1 John chapter 5 and verse 14. And this is the confidence that
we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will,
He heareth us. And if we know that He heareth
us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that
we desired of Him. If any man see his brother sin
a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give
him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto
death. I do not say that he shall pray
for it. All unrighteousness is sin, and
there is a sin not unto death. We know that whosoever is born
of God sinneth not. he that is begotten of God keepeth
himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. And we know
that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And
we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding,
that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that
is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God
and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves
from idols. Amen. Knowing that we have eternal
life, is perhaps the single greatest comfort that a man or a woman,
a boy or a girl can have in this world. John is eager for the
Lord's people to enjoy the comfort and the blessedness of knowing
that we have everlasting life. That is what he has been telling
us in verse 13, the verse that we thought about last week, that
ye may know that ye have eternal life. How blessed you are, brother
and sister in Christ, if you know that you have eternal life. And knowing that our children
have eternal life is perhaps the second greatest blessing
that we could have in this life. May God be gracious to you and
to your children and to your children's children. May we know
that we have everlasting life. The law of God, back in the book
of Exodus, speaks of God's judgment upon sin. And it there says that
God will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation. Might we pray for one another? Might we pray for equally broad
and extensive grace and mercy that the Lord would visit us
and our children to the third and fourth generation? May we
pray, Lord save our children. Knowing we have eternal life
is to know Jesus Christ as our saviour. This is what John is
telling us. He says in verse 20 of the passage
that we've just read together that everlasting life or eternal
life is the true God and Jesus Christ. Knowing Jesus Christ
is the true God and eternal life. Eternal life is knowing Christ.
Eternal life is believing that this one who came, Jesus of Nazareth,
is the Son of God. Believing that he has successfully
accomplished all that is needful for our deliverance from sin.
that the whole work of salvation and redemption and atonement
and reconciliation between God and sinners has been effectually
accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ. Knowledge of that, knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ and his works, is everlasting life. Knowing that He has satisfied
all the demands of the Holy God against our sin. Everlasting
life is to trust the power of Christ's blood. Knowing who He
is and what He has done. so that John in his gospel could
say in chapter 17 verse 3, this is life eternal, that they might
know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And this in a sense is really
just what John repeats here in that 20th verse also. We know that the Son of God is
come and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is
true. And we are in Him that is true,
even in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal
life. So when we know the Lord Jesus
Christ, when we know that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God,
when we believe in the name of the Son of God, then we have
everlasting life. And we are the most blessed of
men and women upon the face of this earth. to know that we have
everlasting life. And John, in this little epistle
before us, that we have been studying now for some weeks and
months, would have us experience the joy of this knowledge, the
joy of knowing our sins forgiven and everlasting life in Jesus
Christ. You know, the world sometimes
says that ignorance is bliss. Well, John says that knowledge
is bliss. Knowing that we have everlasting
life, knowing Christ is joy and blessedness. Why is that? Because the knowing the Lord
Jesus Christ changes us. That's what our conversion is.
