Christians Have Assurance That They Know God

I was going to say for the last time, but that makes it sound like I don't ever want you to read First John again. For the last time in the series, please tune in turn in your Bibles to First John, chapter five. We close the book this morning. We have a Father's Day message and then I'll pick up with Second John. And then when I'm done with Second John, guess what comes next.

Third John. Yeah, man, you passed the test.

I don't know if it's in the bulletins that you got, but I am gonna. Our family will be on vacation. Well, I'll be on vacation from July 1st to something. That's where it'll start. Got guys scheduled and ready to cover in my absence, so I appreciate them being ready.

Well, we closed the book of First John today, but I hope we don't close it in your lives. And I'm going to reiterate what I've said all along because this last chapter says it pretty much not in the same words, but similar words that the book of First John and I've echoed it tried to in every single message is very simply about genuine Christianity and genuine Christians. It's essentially like a test as to whether or not you're the real thing. I always use diagnostic tool because, well, is it toxic masculinity for me to say that men use diagnostic tools? I know women do too, and even professional women do too.

And by the way, there's some professional mechanics who use the same diagnostic tools and electricians and everybody else. I don't mean to be sexist when I say that, but I think of like a voltmeter is what I think of. I use a voltmeter all the time. An ohmmeter, a voltmeter to test resistance, to test voltage. And I use it a lot.

And the idea of that is you use that meter to test. Usually it's the amount of something. Like for example, if a battery is dying and it's supposed to be at 12 volts, you use your volt meter and see if it's dead or if it's only at 8 volts and then you know it isn't working correctly. Well, this book First John is essentially that it's some sort of tool, some sort of diagnostic tool that you can put the probes on a person and decide are they a believer or not, are they a Christian or not? And maybe the person you need to put the probes on is you.

You need to read the book for you to ask if you are the real thing or not. And that's the reason I think this book is put in the Bible, is so that we would always be ready and willing to test ourselves and see whether we're in the faith. So the book of First John's most important thing is genuine Christianity. It's important that we don't make things more important than the Bible does. This is very possible with us.

We have opinions, we have thoughts about how things should be. We have thoughts about what's most important. For example, many people make the most important thing, salvation. Salvation is the most important point of Christianity, but it isn't. Salvation is a means to an end, which is God being glorified.

God being glorified is the most important thing. Salvation is how you get to that or love what love is. I will define what love is. It's acceptance. Love is tolerance.

Does the Bible say that? Because we're going to see in the next book we look at that. Love is only really love if it's connected to truth. Right. So there are things we might think are most important.

But then we enter into a book like First John. And John is telling us what's most important. John is writing. He's going to even tell us today, this is why I'm writing, so that you know these things and you are what he says we're supposed to be. So this book is about acknowledging the real God and the real Messiah and loving him and keeping his commandments and loving the brethren.

That's what it's about. And you are able to figure out if you are the real thing by looking at those things and asking how you're doing in this tiny little book. There's nothing in it about finding your passion. There's nothing in it about being happy. There's nothing in it about you figuring out what God is doing with you and his will for your life.

Except that his will for your life is to keep his commandments and love Him. The emphasis of this book is on whether or not you are actually a child of God or not. And it's very easy to think we are, not be. And you know what? On the other side, it's also sometimes easy to think we're not when we are.

And the book will help us in either direction. Maybe you're the kind of person that gets really discouraged and you wonder if you're actually a believer. I talked about that recently. Well, this book will help you with that. On the other side, maybe you think you have everything all figured out and God would be smart to take your advice and Listen to you.

This book will help you with that too. Let's pray. Father, as we now open this section, closing the Book of First John. I'm just asking that your spirit would lead and we would know what you want us to know. There's some confusing things in this text.

At least they've been confused over the ages. And we just ask that we not get lost in those. That those. The confusing aspects, if they're there, are not distracting and that we get the main points. That's really easy for us, Father, to get distracted, to go down paths you didn't tell us to go down.

So I really do want us to know the text and then live the things that tells us to live and then know and have the certainty that comes in this book from being what you tell us to be, that we're assured. We have confidence that we are what we're supposed to be because we have lived the book of First John. Help us with that, please. In Jesus name, Amen. Well, I'm talking about assurance.

And there we can make a mistake of thinking. What I mean by assurance is I want to. I want to encourage you. That's really what this is about. I want you to be encouraged.

I do want you to be encouraged. But more importantly, I want us to have the assurance that the Bible gives us when we do what God says correctly. Meaning if you feel good, but that didn't come from the instruction of scripture and the exhortations of Scripture, your feelings essentially become worthless. Okay? So it's not okay to feel good and not be good.

Everybody follow me there. So assurance here is not positive thinking. It's not as feeling great and confident and feeling like we can conquer the world. That's not what I mean by assurance. What I mean is that you can be confident and sure that you are where God wants you because you get the assurance from His Word.

So God's essentially telling you in this passage, if this is true of you, you're okay. Not I really think you're great and you're handsome and cute and talented and I really, really like how you cook. That isn't what this text is trying to the kind of assurance that this text is giving. So look at verse 13 with me. I'm going to break it in half.

