Good morning, church. Let's turn
together to the letter of 1 John again as we continue in the Yohanan
epistles. 1 John chapter 5. We're not far to the end, and
then we're going to go over to the letter to the elect lady
and her children. 1 John chapter 5. Verse 13. I write these things to you who
are believing in the name of the Son of God, that you may
know you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that
we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His
will, He hears us. And if we know that he hears
us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that
we've asked of him. If anyone sees his brother committing a
sin that does not lead to death, he shall ask and God will give
him life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death.
There is that sin that leads to death. I do not say that one
should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there
is that sin that does not, there is sin that does not lead to
death. We know that everyone who has been born of God does
not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him
and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from
God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil
one. And we know that the son of God has come and has given
us understanding so that we may know him who is true, And we
are indeed in him who is true. We are in his son, Jesus the
Christ. He, Jesus, is the true God, and
Jesus is the eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves
from idols. I don't know what version of
scripture that you have, but most every one of you would probably
see that I added some words in the context of its meaning. We
know that this letter, again, has been written to the elect,
to the elect alone. And there are no times in any
of the writings of Paul where he has addressed unbelievers
because they have never been his audience. Paul has written
about unbelievers. Paul has written about reprobates.
Paul has written about apostates. Paul has written about revisionists,
about those who are divisive, and so on and so forth. But he
only writes to the elect of God. He only writes to the church. And he does so that he may instruct
them in the gospel, which includes the finished work of Christ,
as well as the good news of life together in Christ. Keep that
in mind, beloved. There is nothing but dysfunction
in the context of isolation in the faith. There is no means
through which any believer can fulfill, understand, or live
out the New Testament in any way without the body of Christ. For it is the body collective
that the New Testament was written. It is the body of Christ who
he has purchased with his blood. It is the elect of God who were
saved before the foundations of the world through the decrees
of our Heavenly Father. John gives several things in
this letter and over the next few Sundays as we come to close
it, I'm going to continue to recapitulate all the things that
John has written and all the things that John has taught and
all the things that God has commanded. But I want us to see that fellowship
with the Lord Jesus is one of the centerpieces of John's writing.
There were people in this particular circumstance and day who were
trying to tell these believers that they were not believers
by some other condition, by some other test, by some other means
to which the Bible did not give them authority. And John then
says, that which we have proclaimed to you, you have known. You have come to Christ. You
have been saved by the Spirit, by the blood, by the word, by
the Son, by the Father. You have been saved by grace.
This is a given. And I will say this many times
over as I teach through this letter, and I've said it many
times already. There is no test for salvation
in this letter. Because John literally what? Assumes that everyone that reads
this is a believer. I write to you little children.
I write to you little children because your sins are forgiven
for his namesake. And I know I just ascribed it
to Paul for five minutes, but that's okay. I'm writing to you
fathers because you know Him who is from the beginning. I'm
writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you children because
you know the Father. I write to you fathers because
you know Him who is from the beginning. And I write to you
young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in
you and you have overcome the evil one. So we just saw in the
text that we're going to be in this morning that we know that
the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. That is why
John is very clear. Do not love the world. Do not
love the ways of the world. Do not love the things of the
world. Do not love the ideals of the world. Do not love the
philosophies of the world. Do not love the logic of the
world. Do not love the arguments of the world. Do not love the
practices of the world. Do not love the things that the
world loves. For these things are not from
God, but are from the world. And the world and everything
in it is passing away. Beloved, if we could just learn
that the greatest idol in all of our hearts this morning is
this present world that we live in and everything that we are
storing up for ourselves in it. Sometimes relationships are a
greater coin than money. Sometimes politics are a greater
crown than glory. And it is all nothing. But John writes these words so
that these troubled saints who have just gone through a church
split, those who had left from among them, Those who left the
teaching of the cross. Those who added to the sufficiency
of the gospel. Those who quarreled over the
exposition of grace. They're hurt. They're fearful. They're damaged. They're worried. And John reminds them that there
is a message. There is a message that stands against the very
thing that many religionists try to express and that God is
righteousness. God is light. God is holy. God is set apart. All that means
is that God is set apart against everything that exists. He, in
and of himself, is sufficiently enough for himself. And everything else in the world
is set apart against the nature of God. Everything. Everything. Yet God created it all for Himself. God said, let there be light
that He might save for the sake of His name, His people. That
He would create through the system of time that He created so that
his name would be glorified because of his grace in Christ Jesus. This is the only good news that
is true. God created the skies and the
planets so that when we look at that and think how magnificent
and then we see the elect of God in Christ Jesus, we go, that's
so boring. because those things are yet
are nothing but a shadow of Christ's glory. And I spent a lot of time this
week thinking about the heavens, the celestial things. They fascinate
me. They fascinate me. We are all sinners and we all
have sinned this present moment. There's not one day, there's
not one word, there's not one thought that can come through
our living flesh that is not tainted with sin in some way.
