Good morning. Let's turn together
to the first letter of John and we're still in chapter 5 now
and for a few more weeks. Maybe a few more months. A few
more weeks. Let's read the chapter together.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of
God and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been
born of Him. By this we know that we love
the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments.
For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and
his commandments are not burdensome for everyone who has been born
of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that
overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the
world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God?
This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not
by the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the
Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth.
For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and
the blood, and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of
man, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony
of God that He is born concerning His Son. Whoever believes in
the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not
believe God has made God to be a liar because he has not believed
in the testimony that God has borne concerning his son. And this is the testimony that
God gave us eternal life and that this life is in his son.
Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son
of God does not have life. I write these things to you who
are believing in the name of the son of God. that you may
know that 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 we know that if He hears
us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that
we have asked of Him. If anyone sees his brother committing
a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him
life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There
is a sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should
pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but 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 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 in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and the eternal
life. Little children, keep yourselves
from idols. Now we're up in and around verse
14 right now. And so when I approach this text,
when I approach this pulpit, there are always a plethora of
things that are true concerning my condition. I am always in
sin. That's number one. Because there's
never a moment, never a time, never a day when sin is not true
of even the believer. We have sin in our lives. It
doesn't mean I'm in sin by reading this to you today. But do you
know what I mean? We are sinners. And there is an element in which
our depravity, and some people say, well, depravity is gone.
No, depravity is destroyed. It is overcome by Christ. The
new birth is that act of God where he overcomes the power
of sin and death, the consequence of death, the consequence of
sin, the initial and true original guilt. So yes, by the Spirit
of God, we believe in the gospel that through any natural means
we would not be able to see. We see because of the new birth.
We see because of the love of God for us, his people. We see
because of the power of the Holy Spirit making sense in our minds
to trust in the teaching of the Bible according to the testimony
of God that he bore concerning his son. And all of these things
John has come to teach us. There's another thing that's
true of me is that I am at war with myself. I am at war with
myself. Many, many, if not almost every
single moment that I have to teach. Some people have always
told me through the years, you know, I just can't wait to preach.
I can't wait to preach. I can't wait to preach. I can't
wait not to preach. I enjoy it. It is my call. I
can do nothing else. If anything gets in the way of
it, God has a real good, awesome, loving, powerful way of destroying
everything that gets in the way of my call. Everything. Everything, even my hobbies.
Everything. But I am at war with myself. There are many things that are
going on in this messed up brain of mine. And these messed up
thoughts are destroying my emotions and my emotions are messing up
my thoughts. And the circumstances of society,
the circumstances of community, the circumstances in our body
on all counts is more than I can bear. more than I can bear. Christ
has borne them. Christ has carried them. We are
victorious because Christ has overcome the world. You see,
I'm just refreshing everything we've already learned, starting
in chapter one, and applying it to myself. Because beloved,
it also applies to you. It is true of you. Another thing
that is true is the fact that God himself in the spirit gives
us I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what needs
to come after what I'm trying to say right now. What is it
that God gives us? God gives us the power to endure. Not in our flesh,
but in Christ. Why? Because Christ endured the
cross and he was raised from the dead. And by looking at the
gospel, by seeing the gospel through spiritual eyes, we hold
fast and endure. We cannot be lost. I want you
to understand that, beloved. We cannot be lost. We cannot
trust in the gospel and be lost. It's impossible. You will not
lose your salvation. You cannot lose your salvation.
There is not one elect person who has ever lived or will ever
live in the world who will die and stand in the judgment of
God because the judgment of God has been satisfied in the death
of Jesus Christ for all the elect of all time forever. Our salvation
is secured and finished when Jesus said it is finished. And there's our hope. That is
the power of God unto salvation. That is the power of God, as
Peter talks about, to live a godly life because we focus on these
truths. And by the Spirit, He empowers
us even when we're unable to know that we're prayed for. Some
of you have reminded me of that time and time again over the
last few months. Because my prayer life is one of the most difficult
disciplines to establish in times like this. How is yours? I'm going to promise you, if
you're praying effectively, it's going to be very difficult. And
that's our subject today, isn't it? Prayer, asking, petitioning
the Lord. So we're at war. We're at war
in our minds against the flesh. The flesh is at war with the
truths of God. I am fearful of a man's testimony
when he says he has no burdens. I'm fearful of a man's testimony
who kicks up his heels like he just bought a Toyota from the
90s. Like there's nothing wrong in
the world. And I can work with someone and I can walk with someone
who is burdened and overcome and overwhelmed a lot easier
than I can walk with someone who is happy-go-lucky, everything's
awesome. Because I have no place in my
mind, in the history of my short life, I have no place to relate
to that. I've never had a season of awesome.
