First John, chapter two, first paragraph. John's writing to the churches, probably a circular letter to the churches of Asia. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not see them. But if anyone does see them, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His word in Him truly, the love of God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in Him. Whoever says He abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked the Word of the Lord. John in his gospel says that all of the events recorded there were written in order that you might believe. And that you may, by believing you will have life through His name. In His letter He writes these things that you may know that you have believed. Knowledge is what it was really all about in writing this letter. There were a group of people that were just beginning to arise in that first century, late, late first century, who would come to full flower in the second and third century known as the Nostics. Of course from the word for knowledge, they would talk about some secret knowledge and therefore some super spirituality. In fact, they came to believe that if you really knew the secret, if you were really on the inside, if you had the secret knowledge, it didn't really matter how you behaved. Because you had the key, you were in. That is basically an aberrant, heretical doctrine of assurance of salvation. They were saying if you had this knowledge, if you had this special knowledge, if you had had this particular thing that it didn't matter how you believed, you would be secure in your salvation. You had it. Others didn't. You were in. Others weren't. You were safe. Others weren't. That's really a doctrine of assurance. How do you know that you know? What is your confidence? You're assurance that you belong to Christ and He belongs to you. John is telling us here in this letter that that is a false ground, a false basis for assurance. And He gives us the biblical basis, the gospel basis for assurance of salvation. And in so doing, I want to just highlight two words in the passage. The first one is found up there in the first verse and it's the word advocate, advocate. And then the next one is found in the very next verse where it says propitiation. This simply has two word emphasis this morning. If you can remember these two words, I think you'll have some ground, some understanding of the proper grounds for your assurance of your salvation. The first one is advocate. He says that we have an advocate with the Father. He said, I'm writing these things that you do not sin. I'm writing these things to the end of your sanctification. The goal is that you might become less and less carnal and more and more spiritual. That you found yourself less and less sinning and more and more living unto righteousness. He's writing this to encourage us in our daily walk, walking in the light as He is in the light, having a fellowship and all the things that go in the Christian life. But if you're do sin and you will, he just told us earlier last week we saw where if you say you have no sin, then you're deceiving yourself. In fact, you're even making God a liar. But if you do sin, doesn't mean you lose your salvation, doesn't mean that grace has escaped you, doesn't mean that you have fallen from grace. It doesn't mean that now you've fallen off the course and you're on your way to condemnation. It means simply that you are fallen. And in and of yourselves, you are a sinner, born in sin, bent towards sin, and bound to sin. And you will see it. And when you do, you have an advocate, an advocate. The word here for advocate is that word that you're very familiar with. It's the word paracletus, a paraclete. And literally what a paraclete is, it is a term that comes to us from law, from the law courts. It is someone summoned, the word claytas means to call, it is summoned alongside paracletas, a summoned alongside to plead for you. In other words, you now have a counsel for the defense. Sin is both legal perversion and moral pollution. And this is how John instructs us to understand it. With respect to the legal perversion, we have an advocate. We have someone who is the counsel for the defense. And since sin is a moral pollution, we have a propitiation. We'll talk about that in just a moment. But first, let's talk a little bit about having an advocate. The advocate is the one called alongside to plead for us. And that is what Jesus does for us. It is part of his high priestly ministry. He is a high priest. He is the high priest who is holy without guile, undefiled, separate from sinners. He fulfills everything the ancient office of high priest stood for and even more. He is our advocate. Now listen to this point. In a law court, as we understand, our justice system, and all due respect to the lawyers in the house, it is not the most perfect justice system in the world, is it? But in our justice system in America, the lawyer tries to say that the person is not guilty. If you've got a good defense lawyer, he'll try to show that you are innocent, that you are not guilty. But our advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous doesn't take that case. He pleads this way. Ron Williams is guilty. He is guilty. But then he pleads his own personal sacrifice as the ground of my acquittal. In other words, it's not Ron didn't do it. He pleads, Ron did it. And I atoned for it. I covered it. I took it away. I cleansed it. Now that's just not simply an attorney. That is a personal substitutionary sacrifice who is also the priest. So the basis of our surets is that Christ pleads for us, and the ground of his pleading is not our innocence, but his finished work on the cross. And you see how that flows into the end of the next word we talk about, and that's the word propitiation. I'm glad the ESV translated propitiation, the law of debate on how to translate the word halasimos, because literally what it refers to is the mercy seat, the mercy seat. I think most of you know about the mercy seat. The mercy seat was in the old covenant. God had what instructed Moses to build various pieces of furniture that went in the tabernacle and everything that went into the tabernacle and all of the furniture and the utilities and all of the paraphernalia that God spelled out and gave Moses instruction on the mountain as to how to precisely construct all of that paraphernalia. Because every detail of it spoke about some facet of the work and person of Christ. So it had to be done according to the pattern that God gave Moses on the mountain. And God's spirit, the first instance we find, the spirit of God, filling people, filled the artisans and the craftsmen so that they were able to shape and mold all of these pieces of furniture. And the most important piece of furniture in the tabernacle, in the wilderness, was the arc of the covenant. It was a box wherein was placed some very vital things. Not all of them, but they were there. But on top of that box, that arc was a solid gold slab that the craftsmen, the goldsmiths crafted the solid gold slab and then out of it had two rising cherubines, two angelic figures whose wings came across and touched at the top. And that was the mercy seat. And the mercy seat was not seen or used, but one time a year in that holy of holies, the most holy place at the arc of the covenant and on top of it was the mercy seat, the solid pure gold slab with the angelic beings. All crafted in one piece and once a year there was a sacrifice. There were sacrifices daily, morning and night, around the month and around the year, all sorts of sacrifices going on, sin offerings, heave offerings, grain offerings, trespass offerings, but only once a year on the day of atonement. With the high priest slaughtered two animals, two goats, and one, and one to be slaughtered and one to be left alive, and the one left alive would bear the sins of the people. He would place his hands on the head of that goat and place the sins of the people upon that and would send the goat away in the wilderness. That was the skate goat, the skate goat would go into the wilderness. Thereby symbolizing expiation, that is, the taking away of the sins of the people. And the other one would be slaughtered and the blood of the animal would be taken into the holy of holies by the high priest and just splattered and splashed and doused upon that perfect goat slab. And when it did it provided a kafar, a covering, we call it kipper, young kipper, the day of atonement, and that's the mercy seat seen. What it symbolized was God atoning, covering the sins of his people. Christ is not only the high priest who is the advocate that when we sin, he pleads our case, not our innocence, not our good works, not our good intentions, not our best efforts, not our marked improvement over the last year. But he pleads his blood and he is that mercy seat because he himself was splattered and splashed and doused in blood, his own blood, the blood of a lamb without spot and without blemish. And that's the basis of your assurance, the work of Christ in his atoning sacrifice, in his pleading with the father, that the father forgives, pardon, dismiss. Your sin based upon that splattered blood, the blood of Christ himself, he says to the father, my blood covers Ron's sins and if the blood of Christ don't cover my sins, they're not covered. If the blood of Christ doesn't cover my sins, I have no salvation, I have no atonement. The basis of my assurance is what Christ did for me in his death. You sang it a moment ago, the whole sermon in one phrase and I had, I'll admit, I had never jumped out like to me like it did just a little while ago. When we sang him, 301, join all the glorious names to that great tune that we sing so much, Darwhal, Isaac Watts, the English hymn writer, right in the exact middle of that hymn. The third stanza, the last two lines says, his, that's Christ, powerful blood did once atone and now it pleads before the throne.