Now I want you to turn back to
the book of 1 John chapter 3. The message this morning will
begin with verse 19 and I'm going to continue to the end of this
chapter. I've been preaching through this chapter and the
issues that I've been dealing with here are having to do with
the fellowship and the family of God. I preached a message
several weeks back entitled, Is God Really My Father? And you understand there now
we're not talking about the universal creatorhood of God. God created
all things. But He is not the spiritual father
of everybody without exception. And I dealt with that then. I'm
not going to go back through all that. But if you want to
truly know that you have a relationship with God, a right relationship,
whereby you can confidently call Him your Heavenly Father, then
the only way you can know that according to the Scripture is
as you stand before Him in the Lord Jesus Christ, washed in
His blood, clothed in His righteousness, You see, God is both a just God,
a just and righteous judge who must judge according to truth. He's not like human judges. We
hope that our human judges do right and go by the law. But even when a human judge in
compassion shows mercy, where justice demands payment, we would
have to say, we may admire that judge, but we'd have to say he
perverted justice, technically speaking, and we are technical.
But the God of this universe who is judge of all, he judges
according to truth. Well, then the question comes,
how can he be merciful to me, a sinner, If I'm a sinner, all
have sinned and come short of the glory of God, the wages of
sin is death. That's the just punishment. You
see, that's not unreasonable or unjust or unfair. That's the
way it is. In the day you eat thereof, Adam,
you shall surely die. Death is the payment for sin,
is the just payment for sin. So how can a holy and just judge
show mercy to a sinner like me and still be true to himself,
be honest with himself? How can he be both a just God
and a Savior? How can God be both a righteous
judge and a merciful, loving, gracious Father and still be
true and honor and glorify Himself? And there's only one way. and
that's through the substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus Christ
in the place of his people, as their surety having their sins
charged, accounted, imputed to him, who died under the just
wrath of God, satisfied that justice. And therefore God can
be both a just God and a savior. He's my righteous judge, but
he's also my heavenly father. How do I know that? Because I'm
clinging to Christ. I have no other way to God. No other way of acceptance. Ephesians
1 says we're accepted by God in the beloved who is Jesus Christ. I'm not accepted with God, I'm
not saved by God, I'm not blessed by God based upon my own merits. If I come before God, now think
about this, if I come before God or if you come before God
on your own merits, you know what you're going to get? Raw,
unmixed justice. And that'll be death. Eternal
damnation. But I come before God pleading
the merits of another. One with whom God said He's well
pleased. Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
the righteous. So if I call God my Father and
it's true, that's how it is, isn't it? By grace. Well, are
you really my brother or sister in Christ? Am I your brother
in Christ? Well, brothers and sisters have
the same Father. If you worship any other God
but this just God and a Savior, then here's what I have to say,
and I'm not saying this because I'm being mean or unloving. In
fact, I'm telling you the truth because I do love you. If you're
worshiping any other God but this God who is both a just God
and a Savior through the Lord Jesus Christ, you're not my brother
or my sister in Christ. I pray that God will make you
so. I pray that he'll bring you to
believe the gospel, bring you into the family. That's what
it is. Now in 1 John 3, that's what
John's talking about. He's talking about, he starts
out that those who are truly children of God, those who are
truly sinners saved by grace, those who are truly born again
by the Spirit, you know what they do? They do a lot of things
they're not supposed to do. In fact, you might look at him
at a particular given day and you might wonder, how in the
world could that person be a Christian? I imagine if you walked in on
King David at certain times of his life, you'd have wondered
that, wouldn't you? Or Noah, or Abraham, or the Apostle
Peter. What if you'd been standing by
the fire there when Peter denied the Lord three times and started
cussing just to show? Well, what is the evidence that
John gives here of those who are children? They cling by the
grace of God now, by the power of God, not by their own power,
by the goodness of God, they cling to Christ for all salvation
and they will not let go. They're in Him forever and ever. And they love the brethren. I talk a lot about that love
because so many people are so confused about it. It's not love
of feeling or emotion. It's not love of attraction.
It's not love of commonality. College football has started.
There will be comraderies this time of year that do not exist
the rest of the year. Just because we love the Bulldogs.