I've never had a season of complete joy in the world. I've never
had a season when there wasn't persecution, when there wasn't
problems, when there wasn't pain. And beloved, I think that is
true for the true believer. Because if we really see those
people who are like, everything's great, it's great because they're looking
at the wrong thing. Everything's great, but it's
not great. Paul never said, everything's
great, guys. I'm writing you from my vacation
home in Rome. I took a two-year sabbatical
so I could write. See, that's what the knucklehead
theologians of today do. I'm going to take a sabbatical
so I can say things that I think other people should hear. It's
what publishing's all about. It's egotistical. No, Paul didn't write from his
vacation home. Paul didn't write from his sabbatical. Paul didn't
write, say, you know what, I had a massage this morning and rode
horses last night and went out on the beach and listened to
some good praise and worship music and everything was good.
Looked at my hands up at the sky, saw the stars, was reminded
of the covenant of Abraham and man, it's just, I've had such
a great month. No, Paul says, I was hated, despised, whipped,
beaten, left for dead, shipwrecked, destroyed, always given over
in the body to death. Though I am bound and changed,
though my hands are tied with iron, though I have not had food
in thirty days, the Word of God is not bound. Do not labor over
me in my suffering, for my suffering is my joy. What kind of craziness
is that? That's the writing of the apostles. Beloved, we share in that suffering because God loves us. Because if God were to become
a genie in the bottle to grant us the desires of our heart of
the flesh, we would be living our best life
now. And we would stand in his judgment,
having never seen the truth of Christ. We're at war. And I'll tell you
that war, oh, it is one of the hardest things
we'll ever do in this world. But there is a moment, a promise
to us when we see our Savior face-to-face. I read out of 1
Thessalonians this morning before the service, and Paul is encouraging
these saints who love each other with a deep spiritual, supernatural
affection. Not a worldly, I love this guy
because of what he's doing for me, I love this guy because God
has testified that he is in Christ, because the gospel comes from
his heart. And there's this sincerity that's
not required. It's not about sincerity. The
greatest sincere folks in the world are cults. It's about a serious, divine
interaction that only the elect who have been born of God can
see and understand. and they can't define it. Sort
of like the joy that Peter talks about that's indescribable. Though
we are suffering and mourning and are in tears, we have joy
that is indescribable. So we see all of this stuff taking
place and we look at the opportunity to pray. I'm going to just get
back to the point, the topic. We get the opportunity to pray.
We're overcome We don't know how to pray. We don't know where
we should pray. We don't know what we should
pray. We're not disciplined enough to pray. We can't keep our minds
on the things of prayer. See, if our lives are so super in the world, what are
we praying for anyway? What are we really driven to
pray for? And I've had great role models. in my life, what
we would call prayer warriors today, people who prayed constantly. And I have journals of some of
these women in my life, grandmothers and great-grandmothers who prayed, who wrote prayers. You see the prayers of Scripture,
the ones Paul writes, the one John wrote of Jesus, you want
to see the prayers, write those things down. And I read these
prayers and I've had good role models, but you can't learn to
pray by watching others pray. You can just go through the motions.
And so what we find, we buy a book on prayer and we follow the model,
right? I mean, the text we're in today
says this is the confidence, verse 14, that we have toward
Him, toward God, toward our Father toward the Son, toward the Spirit, 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 have asked of Him. Now, what's the context here?
It's about prayer. And I'll tell you, the spiritual
sense in which we live under the burdens of this life will
reflect our prayers. And I'm not saying we shouldn't
pray for trivial things. But let me go ahead and give
some caveats here. The Bible tells us that we can pray for
trivial things. We can make our requests and
petitions known to God. We can pray. We're commanded
to pray on behalf of other people. We're to pray blessings. on our
enemies. We're to pray God bless those
who revile us. We're to pray positively to our
Father for His positive kindness toward His own enemies in our
lives. And if we don't, we don't have
the mind of Christ. We don't understand the mind
of Christ. to say anything else in contrast to what I just declared
from my mouth is to blaspheme the Word of God. You may not
understand it. You may say, well, I thought
you can think what you want to think, but the Word of God teaches
it clearly and myopically. In our character, in our mind,
and in our human flesh, we are to love every single human being
that we ever encounter. Period. Bar none. There's no
exceptions. And that love is sacrificial
in prayer and in needs and deeds. But we have a different kind
of love, don't we, for the saints, for the brothers and sisters,
because we have that love that we're required to give our neighbor
and our enemy and the government and everybody else. That's why
it's sinful to mock a leader of our nation, no matter what
political puddle of manure he stands in. It's sinful to mock
someone, especially an unbeliever. Sinful. In Grace Truth Church,
we're going to stop that. I'm not saying we're preaching
to the choir, but we're not going to be a party to that. And we're not going to mock anybody. Because I want us to be known
as Christ followers. We're to love. And it's costly. It's costly because the world
looks at us and thinks we're nuts. Why are they acting like this?