Well, somewhat in half, two thirds. The first section in verse 13 of chapter 5, these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of Go. Then he's going to tell us the purpose in the next verse, half a verse and the next verse the thing I want you to catch first as he says, these things I have written to you who believe. The first thing you can know is that this letter is written to the ones in this group reading the letter who believe. And it's pretty clear that not everybody does.

Not every reader of this letter would believe. So John is like separating the people who are actually believing. But the really important thing I would have you take from this is that John is saying the things I have written. That means everything that came before this chapter, everything that came before him saying that these things that I just wrote to you, starting back in verse one of chapter one, these things I have written to you. Now that becomes really important when we get to the next half of the verse and the next verse.

But I do want you to catch it. I can tell you right now, the most important thing to me is that you have assurance that you have eternal life. I can say that to you, but then I can make the terrible mistake of saying, and the way you know that is to feel it really deeply in your heart. Or the way you know that is if you give lots of money in the offering plate. That's how you know you have eternal life.

The way you can know you have eternal life is if you are better than your neighbor, you're a better person than your next door neighbor. That's how you know you have eternal life. You can know you have eternal life if I say so. And after all, I'm really smart, you should listen to me. So in other words, I can tell you and even have a noble desire in my heart that you would know you have eternal life.

But that doesn't mean I'm using good information to draw that conclusion. So it's very important before we get to the second half of the verse that we never forget the first half of the verse. Now you say, why are you emphasizing this? Pj, you sound almost passionate about this. You sound zealous to make this point.

Do you want to know why? Because I'm a 30 something year old Christian. I mean, I'm a 53 year old man, but I'm a 30 something year old christian. And I want you to know something. There are a lot of people who use this verse and leave out that first half.

And they're telling people you should have assurance of your salvation. Do you want to know why? Because you prayed a sinner's prayer. Sincerely, you prayed a sinner's prayer. And if you really, really meant it, you should have the assurance that you have eternal life.

Is that what John says. Here it is not what John says. Here John says, you have assurance and you can know something, how and why based on the things I have written. So these are not every word is inspired. Every word is breathed by God and authoritative.

So when John says, I'm about to tell you some things, but I've already told you some things. And those are the things you need to internalize to figure out whether or not you're a Christian. Not your feelings, not what your pastor says, not what your neighbor says, not what you think when you look in the mirror. The way you can have assurance of your salvation is to read the things that John has written. So don't leave that out.

Don't brush past that too quickly. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. He's going to say that again in a second. He's going to say the very same phrase in the next verse. So he's saying it to those who believe in the Son of God.

Why would he say that? He has already told us. There are many people who don't believe in the Son of God. They believe that Christ has not come in the flesh. They don't believe that God, the second person of the Godhead, became a man, the Son of God became a man.

There are people who don't believe that. They are not those who believe in the Son of God. Those are people who believe in something else. Which is why he'll close this letter talking about idols. So follow me here.

I'm going to write to you something. And the things I have written to you already and the things I'm about to write to you, you, you are true believers in the Son of God, the real one, Jesus, the God, the Son and the Son of God. The Word that became flesh, the Messiah, the chosen one of God, God's only begotten Son. That is who you believe in. And I am writing to you.

And then he says second half of verse so that you may know you have eternal life. So he's writing. He's writing to the people who believe, who have had faith in the Son of God. That's believers. And he wants them to know they have eternal life.

Not guess, not speculate. I want to say something about the word know. K, N O W. In our context here today, we emphasize it all the time. I always emphasize we see the word know when you know the Lord and Abraham knew his wife and Noah knew his wife and Adam knew his wife. We always stress that when you use that word, the idea is intimate knowledge, familial knowledge, close, personal, relational knowledge.

That's what we mean by that. Like when you know God, it means you know him personally, intimately. He's your father, right? None of the nos in this whole context are that word except one. So all the times now from here out, from verse 13 on, he's going to say the word know a bunch of times, K, N, O, W. But in this context, it's.

It comes from the word oidas. The. The word is academic knowledge, understanding. So in our context here, John isn't saying I want you to know intimately, familial. He isn't saying that.

He will say it. He'll say it once in this text. But the overwhelming use of the word know here is knowledge. The way we know math, the way we know things, the way we know about stuff. So that becomes important because John wants the reader and you and me to understand what he's talking about.

He wants you to know with certainty in your head and understanding and be confidently assured in your mind that you have eternal life. God wants his people to know. I'll never forget I was at a Starbucks years ago, and it probably doesn't surprise you because I like coffee, but I was at a Starbucks and I saw a priest studying next to the window. It was the one downtown and he had a bunch of books there. And the way.

Guess how I knew he was a priest. Do you think I had some intuition? No, because I saw the collar, he was dressed like a priest. So I went over to talk to him and said, what are you studying? And we had a short conversation and I asked him point blank, I said, if you died right now, would you go to heaven?