And our job is not to look into the mirror at every turn to find
it all so that we may get it all away. Because there is never
a time where there will ever be the greatest of saints who
will ever be free from personal sin. or free from the presence
of sin in this life. But beloved, we have been freed
from the power of sin. You remember? I mean, I've preached
so many sermons on this text and so many sermons in my lifetime. I mean, it's just uncanny, the
things that I continue to learn and learn to articulate clearer
and learn to absorb and learn to apply. And as I grow older,
I pray the Lord would give me greater wisdom in that application
for your sake. But there's been one thing that
the Lord showed me in the very first few weeks of being a pastor. And that is that the ultimate
thing that we are longing for as shepherds according to the
command of God through His Word is that we are to teach and proclaim
and exhort and admonish and encourage that the church may grow into
maturity to do the work of the ministry among itself so that
the fullness of the joy of Jesus Christ would be ours together. Because is that not the reason
that we seek after idols? I'm going to get ahead of my
last sermon just a little bit. We seek after idols because they
provide us a little bit of joy. And you've heard me say this
already. You've heard me say that the joy of the Lord is full
when we are assembled and serving, when we are considering one another.
when we are doing that which God has clearly taught us that
John has already said is not burdensome. It's not laborious.
It's not overwhelming to love. As a matter of fact, I've read
a lot of articles over the last year, especially articles on
the mind and different things because I enjoy that type of
stuff. And even just this past week, Robin and I were talking
about a particular study that shows that if people who seemingly
find themselves blue or down or depressed would take a moment
every day and ask, how can I do something kind or something good
for another person, that it immediately changes their outlook. So even
science knows what God's word teaches clearly is effective. The worst thing that we could
ever do, beloved, is to sit and think about us. The worst thing
I could ever do is think about how I feel and what I need and
what I want and what I don't have. And then to look at what
everyone else has and feels and want what they have and feel.
Covetousness, idolatry, adultery. It's spiritual adultery. And
so the word of God teaches us That we have fellowship with
Christ through grace and that our intimacy with God continually,
our fellowship, our walking together with God is effectual to our
joy and our joy is complete. That's what John says. And then
he begins to explain it. Because it's very easy, I'm going
to tell you what, it's very easy in the flesh, it's very easy
in the intrinsic holes of our soul to just disappear, to become
a recluse, to become a hermit, to wallow inside our own minds
and our own hearts and to the point that we feel like it's
better for us, but yet it's never better, it's never good, it's
never joyful. And John doesn't want these Christians
to sin. He doesn't want them to walk
in a position of sin. He doesn't want them to live
in a way that is unpleasing to the Lord. And so he says the
remedy for that in your practical life is just to live together
in love with one another in long suffering. That's it. And he's told us to test the
spirits. These are not things that are deep. These are things
that are very simple. These are childlike instructions.
These are things that anybody that would just back up and listen
with the Spirit of God in them can grasp and apply very clearly. When we think things, we test
them by the Spirit of God. When we see things, we test them
by the Spirit of God. And the Spirit of God says to
test these things by the love of Christ and test our judgments
by the love of Christ. And more importantly, for our
love for one another. Because it's, I'm telling you,
if it smells like smoke, it's probably fire. You see, that's
how we think, isn't it? It's easy for us to get bogged
down and to whitewash and broad brush everything in the circumstances
of our own little myopic idolatry to the loss of our joy and the
loss of our intimacy. And in those two losses, we have
literally lost our faith. Let me say that again. When we lose our joy and we lose
our intimacy with one another, we've literally lost our faith.
Because we no longer look to the love of God in Christ. We
look to everything else. We look to resolve things based
on our understanding of how they should be, rather than God's
clear instruction and perfect, simple, little childlike picture
of what it should be. And more importantly, what it
is. That we have intimacy with the Lord. We have intimacy with
Christ. Therefore, let us have fellowship
with him in that intimacy. Let us have fellowship in the
good news of the finished work of Jesus. But Antichrist come
in to revise this simple grace. Antichrist, the enemy, the world
that is under his control by the sovereignty of God. This
is God's purpose and God's plan. that the enemy would have his
way in all the wicked deception of the world so that there is
no means through any religious aspect of any man's theological
philosophy anywhere in any inference of doctrine that any person can
stand before God joyful much less righteous except in his
simple decree of grace. The dumber we are, the greater
God is. And that's not a slap against
study, because elders are commanded to study the Word of God. Sadly, they don't study the Word,
they study the peripherals of the Word. Most teachers of the Bible watch
more videos of other people teaching the Bible and think they're learning
the Bible. You're not being taught by listening
to my commentary. You're being encouraged to listen
to the Word of God. It's being explained and you
must, you have the responsibility to divide it with me. And when we make mistakes and
when we become deceived and when we find ourselves in error, we
change because God's Word teaches us the truth. And then we're
patient with one another as we grow. We're patient. We're patient. And this is love and faith at
work. This is what's happening here.
