Open your Bibles with me to 1 John chapter 3, beginning at verse 19. The topic for today's message is, it's an amazing thing, it's confidence toward God. Confidence toward God. You might have noticed that the opening reading and the Both the call to worship and the hymn, Blessed Assurance, revolve around that theme. The assurance, the blessed assurance, that God's people are to have, not necessarily before people, men and women, but before God. That's an amazing thing.

We all want assurance of salvation. We want to know that when we lay down our heads to die, that we will wake up in the arms of Christ, our savior, our shepherd, our keeper. How do we get that assurance? What is the right kind of assurance? It's not just a feeling now.

I think about this, you all know I'm a Kentucky basketball fan. That's where I'm from. And one of the best times I have watching them play basketball is on recording when I know they've already won. I mean, they can get behind 20 points, but I know they're going to win. It can be a tight game. But I know they're gonna win. So I sit relaxed. And that's the way it is.

Do we know the end from the beginning? Well, the Bible says that God alone knows the end from the beginning, and that's referring to providence. For example, you don't know what, I used to say you don't know what tomorrow holds, but you don't even know what the next five minutes are gonna hold. You know, you think about all the trouble we're having in the world today. People walking a city block and all of a sudden, boom, it goes. Or somebody comes along and shoots and all that. We don't know the future.

As far as providence is concerned, what I mean by providence is God's governing the things in this world. Each day is in his hand. He's in control. You know, I see a lot of signs where it says God is in control, but I wonder if the people really believe it. Well, God is in control. He declares the end from the beginning. Now, I can declare the beginning from the end. I can tell you how the day started. I just can't tell you how it's going to end. But God, He declares the end from the beginning.

And He's not just a crystal ball gazer. He doesn't just, you know, a lot of people, they talk about election. And they don't believe biblical election. What they believe is that God looks down through the telescope of time and sees who will respond to him positively. And then he elects them. That's not biblical. That's idolatry, really, is what it is. God doesn't look down through the telescope of time. God declares time. You ever read Ecclesiastes 3? to everything there is a season and a time. What does that mean? It means God's already set the times and the seasons. He's in control.

Somebody told me one time, said, well, I just don't understand that. Well, join the club. You're not God. And neither am I. But God declares the end from the beginning. And God in his book, the Bible, gives every believing sinner, every born again person who's looking to Christ, the Christ of the Bible, He gives us reasons to be assured in such a way, to be assured of our salvation in such a way that we can have confidence with Him.

Now what is that suspicion? Well, think about it. God knows our hearts. Now I can talk to you and I can say things, I can tell you what I believe, but you can't really know my heart as far as the assurance of salvation. I hear you talk and if you tell me you believe the gospel, I receive you as a brother or sister in Christ. But what happens if next week you go away? Now that's not said to scare you or anything like that. It's just saying that only God knows your thoughts. Right now, God knows what you're thinking and what I'm thinking. That really neat thought you had about me, he saw that. And sadly, the bad thought too. God knows. My point is this, you can't fool him. Let me show you this. Look at 1 John 3.

Now, these are scriptures that have to be taken in context. Because if you don't take them in context, you'll make the same mistake that many people make, like in the book of James. You know the book of James, where James talks about faith without works? A lot of people look at that book and they say, well, James believed salvation by works. Well, no, James didn't. And it even uses Abraham as an example. Paul used Abraham saying justified by grace. James said justified by works. And a lot of people see James and Paul in Romans chapter 4 and James chapter 2, they see them at odds. But they're not at odds. They're not talking about the same thing. Paul's talking about how a sinner is saved by grace and justified before holy God. James is talking about the proof of the genuineness of our faith as we appear to people. Do you really believe what you claim to believe? That's what he's talking about. Is your claim justified? Vindicated, you might say. So they're talking about two different things.

But the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, salvation has always been, is always now, and will always be by grace. that means that no sinner who has that salvation and the blessings of it has earned it or deserved it. And it's not a matter of God responding to you or me, it's a matter of us responding to God's power which never fails. I'm telling you if God calls you into the kingdom, you're coming. And somebody said, one time they said, well, does he drag us against our will? No, he has a power you don't have and I don't have. He can change your will. And that's exactly what he did with me. He changed my will because I didn't want any part of it until he changed my will. And he can change yours too. The Bible says, it's not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. And God said, I'll have mercy on whom I will and I'll be gracious to whom I will.