And you could see he visibly became uncomfortable. Oh, I don't know. Not sure. I'm not even sure anybody can know that now based on what I just read to you. Is he right?

You can know now. It's important. Again, back to what I said at the beginning, my introduction. It's not know because you really feel it. It's not know because you were baptized.

It's not know because you're really smart or you're in the right church or you have a doctrine. No, you know because of what John wrote. When you go back and read what John wrote and you believe in the son of God that John is writing about, and you don't believe in anti what the Antichrist knew that he didn't come in the flesh, and you don't say one thing and do another and say you love your brother, but Walk in darkness. You're not a hypocrite. If you believe that you read his book, then you can know you have eternal life.

I want you to know this, and I want your assurance not to come from what you think you know. I want your assurance to come from what God tells you. And now you know what God tells you. And you've taken the test and you've got on the scale. And God said, you're not weighed and found wanting.

He says, you're weighed and you're worth your weight because you believe what he says. You read what he said and you believe it. And then he says, I said in the next verse, it's the last part of this verse, verse 13. And that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. So do you see the sandwich there?

The two pieces of bread? You who believe in the Son of God and the name of the Son of God and Jesus, the true God, the one who came in the flesh. God, the God man. Right. You who believe in him, I want you to have eternal life so that you'll continue to believe in him.

It's pretty basic. Now, I do want to say something here because it could read like you. It's possible to stop believing when it says to continue. It's a very logical thing to suggest that this might be. You can stop believing.

And there is something to be said for people who start and then don't finish. But I think we all understand with other passages, this is more like what Paul says, unless you believed in vain. He says to the Galatians or James talks about faith without works being dead. In other words, if you are moving along in your faith and you think you're the real thing, and then you prove not to be, it just proves you were not the real thing. So he is saying, I want you to continue in this belief.

You do believe. I want you to know because you believe. And based on what I've written, you have eternal life and you must continue to believe. Perseverance is absolutely built into the Bible. But I don't want you to think that it means you can lose your salvation.

It could hint at that. By the way, if you were looking for a verse that could hint at that, this would be one of those verses. But with the rest of Scripture and even the rest of John, it's very clear that this is just a warning to not get relaxed and to make sure that we find our confidence in belief. And I do want you to know you can't continue in something that you haven't started. Did you know that this means that they already started?

He already said they do believe, so they're continuing in what they started. So two uses of the Son of God that has to do with his identity. That has to do with the right understanding of Jesus. You don't get to believe in any old Jesus, any Jesus of the false religions or Jesus of your own, the figment of your imagination. You have to believe in the Jesus of the Old Testament scriptures comes to fruition and him being born, him being who he said he was, dying and raising again the real Jesus.

Now, how do you know and how can you fortify and have confidence. Look at verse 14, that you're a real believer. Now, this is the confidence that we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. There's so much to cover here. I could have done individual sermons with any of these chunks of Scripture.

What he's saying here is, I now know I'm walking with the Lord. I've read what you wrote, John. I understand. And I'm not going to violate what you said. I'm not a hypocrite.

I do love the Lord. I love his people. I'm keeping commandments. Now. I have confidence as I move.

I now have the assurance and confidence because of my walk of faith that if I pray, he's hearing me. That's essentially what he's saying, that I can only have confidence in answered prayer and God hearing me when I have done the things that he wrote, when I have been walking the way he said to walk when I believed, and then walk according to what he said. These things I'm writing to you so that you, you who do believe, so that you would continue to believe, so you would have absolute assurance that you have, you are in current, present, right now, possession of eternal life. This is not something that happens after you die. It's something that happens when you believe in Christ.

You have eternal life and now you have confidence. If you have it and you're walking in it, you're continuing in it. You're doing the things that God says to do. You have confidence that if you ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And it goes on to say in verse 15, and if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked Him.

That's essentially an amplification of what he said. It's kind of saying the same thing twice, but the next one's a little bit bigger. The next one is like shining more light on it. So sometimes people have trouble with what this means. I have seen over the years that praying is strange.

Talking to the Lord and figuring out how to functionally do that, like, how do I talk to Him? What does prayer look like? I want to try to simplify it without compromise, you know, I don't want to simplify something so much that it loses its nourishing value. I don't want to water it down so that I make it small. Too small.

It's not small. But I do want you to think about this, if you would. If I were to ask the Lord to give me something that I know without question is against his will, should I expect him to answer? Like, if I say, lord, I'm no longer happy with my wife, I want you to give me a different one. Now, do you see how that is obviously not his will.

Everybody sees that, right? Everybody in this room. That seems so simple that everybody in here. Like, that's ridiculous. Nobody would pray that, by the way.

They would pray that I'm not praying, that I have the best wife. Why would I ever ask for a different one? You think there's two people on earth that would put up with me? No, no, no. There's only one.

So if I'm praying something, that is for sure, clearly against his prescribed will in Scripture, should I expect an affirmative answer? No. I would expect him to say no. Right? Everybody got that.