I have so many times in life, and y'all have too. How many
times in life have you had someone label you one thing, and then
in the same day or week or group, somebody label you something
else that's completely contradictory to the other label? And you can
carry five or six labels based on how people assume you are,
and then they judge you accordingly. See what was happening here in
John? People were judging the saints as lost. People were judging the doctrines
of Christ wrongly. And you can't win. So what do
we do? We pray. We pray for our enemies. Because even our enemies in this
season of life may be our brothers tomorrow. They may be the elect of God
who have yet to been awakened by the Spirit in the new birth.
They may not know. And how dare we think that we
know because of who we are and how good we are and how awesome
we are. We ought to weep and pray. We're to pray for people in high
places. We're to pray for the rich. We're to pray for the poor.
We're to bless and love and be kind and courteous and not show
favoritism. When we get through with Hebrews
on midweek, we're gonna do a reading through James. And I think when
I'm through with John's letters, I'm gonna teach through the Timothy
letters and Titus. I'm gonna teach through those
three again. Give us some instruction that comes from that text alone.
Give myself some instruction. I need some reminding about my
role and my responsibility. We're to pray. We're to pray. But how do we pray? Where do
we go? Do we buy a book? Do we go to
the bookstore and we buy a book on prayer and we follow the models?
Do I follow the models of my mentors throughout my life? Do
I come to the place where, you know what, I sit down with you
and say, how do you pray? Would you write that prayer down for
me and I read that prayer? This is what I was saying before I
went off on that little thing. We'll pray based on the burdens
of our soul. We'll pray according to the God-given
burdens of our lives. We will pray out of our suffering. We will
pray according to the will of God
when we know the word of God. God's will for us, his children,
is, of course, to know him. through Jesus Christ, and John
17 3 says this is eternal life. This is the truth. The spirit
of the truth, the testimony of God concerning his son, he has
given us this knowledge, we have it, we know it, we know him,
and now we must learn to discern and discriminate against those
things which are not truth. And that's why this letter was
written. So we can see some error that was taking place in John's
day, and it was infiltrating the church, and this error then
was overwhelming these Christians. They began to start having hatred
in their heart toward others. Then they were suspicious of
their own siblings in Christ, and then they began to labor
against them. And John's saying, you gotta
test the spirits, man. And you've got to obey God Almighty
when He tells you to love one another and you don't get to
decide how or when you do it. You can, but God commands you
this way. See, we hate that word, don't
we? We hate the word command so hard because it ties itself
to all sorts of heresy and false gospels. But that's exactly what
Paul is saying. When Paul says, Therefore you
do this, God has commanded it of you, not unto your salvation,
but unto your joy. See, the letter was written that
our joy may be full. That's why it is a terrible thing. If I get into the pulpit and
I preach out of my position of emotion or heart or burden or
frustration, man alive, you can tell the difference when I say
things that are my frustrations versus the Lord's encouragement,
can't you? You can tell when I'm mad at a certain situation
or a certain group of people, and it might not be but a 10
second statement, but I'll tell you this, you can tell the difference. Why? Because my entire countenance
changes, because my heart is driven to the flesh rather than
being driven by the Spirit. Preaching should never be done
for the sake of laboring a burden over the sheep. You can't preach
Christ in anger. You realize that? You can preach Christ because
really you're preaching against Christlessness in anger. Look at Paul's letter to the
Galatians. Starts out angry, righteously so. These are his
beloved brothers and sisters. These are his children in the
faith. These are the elect of God. And these knuckleheads have
come in and tried to get them attached back to the law. Are
you kidding me? That's not somebody coming in
your living room and calling all your family ugly and pouring
chocolate milk on your rugs. You're not going to be like,
well, bless my soul, I wanted some brown tint to that rug. I can't
believe, thank you. No, we're going to have a problem.
But then Paul quickly gets to the gospel. And the gospel is
not angry. The gospel is not a burden. The
gospel is not something that causes us strife. The gospel
is not something that causes us to worry or fear. The gospel is something that
has to be preached in joy. So you know one of the greatest
ways in which God empowers me to overcome who I am and what
I'm going through and everything that I selfishly love to wallow
in when I stand in this pulpit is that the Word of God by His
Spirit gives me the greatest joy that I've ever experienced
throughout the entire week. And what I want to do is I want
you to share in that. I want you to share in that.
Because no matter how well we do, in our community, no matter
how well we do online, no matter how well we do with loving others,
our enemies and everybody included, it's never going to be good enough.
So it's not like we're trying to appease God because the gospel
says it's good news that God the Father is appeased in the
death of his son. So he sees us in the eyes of the righteousness
of Christ or through the lens of the righteousness of Christ.
