One day – your time on this earth will be over. Then what? If God is God – how are you going to fare when you stand before Him? I mean how can you be certain that He will forgive you?

For such a long time you know, I poo hooed any notion that I needed God's forgiveness. I mean, give me a break! If you'd asked me, back in those days, about what I thought on that whole subject, I would have given you quite a mouthful. But deep down, underneath that confident bravado I was running away from God. Now you stand back and you think that through and you realise how stupid it is to kind of run and hide from God, if God is who He says He is. I was running away because frankly, I just knew that the stuff I was into was plain wrong.

I was greedy, I was selfish, I wasn't frankly a particularly nice person and then when I came face to face with this Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God, my biggest concern was, well that I wasn't good enough. And even after I accepted Him for who He is, I still, for a long time, would try and run away from Him because of the deep sense that I had, that I simple wasn't deserving of His forgiveness.

Now I don't know where you are in your life, maybe you're where I used to be and if you are I completely understand. But, but let me encourage you just to join me over these next few minutes and let me share something with you about this forgiveness thing.

My hunch is that the sense that God wouldn't or couldn't possibly forgive me for what I've done is more widespread and prevalent than we might think or admit. Many people like me push it away and you try not to think about it but when I talk to people, who believe that there's a God, and I ask them, "so what's stopping you from living your life for Him? What's stopping you from drawing close to Him?"

The answer that comes back, time and time again, is this sense that, "God wouldn't forgive me. I'm not good enough!" Now it comes in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and forms in which people reply but you boil it down, what they believe is that they are simply not good enough for God. And you know, it goes for people who've believed in Him for years as well as for people who have been avoiding Him for years.

Lets just assume for a minute God is God, there is a heaven, there is a hell, sorry John Lennon but there is. And one day, you and I are going to stand before Him and have to give an account for our lives. How can we be certain that it will go well? If I asked you right now, as you live out your life day by day, how certain are you of that day, that eternal future? How would you answer? You know, most people are actually pretty uncertain. They might be able to verbalise the right response but deep down they're not sure at all.

I want to take you to another of Gods unbreakable promises today. That's what we've been looking at over this week and we'll be looking at them again next week on the program. Promises that you and I can depend on because when we have those promises written on our hearts, it changes our lives. God is a dependable God and His promises are so important, particularly in the storms of life because Gods promises give us peace.

Now this particular promise we're going to look at today begins at a really strange dinner. Some people refer to it as the Last Supper, you maybe familiar with it. It's the night that Jesus was betrayed to be crucified and they celebrated, if you can use that word, the Passover meal with His 12 disciples. Jesus washed their feet and, have a listen. This comes from Matthews's gospel, chapter 26, it begins at verse 26:

While they were eating Jesus took bread. He gave thanks and He broke it and He gave it to His disciples saying, "Take it and eat it. This is my body." Then He took the cup, He gave thanks, He offered it to them saying, "Drink from it all of you. This is my blood, the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not eat or drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.

Of course that's the first communion service, Christians the world over celebrate that regularly but pay particular attention to one thing He said:

This is my blood, the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

What's a covenant? It's an unbreakable promise of God. When God makes a covenant with people He never, never breaks it. The wine, Jesus was saying, symbolised His blood being poured out which it was soon to be when He died on that cross not 24 hours later,"…for many for the forgiveness of sins."

And then, you want an explanation of that? You go an have a look at the book of Acts, chapter 10, verse 43 which says that:

... everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.

You put those two together and there you have the unbreakable promise of God that, whoever believes that Jesus died for them, to pay for their sins, will be forgiven. EVERYONE who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name. Now that would be hard to believe if not for the blood which was poured out. Jesus also said:

No greater love has anyone than to lay down his life for his friend.

This unbreakable promise is born out of a love of God. The one thing, the barrier that separated us from God is removed, not just from Gods side but from ours. From Gods side, because He's holy and perfect, because His perfection, His goodness, His love is, it's so far beyond anything that we can attain and our sin keeps us from Him. And from our side, because our sense of guilt, our conscience keeps us from going to Him as it did me many years.

See God invented double sided book keeping, this is a double sided transaction, this "forgiveness" thing; God's side and our side. You and I are forgiven, that means God lets us into His presence, that means that we can start living our lives as though we are, because we are.

What does that mean? It means absolute certainty, freedom, no more condemnation, no more guilt, an incredible joy. I have been forgiven by God not because of what I did, what I did led to me needing to be forgiven. I've been forgiven because I could never meet His standard of complete perfection but because I believe that His perfect Son, Jesus Christ, died and rose again to pay for my sin and give me life, I have been forgiven.

I am free, I have no guilt and you know, every time I stumble and fall, every time I fall short and I do, every time my pride or my ego or my selfishness gets the better of me, hopefully less now than they used to, I don't have to live under condemnation. I go to God, I say, "God, I believe in Jesus. I ask for your forgiveness. I believe with all my heart Jesus died for me."

The whole point of this double sided transaction of grace is that I'm not good enough, that's the point, and this forgiveness is a promise that I can stand on, every moment of every day of my life. Do you see how liberating that is? Do you see how freeing that is? Man, it's amazing, complete certainty. On that day that I stand before God, on that day when I look Him in the eye, in my heart I will know that I am forgiven. I will stand before Him as though I had never sinned in the first place, as though I had never rejected Him or rebelled against Him in the first place because I believe in Jesus. Why? Because Jesus gave me this unbreakable promise:

Whoever believes in Me (He said) will be saved.

That's it - unbreakable!