So then how should I expect, and how should I be praying to expect a yes? And the answer is, that's what it means according to his will. How do you know his will? It's spelled out in those 66 books you're carrying around. It's not your guess.

It's not what you feel. It's not your passions. It's not what you want in life. It's what he says in His Word. These things I have written, that's true of all of the scripture.

So if I ask something like this instead, Lord, I know with your will that we, your people, make disciples, would you please give me opportunities to make disciples? And then I can expect an affirmative answer. Because he spelled that out in his will. And you say, what about all the other things? And my answer to that?

Forgive me, I'm a pastor. You should expect me to say what I'm about to say. Why are you so worried about all the other things? Maybe you should be worried about his things, what he's doing on Earth. And you're part of it.

You're part of evangelism. You're Part of building his kingdom. You are part of discipling people. Do you see what I'm saying? The Lord says, here's my playbook.

These are the things that are important to me. These are the things I care about. Read this playbook. And then once you've read it, you know, what I want in this book is my will. This is what I want.

Take that book. What do we do? We take that book and say, nice book, Lord. I'm gonna put it over here. But, you know, I want that job.

You know, I want that woman. You know, I want that amount of income. You know, I want that. A number of Instagram followers. These are the things that are important to me.

And I feel like I'm standing here so often in my life saying, but no, the book. He told you what he wants. These. These are his will, his expressed will. It's there in words.

He tells you what he wants. I know, but what about the things I want? Is it possible maybe he wants my things, too? So if you're doing that, are you praying Thy will be done, or are you praying, lord, make my will, Thy will. So if you are doing his things, walking according to his commandments, class, where are his commandments found in His Word?

You're doing the things he says to do that are clearly spelled out. This is my whole life right now is feeling compelled in this world at this time to tell people. Stop letting other voices, including your own, dictate what you think is important. Your own inclinations, your own politics, your own family desires. Stop.

Stop letting your emotions and your thoughts have the loudest say so in your life. And get his thoughts into your head. This has been a theme in lots of my conversations where people are telling me, well, this is what I think. What about this? Why not this?

What about this? And none of the things they're saying have verses with them. So I'm trying to tell you, if you have His Word, and you know His Word, you know his will, then you know how to pray his will. His Word says I'm supposed to love my wife like Christ loved the church. Guess who needs to pray for help in that?

Yeah, you know, I do. I am praying for help in that. But I also know he'll answer that because it's his will. It's spelled out in His Word, or loving the brethren, loving one another. Is it his will that I love one another?

How do I know that? He only says it, like 9,000 times in the book. So I know, maybe if I'm not loving the brethren, and we're not loving each other as like we should. We can pray about that. That's what this means.

If you pray according to his will, it doesn't mean if you try to shove your will on his. Now, the next section is the hard part. Verse 16 is very difficult to interpret. Now, just so you know, I. To me, it's not difficult to interpret because I accept a pretty widely accepted view of it.

But I don't want to be condescending to people who think differently. So when I say it's difficult, what I mean is there's lots of opinion on how to interpret the verse. Would you do me a favor, though, before we read it? Would you right now just commit that whatever the next few verses mean, the lesson of first John and the next verses are to help people out of sin and to pray for people so that they would get out of sin. Can we all agree that no matter what the text means, we don't get lost in the nuance or the details of the text and then miss the main point?

Like. Like Paul and his cast. Imagine if you were there arguing for three days with the doctors. What's that cast material color gonna be like when it's done? What's the color gonna be on that cast?

Because we really don't want a greenish color. It doesn't go with our furniture at our house. Do you understand that you would be missing the point and getting caught up in details. If you care what color the cast is instead of the purpose of the cast for the boy's arm, that works here too. If we miss the point of the text, but we have every.

All of the details and the history and the meaning underneath it figured out the subtext. If we have. If we know all the details, but then we don't help anybody out of sin. Do we all agree that we missed the text? So join with me, please.

We'll study and it's exciting to learn things and to discuss things, even things that are controversial. We can discuss them, but let us not mix miss the text. So now with that look at verse 16. Anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask and he will give him life. For those who commit sin not leading to death, there is a sin leading to death.

I do not say that he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death. John, what are you talking about? This is the kind of time where I wish we were in a classroom setting and I would just make all of you have to explain it. And I would like make you maybe even like the old days.

Remember back in school if you weren't homeschooled and you're public school and you had to do an oral report in front of the class. Scariest thing in the world, right? Stand up right now and tell me in verses 16 and 17 what John means. I actually think the meaning is relatively simple. I actually do.

And so forgive me again if it sounds condescending. There is a sin leading to death and a sin not leading to death. First, let me tell you what that doesn't mean. If you come from a Catholic background, they believe in things called mortal sins versus venial sins. And the mortal sins are sort of the unforgivable worst kind.

And the venial kind are the more, less severe sins, right? That is not what this is saying. This is not speaking to a degree of sin. Like there's some small sins down here that won't kill you and some big sins up here that will kill you. That is not what it's saying.