We saw last week in this text that the only way that you know
that you have eternal life is that you know the one who is
eternal life and that you know what he has done for his people. And that is by the Spirit of
God. And sometimes we get the accusation
of being antinomian because they don't apply the Mosaic precepts
to our lives as some kind of a lockstep experience, which
is ridiculous. Christ is the end of the law
for all who believe. We understand the law as a death
sentence. We understand that it is judgment. It is good and
it is pure and it is righteous, just like the law in the state
of Georgia that says if you take a man's life, you are guilty
of murder. That's a good law because it convicts the one who
kills. The law of God convicts the sinner
to death, sentences them to death. Christ stands us in right standing. We are law keepers in the eyes
of God completely because of Christ, because of his imputed
righteousness. And so when we see this testimony,
this witness, this instruction, this good news proclamation that
God the Father Himself has said, that the prophets have said God's
Word, that the Spirit of God has testified, that the works
of Christ themselves have testified, that Jesus has said, that the
apostles have said, that we have, we have the same testimony. If
you are my brother or my sister in the faith, then you have the
testimony of Christ, the testimony of the Father, the testimony
of the Spirit, the testimony of the Word. You have that testimony
in you and you do not add or subtract from it. Add to it or
subtract from it. That is not what we do. And when
we do, we encourage one another. We do not condemn one another. And in verse 13 of chapter five,
and I've already talked about all this, this is so much review,
there's so much review to go through all these things, but
I feel like it's better to teach separately on these things with
more emphasis than to hurry through them. I, John, write these things
to you, you believers. That's what you should say when
you read that. He's not saying those of you
who are believers. He's saying all of you are believers. I write these things to you.
That's why I read the portion over there in chapter two about
the children. Children, it is the last hour,
and now little children abide in him. Beloved brothers, everywhere
you look, he is writing to those who are believing. And the very
thing that he just said, is that the testimony concerning Christ
is the testimony of God. And only in this testimony do
the elect find their hope. That is why the most of these
terms are often pejorative. But that is why these Confidence
and assurance, tight gospels are so condemning. Well, you'll
know that you're a believer if... You know what? You know that you're
a believer as you believe it. You know the Christ. You know
who He is and what He accomplished, and you know for whom He did
it. This is not new. It's the gospel. You know that
you're a believer when you believe the witness of Christ. When you
know this is the Word of God and it is true when you rest
in your soul. And this is not an exercise of
your volition. It is not an exercise of your
power. It is not an exercise of your mind. And that you have
got to be smart enough to see it. This is an exercise of God
alone who grants you the peace of saving faith. to believe in
the testimony of Christ. So we don't question ourselves.
The very nature of questioning ourselves is to question God.
God, did Christ's work really do what it was supposed to do
for me? See, when others cause us to doubt our salvation, when
we hold to the witness of God, they are actually doing the work
of the devil themselves. Because they are rejecting the
very nature of God's testimony concerning Himself. Now there's
a lot of yeah buts in there, but I will blow them away with
a fire hydrant. Because God's Word disallows them. Believe in the Gospel alone. It is by grace you have been
saved. That is where faith rests. It is by grace you have been
saved. And only God can cause you to
rest in that. Only God can give you the hope
there. Yet the world and the religious
and the revisionist and everybody else who are all in the spirit
of Antichrist will come along as every day of our lives to
try to condition you to think differently. And sometimes we're
deceived. Sometimes we put the phylacteries
back on our faces and our chests. Sometimes we begin to burn the
incense. Sometimes we put our shoes in certain places beside
the bed to keep off the bad spirits. There's a lot of superstitions
I was taught as a child. I had great and great great aunts
and grandmothers. And these people were country. You get a splinter, you take
it out, you put it in your hair, it'll keep the soreness out.
I mean, just all sorts of silly stuff. Your ears are burning,
somebody's talking about you. Your hands are itching, somebody's
coming to see you. I don't know, all kind of stuff, just witchcraft. And it's the same kind of nonsense
that we get caught up in today. Well, you're probably not saved
if you don't hate sin all the time. You're probably not saved because
you don't believe the gospel. You see? And if you do believe
the gospel, then your brothers and sisters who are spiritual
will help you walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. And they
won't have a rope and a torch and a hay fort when they talk
to you. They won't pry into your past.
They won't pry into your thoughts. They won't pry into your affections.
They will just see as we walk together when those things don't
align. you who believe in the name of
the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
John writes this section here of chapter five, in fact four
and five, so that the believing ones who are the elect of God,
who have been born again by being granted repentance, which is
faith in Jesus, will know the love of God, will
be certain of the love of God, and then will live in the love
of God together as a people. See, Jesus Christ is our security. Let's think about this for a
second. This is simple gospel stuff. Jesus Christ is our security. How is Jesus our security? He
secures our redemption. He secures it. He secures our fellowship with
God. Jesus Christ secures our joy. He secures our hope. He secures our assurance. He
secures our perseverance. He assures our faith. He assures
our intimacy. He assures and secures our love. For God has first loved us. You see why all this is stated
in the way that it is? God is love and it's not that
we loved Him, but He loved us first. The love of God is manifested
in the giving of His Son for the sake of the elect. The elect
will know this truth. And Jesus Christ secures our
victory. We've overcome the world not because we're so strong,
not because we've done well, not because we've tried harder,
not because we have tried to live a life more pleasing. That's
not how we overcome. We overcome because Christ has
overcome the world. Christ died on the cross, went
to the grave and raised himself to life. There is no power over
Christ. He subjected Himself to be like
the creation. He took on humanity without giving
up divinity. And He did everything righteously. He thought righteously. He spoke
righteously. He feared righteously. He was angered righteously. Beloved,
I can't wait to see the day of what righteous anger feels like.