Our conversion is a knowledge of who the Lord Jesus Christ
is. Knowing the Lord Jesus Christ
and knowing we have everlasting life in Him by that knowledge,
changes us, changes the way we think, changes the way we act,
changes the way we live. The Lord Jesus Christ came, we
are told by the writer to the Hebrews, to deliver them who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Now, knowing Christ, knowing
everlasting life brings Liberty. Liberty. Freedom from the bondage
of sin and death. So that the knowledge that we
have of the Lord Jesus Christ is consequential. It has an effect. There are consequences that flow
from that knowledge of everlasting life. Faith and belief and trust
and hope have consequences. So when we speak of faith in
Christ and believing in the things that the Bible says and trusting
that the work of Christ is efficacious for us and hoping in this great
work of salvation, it has an effect on us. Its design is to
equip us and enable us and sustain us in this world and to comfort
the children of God, to bring us a spiritual wisdom and understanding,
a knowledge of gospel truth and the revealed grace of God, which
is a blessed gift to our hearts and to our souls. There is blessing to be had in
this knowledge of who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he has
done for us. But here's the interesting thing
also. Every believer learns a lesson
as they go along their Christian pathway. As pilgrims in this
world, we learn that the Christian walk is not always easy. It is not always without concern
and anxiety and challenge and difficulty. Indeed, the knowledge
of everlasting life, the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ actually
brings extra trials, extra difficulties. The believer has more concerns
in this world than does an unbeliever. Let me give you some examples. My sin never grieved me until
I saw it in the light of God's holiness. And now it grieves
me. The world hasn't a worry about
sin, but sin grieves a believer. I was never concerned about the
eternal state and well-being of my loved ones. until I understood
the implications of judgment and of hell and of separation
from God. I never grasped the depth of
human evil until I saw how implacable it is against the divine will. and how impossible it is to know
God in this world because of our human state and condition. And I never knew the intensity
of that battle that goes on between the flesh and the spirit in the
natures of the believer. in the Lord Jesus Christ until
grace came to me. So that there are problems that
come to believers at the same time as they get the comforts
and the benefits and the blessings of a knowledge of everlasting
life. And in these final verses before us today, in this portion
of John's first epistle, we can see that the apostle, having
helped us to understand what it is to know Christ, is giving
us some practical helps when it comes to living with the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ and the consequences that that brings. So what we're going to do today,
and I've actually, don't panic here, but I've got six things
that John speaks about with respect to the things that we now know. And they are all referenced in
this passage before us. You might have noticed the frequency
with which John speaks about the things that we know. And
he is telling us those things in order that we might take them
and apply them to the challenges that we face as believers in
a world that is full of wickedness. So here's the first one, and
I'm going to move through these quickly. The first thing that John would
have us know, or the first thing that we know because we trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ, is that God hears our prayers. God hears our prayers. Do not
ever imagine that your prayers as a believer go unheard or unanswered. God delights to hear us pray. He delights to have us seek his
help. in prayer, for us to open our
hearts to him and lay before him the challenges that we feel
and the anxieties that we have. The Lord Jesus Christ did it.
He is our great example. He taught us how to pray in a
sense that he gave us a pattern of how we should approach the
Father with our prayers. let us go to the Lord in full
confidence that he hears us. And that in itself is an evidence
of grace in our life because prayer presupposes that God exists
and can be approached through the intercession of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So if we pray with an earnestness,
if we pray with a sincerity, praying to God through the Lord
Jesus Christ, we exercise a grace that is given to all true believers. We know that through the Lord
Jesus Christ, through the intercession of his blood and his mediation,
we can take our prayers to God. upon that basis we can go before
God with boldness and we can go before God in sincerity and
in earnestness. The writer to the Hebrews tells
us in chapter 10 verse 22, let us draw near with a heart Let us draw near with a true
heart in full assurance of faith. That is trusting in the Lord
Jesus Christ. So we go to the Lord with sincerity
and we go trusting in Christ. So that's the first thing, that
we know that God hears our prayers. Here's the second one. Wonderfully,
we shall have our request. This is a great encouragement
for the Lord's people to pray. We shall have our request. That's what John's telling us
here. Now there are two principal conditions in our petitions to
the Lord. First, and we've referred to
this, we have to ask in Christ's name. And second, we ask according
to His will. John's already spoken about this
in his gospel. In John chapter 14 and verse
13 and 14, he writes, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, he's
giving us the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, whatsoever ye shall
ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified
in the Son. If ye shall ask anything in my
name, I will do it. Now we've already thought about
this, that we believe in the name of the Son of God. We spent
some time thinking about the amazing names of the Lord Jesus
Christ and how they all speak of the accomplishments of the
Son of God here upon earth. All the wonderful names that
Scripture gives to Him. So that when we go in the name
of the Son of God, we are going in the knowledge of those things
which Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. all the accomplishments
of that glorious name is what we approach the Father with. And if we understand what God
the Father has done for us, for the love that he has towards
us, and the great extent of his mercy and his kindnesses and
his grace and his forbearance, if we understand something of
that, do we not desire to glorify God? Well, John's telling us
here, ask Him for the things that are upon our heart. Ask
Him for petitions in the name of His Son and God Himself is
glorified in our requests. So we ask in the name of the
Son of God and we ask according to God's will. Now this is interesting
as well. We sometimes speak of two wills
of God, his secret will and his revealed will. These are just
ways in which we try and explain the things that we see happening,
going on around about us. But God's secret will are the
things that he has purposed to do, his decrees if you like,
the things that will happen in this world as the purpose and
the plan of God unfolds for this world. What God has eternally
determined to do. Now we will not change these
things by our prayers because this is the determinate counsel
of God and nor should we pray against what God has decreed. So God has decreed that there
is a heaven and a hell. We shouldn't think to ourselves,
oh, I wish there wasn't such a place as hell. I'm going to
pray that God doesn't have a hell, doesn't have a judgment, doesn't
have any wrath against sin, because that is what God has shown us
is his decree, is his purpose. So we are not to pray against
the will of God in that sense. Rather, we are to pray according
to the revealed will of God, particularly for those blessings,
those helps, those graces, those gifts that are reserved for us
in Christ as part of the covenant promises of God. so that all
of God's grace and all of God's goodness and all of God's spiritual
blessings, what is called the sure mercies of David, his exceeding
great and precious promises, which are in Christ, yea, and
in him, amen. These are the things that we
are to go to God and we are to pray for, for his help. And John
gives us an example. He says, we may pray for ourselves
and we may pray for others. We may pray for our brothers
and sisters in Christ on this basis. And he gives us an example
of praying for a brother who has fallen into sin. Now, we all sin. And so our prayers are for all
of us. We pray for all our brothers
and sisters and we pray for the challenges of their lives. We pray for the church. We pray
for our friends in the congregation. We pray for our families. We
pray for those that the Lord lays upon our hearts as we see
the needs that they have. And it is that problem of sin
in our lives that is the source of all of our challenges. That old man, that old nature
and the frailty and fickleness of that to run to sin, to run
to temptation, to run to the lusts of the flesh. This is the
source of our trouble and so we pray for one another on these
matters. and the Lord promises that he
will give us help both personally and for those for whom we pray. What we're praying for is the
covenant mercies of God in Christ for one another. We pray for
an increased view of Christ's blood and its power to cleanse. We pray for an increased grasp
and understanding of the blessings that God has for his people in
the covenant of grace. We pray for a sense of his patience
and forbearance, his long-suffering. We pray for a deeper knowledge
of his love towards us and for his mercy in the circumstances
of our life. We pray for himself to give us
more love for one another and more patience towards one another. and we pray for peace and joy
and the spiritual fruit of the redeemed life for our brothers
and sisters and for ourselves in Christ. John says, you know,
there is a sin unto death, but no believer commits that sin. And if you fear that you have
committed that sin, then you have not. Because that sin is
a willful denial of the truth as it is revealed in the gospel,
and it is an ongoing denial of salvation by grace, of righteousness
imputed, of justification at the will of God, and of eternal
life by the Lord Jesus Christ. Now if you want to deny all of
those things then, That is the unforgivable sin because that
is what takes men and women to hell, the denial of the work
of Jesus Christ. But those of us who believe the
work of Jesus Christ, we cannot commit that sin, for it is the
very opposite of it. The third thing that we know
is that those who are born of God do not sin. And this is another
help for us in our Christian life. It's another thing that
we know in knowing Christ's work in our lives. Now we know that
we are not sinless in our flesh. We know that the sin, that the
flesh is never perfect. but we know that there is a holiness
in the new man. And so what this is teaching
us is that there is both an awareness of sin in our life and the knowledge
that God does not impute sin to us in the new man. in the
hidden man of the heart. He is blameless and holy without
sin and justified in the sight of God. So what John is telling
us here is that the knowledge that the born of God do not sin
gives us a perspective and an explanation by which we can understand
our lives and the battle between the old man and the new man. Christ is the one who is the