John has been saying it over and over and over again. And he's going to say it again here in just a minute back. What he said in chapter three, verse nine. And what he's going to say right after this is that whoever is born of God does not sin. He just told us these things I've written to you so that you would continue to believe because you have eternal life.

Right? That's what he's saying. There are people who are the real thing, genuine, the point of the book. And then there are people who are walking in sin. Then there are people who maybe by the observation of their lifestyle are not people walking with Jesus, the son of God in the commandments.

And there are some of those people walking in that way that I'm going to say this. Be careful. If you have to explain this to your kids and you need help with it later, ask me, I'll help you explain it. I'm going to say it. But there are some people who are defiant in their disobedience.

They are defiant, they are high hearted. They think they can throw off God's authority and God will kill them. Now you might think I just spoke blasphemy from the pulpit. You might think, well, who does this guy think he is? God loves everybody.

God doesn't kill. One of the commandments is thou shalt not murder. How can the pastor get up there and say God would break his own commandment? Because it isn't a commandment when the killing is just. It's not a sin when the killing is just.

Capital punishment is not a sin when the killing is justified. What are the wages of sin? So here, what you have here, I just want you to imagine two people, and I'll just paint a picture for you so that we can understand this. There are two people. One person is sinning, the other person is sinning, okay?

From the outside, they look the same. One person is sinning the way many of us sin, meaning struggling, hurting, vexed in their conscience, fighting the sin, hating that we're falling to that sin again and again. Some of you probably feel exactly what I mean by that. I get so sick of that sin. I get so sick of that temptation, and I'm struggling with it. And you're watching that guy, and that guy looks like he might essentially be abandoning the eternal life walk, okay? But the other person is saying, I'm so sick of God bothering me. Why doesn't he leave me alone? I'm sick of his rules. I'm sick of his commandments.

I don't want to obey him. Leave me alone. And that's what he's thinking internally. Now, from the outside, you might not be able to tell those two apart. Does everybody understand what I'm saying?

One person is struggling and hates their sin. The other person hates God because he's condemning their sin. But they're in the midst, okay? Now I'm going to suggest to you that that second person can be a Christian. That's the shocking part to where they are. So now, after some phase of life, whatever, however long that time is, that they were walking with the Lord and now aren't they have gotten to the point where they are apostate, to the point where they're abandoning the Lord. And apostate usually means lost. But what I mean is they've turned their back on the Lord. Backslidden? Is that a word we can use?

They're so far gone that now they're at a point where nothing will draw them back. And I'm going to suggest to you that that can be a believer. And God will kill that believer. Do you want to know why? Because it's better for the believer to be taken to heaven than to continue in their shameful lifestyle, than to continue in blasphemy, than to continue shaming the name of God.

If you think I'm making that up, think of Ananias and Sapphira. I don't know. They might not have been saved, but God took their lives in Acts, chapter five. Didn't he? How about in the communion passage, when the Lord says, for this reason, many among you sleep? Why? What were they doing? They were flagrant before the Lord and abusing communion, not discerning the Lord's body. And so it says, many slept. So what I think can happen is that somebody can be so down the road of disobedience.

As a Christian, do you notice it says, if anyone sees a brother sinning. Did you see it in the text? It says it right there. If anyone sees a brother sinning, they can be so down the path that there is no hope for their repentance. There's no longer hope for their repentance.

And then John says, that's why you don't pray for that person. Now here comes the important part. What John does not tell us is for you and I to figure out who that person is and decide whether or not we're going to pray. So here's how you fix the dilemma. There's not a dilemma, first of all, but here's how you fix it, if you have one.

I'm looking at the two guys. This guy in his heart of hearts wants to please the Lord. And isn't this guy in his heart of hearts is sick of the Lord telling him what to do and he's tired of it and he doesn't have any more steam and he doesn't want to continue in the Lord anymore. You can't tell the difference when you're watching. So what you do is you pray.

Lord, you know what's going on with these guys. I don't want to pray against your will if you're going to take this guy. I don't want to pray against your will. If you're going to make this person fall asleep in the Corinthian sense, I'm not going to tell you what to do, that I know better, that you had better grant him repentance. You don't boss God around. You're praying for his will to be done. So you say, lord, I don't know what's going on with these two guys. I can't read their heart, but you can. And if it's your will to grant them repentance, please do that. Please grant them repentance.

If that's your will, your will be done. He's not saying, figure out who's this one sending the sin leading to death and don't pray for that one. That's not what he's saying because we don't know. He's also not saying a Particular kind of sin. Usually we say, like, well, alcoholism leads to liver disease and so don't pray for the alcoholic.

No, no, no. That's not the application. The application is there are people in this church, in this congregation that John is writing to who are saying they love the Lord and don't have the truth in them. But on the outside, we don't know that. That's. We can't read the heart. Only God can do that. And so if you have a congregation and someone in that congregation is defying the Lord, even a brother, you don't want to tell the Lord you have to fix them. You tell the Lord, have your way. I don't want to pray against your will.