Or, I guess if I please Randy, I have to say we love the Yellow
Jackets. Or Robert, I'm sorry. We love the Tigers. Whoever it
is you love. That's not this kind of love.
This love is based on the truth and recognizing the fact that
we have the same Father, the same way of salvation, the same
Savior, who is called in the Bible our elder brother because
all the blessings, you remember in the old covenant in Israel,
all the blessings to the family came through the elder brother,
the law of the firstborn. Well Christ is called the firstborn
among many brethren. You know what that's literally
referring to is his resurrection from the dead. And his resurrection
from the dead came because he died under the just wrath of
God for the sins of his people charged to him and he satisfied
justice in full. He drank damnation dry. That
was the cup that he spoke of in the garden. It was the wrath
of God. And he fulfilled it. completely
unto righteousness, so that we who are God's children, we who
are brothers and sisters in Christ, we stand before God in a righteousness
that we had absolutely no part in producing. It's the righteousness
of God, the righteousness of Jesus Christ in Peter. And when
the Holy Spirit comes, In the power of the new birth, regeneration,
conversion, quickening. That's exactly what He shows
us and He brings us to see that Christ is everything and I'm
nothing. I don't have anything to recommend
me unto God. I don't care how good I've tried
to be. Should I try to be good? Yes, but that's not my righteousness. That's not my salvation. That
doesn't wash away my sins. That doesn't recommend me unto
God. Only Christ. And the merits of his obedience
unto death saves me and secures me and brings me into that fellowship
of the family of God. And I cling to him and I cling
to everybody who believes that same thing. Now look at verse
19. He says, and hereby, now this
is what he's talking about now. This is the context. 1 John 3,
19. Hereby we know that we are of
the truth and shall assure or literally persuade our hearts
before Him. In other words, it's no use me
claiming that God is my Father and that true Christians are
my brothers and sisters in Christ unless I myself have been brought
by the Holy Spirit to cling to Christ for all salvation, for
all forgiveness, for all righteousness, for all justification, for all
eternal life, for all blessing. If I don't cling to Him in the
truth, and if I don't fellowship, if I don't have a partnership
with those who believe the truth, then what good is it for me to
try to persuade myself that I'm a true child of God? Now he begins to talk about assurance,
and I want to talk about that just for a moment, but let's
read on. He says in verse 24, if our heart condemn us, that
has to do with doubts. Is God really my father? Am I
really a child of God? Well, he says, God is greater
than our heart and knoweth all things. Well, if my heart, now
you know what the heart is in the scripture, it's the mind,
it's the affections, it's the will, that's what the heart is. It's not this organ pumping blood
in your body. It's not just emotions. Well,
I just don't feel like a child of God. That has nothing to do
with it. If you tell me today, well, I
feel like I'm a child of God, I would ask you this question.
I'd say, well, what makes you feel that way? Well, you know, I gave some money
to a beggar yesterday. Here's what I would tell you.
I'd say, well, I'm glad you gave money to that beggar, but that
doesn't prove anything about your relationship with God. Should
those who are saved give money to beggars if the person's really
in need and you've got it to give? Yes. That's not the issue. But that's no sign or evidence
that a person is a true child of God. When he says this, look
at verse 20. If our heart condemn us, God
is greater than our heart. In other words, here's what he's
saying. Let me put it in this perspective.
Do you know that what God says in His Word is greater and more
authoritative than what I say about myself. Now did you hear
that? You know, to be honest with you,
I don't know really what it is to feel like a Christian. That
may shock some of you. I can go through the scriptures
and I can show you all kinds of emotional states that God's
true children were in. Sometimes it's happy and joyous
and sometimes it's down in the depths of, as old Bunyan said,
the slew of despond. Is that right? A Christian can feel any way
that an unbeliever feels in that sense. But here's the issue about
salvation. Here's the issue about persuading
me. Here's the issue about assurance.
What does God's word say? Because God's greater than my
heart. You know the Bible says in Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart
is deceitful, desperately wicked. Now we know that's talking about
the unregenerate heart of an unbeliever, the natural man.
But if I'm trying to understand these things and persuade myself
of these things and gain assurance by how I feel or even what I
say to myself, that's bad. That could lead me to a false
refuge of experience-based religion. You know, that's what most people
want today. Look back at John 14 that Brother Jim read there.