Because I know what fleshly anger feels like. And I know what idolatry
and stupidity and lying feels like when I try to convince myself
that it is righteous anger. Righteous anger in the heart
and the mind of a saint, of a child of God, shuts up and sits still. It doesn't act out and it don't
speak up. And I'm gonna say that a lot
in the next few weeks. Jesus secures our victory. And
because of that, verse 14, this is the confidence that we have
toward Him. That we can ask, if we ask anything
according to His will, He hears us. And we know that He hears
us in whatever we ask, and we know that we have the request
that we have asked of Him. Now last week I talked about
this in a general sense, prayer. And we looked at the Lord's model
prayer, we looked at James when people were being a little screwy
with their praying and not doing it correctly, and their attitudes
were strange, their desires were wrong. So what's the ultimate
question when we hear this if you pray according to the will
of God? Well, of course it comes to the position of this. Father,
I want what you want above what I want, like Jesus prayed in
the garden. Lord, what was Jesus' will in his flesh according to
the cross? I don't want to suffer this But
my will is to do that which you want. And this is what you want,
Father. It's not a dichotomy. It's in
perfect unity. Let this cup pass from me, Father.
Jesus praise. That's what I want. But not my
will, but yours be done. So he stands up and he goes out.
Behold, my accuser comes. He endured such hostility towards
sinners. He looked past the cross to the
glory, to obey the Father. Beloved, Jesus did it all right
in his humanity. He loved his enemies perfectly. He loved them in his character,
in his nature, in his words. And now we can pray his will.
So that's the first thing. We pray according to His will
by submitting our minds to the promises of God, to the power
of God, to the purposes of God, and all these things to know
that whatever comes in this life is the will of God for us. So
we don't need to worry about what the will of God is. What
do you want from me, God? Not a bad question, but we worry
about it too much. We try to decipher God's will,
like there's some secret that God's trying to hide from us.
And I hear the people already saying, well, Pastor, you know,
there's this secret will and the hidden will and the visual
will and, you know, the steering wheel and everything else. And
there's all these wills that God has in Deuteronomy 29, 29. And he's only going to tell us
that which, listen, God has told us enough about what he desires.
Let's start with that. Let's start with that. Let's
start with what John is writing here and God is teaching us and
the Spirit is showing us concerning the context of this idea of prayer. What is the context here? He's
saying that you have eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ
and you are victorious in this work. So therefore you have confidence
to come to the Lord and ask Him to pray to Him to do His will
in your life. But what's the context? What's
the will? It's twofold. To hold fast to believe in the
truth of the gospel and to love your brothers and sisters in
Christ sacrificially and patiently. You see, that is the will of
God. So what John is saying there,
that when we see these commands that are not burdensome, when
we hear the fact that until we are serving one another in the
gospel, we are never going to have the joy that we so desperately
desire. It will not come, beloved. You
will not get it. And it will cause you to seek
after idols to fulfill that missing hole of joy in your heart. And everybody says, I just can't,
I just can't, I just can't. You're exactly true when you
say that. I feel like Jesus in John 4,
you say the truth when you say you can't love. And of course
we know that Christ loved perfectly so that we are counted as lovers
of our brothers because Christ has loved them. We're not condemned
because of our lack of love, but we don't have the power in
our flesh to love as God has called us to. Matter of fact,
we don't have the power to even love a little bit. Because
sometimes when we find ourselves loving the most, we're doing
it out of fear, hoping that God will bless us. Oh, I just don't
want to make God angry. I guess I'll help my neighbor.
Hey, neighbor. You see, that's not freedom. That's slavery. And perfect love
casts out fear. This is all the context of 1
John. Perfect love casts out all fear. Fear has to do with
punishment. Love has to do with freedom and eternal life and
glory and joy. So the gospel must always bring
us to a place of just almost break dancing. Or whatever kind of dancing you
like to do when you're excited about something. The gospel is not a burden. The
gospel is freedom. The command of God to love is
not a burden. So if God, in His sovereignty, has saved His people,
perfectly, even before the foundations of the earth, of the world, in
Christ Jesus, and then on the cross of Christ, the debt of
sin is paid. You realize that? It's paid.
It's not put into an account and then when you muster up some
type of faith enough to please the Lord, He takes a little bit
of that out of the Jesus account and sprinkles it over there on
yours. That's ridiculous! Paul doesn't teach that. Jesus
doesn't teach that. It's a promise and it's done. Yes and Amen are the promises
of God so we can pray for the will of God. What's this context?