I don't want to fight you. And if you're going to take somebody home to prevent their life from shipwreck and hurting the body of Christ and hurting your testimony, if you're going to do that and rescue them from themselves, I don't want to pray against that. That's hard. I think we can all agree that's very difficult. There's a lot of gymnastics that people do to try to fix this text.

And I don't think it needs to be fixed. I just think God actually will stop people from shaming his name. And I'm sorry to tell you that I actually think I know names. I could name names. I won't from the pulpit of people that.

That's happened with that. I know. I knew that they were just pushing, pushing, pushing, essentially making. Daring God to stop them from their life. And I believe they were regenerate.

So that might be a hard saying. Just so you know, I'm not out of the pale of orthodoxy. Many people believe what I just said, John MacArthur. Many other people believe what I just said. So I'm not.

This is not a weird interpretation. It's just John saying there are real ones and there are fake ones. And you want to be really careful. If people are in their hearts hating the Lord, telling the Lord he has to fix them, that's the idea. I think that's what it means.

And again, if we didn't have other texts of scripture where God judges like that and God chastens like that, if we didn't have other passages of Scripture, it might be harder to interpret. But I think we do. I think if we have the abuse of communion, you have those kind of things is what we're talking about. So you pray for everyone. Even you're not making a mistake.

If you pray for the person, you can take the take the good reformer word with you today. Contumacious. I love that word. We don't use that word enough. Contumacy.

It's defiant disobedience. It's like a complete lack of submission to authority. Right? So you see somebody living that lifestyle, it's totally okay for you to say, lord, I would hope that it's your will to stop them, to change them, to motivate them, to move them in a direction of repentance. But your will be done.

Right? That's the idea. That's the idea. You. You might wish for someone's repentance.

And you're not against the Lord if you do that, because he knows you don't know. The Lord isn't mad at you if you're. You're not fighting the Lord when you do that, you're fighting the Lord. If you say, this person probably should die, but God would be wrong for taking their life. Right?

That would be wrong to argue against the will of the Lord. So it's okay to say, I don't know who saved and who isn't, but I'm going to pray for everybody. There's nothing wrong with you praying for everyone. We'll talk more about sin and depravity and things in the later service. Verse 18. We know whoever is born of God does not sin. But he who has been born of God keeps himself and the wicked one does not touch him. Now this is a repeat of what was said in First John 3, 9. It said twice. Whoever is born of God does not sin.

Now I'll just do what I always do. I did it. Then I'm going to do it again. How are you doing? You right now, here, hearing me, hearing John, how are you doing?

Whoever. Every single person born of God does not sin. How are you holding up? Which is it? You're born of God or you're sinning?

Because the text says, no, they're exclusive. Again, I'll repeat what I've said multiple times. It means, does not make your habitual lifestyle sinful. Now rewind back to the people who sin. A sin leading to death.

This might be the delineating factor between those who are born of God and those who are born of God. But having a habitual life of sin that God puts in check by taking their life. So what's the difference is the habitual, active, busy lifestyle of sin. Whoever is born of God does not make sin their lifestyle. It is not their habit.

It is not their normal operation to walk in sin. You are no longer just a sinner saved by grace. You are a child of God who occasionally sins. Your identity is in Christ, not in what you used to be. So now, yes, you sin, but you sin like you used to accidentally be nice to someone when you were not saved.

You sin on occasion, not by practice. Now if you're struggling and you're stuck in sin, that's a different story. And that's the people you were just talking about back in verse 16. It also says, whoever does this and whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who has been born of God keeps himself. Uh oh, that goes against my doctrine.

My doctrine says I can do nothing to keep myself, God has to keep me. In fact, this is contradictory to First Peter, who says we are kept by the power of God. So why is the Bible contradicting itself? It's not. If you want a couple of big words to make yourself feel smart so that I can feel smart by giving you a couple of big words.

Justification is operative. Sanctification is cooperative. What is a cooperation? When you cooperate with somebody, what are you doing? The two of you are doing it together, right?

When you're declared righteous before God and he saves you and takes you out of the world and out of Adam and puts you in His Son, he declares you righteous in that moment, you are saved. That is a hundred percent operative. God does that work completely. God does the work of saving completely. But our work of progressive sanctification in our life, now that we have the root of justification, the fruit is bearing itself out in our lives and we are walking according to the commandments.

That is cooperative. That is something that we take part in. Our personal, practical righteousness on earth is a cooperation between us and God. We don't add to salvation. We're not adding to us.

We're not actually getting closer to heaven by our cooperation. We're not adding to our righteousness account in heaven. What we're doing is the work that brings reward. But it is very important to understand there is a cooperation. So that you can never say, if only God would do this, then I would be righteous.

It's God's fault. I'm not righteous. You can never say that sin wasn't God's fault before you were saved and sin is not God's fault after you're saved. So we cooperate with them. We keep ourselves, we grow in grace and knowledge.