We are the righteousness of God imputed to us from Jesus himself. So God is not angry with his
church. God is not upset with us. God is not going in there
disappointed with us. But yet we see through the relational
way that the Bible expresses the Godhead, the three persons
of the Godhead. We see that Paul says that we
can grieve the Holy Spirit. And how is it that we grieve
the Holy Spirit when we do not pray as we should and when we
allow relational issues that are not gospel to divide us? to the point that we start hating
one another. And beloved, the reason John
puts this praying thing at the end of the letter is because
he's had to get to the love of God and he's had to get to the
reality of testing the spirit. And he's had to get to the encouragement
of telling these beloved children not to worry about those who
fight against them and against their gospel. because the Word
of God that he writes in this letter will, by the Spirit of
God, testify to the heart and to the mind of the child of God,
and the child of God will fall under its submission. They are from the world, therefore
they speak from the world, and the world listens to them, and
we are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever
is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit
of truth and the spirit of error. You know, you've heard that said
over and over again. If you want to hear that preaching
again, you can go back and listen to it. But ultimately, we who
are filled with the Spirit of God, who are sealed by the Spirit
of God, we hear the words of John in this letter, and we know
that they are the words of God. Now, we may, in our obstinance,
go, I don't like that, and we're going to pretend, and our pride's
going to make us go, I'm not going to submit to that. I'm
not doing that. And we can find reasons not to. But ultimately,
we are rebelling against God willfully, and we know it. We
know it. And if you don't have joy in
the midst of your rebellion, I'm so sorry. It's not my problem. The Word of God gives us joy
when we see and clearly understand that which God is calling us
to. And we can't make each other,
what? We can't make each other bend to each other's will. We
can't make each other bend to the will of God. We can't do
that in salvation. I can't convince anybody. I've
never convinced any person that's ever breathed or whose ears have
ever heard my voice. I've never convinced them to
believe the gospel or to understand the gospel or to change their
lives because of the gospel. Only the word of God by the spirit
does that. That's it. That's why we believe
in exposing and expositing the scripture. So now we're back
to the idea of prayer. You see this joy, confidence? How are we praying? Well, think
about it for a second. There are ways in which we pray,
and there are ways in which we've learned to pray, and there are
ways in which we've learned about prayer. But what I just said
before I said that is that only God can teach us how to pray.
And only God's word can teach us how to pray. So I think all
the prayer books that have been written throughout the centuries
are just a bunch of wasted trees. And I've read them. I mean, have
you ever read a book on prayer? Have you ever read a book on
prayer, trying to get it in? And how many books have we read? Okay,
that one worked for a season, now we gotta find another one.
And there's a new one, and maybe there's a fifth. Or, oh, get
this, Puritan prayers. Them people could pray. They
pray in an old tongue, an older tongue. It's modern English,
but it's an older dialect. It's incredibly profound, and
it's like, man, these people, that's all they did. Church service,
eight days a week. That's all they did. Of course
they had the tongue of the King's English in prayer. But reading their prayers isn't
me praying. And I think our prayers need
to be subject to our personalities. I don't see anywhere in the Bible
that teaches us that we have to pray a certain tone. But there is
a way in which the Bible says we have to pray in a certain
manner. We see the book of James. Oh, he had his hands full. He
had his hands full with these guys. There were people in that
church. They were the elect and they
were really, they really had a problem. They should have,
James should have made them sit down and read John's letter,
but it wasn't written yet. So he had to, you know, He had
problems. He had people who were egotistical
in the faith. I know the truth. I know the
best. I am the best. Look at me. And
then the scumbags of the earth, according to these people, began
walking into the fellowship. You know, that's why we keep
the front row open for the prestigious. Get that right. Don't sit up
here if you ain't in the right dress. But that's what it was in James
Day. And James rebukes them hard. It's hard to come away with some
joyfulness when James' letter showed up, wasn't it? That's
why you gotta have the gospel in mind, don't you? Sometimes
we have to have a member's fellowship that's a little hard, haven't
we? It's not very joyful when we literally excommunicate people
from our lives because of their refusal to submit to the clear
teaching of Scripture. It's hard. It'd be easier to
preach their funeral for me. But God has promised that the
only way he'll reconcile any of it is to follow that which
he's prescribed for all of it. And so James is getting to the
heart of the matter in James 4. Listen to these words. It's
what causes quarrels and fights among you. What is it? What is
it that caused you to grumble? Is it not this, that your passions
are at war within you? Did that sound familiar? Didn't
I say something about myself today? You desire and you do not have,
so you murder. Now nobody was taking each other's
lives, they were gossiping. They were calling up folks, aggravating
each other, talking about things, murdering in their hearts and
with their mouths and with their lives. You covet and you cannot
obtain, so you fight and you quarrel. You do not have because
you do not ask. And you ask and you do not receive
what you ask for because you ask wrongly. Why do you ask wrongly?
