's always compound. The definition of a good mathematics teacher is someone who has the ability to make vulgar fractions look decent to kids.

Sin is ever vulgar. And each fraction is capable of infinite subdivision. Take the case of David.

Those of you who know the Old Testament. And I've already hit the button of an illustration. If you want to say, ouch, because it hurts in modern terms, take the case of the serious fraud squad of Scotland Yard.

The cost of the pardon. We've looked at the need and the nature, but the cost. Now here we need care, especially evangelicals, because we're pretty good on grace.

The Hebrew word pardon means to cover. I'm hoping that my car is going to be available for me at the end of the service to get me up to the north of England. I loaned it to a dear friend for a couple of days.

Because it's only insured for me, I had to ring my people up. I said, my people, that sounds good, doesn't it? I had to ring the insurance company up. They call me Tony, you know.

Just extend the cover. Do you ever read insurance policies? I don't, because I can't understand them. And I've got a sneaking suspicion that half what they promise they don't really mean, because they don't express it in language that is too comprehensible.

Or actually, maybe they can't deliver the goods. You say, what are you talking about? Well, try life insurance. My life is insured.

But it won't benefit me while I'm alive. It might benefit my dear wife Rowena if I die prematurely. But no one goes around selling death insurances, do they? Because you wouldn't make a buck if you're a man from the poo.

But when the Bible talks about cover, it does so in language that can be understood. The Lord Jesus wants to cover your sins. Now, the covering of sin was not an easy thing for Him to engage in.

It cost Him, actually, His life. We've got a lovely song that dear Margaret Haben, as she used to be called, sang often here and used to move me to the depths of my being. It's your blood that cleanses me.

Would you be free from your burden of sin? There's power in the blood. When Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, the blood flowed from His side. Now, we in evangelical circles do not apologize for preaching the gospel that says that when Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, it was the shedding of His blood, it was the breaking of His body that paid the penalty for the sins that you and I have committed.

Pardon for sins of deepest dye, a pardon sealed in Jesus' blood. You see what I mean when I say that grace, though it's free, it was not cheap. And evangelical people have to realize that within one sin there is this multiplicity of sins.

And that sin was so terrible that the greatest person who ever came on this earth went to the cross to atone for your sin. But you say, how could one man die to atone for the sins of so many? And the answer is He wasn't just a man. He was the infinite Son of God who pays an infinite price to redeem finite men and women and down the centuries in their hundreds, in their thousands, in their millions they have come because God promised to Abraham centuries ago that He would make His seed, that is all who exercise a similar faith to Him.

He would make them as numerous as the stars in the heaven and as the grains of sand on the seashore. But the cost of pardon was enormous. What about validating the pardon? Christ died for all.

Christ tastes death for every man, but not all are Christian. I have got one of the hardest things to do tomorrow. That's why I'm going up to the north of England this evening for probably the last time or maybe there will only be one more occasion.

I'll address the whole of my very large family because although I don't come from a large family in terms of my mum and dad they only had two children I come from a large family as far as my grandparents were concerned and another of my aunties is dying. Once again it falls to my lot to address my family and it's the hardest thing I tell you almost on God's earth to speak to your own kith and kin your own loved ones your own relatives and tell them that death does not necessarily usher them in a safe condition into the presence of Almighty God. You see the pardon that God offers has to be validated.

President Andrew Jackson was an earlier president far more early than Gerald Ford of the United States of America. On one occasion a man called Gerald Wilson robbed a payroll from a train and he killed a guard. The public sentiment at that time was such that there was a move to stop capital punishment and therefore a lot of people petitioned the president to pardon Wilson and President Jackson agreed and he issued the edict granting pardon but Wilson refused the pardon and the case went to the Supreme Court in the United States.

Chief Justice John Marshall said a pardon is a parchment whose only value must be determined by the receiver of the pardon. It has no value apart from that which the receiver gives it. George Wilson who killed a man and refused a pardon was hanged in the United States of America.