These are things that we do, these are ours to do. Got to be careful because in our way of thinking, if you're even remotely Calvinistic, you believe in the doctrines of Grace or God's sovereignty and everything, then very easily, very easily you can get to that cheap grace idea and that free grace idea to the point where you say there doesn't have to have an effect. All you have to do is say you're saved, and that's fine. And then if you fall, well, it must mean you're not saved, or it means you're fine while you're in sin. And this is saying, whoever is born of God does not sin.

Second. And then secondly, they keep themselves and the wicked one does not touch us and in fact touch him. Now, the next part of that is a continuation of that. In verse 19, even though I've separated it here in your notes, it says assured Christians know things. In my notes originally, I'm just confessing to you that I'm still childish a little bit because I first typed assured Christians know what's up.

So I changed it to try to be more dignified for you and your notes. But I did say that. So I'm confessing to you that I still got a little childish Sloan in me there. But it is true that Christians, true Christians, assured Christians who are walking the way John says, know things. They can be assured of things.

And look what it says in verse 19. We know we are of God. Remember before, can you know you're saved? Assuming you read the things John wrote, assuming you're still believing in the Son of God, can you know you're saved? Be certain of your salvation and that you have eternal life.

Yes, he already said that. But now he says, we know we are of God. That means in our life. And the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. He just said in verse 18, if you're born of God, you don't sin and you keep yourself.

And then he finished that by saying, and the wicked one does not touch him. Right? So Satan wants to touch his believers. Satan wants to go after him. But what does it say?

They're unable to. But on the other hand, the world who are not of God, they're of the world, not of the Lord. Those people, one, the older translations say, are in the lap of the evil one or in the lap of the devil. What picture does that bring up in your mind? When you think of being in someone's lap, what do you think of? You think of babies. Don't you like being in the lap? Like a little baby in the lap. And that is exactly the right picture. That's a paraphrase.

It's not the best translation, but it's a Great picture of the idea here. When it says the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one, it means that the devil is whispering and the world loves hearing what he has to say. You don't want to follow those Christians. They're not having any fun. Oh yeah, I kind of thought that for a second.

I kind of thought it looked like they were not having any fun. So thanks for telling me that. You don't want to think that abortion is murder. Think of it as the rights of the woman to do whatever she wants with her body. Oh yeah, that feels better.

So then I can have unprotected sex and not have to worry about any consequences. And now I don't have to worry about that. And I could just be promiscuous and not do things God's way. And now I can have the freedom of that with pills and abortion and just do whatever I want. That sounds so much better to me.

Do you see that? It's not Satan twisting. He doesn't have to arm wrestle anybody to follow him. Their sinful nature already wants to follow him. All he has to do is whisper.

All he has to do is tell you you don't want to follow the Lord. And for somebody who's already leaning that way, somebody in the world, they happily go along with it. Happily they're not. You got to get this out of your mind. If you have it in your mind that people would follow God but something's keeping them from it, as though the devil is holding them back.

No, you can't follow God. No, no, no. We are all willing participants in what the devil is doing before we're saved. We walked after the course of this world according to the Prince of the Power of the Air. We willingly followed what the devil said.

None of us thinks that. I doubt anybody in here thinks that you were a devil worshiper before you got saved, that you gladly followed the devil as your God. Nobody thinks that. But the Bible is pretty clear that before we're saved, when we're in the world, we like what the devil has to say. That's why he's the God of this world, because he has a lot of followers.

But not us. We're of God. Now the real question is, will we divorce ourselves from the world enough to walk with the Lord or do we want what the world has all the time? Another thing that we know. And here comes the other no.

This is the first time the other know the. So the first no is oidos. That's the academic knowledge that's being Aware of that's knowing a thing. Like when we say knowing math, that. That when we use that word.

That word in the New Testament Greek is oidos, some version of oidata. There's various versions of it, depending on the context, but the lexical version is oida, oidos. I think. Now on the other side of that is the ginosko knowledge. That is, that's where the word kano comes from.

When you have kanowledge, it comes from ginosko, okay? Ganolage, okay? That's the word comes out of this original kind of context. So ginosko can be knowledge, head knowledge. It can be.

It can be a head knowledge with an intimate understanding. But a lot of times, especially when it's used relationally like it will be here, it has to do with actual familial knowledge of a relationship. So look at it with me in verse 20. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding. And then here, so the first no is we understand.

We. We grasp. We. We have the knowledge of. We have the. The book learning kind of knowledge, the understanding of that the Son of God has come and given us an understanding. And then it says that purpose clause. We may know. Here's the gnosco kind of knowledge. We may know who is true.

And we are in him who is true in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. So this one is. I want you to know something and I want you to know who is you who are of God, you who follow the Son of God, you who are going to live what's been written in this book. I want you to know that you not only believe in him, you have a knowledge of him, but you are yourself in Him.

There's a unity. You're in Christ. You are connected to him, familial brother, son, bride. You're in a relationship with the Father, I and him and him and me. All that language it's in first.

I wrote it. I mean, I put it in my notes. When Jesus is praying and he's praying for his disciples, I do not pray for these alone, but also those who will believe in Me through their Word. Are we not right now reading John's Word? Right.