You ask God to do that which you want Him to do so that it
may be spent on your passions. And then James says, you adulterous
people. Now these are saints. These are
the elect of God, regenerate elect. He's already said that. Count it all joy, my brothers. the elect of God, who are being
taught to live according to the mind of Christ. You adulterous
people, do you not know that friendship with the world is
enmity with God? What does it look like in James'
and in John's context of his first epistle? Friendship with
the world, do not love the world, the things of the world, the
pride of life, the lust of the eyes, the pride of possession, for these
things are not from God, but from the world, and the world and everything
that is passing away. do not love these things. So why is
it that we love the methods that the world has provided? We love
the methods of debate. We love the methods of arguing.
We love the methods of theology. We love the methods of prayer.
We love the methods of reconciliation. We love the methods. For those of you who have ever
read Cicero or Plato or Socrates or any of these, and you know
that this is an age-old issue. But yet we read the Word of God
and we see, don't do it, don't be there. God opposes the proud. Therefore, whoever wishes to
be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God, or do you suppose
it is of no purpose that the Scripture says he yearns jealously
over the Spirit that he is made to dwell in us, but he gives
more grace? Therefore, it says, God opposes
the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves,
therefore, to God. Resist the devil, and he will
flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to
mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the
Lord and He will exalt you. Do not speak evil against another brother.
The one who speaks evil against another brother or judges his
brother speaks evil against the law and judges the law of God.
And in that context, judges the holiness of God. But if you judge
God's holiness, you are not a doer of righteousness, but a judge.
There is only one lawgiver and only one judge who is able to
save us to destroy. But who are you to judge your
neighbor? Come now! You who say this, that. And so
he gives them examples of how they're living in a passion for
the flesh. James does. Now, why would I
segment into that in the context of 1 John 5, 14? Because it's
about prayer. See, I'm willing to bet you that
James' audience prayed fervently and prayed publicly. and prayed
often. The question is, what was the
prayer of their heart? Well, Jesus gives us the model,
doesn't he? Jesus tells us. He didn't pray this prayer. This
is not a prayer that Jesus prayed. People say, let's say the Lord's
Prayer. It's okay to memorize this as scripture, but it's not
the prayer Jesus prayed. Jesus says, pray, and when you
pray, do it in private so that no one can hear you or see you,
because you're praying to your Father. Don't stand out on the corner
like the Pharisees, like the hypocrites, like the actors.
Don't stand up and make the good King James prayers on the public
platform. But pray. And when you pray,
pray in this manner. Pray this way. Our Father in
heaven who is holy. You see that? Your will is done. Your kingdom
come on earth as it is in heaven. Father, give us what we need.
And forgive us of our sins as we are forgiving others who sin
against us. Father, help us in our unbelief. That we aren't
led away into temptation. Lead us out of the temptation
of the devil. James talks about that too, doesn't
he? James 1. And hold us fast, Father, and
Your promises, for Your kingdom is all. You are all in all. Amen. Let it be. It is so. It
is so. It is so. It is true. This is
the prayer that Jesus says that we should pray. And this is how we ask according
to the will of God. But what's the context now in
John's writing? He says anything according to
His will, He hears us. It's like if my children, if
I get home today, and my children, some of my children come and
say, hey, dad, I want a Lamborghini. Go get me a Lamborghini. I'll
go get it. I'll go down to the dollar store and buy a little
matchbox Lamborghini. Gotta be specific. You know. Hey, dad, I want a Lamborghini
I can drive. Maybe a little more expensive, but I can work that
out. Go to Toys R Us and get one of
those little battery deals. I can modify it that will hold
300 pounds. Put some real tires on that thing. No, I want a real
Lamborghini. It's impossible. Can't do it.
Well, it's not impossible. I could go steal one. But it's
impossible for me to purchase one. It's impossible. Not only
that, it's ridiculous. Why would I give that to my children?
That's not even in the scope of what I would even consider.
Now, why that? Because I wanted one of those
when I was 12. Who didn't? It's a good-looking car. We ask that which is according
to the will of God. How do we do so? And what specifically
now are we looking at praying in the middle of this issue about
love and holding fast and believing the gospel? Because it is hard
to do. That's the point. It is hard
to rest in grace. It is hard to believe the promises
of God when our flesh is attacking us, when our mind is attacking
us, when the world is against us, when everything seems to
be crashing down around us, when there is a fire and it's coming
close and we have nowhere to go. It's hard to rest when the
flesh is so knowledgeable, wise, active, and responsive. Isn't
it? I mean for years I have trained
people punching at my face and hitting my body. I don't feel
pain like most of you do. You can punch and kick me a lot
harder and more often than most people can take. Because I have
desensitized myself and my reactions to people putting fists in my
face. This is sport fighting now. This is not like I bought
it in a brawl or a gang or anything. But yet if somebody comes up
to the random person, just an average person on the street and puts,
you know, swings at them or slaps them, it's counterintuitive to
stand there. It's counterintuitive to breathe
underwater. It's counterintuitive. The flesh goes against the spirit. The flesh that we live in, this
meat suit, this consciousness, this mind, these thoughts, they
go against the very simple promises of God in the Bible. And so when
we are not able to withstand, we need just ask. That's what John's saying. And
even then, It is all an act, it is all an instance of mercy
from the Lord. The Father comforts us. How does
he do that? How does the Father encourage
us to pray? The Father comforts us through the Spirit, sometimes
just supernaturally. We don't even know why. You ever
just been in a really bad place and then all of a sudden you
just feel at peace? It could be because of some correlation
or some connection, something you drank, something you ate,
something you remembered. Or it could be that the Spirit
of God in that moment, through the remembrance of the Word,
comforts you. And for that moment, for that five seconds, or for
that five days, you are at peace, not laboring over these circumstances.