God, I cannot love my brother. Help me love My brother, see
this is faith in Jesus Christ according to the promises of
God. Faith that is at work is love. And for those of you who are
following with us on Wednesday night in our reading of Hebrews,
when we get through that we're going to go right into the book
of James for our little short quick lesson through that. James
teaches the same thing. Love is the centerpiece. So we
can pray, God help me, love. Help me, love. See, don't we have our own definition
of love? You know, we spent, what, two weeks in 1 Corinthians
13, back into going to look at what love is. I didn't spend
enough time there because I wasn't preaching through that letter,
but I'm gonna tell you, we might need to come out of the end of this and go
through it one more time. Just for my sake, to go through it
one more time, because I'm going to tell you right now, for those
of you who look up here and say, look at Pastor, man, if I could
just be like Pastor, don't be like me, be like Christ. You don't
want to be like me. Because you'd be dreaming of
ways to punch people in their throats. And I'm not giving into violence
and I'm not walking around angry, but I'll tell you, beloved, to
lie about the things that are true concerning your sin is to
lie about what God says concerning your sin. Because he says it's
there. Don't say I don't have it. Don't
say. You know what's really crazy?
We get so angry with people we've never met before. Driving, drive-through,
drive-through window. Ranting about Verizon Wireless. Oh, I could climb a tower and
scream to the heavens. There wouldn't be no service
up there either. You see, we have hatred. We love to get together
and say, well, how's so and so doing? Well, I'm gonna tell you
what, you better pray for him. Let me tell you why. You see,
the let me tell you why is sin, it's murder. We love it, we love it, that's
what the flesh does. It thrives on talking about people
rather than praying for people. And we don't have the power. And God is not gonna go ping
and give us a magic slap of the head with some kind of a divine
wand and then all of a sudden we're gonna wake up tomorrow
just going, you know what, I just love everything. We're picking up leaves out of
the yard, trying to put them back on trees. I mean, it's just not
gonna be like that. But when we ask God to help us
love and to cause us to serve and to give us the joy that comes
through it, that is His will because He has said it right
there. So when we pray for God to help us not fall into the
sin of not loving so that we don't fall into the sin of not
believing, He helps us. That is the will of God. Whatever
we ask, we know we have the request that we have asked of Him. Why? Because of the authority of Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ has done all that
is necessary for the salvation of God's people. You have Jesus,
you have life. You have life, you have the love
of God. You have the love of God because
He loved you. Now, because of this gospel,
we can love each other. But I can't, okay, ask God, He
will help you. When? Every day. Several times
a day. When the person that you really
don't love shows up. When the person that you really
don't want to help asks for it. When the person that you really
don't know that well comes into your life in some way. But we're inclined to take care
of ourselves, aren't we? We're inclined to take care of
ourselves. And Paul, when he's teaching about the gospel picture
of marriage, he says that husbands need to love your wives as Christ
loved the church who gave himself up for her. That ought to shut the mouth
of every husband in the faith. Never to argue, never to fight,
never to complain. Do I have complaints? Not a one. that you're gonna hear about my wife. Because Jesus didn't get up on
the cross and moan and cry and declare, these sorry sinners,
they're not even looking at what I'm doing for them. Look at my
hands, look at my blood. I mean, that's the martyr syndrome,
right? He didn't cry out and make bold
claims about what he was gonna do when he got off that cross.
He didn't do the Marvel syndrome. Are you gonna put me in that
ground? Watch now, watch on Sunday. You better not be around here.
I'll burn you with my laser eyes. I mean, no. Jesus died in place
of the ones who hated him and then gave the spirit to cause
those he loved divinely to see. And so not only do we have this
issue of love, we have this issue of prayer, we have this issue
of being able to ask God through the authority of Christ because
we have life in Him. We saw over in chapter 3, verse
21, where John's already said, what does he say? Beloved, if
our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.
And whatever we ask, we receive from Him because we keep His
commandments and do what pleases Him. What does that mean? You
don't remember? Let me remind us what it means. It means that
when we're obeying the clear call of God, the clear command
of Christ to love each other in the gospel, in light of the
gospel, by the power of God, that we're keeping the very commandments
that he's asked us to keep. And in doing so, we have intimacy
and joy. In doing so, we're able to say,
okay, here are the only things that I need to worry myself with. And we also believe in the name
of his son, Jesus Christ. See, those are the commandments.
Verse 23 of chapter three. And this is the commandment,
that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and that we
love one another just as he commanded us. And so we wanna walk with
God. We wanna walk in the intimacy
with the Lord. Let's abide in him. That's what
it means to stay in lockstep with what God's will is for our
lives. Let us love one another. We abide. Because we already
know that He abides in us by the Spirit that He's given us.
So God's sticking with us. Let's stick with Him. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that
the exact opposite of everything we see online, everything we
see in the world today, everything we see on television, everything
we see in the context of the Church of the United States of
America, the Church of the world, everybody's arguing and bickering
and fussing and fighting and standing for truth, baloney.