So these verses here in 1 John 3, if stood on their own without any context, somebody could get the wrong impression. Look at it, verse 19 of 1 John 3. And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him. Assure our hearts before Him. And what is he talking about? By this, hereby, we know that we're of the truth. Do we believe the truth? That's the issue here. He talked about loving, loving the bread, loving Christ, loving God. Is this love that we have for God?

Number one, it's not natural to us. It's a gift from God. Romans 5 tells us that this love, this agape love, that's what it is, it's a divine love, is shed abroad in the hearts of God's people by the Holy Spirit. We didn't have it before. We had love, we loved our children, loved our wives, loved our husbands, loved things in the world, but we didn't love God. We don't love God until God sheds this love that's found in Christ within our hearts.

And it's important that we understand that John is not speaking of our love for Christ and our love for our brethren as the ground of our salvation or the ground of our assurance of salvation. He's talking about it as the fruit and evidence that we believe in Christ, that we have this love within us.

No true believer would ever come before God pleading the merits of his or her efforts to love the brethren. When you stand before God at judgment, if you're one of His, you're not gonna stand there and say, well, Lord, look how much I loved everybody. Because if you do, it's kinda like this, it's kinda like God's gonna say, well, let's compare your love to Christ's love. Now, how would you measure up then? Well, he's the measure. He's the measure of righteousness.

That's why God has commanded all men everywhere to repent, because he's appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, and that includes love and obedience, all of it. He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, and that he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he hath raised him from the dead.

My only righteousness before God is the righteousness of Christ freely imputed to me. That's it. And that's in every area of life. My love, my obedience, my diligence, my sincerity. None of those make me righteous before God. None of those put away my sins, only the blood of Christ.

And so what is he talking about? Well, look at verse 20. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. You could apply that verse two ways. If you're just playing church, as some people say, if you're just words only and not the truth, God knows your heart. You can't fool him. You can't fool God. Now, you can fool me. I can fool you. But you can't fool God. He's omniscient. He knows everything. He knows everything about me.

But there's another way that that verse can apply. You know, sometimes true believers can get into awful states of sorrow, pain, a fresh view of themselves in their sinfulness. Oh, I'm not worthy, and all that. And I'm not making fun of that, don't get me wrong. The old writer of Pilgrim's Progress called it the slew of despond. And sometimes believers can get in that state.

Think about Job, you know, going through the trials that he went through. Old Daniel, he had a dream, and he saw himself in beauty, and his beauty melted into corruption. In light of God's holiness, in light of Christ's righteousness, we have no beauty. He is our beauty.

But sometimes we erroneously Get focused on ourselves. Oh, I've not done enough. Yeah, that's true. You haven't. Neither have I. Oh, I need to do more to make my salvation sure. No. Well, when our hearts condemn us like that, God is greater than our hearts. And where do we go to get relief over that sorrow? We go to the word of God.

And what does God's word say? If you're in Christ, if you're looking to Christ and that's what you need to do, you can have confidence and assurance and peace of salvation. Not because you've done enough, not because you're good enough, not because you're trying hard, but because of what Christ has already accomplished on Calvary's cross to put away your sins and to make you righteous before God.

So God is greater than our hearts. And so he says in verse 21, beloved, if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God.

What is the heart? Well, he's mainly talking about the conscience here. And I want you to turn to Hebrews chapter 10. The conscience. And I talked about this a little bit in the 10 o'clock message. We're all born with a conscience. But the problem is, naturally speaking, our conscience is defiled. The conscience is the seed of all judgment within your heart, your mind. The heart involves the mind, the affections, the will, the desires, and the conscience. And it's that by which you judge yourself to be right or wrong, good or evil, saved or lost. That's the conscience.

Now the problem with the natural man is the conscience is defiled. Look at Hebrews chapter 10 and look at verse 18. Now what he's talking about here in the context is what Christ accomplished on the cross to put away the sins of his people. He's not talking about what you or I do in order to remedy sin because there's nothing we can do to remedy sin. No matter what I do, if I could, listen, if I could start keeping the law perfectly today, which I can't, That still would not put away or atone for my sins of the past because I'm a sinner. You break one commandment, you've broken them all. There's nothing we can do. If you won the lottery and gave it all away to charity, it would not put away your sins. You still deserve death and hell based on your best efforts. That's what the Psalms say. A man at his best effort is altogether Wrong. Man at his best state.