And hold your finger there, because I'm going to be referring back
to that. Christ here, and incidentally, in these verses, he's not denying
his deity when he says, the Father is greater than I. You know,
the Bible teaches the triunity of God, the Trinity, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. There's one God in three persons,
and each person of the Godhead has an office. The father represents
the sovereignty of the Godhead, the kingship of the Godhead as
in the Godhead. The son represents the servitude,
the office, the redemptive work. That's why he became man, that's
why he is God-man. And the spirit is the great applicator. So sometimes the son is represented
as serving the father, and he'll say things in scripture like,
well my doctrine is not mine, but the father, he who sent me.
He's not denying that he believes the doctrine, or the doctrine
is from him. He's just simply saying, I have the authority
of God to say these things. That's what he means. But going back to this feeling
stuff, emotion, what we say. He says here, That the Spirit,
talking about the Holy Spirit, that's the Comforter that he's
talking about. The Bible says that the Spirit
witnesses with the Spirit of God's people that we are the
children of God. Now you can go to a lot of religious
organizations people holding church, they say, on Sunday morning,
and you walk into a particular place, and let's say they're
jumping up and down and clapping and everybody's singing and all
that, and I'm not just making fun now, but you know what a
lot of people will say about that? They'll say, boy, I really
feel the spirit there. You ever heard that? You go into
another place and everybody just descends on you, shaking your
hand, smiling, hugging you, you know, real friendly. There's
not one person in the whole congregation that doesn't speak to you. And
you say, boy, the spirit was there. Now here's my question. What
does God say? And listen, there's nothing wrong
with being joyous. Now don't start jumping pews
this morning or anything like that. Because that's just nonsense. But there's nothing wrong with
being happy and joyous, nothing wrong with smiling, nothing wrong
with greeting people, being nice, being friendly, nothing wrong
with that. But is that what God says is the assurance of the
presence of the Holy Spirit? No. Look here. Look at verse
14 of John 14. He says, or 15 rather, he says,
if you love me, keep my commandments. All right? No, we're going to
listen. No, that's what we're going to go to. He says in verse
16, And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another
Comforter, that's the Holy Spirit, that He may abide with you forever.
Verse 17, look at it. Even the Spirit of what? Truth. Whom the world cannot receive,
because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him, but you know Him.
For He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. The Holy Spirit
is the Spirit of Truth. I'll tell you where the Holy
Spirit is. Where the truth is. Not where a lie is. I mean, people
can be jumping up and down and running all over the auditorium
under the preaching of a lie. That's an evil spirit. And you
know what the main thing the Holy Spirit does when He brings
a sinner to God as Father and to salvation? You know what the
main thing He does? He points that sinner away from
self and He points him to Christ for all salvation. I had a fellow who used to tell
me all the time, he'd look at people and say, I believe the Holy Spirit's
working on that person. And I'd tell him this, I'd say,
well, I can tell you how you'll finally know. He said, how? He said, where does he end up? I've had people say, well, I
just feel bad, I feel guilty, I don't feel like a Christian.
And what happens? They go join a church, they get
baptized, they start doing this, they reform their life. My friend,
listen, that's not where the spirit of Christ, he leads sinners
to Christ. Are you burdened with sin? The
guilt? The condemnation of sin. Here's
the question, if it's the Spirit convicting you, where do you
find relief? Where do you find salvation? Where do you find
forgiveness? Where do you find righteousness?