That's garbage. You're not standing for truth
if you're not silently and willfully praying that God would cause
you to love your brothers and sisters in service. You're not
standing for the truth when you stir in division. That's what
these revisionists were doing. And if a man or a woman wants
to teach, they better be qualified to do so. It's not just given to anybody
to command the saints and to hold authority over the saints.
If a cat comes in and goes, meow, meow, meow, meow, and meows out
the Word of God, we are bound by God Himself to obey it and
submit to it. If a cat reads the Bible, we
must submit to God through the cat. That's why cats can't be
pastors. That'd be a little confusing.
Do you say meow or meow? I don't know. It would be hard, wouldn't it? It's
the Word of God that we submit to, not men. Don't submit to
me except that the Word of God is coming from my mouth. That
the care and the witness of the Gospel is being given to you
through my teaching and through the teaching of the elder brothers
of this fellowship, of this family. And you willfully subject yourself
to these things. Nobody can lord over you. Nobody
can say, no. Hey, you on the street, come
here, you're my sheep. I mean, that's ridiculous. This
isn't some lore ward video game. This is life in Christ. Nobody
has authority to teach you anything except the word of God and only
those who you willfully subject yourself to under the confines
of the local assembly in a loving, intimate, divine relationship
that you have to even listen to what they say. That's why I have great disdain
for social media and its usage. I've never seen good stuff. Long term, never seen good stuff.
Even if the GPS goes dead, you get back on the road sometime. These are the saints of God.
These are the sheep of Christ. These are the ones that Christ
laid down his life for. These are the ones for whom Christ
died. Christ said it is finished. Christ
said I purchased him with my blood. We don't need to play
with the lives of God's sheep. We don't need to step outside
the boundaries of what God's promises are in the word. We
don't need to go and try to twist things to make our stand work. We just need to preach the scripture.
and preach the cross of Christ and then lovingly not hold each
other accountable. I've already, I'm almost, even
though it's true, I'm almost too scared to use the term. I'm
going to hold you accountable. You'll hold me accountable. See
how that sounds? That doesn't sound pleasant, does it? It doesn't
sound pleasant anymore. I want accountability. Oh, do
you now? Pulls out chains, duct tape. You see, that's what it,
that's what it feels like in our culture because that's what's
being given to us. Christ holds us accountable.
How? The love of Christ compels us. That's how. The love of Christ has never
lorded over anyone, but it has set his people free. Well, what about these other
folks? Well, it is the way you look. Do not let your heart condemn
you. Condemnation is not the spirit
of life, but the spirit of the Antichrist. Christ is our victor. So our visage before our own
eyes and the things that we look at and the eyes of others and
their conditions are not our hope. We need to stop looking
at things that are not Christ. And we need to stop listening
to things that are not Christ. Anything we ask, according to
his will, he hears us. There's no fear in love. Perfect
love casts out fear. I've already talked about that
text. In John 16, Jesus says these
words, verse 23 and 24. He says, in this day, in that
day rather, you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to
you that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will
give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing
in my name, ask and you will receive that your joy may be
full. You know what's joyful? Have
intimacy with the Lord through his people under the perfect
boundaries of his word. I asked my youngest last night
to do something simple. She's getting to that age where
I shouldn't probably give these examples. But it's just perfect for today.
It's like the Lord said, you need a little object lesson for
tomorrow. Here, she was jumping in my house. I hate that noise. I can't deal
with it. I just can't. I can't deal with
it. Abigail, stop. That's the face she gave me.
So I said, do you love me? Yes. Well, then listen to what
I'm saying. She turns around, literally makes
that noise like some kind of a velociraptor. And I'm going. I said, why are you acting like
this? She goes, I hate being bossed around. Touche. Touche. Abigail, the word, the
name means the father's delight. It's amazing, isn't it? We don't like being told. We don't like being instructed.
We don't like the confrontation of knowing that our flesh is
weak and selfish and powerless. And we'll struggle with that
until the day we're glorified. So as we've been learning in midweek,
we learned that the discipline of the Lord helps to teach us
this. And to teach us to depend upon him. Beloved, stop right
now thinking what you're gonna do to love somebody better. I
know some of you are already doing it. You're making mental notes. I'll
do this, I'll do that. You've already got, you know,
I haven't seen a whole lot of pens going, but I know your pen
in your brain. I know what it looks like when
you're writing. That's not the point. The point
is to trust in His power. Father, without me making any
plans, and for the sake of Your name, without developing any
programs, Lord, I want to love people.
I want to feel the joy of the Lord that's beyond comprehension.