So what he's talking about here is what Christ did. Look back up at verse 14. He says, for by one offering, he, Christ, hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, them who were set apart by God. It took his one offering of himself, shedding his blood on the cross, to do the whole thing. put away all the sins of all his people that God gave to him before the foundation of the world called his sheep. That's why he said the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. So he says in verse 18, now listen, where remission, that's pardon, of these is, where the pardon of our sins is by the blood of Christ, there is no more offering for sin.

Now what that tells you is this, If you are pardoned and forgiven of all your sins by the blood of Christ, there's nothing else to give for that reason. We don't owe God any debt of justice. Christ settled it. One offering. Now, if you're not in Christ, if you live and die in unbelief, then all your sins are charged to your account and you have nothing to pay for. And that's why people perish in eternity. They don't have a mediator. They don't have a substitute. They don't have a righteousness. They don't have a savior. They stand before God on their own. So you may die and your last words may be, I know I'm going to wake up in heaven. But my friend, if you're not washed in the blood of Christ and clothed in his righteousness, you're going to wake up in terror. I'm telling you. And that's what he's saying here. If you reject Christ, there's no more offering for sin. What could you give God that would satisfy his justice and honor his law? Nothing.

So if you have Christ, if you're washed in his blood and clothed in his righteousness, look at verse 19. Having therefore, brethren, boldness. Now that word boldness could be translated liberty, free access. to enter into the holiest, you see that? By the blood of Jesus. There's your key. There's your way in. He says in verse 20, by a new and living way, not an old and dead way like that law of Moses, that wouldn't do it. Which Christ hath consecrated, Christ made new. For us, as our surety, our substitute, our redeemer, through the veil, that is to say his flesh, he was God manifest in the flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God, that's Christ, our great high priest, let us draw near, that's near into the holiest, into the presence of God, with a true heart, sincere heart, in full assurance of faith,

Now what is the full assurance of faith? It's the full assurance of looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, resting in him, pleading his blood, pleading his righteousness, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.

Sprinkled how? With the application of the knowledge of the blood of Jesus Christ, just like the blood of that lamb in the old covenant was sprinkled on the mercy seat. When God shows you your sinfulness and your depravity and your deservedness of hell and drives you to Christ for salvation, to plead His blood, His righteousness, that's the conscience being sprinkled, the application of that blood, the knowledge of God.

Now an evil conscience is a legal conscience. It's like a person who thinks, well, I want to go to heaven, so I'm going to get busy trying to obey God. But the problem is, is that that won't get you to God. That won't get you into heaven. Because your works aren't good enough. My works aren't good enough. And that's an evil conscience. Did you know that?

And he says, and our bodies washed with pure water. That pure water is a symbol of the blood of Christ. Now go back to 1 John 3. So verse 21, beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. If our heart, our mind, our affections, our will, our conscience does not condemn us, speaks peace to us, and it means something, it really, it's true and real, We have that confidence toward God.

And how do we have that confidence toward God? Who knows our inner thoughts? Sprinkled by the blood of Christ. We enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus Christ. I plead his blood. I don't plead my works. I don't plead anything but him. You remember those false preachers in Matthew chapter seven who said, Lord, Lord, haven't we preached in your name? Haven't we done many wonderful works? Well, what am I doing today? I'm preaching in His name. But I'm not going to stand before God at judgment and have confidence of my salvation because I preached in His name. My confidence of salvation is in the blood of the Lamb, the righteousness of Christ. You see that? And that's what John's saying here.

Now he says in verse 22, he says, and whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. Well, now you look at that verse by itself, you wonder, well, now wait a minute. Is that saying that he will answer our prayers if we keep his commandments? Well, first of all, what are his commandments? Well, look down at verse 23. And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ. That's the commandment he's talking about. He's not talking about keeping the 10 commandments now. He's not talking about human morality here.