So we believed through their word, those of us in the room right now. And so he's praying for us that they, all of us may be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in you, and that they may also be one in us. That the world may believe that you sent Me, this is unity, the oneness that we have with the Lord. And Jesus is telling, he's praying that the people who will believe in Me through the word of the apostles and the spread of the gospel in the world, Father, I want them to understand that we are one. Just as me, Father and Son are one.

They are one in us and they're one with each other. This unity, so crazy how much division we have. We should be scared to be divisive with God's people. It should terrify us when Jesus is literally praying, be unified. And we're like, I don't know if I like him.

You're supposed to be one with him. But now he's saying it in such a beautiful way. We may know him who is true. And in that case, by the way, that's the Father in our context, in word order, we know the Father is true. And then it says, and we are in him who is true.

That's the Father, but also in His Son, Jesus Christ. You see, both. We're in him, the Father. I'm sorry, the second one is Jesus. We know him who is true, and we are in him who is true in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Both. We're in both. Remember when Jesus says that no one can take them out of my hand and no one can take them out of the Father's hand. You remember when he said that in John 10, when he says that we are in both of their hands, who could beat us if we're in Jesus hand and His Father's hand. You want to talk about assurance?

If you're in the Father's hand, who could take you out, right? So here's the ideas I want. I want you to know, I want you guys to be confident that the Son of God has come. He's come. John is saying, I saw him. Remember, he started this whole letter, this whole letter with, I'm testifying to you about what I saw. I'm declaring to you what I saw. I saw him come. I saw the Messiah. I saw his ministry.

I saw him live. I saw him teach. I saw him heal. I saw him doing miracles after miracles. Remember, John's book is the one that says, if I recorded everything, the world couldn't hold all the books.

John saw all of that, and he's now saying, he came. And you who believe in him are in him and in His Father. And you have eternal life. This is the true God and eternal life. Jesus praised that in that high priestly prayer, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the One True God.

I guess I have to ask before we get to the last quick note. Are you in him? Is God your God? Have you trusted Christ as your savior? Are you in his hand now?

The opposite of all that, and it's an easy opposite, is the last line. It's an amazing thing that John closes this letter with. Amazing that he closes like this. I find it amazing after everything he just said that the last note John leaves with is a negative note. It's not really negative, because if you hate idols, it's the happiest news to hear.

But look what he says. Little children. Remember he's been saying that the whole letter. The people I love my little children. John, the loving apostle, like a dad to the believer.

Little children. And you think he's going to say, love you so much. Hang in there. Keep up the good work. That's what you think he's going to say when he says, little children, no.

Keep yourselves from idols. Amen. He ends with a truth. Why does he say this? Because the whole book is about genuine Christianity and genuine Christians, and there are false Christianities and false Christians.

And the name for a thing that would be a false Christ, a false God. The thing you call that thing that would have your attention, have your worship, have your devotion. That is not God. What you call that thing. The label of that thing is an idol.

So you either trust the real one, the true God, the one that we're supposed to be in, the one that we believe in, the. The one who's who we're following. According to what John has just written, we either trust that one or we trust any other one. And all of the other ones are false. So anybody that says Jesus didn't come in the flesh, false.

Anybody that walks after the course of this world, false. Anybody that says they walk with God but hate their brother, false. Anybody that says they love God but don't walk in truth, false. Anybody that doesn't keep commandments in their life, false. And if you put them on the pedestal, if you put them up for attention, you've just made an idol.

Keep yourself from the fakes and trust the real one. And you say, john, what's an idol? He's everything I just wrote about will tell you what an idol is. Go read, I just wrote you a letter and you ended with keep yourselves from idols. And if you want to know what an idol is, go look at all the things I say in this letter about what aren't true Christianity.

And what you're left with is false idols. Anything we bow down to anything we give credit to that belongs to the Lord only. Anything that we give our devotion to that belongs to the Lord only. Our time, our energy, our worship. Anything.

Where instead of God getting what he should be getting, another thing is getting that it doesn't matter what it looks like. It could have shiny rims. It could have a beautiful face. It could have a big bank account. It can be very famous and have a lot of followers.

It doesn't matter what it is if it takes from us what belongs to God alone. It's an idol. Don't have any of those. Walk with the true Jesus, Father. Thank you for making it so clear.

Sometimes it can be hard. When it's clear, it can be. We see verses in your word that say, whoever is born of you doesn't sin. Oh, those are humbling verses. Sometimes they're even painful.Because we know, Father, we fail. We know that we're weak and we do sin. But I think it's clear, Father, you make it so clear in your word that the idea is that we're faithful overall in our lives. When we fail, the same book tells us to confess our sins and you'll forgive us. When we stumble, you lift us up.

You want us to know that we are your children. And this letter so helps with that. Would you help us walk in that assurance? Because we want to obey you and honor you. Thank you for saving us.

Thank you for making obedience possible. Thank you that you give us that beautiful opportunity to live for you instead of for ourselves. Help us do that now. In Jesus name, amen.