Where do you find life? If it's anywhere but Jesus Christ
and Him crucified, His blood, His righteousness, it's not the
Spirit. Go back to 1 John 3 now. So verse 20, if our heart condemn
us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Now,
what does God say? Look at verse 21. He says, beloved,
if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward
God. Now he's talking about assurance. Verse 22, and whatsoever we ask,
we receive of him, because we keep his commandments and do
those things that are pleasing in his sight. Now when he says
whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, he's not saying that
God is now a genie in a bottle and you can just rub it three
times and get three wishes and get what you want. He's not saying
that anything you ask God for, God's going to give you. You're probably like me, Lord,
help me win the lottery tonight. Hadn't happened yet. You see, God treats his people
as his children. If your little son or daughter
or your grandson or granddaughter comes up to you and says, grandpa
or daddy or grandma or mama, little six-year-old said, could
you buy me Mercedes Benz? Are you going to go out and do
it for him? Well, one thing, you may not have the money to
do it, but secondly, if you did have the money, I hope you would
know better than to put a six-year-old behind
the wheel of a car. Now, he may want it, and he may
be sincere, and he may think he can handle it, but you know
better. That's the way God is with His
people. What He's talking about here is issues of fellowship
and salvation. Listen, any sinner that ask God
for salvation, and here's the key now, underscore this, any
sinner that ask God for salvation God's way will get it. And any sinner who ask God for
salvation God's way, I can tell you right now, that's a gift
from God even to ask it. He won't do it naturally. We
won't do that naturally. Did you know that? Oh, we'll
ask God for salvation, but we're like Cain by nature. We want
it our way. A way that gives us some room
to brag. A way that I can use to set myself apart from the
rest of the group who didn't ask. That's not the way God works. He works by the Spirit in the
new birth, doesn't he? He gives us eyes to see and ears
to hear. And we see that we're nothing
and Christ is everything. And he says here, and I'll look
back at it again, verse 22, Whatsoever we ask we receive of Him because
we keep His commandments. We keep His commandments. And
do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Does that mean
that a believer, a child of God, is a perfect person now? Well,
no. If that's what it means, then
here's my suggestion to all of us. I'm going to quit and do
something else, and we need to shut the doors on this place
because there's none of us that fit this bill. Now, you may think
you do as far as being a perfect person. If that's what you think
this means, you don't qualify, but neither do I. If it means
that now once God saves me, I'm a perfect person. Let me tell
you, there is a perfection. that the people of God, the children
of God can claim. But it's not in us. It's what
we are before God in Christ. You see, when God accepts me
and receives me, it's as a sinner saved by grace, washed clean
in the blood of Christ. I'm still a sinner. But I stand
washed clean from all my sins in the blood of Christ. I stand before God righteous,
not in myself, but in Christ righteousness imputed. Now that's
the only perfection that I can claim right now. One day I will be perfect in
myself, but that's when I go to be with the Lord. I'll be
free from the presence of sin, the contamination of sin, the
influence of sin. You know, I don't even know what
that's like. Paul, that's what Paul meant when he said in Romans
7, how to do good, I know not. I don't even know how to do that.
Because we're so plagued with sin in our thoughts, our motives,
our goals, that we can't get away from it. Paul said, this is a faithful
saying worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners of whom I am chief. All right, he says,
but because we keep his commandments. Now what are his commandments?
Well, you know, the problem that most people have today when they're
reading the Bible, they see the word commandment or plural commandments,
they always think of the Ten Commandments, don't they? That's
not what he's saying. First of all, now hear me out
on this, okay? Don't cut me off. We're not under
the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments was a moral
law given to the nation Israel on Sinai by which that whole
nation as a theocracy was to be guided and ruled both politically,
economically, civilly, and religiously. I told a fellow one time, he
asked me that. He said, are we under the Ten Commandments? And
I said, no. And you know what his response was? He said, well,
does that mean I can go out and commit adultery and commit murder?
I said, oh, no. No, it doesn't mean that at all.
You do understand that it was a sin to commit murder and commit
adultery before Moses went up on Mount Sinai. And you do understand that it's
still a sin to commit adultery and commit murder even after
Mount Sinai. You see, there are moral principles
embodied in the Ten Commandments that have always been law. And
incidentally, Christ never makes any suggestions on that issue.
He's not, I suggest to you that you do. It's law. Believers today
are under the commandment of Christ in the New Testament.
And it's just as wrong to murder under His commandments as it
was under Sinai. But there are some changes which
I don't have time to go into this morning. What is it to keep
his commandments? All right, well let's read on.
Verse 23, look at it. And this is his commandment,
that we should believe on the name of his son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another as he gave us command. There it is. Believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. Rest in him. Verse 24, and he
that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him,
and hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he
hath given us, the spirit of truth. We keep his commandment
of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you know that's a
gift from God? For by grace are you saved, through faith, that's
not of yourselves, it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any
man should bow. We keep his commandments of repenting
of our dead works. When God the Holy Spirit brings
a sinner to Christ, He no longer imagines that He can do anything
or anything can come from Him that will make Him right with
God. He's totally at the mercy of God and the mercy of God can
only be found in what the Bible calls the mercy seat and that's
Jesus Christ. Like that old publican, God be
merciful. You all know that word merciful
in there is propitious. It means I need a blood sacrifice
that can satisfy justice for me. I cannot deliver it, I cannot
provide it, but God by his grace provided it in his son. That's
it. Now let me conclude with this.