And that can't happen that way. Sometimes it is that you're driven
to the Word of God and you're in despair and you're snatching
the pages around and you're going, where is it? Where's your peace? And you tear your office apart
and you throw your CRT monitor on the ground. You don't throw your Bible because
it costs too much, but you would if it was a cheap one. And you land on your butt and
you have destroyed every physical thing within a 10 foot proximity
in your frustration and anger and absolute brokenness and you're
daring God to show you peace. And you open it up and you see
Hebrews 1 and that's a true story for me. It's about Christ. Sometimes
even in our rage and our frustration and our inability to even rest,
we sort of turn like Gideon and we test the Lord in sin and God
is faithful. And sometimes it's just in the
calmness of our day where we have read the Word of God maybe
today or last week or a month ago and the Spirit sweetly, like
a mother, brings it to our attention and we have peace. And sometimes
it's through the relationship with the body of Christ where
we encourage each other through the Word and through the promises
of God. That's why we have to make sure, beloved, that we are
always building up, not tearing down. always encourages to the joy
of the Lord. When we tear down, we are working
in the flesh. Tear down idols! You find that
and come see me after service. You don't have the authority
to tear down idols, except the ones that are in your own log-filled
eyes. That's the last sermon of this
series, by the way. I don't have the right to tear
down your idols. Because I don't have the right
to judge those things as idols. I don't have the right. But I
do have the responsibility of teaching you the truth of Christ.
And teaching you the instruction of the Word. And that together
then we are learning to pray, Father help me. I'm an idolater. I'm an adulterer. I worship false gods. And some
of us may be sitting there saying today, well, I don't worship
false gods. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. And I'd be remiss
to say what they were because then I would contradict what
I said just a minute ago. So I'll just let you and the Lord
handle those things. And when the sermon comes out, we'll see
if they apply. Generally speaking, I don't have
a list of everybody's names on here. I got these idols down
here. Because if I'm going to do that, then all of you put
my name on a page and everybody else can see my idols too. And
we're not, that's not productive. What's productive is to see the
worship of Christ. What's productive is to learn
to pray according to the will of God. And the Father is teaching
us through the written word right here that we can pray because
Christ has overcome the world. It is the will of God that we
rest in the joy of Christ in the midst of greatest pain, discomfort,
despair, and persecution. It is the will of God that we
rest in the joy of Christ. We cannot fear anything the world
comes with when we are resting with everything God the Father
has come with in His Son. You ever had that friend that
always had your back, never would let you down, was a lot stronger
than you, a little crazier than you, and you knew that no matter
where you were in the world, If that guy was with you, or that
girl was with you, you were safer. And I've had those friends. They're
usually large and pro athletes. And you're, I know for me, I'm
a little more arrogant when I got a guy like that standing on my
six. In any circumstance. I mean,
we're just going to the movies, we're going out to eat, we're
doing something like that, and you got this guy up here? Somebody
comes up and gets in your face, you say a lot more, don't you?
Because you're not fearful. And you turn around, and that
jack's been to the bathroom, and he's not there. And you're like,
oh! What have I done? Well, my dad would always say,
son, your mouth has wrote a check that your butt can't cash. Now, see, we would take that
in a physical sense, in a real sense, in the world, and we would
feel more confident. Like children, when mom and dad are really only
on the other side of the sheetrock and the wall. But, you know,
that two and a half feet makes the world of difference to a
child. The monster's going to devour my brains while I sleep,
and the monster can't touch me because dad's here. Well, I've got a seatbelt. And
I'm going to drive 200 miles an hour. That's okay. They'll know where to find your
body. And we have a false sense of
security in the world. But beloved, we don't need to
have a false sense of security in the Christ. We don't need to labor over fear
and worry about how it's going to turn out, about the weather. And those of you who know me,
I worry about the weather. I deleted all of my radar apps,
by the way. In September, I deleted them
all. I took down the third monitor that I had watching the world's
weather. I mean, I worried about formations
in the ocean six months before season starts. Can't worry about
that like I can do anything about it. No, this way. We worry, but we shouldn't worry.
We shouldn't fear because he who believes that Jesus is the
Son of God has overcome the world because we have faith in the
one who is the overcomer. And this is not about life, liberty,
the pursuit of happiness, health, wealth, and jolly good times.