I want to understand intimacy in a way that I've never understood
it. I want to experience life together
with the saints. Like I've never experienced it
before, I want this Father, help me do these things and God will
plant these things in you if you ask Him. Whatever you ask, you will receive
that your joy may be full. Jesus Christ, His authoritative
work, His name comes with His authoritative work, His effectual
work. So we know that we have eternal
life. So we can then know, we can have
confidence to ask Him to help us live according to this eternal
life. And that command is to love each
other. And by His power, these things
will naturally develop in our hearts. But when we hear the
Word of God, and we suffer the idea that I don't want to do
that. Okay, tell the truth. You don't
want to do it. That's okay. I don't have to do that. You're
absolutely right. But you will not have a full
joy. You will not have a complete
joy. You will not experience life more abundantly until you
die. What do you want? This isn't close to a health
and wealth gospel you're going to get in here. That's what it is. That's what
the Bible, that's what John is saying. And so if I ask God to help me
love my siblings in Christ, John is saying you can ask him
and he'll do it. He will do it because this is his will for
his church. So now our faith in Jesus and
our obedience to his command to love is empowered by his spirit
through prayer. And this results in us not only
having joy, but the reason the joy is full is because we're
helping one another. And that's the very next thing
that he talks about. Verse 16, if anyone sees His
brother, notice that, sees his regenerate, elect brother, sister,
committing a sin not leading to death. He shall ask and God
will give him life. I didn't go over this a little
bit much last week, but let me put these in two piles. We see
here, let me keep reading, to those who commit sins that do
not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death, and I do
not say that one should pray for that sin. All wrongdoing
is sin, but there is a sin that does not lead to death. There
is sin that does not lead to death. Okay, there's two schools
of thought. I'm gonna give you the school
of thought that's historical, and then I'm gonna give you the
school of thought that's contextual. The historical school of thought
is that there's some sin like Ananias and Sapphira, blasphemy
of the Holy Spirit. Remember? And others, and Corinth who took
the Lord's table just because they wanted some food. He's living
wicked lives and Paul warned them, he says, don't do this,
God's gonna start killing y'all. And they're up there eating and
eating and eating and they're dying right there in front of
everybody. That the Spirit testified to the church. These people blasphemed
and lied, not blasphemed, but lied to the Spirit. How did they
lie to the Spirit? They lied to the church. Ananias and Sapphira said, We love y'all. We got a lot of
land and wealth, and we're going to sell it and give it to all
y'all. And they got a little more than they thought they would.
And they thought, they won't ever know the difference. Here's
part of it. And God gave them a chance, didn't
he? Is this everything? Yes. The next one comes in. Is this
everything? Absolutely. And then the church got to see their dead
bodies get carried out. Nobody lied again during that
season of life. See, a lot of people think that's
in view here. There's a sin here where you're lying to the church,
where you're not loving the church, and that's definitely possible
in the sense of the context of this letter. We're supposed to
be loving. But see, there are two commands
in this letter that have to be understood, right? The command
to love one another, but what's the first command? To believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, that's the historical idea.
There's some sin that we see some people doing that's going
to lead to death. Let's don't even pray for them. They're gonna
die one day. Nobody would know that people
were lying to the church. Nobody would know that they weren't
loving, that they were deceiving people as charlatans. And I don't
know about you, but the world is full of charlatans. The world
is full of... Why aren't they killing over
death? It seems like they live long and rich. While the humble saints get cancer
and die. That's what Solomon observed. So here's what I think the contextual
reality of this is. If one sees his elect, converted,
regenerate sibling committing sin, not leading to death, he,
the one, shall ask and God will give him life. What does it mean? Well, I've
already said life, more abundant life, intimate life of joy. When
we sin in our lives in any way, and we sin in any way, whether
it be private, personal, public, whatever it is, it affects our
joy because it affects our relational point of view to the Lord. It
doesn't affect the literal relationship. It doesn't affect our position
before the Father. It doesn't remove God's grace. It doesn't establish the possibility
of losing salvation. It just turns things on its head. And mostly internally, then as
our internal heart condemns us, then our relationship with others
in the body of Christ are severed sometimes. And so I believe the better thing
to see is that there are sin, there is a sin that leads to
death, and that is not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And moreover, there's an opportunity to see
that there may be lost people who don't love and we don't need
to ask God to pray for the lost to learn to love. But see, then
we're back to this brother thing. What does it really mean? John
doesn't give us the answer. He doesn't give us the answer,
so no matter what it is, we know that the context here is that
there is sin that leads to death, and we know by the teaching of
Scripture that if you have the Son, you have life. If you do
not have the Son, you do not have life, so you're in death.
So there may be those who profess to be our brothers and sisters
who do not believe the gospel or who add to or subtract from
the gospel, and we need to be careful to discern by accepting their testimony and then walking together fruitfully
in love. For whatever it is, until the
Spirit of God gives me the understanding of seeing a sin in one of your
lives and says, oh, that's going to lead to death, I'm not praying
for that one. I'm going to continue to pray
for anything that I see. So if we can't apply that, then
stop trying. You know how many books have
been written on what the sin that leads to death, what the
sins are that lead to death? You know what I think they are?