I want you to see a couple of scriptures on this thing about
assurance. And I want you to turn to the book of Hebrews and start with Hebrews chapter
10. And I could show you a lot of
verses here, but here's what I want you to understand. In
light of keeping his commandments, in light of loving the brethren,
where does assurance of salvation come from? And let me say this,
in the Bible, The ground and cause of true assurance, godly
assurance, never comes from within ourselves. Never comes from within ourselves.
Now, is there some benefit? to looking at ourselves and looking
within ourselves and examining ourselves? Yes. But not to find
salvation, not to find assurance. Let me show you that. Look at
verse 19 of Hebrews chapter 10. Now this whole chapter is talking
about the one sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ as the propitiation,
the sin-bearing sacrifice, satisfying God's justice for His people.
By one offering he hath perfected them forever that are sanctified.
Look at verse 19 of Hebrews 10. Having therefore, brethren, boldness.
Now that word boldness is liberty and confidence. To do what? To enter the holiest. The holy
presence of God. Seeking salvation. Seeking an
audience in prayer. Seeking to worship. Seeking to
obey Him and please Him. Where does my confidence, my
liberty to enter the holiest come from? Look at the next line
in verse 19. By the blood of Jesus. You see that? In other words,
my confidence doesn't come from the fact that I believe I'm such
a good guy. It doesn't come from the fact,
well, I joined the church and turned over a new leaf and reformed
my life. It doesn't come from being baptized. It doesn't come
from crying and repenting. It comes from the blood of Christ.
There's my confidence. I know this. God will never turn
away a sinner who comes truly pleading the blood of Jesus Christ.
And look on, he says in verse 20, by a new and living way,
which He hath consecrated." This is a way that Christ made. He
said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto
the Father but by me. For us through the veil, that
is to say His flesh, He offered up His humanity on the cross. And verse 21, having a high priest
over the house of God. Look at verse 22. Let us draw
near with a true heart. A true heart is a regenerate
heart, a sincere heart, a penitent heart, in full assurance of faith. Now where's our assurance come
from? Look at it. Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience. That's a condemned conscience.
And our bodies washed with pure water. What is that sprinkling? What is that pure water? That's
the blood of Jesus Christ. And one more, turn over a page
to Hebrews chapter 12. That's what it is to keep His
commandments, folks. Yes, we're to be obedient in
every way. We're to be good citizens. We're
to be good people. We're to be good husbands, good
wives, good workers, all of that. But that's not what saves us.
That's not what gives us confidence. In fact, all of our striving
to be good citizens, to be better people, is to be motivated by
this right here, the assurance of God's grace in Christ. That
gives us the right motive of grace and gratitude and love
and not legalism, legal fear of punishment, or mercenary promises
of earned reward. How many people get involved
in that? Well, look at Hebrews 12 verse 1. He says, wherefore
seem we also our compass surrounded about with so great a cloud of
witnesses, that's all the ones he mentioned, sinners saved by
grace in chapter 11. Let us lay aside every weight,
every burden, and the sin which doth so easily beset us. You
know what that is? That's doubts, legal fears. and let us run with patience,
with endurance, the race that is set before us. Now, how are
we to run the race? Look at verse two. Looking unto
Jesus. Not looking to self, not looking
to the church, not looking to the pastor, looking to Christ,
the author, that is, he's the originator, the source, and the
finisher, he's the completer of our faith. What is our faith?
It's our salvation. Christ did it all. Who for the
joy that was set before Him endured the cross, satisfied justice,
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God. Now you know what that's saying.
We're going to sing a closing hymn here. Page 52. But I always
think about my favorite hymn. I'm not going to change it on
you, Amy. If I did, you'd know this one. My favorite hymn is
The Solid Rock, which says, My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock
I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. That's what that
verse is saying. My hope. You know what hope is
in scripture, don't you? It's the certain assurance and
expectation all salvation and glory based on the blood, the
righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right?