Now, should we be moral people? Yes. Should we strive to keep God's commandment? Yes. But he's talking about something specific here. He's talking about resting in Christ. the name of the Son of Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment. Love the brethren. Now these are the two evidences of the grace of God in a person's life. They're not the ground of salvation. They're not that which earns us salvation or blessings. They are the fruit The evidence of the grace of God working in our lives.

I rest in Christ, I believe in him, and anybody else who does that, they're my brother or sister in Christ. Loving the brethren. Think about, in these things, we can still see imperfections in ourselves. I believe the gospel. I believe in Jesus Christ. Now, do I believe perfectly without any shade of doubt in any time in my life? I can't say that I do. I can tell you my tenor of life is faith in Christ. And I can tell you this, the only reason I don't leave Him and forsake Him and apostatize is because He won't let me go.

But there are times in my life I wonder, God, are You there? I shouldn't, because that's sinful. That's doubt, that's unbelief. But He never lets me go the nth degree of apostasy to leave Him and to forsake Him. He always keeps that rain on me. One preacher said, we're on God's leash. He won't let us go.

And do I love my brethren? Perfectly all the time. No. Sometimes y'all can make me mad, sometimes I can make you mad and all that. We know all that. Should we strive to love one another? Of course. Forgive one another? Of course. But our love doesn't even compare to God's love for us in Christ. You see that? His love never changes. There's no shade of degrees in His love for His people. He loved us with an everlasting love, even when we were enemies, Romans 5 says.

If you became my enemy, would I love you? Like the Bible says, love your neighbors yourself. I should, and I hope I would try. But our love to God, our love to Christ, our love to you, to each other, is not the cause or the ground of our salvation or our confidence of salvation. If it is, we're all in trouble, not just you, all of us. And again, shall we strive hard to love God, to love God perfectly, love our neighbors, ourselves, love our brethren? Yes. not in order to attain or maintain salvation, not in order to assure our hearts before God, but because God has already assured our hearts in His love through Christ. You see the difference?

Now, it's not easy to see that difference. The natural man can't see it. All he can see is, well, if I do this, God will do that. I'll be okay. And he mentions prayer here. Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him. Now we know in context, anytime you read about prayer in scripture, there are several keys to prayer. Number one, prayer is an act of worship and faith in the true and living God. We always pray to God through Jesus Christ on the basis of his merits alone. And number three, we always pray with this attitude, God, thy will be done. You see that?

So if I get on my knees today and say, God, send me a million dollars, you know what? It may not be God's will for me to have that. And so far, I can say it has been. Thy will be done. I tell you what I ought to pray is, Lord, make me content with what I have. That's Christian contentment. Make me content with what I have. Let me worship and serve you. I've got more than what I deserve, especially in salvation, don't I? Of course I do. But even in this life, I've got more than what I deserve. And I'll tell you what, the next breath you take is a gift from God. You didn't deserve that. And I don't deserve it. So when he's talking about prayer, he's not talking about God being a genie in a bottle, you know, well if I ask hard enough or if I get enough people praying with me, I'll get what I want. No, that's not the way God works. Prayer's an act of faith, it's an act of worship, it's an act of submission. Thy will be done.

So in verse 23, he says, he says, and this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he gave us commandment. And he that keepeth his commandments, believing on the Son, loving one another, dwelleth in him, we dwell in Christ. Christ is our hope. Christ is our life. Christ is our righteousness. And hereby we know that He abideth in us, the Spirit of God. Christ dwells within us by His Spirit and by His Word, and we can't get away from it. And it says, He abideth in us by the Spirit which He hath given us. All things given. Doesn't the Bible say that, that we're blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus? And doesn't it say that, he that spared not his own son, how shall he not with him freely give us all things? That's the way salvation works.

So whenever you read in the Bible about believers being encouraged to keep the commandments, find out what those commandments are. The ones that evidence salvation are the ones that John's speaking of here. Believing in Christ, resting. It's not just mere human morality. Even unbelievers can be moral people in the eyes of men. They can be churchgoers, they can be givers, they can be philanthropists. They can be kind in the eyes of men. So that's not what he's talking about.

Now, should we be all those things? Sure. But that's not what he's talking about that assures our hearts before God. What it is is those things that assure us that our faith in Christ is real. and is genuine and not just sham talk. Hypocrisy, like James was talking about.