Speeding. Bungee jumping. I mean, silly stuff. Bungee jumping's
not really a sin, but speeding is. Overindulgence of narcotics and
alcohol and Netflix. I mean, there's a lot of stuff
that could lead to death. But that's not the point John's
trying to make. John says, if anyone sees his
brother committing a sin, and I believe the sin is not
being loving, being divisive, destroying the relationship with
the church, that the one who sees it shall ask and the Father
will grant him life, grant him joy, grant him resolve. Don't get me wrong, John says,
verse 17, all wrongdoing is sin. We're not saying there's sins
that are greater than the other. It's all sin, and the weight of the sin
is death. But there is sin that does not lead to death. And I
would say that it's more over this. The sin that does not lead
to death is any sin that the believer does. Any sin. But the sin that leads to death
is any sin that an unbeliever does. Where you get that? Verse 18. We know that everyone
who has been born of God does not keep on sinning. Here's the
key, that he who was born of God protects him and the evil
one does not touch him. So, the one who is born of God does
not keep on sinning. Remember, this is written to
the elect, to the regenerate, to the saints who are the children
of God, who know Christ, who know they have eternal life,
and that Christ is the propitiation for our sins. So we're learning to know the
Lord more intimately through love and through service and
through understanding and learning. But it says there, if we say
We have no sin. We lie. We are self-deceived. And the truth of sin is not in
us. The truth of our sin is not in us. If we confess our sins,
if we're honest about our sins, we know that as sinners, He's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanses us of
all unrighteousness. Of course, that's what Christ
has done. So now we see Keep on sinning. Do you know how many
times I've been told as a young boy and as a young man that that
verse 18 right there, I've been told that that means that we
can be almost sinless in this life. I've also been told that
there's a willfulness. Like, well son, we might have
some accidental sins, but if you really just sin on purpose,
What sin is not on purpose? I mean, I'd love to know what
those were. What sin is it? What you say when you stub your
toe? I could argue that probably wasn't sin, but the outcome of
a willful heart. What it says there, he is our
propitiation. If I sin, When I sin, and in this sense, not loving
my brothers and sisters, let's just keep it in context, that
sin is counted in Christ. That's not a sin that's counted
against me. That's counted against Christ. And it's already been
counted against Christ. See, Paul talks about the amazing
grace of the Lord Jesus in his perpetuatory work, in his substitutionary
work, to such a degree that the first thing that comes to our
minds when we hear that is, you're saying I can do whatever I want
to do? And Paul says, should we sin more so that grace may
abound? And the answer is no, that's
absurd. How are you going to fornicate in the name of grace?
How are you going to lie and deceive in the name of Christ?
How are you going to murder in the name of grace. Praise
the Lord, you're about to die. I mean, that's just silly, isn't
it? It's foolish, but that's Paul's argument. This is foolish.
Nobody can murder in the name of grace. It's about grace. What
grace does is demonstrate not only the point of God's love,
but the effectual nature of God's love for His elect. That the
sins are no more, so then why do we want to stack them back
up on Jesus? That's the mindset there. And don't go there, don't
say, oh that's how it works, oh no, oh no. No, we're not mystics. Jesus isn't being snatched back
up on the cross every time somebody sins. The sins are forgiven,
they are paid for. So we are not continuing in sin
because God has birthed us from His Spirit. And then we help each other.
And we pray for ourselves and we pray for each other. And remember
what does Paul say in Galatians? What is that text there in Galatians?
Is it Galatians 6? Those who are spiritual help
restore those who are in sin. Look at this for a second. I think it is. Brothers, if one is called in
any sin, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit
of gentleness, and you should keep watch on yourself lest you
too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, should
have thought about this earlier, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Now look at that. Love one another. Take time to pray for one another. We need to spend more time encouraging
each other in the gospel rather than trying to control each other
with fear. And most of all, we need to rest
in the finished work of Christ who loved us and gave Himself
for us. So if we just go there first,
a lot of times any problem will take care of itself, including
your lack of joy. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, that though
we were dead in our sins and guilty before You, that You suffered
Your Son on the cross and put your full justice upon Him. And in doing so, your wrath is
satisfied, your righteousness is satisfied, Father, your holiness
is satisfied, because you have forgiven your
people. You have forgiven us greatly.
And it is just because Christ took our place and took the penalty
of our sin. And Father, You have promised
eternal life to all who are given to the Son, and You have given
Your people to Him, and He has paid for their sins, and we,
as we teach each other, as we teach the world, as we call all
people everywhere to think and listen and come to the truth
of Christ, we know that You will call Your elect. You will call them out. You will
grant them faith. And they will see Jesus. And
they will see that they have been found in Him. And they will
know that they are your people. And so, Father, above all things,
I pray that you would grow us intimately in this gospel. And
that we would not worry and labor, but that we would pray and rest.
And as we teach and as we experience things that are sweet and things
that are bitter, Lord, that we would not lose hope because you
have sealed us with your spirit. Help us to stay close to you
by staying close to one another in your word that you would equip
us and fulfill us in Christ until the day where we all stand glorified
with you in his name and by his great power. Amen. Thank you,
beloved.