God extends pardons to those who will come and confess their need but it's not applied across the board. There must be your assent to the fact that God extends his pardon to you and yet as I close down let me say this that the pardon that God offers goes beyond a mere judicial pardon. Let's assume that this British girl that I talked about was actually guilty of smuggling cocaine.

Let's assume it and let's assume that the Thai king nonetheless grants pardon. She will have the pardon but the crime still remains not dealt with. Time and time in history that's happened.

A president, a queen, a king has pardoned an individual but the crime still remains. But the pardon that our God offers is such that the crime of your sin is expunged by the blood of Jesus Christ. I got a dear little friend called Joshua.

He's my cat. He's one of two. And every Sunday morning you can bet your bottom Bible that he'll come into my room and he has a look at my little computer.

Sometimes I think he just shakes his head and looks like you're not going to preach that. And occasionally he gets so near by accident I'm sure to the delete button. If he ever does it I'll skin him.

I wouldn't actually, I'd have to face my wife. But my friends, the pardon that God offers presses the delete button on the sins that you have forgiven that you have done, that you have committed. As far as the east is from the west so far God distances our transgressions.

He hits delete. He doesn't recall them again. All the rottenness, all the wretchedness, everything that sometimes makes you sick about yourself, it all goes.

And it's true, it does because that's the character of God. Let the wicked forsake his way, the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord and he will have mercy on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

Says another old preacher, be careful to keep the old receipts which you have from God for the pardon of your sins. Have you known his absolution? Let's bow our heads in prayer. As we've come to the end of this lovely service in which you've heard far more than so-called professionals address you but men and women from ordinary walks of life tell you of what God has done for them.

And I ask you, do you go out from this church pardoned or do you still fall into the category of those who linger and procrastinate and haven't asked God to deal with their sin? But you say, what do I have to do? Well, how about just using the word sorry? Lord, I'm sorry for what I've done that's wrong. I'm sorry that your son went to the cross to save me. Sorry in the respect that it was a painful and a hurtful and a shameful death and I'm sorry that I caused it.

But I'm glad that he offers me forgiveness and freedom. I take it right now into my heart, into my heart. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today. Come in to stay. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Have you said that? Here's the challenge. Have the guts at the end of the service, and it takes very little doing to stop Hugh or Tim, they'll be in the foyer and take a little book from them with my compliments as I'm quickly going to be away and read it through and it'll help to reinforce what you've done this evening as it pulls certain scriptures together and underlines them. Father, we thank you for tonight.

Continue with us, we pray and we bless you that you're a pardoning God. We ask that in the afterglow of your pardon we might live out our lives for your honor and for your glory. Amen.

Let's sing a hymn. I've got everything in the pulpit by the hymn book I want. No, I haven't, here we are.

When peace like a river attendeth my way. It's 120 in the white supplement and we'll have it up on the overhead projectors. Speaks again about the abundant pardon that our Lord Jesus offers us.

We'll sing it fairly fast and yet we'll still concentrate on the words. 120 in the white supplement. When thou art gone, thou art gone, great and small.

It is well, it is well, in the small. It is well, it is well, in the small, in the small. It is well, it is well, in the small.

When Satan shall come, and idols shall come, and gifts as assurance shall come, and Christ shall reign above the helpless and sick, and the children his own blood will pour out soon. It is well, it is well, in the small, in the small, It is well, it is well, in the small. I sing of the praise of his glorious Lord.

I sing I love the Lord. Hail to his cross, and I hail him no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, glory to the Lord.

Glory be in Christ, in Christ let it be, and all the world shall know the righteousness of the Lord. All the world shall know the righteousness of the Lord. Glory be to the Lord, praise him forevermore.

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. And Father, as we read from your word, we bless you that your Son responds to those who say, I beg your pardon, and he tells them to go out and sin no more. Beloved God, we beg your pardon, and are glad that you are prepared to abundantly forgive at such an enormous cost to yourself.

Amen. Thank you for coming. If you'd like to stay for some tea and coffee, that's served in our real room.

If you'd like more information about the Church, then go to the Welcome Desk, and there's a letter there and a little booklet from Tim and myself. Thank you for coming. Good night.

God bless you.