This is about standing firm in the promise of God for eternal
life, knowing that every pain, every tear, every sick angst
that comes from our soul is part of God's love for us, to train
us in righteousness, to believe, So when we pray, we pray that
God would sustain us by His promises, that God would help us to maintain
a faith in His faithfulness, to know that His faithfulness
is true despite our faith. I'm talking to you, believer.
I'm not talking to an unbeliever when I preach from this pulpit. Unless some of you are mistaken. Unless some of you maybe are
not born of God. Which is a possibility. A great possibility. But only
through the teaching to the church will those who are the elect
actually hear the truth. Make disciples. Teach one another. Teach the willing. You know the
difference in casting pearls before swine and doing biblical
teaching? You only talk to those who want
to talk and learn. That's the difference. We ask anything according to
His will. He hears us. It is the will of
the Father for us to walk in joy. It is the will of the Father
for us to walk in unity. It is the will of the Father
for us to have a strength in faith. It is the will of the
Father that we understand the love of God, that we understand
the righteousness of God, that we learn the gospel more and
more, that we sit in a place of really soaking up the truths
of grace upon grace upon grace. It is the will of the Father
that we test the spirits and that we sit at peace, we sit
at peace at the table of redemption knowing that the spirit of error
is by the will of God who put the words even in the mouths
of heretics. that he may deceive the nations. God will not let his children
stay in error. He will not let his children
stay in fear. Christ has finished the work. So when we are laboring, let
us pray to our Father to help us stop laboring. How silly is it for me to think
that I have the power or the wisdom or the intellect or anything
to help anybody do anything spiritual that God Himself cannot do. I
can't even get it in my own mind. That's why it's called counsel.
That's why it's called encouragement. That's why it's called teaching.
We can only teach and encourage and counsel that which the Word
of God has taught, encouraged and counseled and caused us to
know. Beloved, there are a lot of things
that we pray for. There are a lot of things that
we pray for. And in the context of this, John is not teaching
an exposition on prayer. It's just a sentence or two.
He's reminding his readers that which they already know. That's
why we need to understand and have Romans chapter 8 in our
hearts. This affliction, these things that we're going through
right now are nothing compared to the glory that awaits. That's
what Paul begins to say in Romans 8. And then when we are broken
and we're turned around and we're in turmoil and we're in this
swirl of life and we don't even know what we ought to pray, the
Spirit of God prays in our weakness. And the Spirit of God always
has God answer the prayers because the Spirit of God always prays
according to the will of the Father on our behalf. And you don't know how many times
in these last year that I've even been able to say, Father,
your spirit is praying on my behalf, and I don't even know
what he's praying for, but your will be done in my life. It's
settled. Back away. Back away. And let the Lord have
it. But John wants to illustrate
the truth of faithful prayers and that God will answer and
God will answer the prayers of his people when we ask him to
cause love to be true in the church. God will answer the prayers of
his people when we ask God that his elect come to the knowledge
of the truth amongst us. He will answer that. God will
answer the prayers of his church when we see each other in sin,
whether in doctrine or whether in deed, God will answer our
prayers and that's why verse 16 is what it is. If anyone sees
his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall
ask and God will give him life. Now there are, and I'll talk
more about this next week, but the sinning that leads to death,
there are so many theological commentaries or commentators
on this issue. But let me ask you this right
now. In the context of John's gospel,
what is the one thing that is assumed of his readers? That they are
born of God and they are the elect. So the sin that is leading to
death could mean one of two things. It could mean the sin of unbelief.
Does that not lead to death? Any sin in the life of a unbeliever
is death. The wages of sin is death. The
free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. Any sin in the
life of a believer does not lead to death. The power of death
is gone. It does lead to consequences. It does lead to division, it
may lead to excommunication, but it doesn't lead to death,
unless the sin is destructive and deadly. Like drug abuse, or driving too
fast, or jumping out of windows for no apparent reason, or whatever
it might be. And some people say, well, that
could be in line. Maybe it's a sin that actually causes God
to kill folks. I don't see that anywhere else
in the Bible. So I affirm the idea that in
the context of John's writing, that the sin that leads to death
is something that was either instructed to these people alone
that we don't understand, but it could also be inclusive of
those who are not believers and their sin. In other words, we
ought not be praying for an unbeliever to walk in a manner worthy of
a believer. And I'll talk about this a little bit more next week. But yet when we see our brother, because we know it's not a brother,
because Paul says don't pray for that. Don't pray for the
sins of the lost for their actions to change. Because there's no
context there. But pray that God will give him
life. I came, Jesus says, that you
may have life and have it more abundantly. You see, sometimes
we put the focus, and this is where the devil is in the detail
sometimes, literally. We take these things, and there
are a plethora of people who have taken that idea of abundant
life and illustrated what the world says is an abundant life,
but we know we are overcoming the world. We are not to love
the world. Chapter 2. So when we see this idea of giving
life, are you living? Are you truly living life? Are
you truly full of joy when you are living in fear and dissension
and division and frustration and anger and resentment and
bitterness? No. Are you in joy when you are absolutely
rebelling against God willfully knowing that there are sins in
your life that are destroying your heart and attacking the
very nature of gospel truth in your life? No. So the scripture
is saying, let us pray for our brothers and sisters who doubt. Let us pray for them who sin.
Let us pray for them who are not walking as I've instructed
you to walk this day and God will hear that prayer because
He answers the prayers that are according to His will. So are we praying? Or are we fretting? Are we praying? If you can't pray for yourself,
it's hard. Ask other people to pray for
you. Pray for me. That's all you have to say. Pray
for me. You don't have to embarrass yourself. You don't have to give
details about all the ungodliness that's going on in your life.
God doesn't need me to know all the details of what's happening
for you in order for Him to answer the prayers. If you ask for prayer,
we can pray for one another. And yes, we need counsel sometimes
with people who will keep our secrets. There's nothing worse than someone
defying confidence. And we've all done it. We've all done it. And that's why we have to be
very careful. Pray, because what happens in
a weak conscience, a weak Christian, when they hear about your sin,
then you ask them to pray, and it troubles them, and then they're
embittered, or they're enraged, or they're frustrated. You know,
there are some people you can't even tell that you struggle with
certain things, because they will judge you for them. And it may be acts of wickedness,
it may be sexual immorality, it may be lying, it may be substance
abuse, it may be mental issues, it may be relationship problems,
it may be doctrinal issues, it may be cognitive issues, whatever
it is. So you can just say, pray for
me. That's why the scripture talks about those who are spiritual
restoring others. That's why the scripture is very
clear on who can and cannot be qualified to be an overseer of
the church. In almost every circumstance
where people come to me and confide in me certain things through
the years, they're always prefaced that, please don't judge me. Nope. Now, will your flesh want
to? Yeah, I've seen some silly stuff.
I've seen some wild stuff, but I think I've seen it all. I think
I've heard it all. I think I've seen it all. But
ultimately, we pray. And the Lord will see
us through these things. We do not have to work them out
in our own understanding or our own abilities. Christ is victorious
because he was victorious for us on the cross when he gave
his life in our place. satisfying the wrath of God for
us and giving us the full credit of His righteousness before the
Father of justice. That's good news, beloved. Rest
in the victory of Christ and pray accordingly. Let's pray. Father, we know, we know, we
know You. We know You and we learn You more and we are reminded
of You. We are reminded of Your Son. We are taught and reminded of
Your Spirit. We are taught and reminded of the truth of the
Gospel. We are taught and learned of
grace. Lord, we have justification on
the brain and propitiation and redemption and all these things.
We dig into the headiness sometimes of how man has labeled, and Father,
sometimes we do it at the cost of the simple truth of grace. Sometimes we work so hard to
come to greater conclusions instead of just resting in the simple
conclusion that Christ has overcome the world for His people, and
that we will not die, and we will not be judged by you. Sometimes, Father, I feel like
I over articulate, that I try to explain too much, not trusting
in the simplicity of your word to do so. Father, when it comes to praying,
when it comes to understanding the truth of prayer, as we continue
to look at this for the next few weeks, Lord, I pray that
you would help us to be at peace, that we should not approach prayer
from the position of fear, but we should approach prayer from
a position of rest, from a position of promises that
you've given us. And we should just pray and be
honest with you, Lord, and you will not condemn us. Everything
that we are beyond what we can see is already known by you. Before the world began, you knew
everything of who we are. And Lord, more importantly, you
knew us intimately in your love. Your foreknowledge for your people
is your love for them. And so that you have satisfied
because of your eternal love for the elect alone, you have
satisfied your righteousness through the death of Jesus Christ
who took their place. And so Father, even if we just
pray for the joy of the gospel to ring through our souls and
minds, that we may share it with one another, it is the greatest
encouragement that we can give to each other. Help us to never
be tempted to forsake the assembly. Lord, bring to mind each other
throughout these different times. I often consider these times
perilous and frustrating and dark. But Father, they are times
of light and righteousness, for we are your righteousness. And the light has shone in the
darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And because
of that, Lord, let us be at peace. Thank you for your power, for
your spirit. And Lord, I thank you for my
brothers and sisters, not that I am always teaching them, but
Father, that they are also always teaching me. That the very thing that I say
to myself comes back to me. And the very thing that they
say that we all say to ourselves come back to us from our brothers
and sisters, Lord, let our relationships be sweet. And intimate. And grace filled and Christ centered.
Help us be slow to anger and slow to speak and slow to judgment
to seek after reconciliation above all things, knowing that
you have purposed your people to walk in unity according to
your instruction from your word. And we thank you for the privilege
of praying. Let us sing now to the praise of your glorious grace
as we continue our worship in Jesus name. Amen.