only begotten of the Father and he keepeth his own body, his
own bride, he keeps his bride pure. because he has defeated
the evil one. He's the only one who can keep
us pure, because in the old man we would run to the lusts of
the flesh, but in Christ we are preserved and protected. And
this is a help to us, to explain our feelings and our challenges
and our trials in this life. By faith, in what John is telling
us here, that the born of God do not sin, we do not become
discouraged by the weakness of our flesh, seeing it for what
it is, the seat of the old man's corruption, but rather we believe
that we are created anew in the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted
and complete in him. John tells us another thing that
we know in these verses. He says, we know that we are
of God. So this is another thing that
comes to those who have everlasting life. We know that we are of
God. We are the sons of God. We are
heirs of God. Now John has proved this to us and in the practical challenges
that we have in our life, in the troubles that we face in
our walk through this world, in this world of sin, our confidence
is founded on these high truths, that we are of God. In times of doubt, We are of
God in times of wavering and coldness and falls and failures. We believe by faith. We are of
God against the incessant warring of the flesh that goes on inside
our hearts. We hold this truth to be true
by faith. We are of God and eternal life
is assured to us. So that it is not our feelings
that we rely upon. It is not the devil's temptations
that we give ear to. but it is the testimony of the
word of God. And though this whole world lieth
in wickedness, says John, though the trials and the temptations
of living in it are with us all the time and never seem to cease,
Heaven and the promises of God towards His church and people
are just over the horizon. Everlasting glory awaits us. We are of God and we are entitled. We have the titles to our heavenly
homes, our heavenly mansions, by the attested record of the
word of God. That's the fact, not the feelings
of our own hearts. Fifthly, we know that Christ
has come. Again, this is what John tells
us in these verses. We know that Christ has come.
This is not mere wishful thinking. This is not a religious delusion
or some misplaced optimism. This is not the power of positive
thinking. We know Christ has come. That's
the whole point of what John has been explaining to us here.
Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. It's what the Scriptures
testify. It's what John the Apostle has
testified with his apostolic authority. It is what God in
heaven, Father, Word and Spirit has recorded. It is what the
blood and the grace of God on earth in the hearts of men and
women attest. We believe that Jesus of Nazareth
is the Son of God. and knowing Christ is come proves
that we are born from above. Does Satan tempt us? Christ is
come. Does the flesh rise up? Christ
is come. This is more than just a historical
belief or a confessional statement. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to
us. Do you remember when Paul was
anticipating going to Rome and he was waiting and he knew that
the people all around about him were trying to kill him? We're
told that the Lord came to him in the night and called him by
his name. And so here, by faith, we lay
hold upon the fact that Jesus Christ is come. He is in us. He dwells in us. In his risen
power, we see him and know him. Jesus Christ has come and he
whispers to us in the gospel, fear not, little flock, fear
not. It is your father's good pleasure
to give you the kingdom. You have eternal life. And the devil, he comes like
a thief to rob us of our joy in believing, to rob us of our
joy in the Lord. But John tells us in chapter
10, verse 10 of his gospel, the thief cometh not but for to steal
and to kill and to destroy. I am come, says Christ, that
you might have life. and that you might have it more
abundantly. Abundant life is the present
possession and the eternal inheritance of those who know that the Lord
Jesus Christ is come, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. And sixthly, of the six points
that I had, as John tells us here in this passage, we know
we are in him and united with him. What a blessed truth that
is. What a comfort to the souls of
his wayfaring people in this world. How do we know? We know because the Word of God
declares it. We know because the Gospel of
Christ proclaims it. We know because the Apostle testifies
to it. We know because the Father, the
Word and the Spirit record it. That grace delivers it to our
hearts and applies it and that the blood of Jesus Christ has
secured it. Therefore we know we are in Him. and we are united to him. If
you know all these things and you believe it to be true, where
did you get that knowledge? Where did you get that knowledge?
Where did it come from? Look what John tells us in verse
20. He hath given us an understanding. He has given us an understanding. Do you see what John's doing
here? He has shown us what it is to
be a Christian, to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son
of God, to believe in the name of the Son of God. That's what
a believer is. And it is he who has given us
that understanding. Now with that understanding,
he is showing us how we are to interpret and grasp the things
that are going on in our life. Let me give you the definition
of a Christian. You can write this down. A Christian is one in whom the
truth is in your head and the battle is in your heart. He hath given us an understanding
that we may know Him. We know the truth. He has revealed
these things to us, but we still have a battle in our heart. You
who doubt your salvation, is what I've just said truth or
foolishness? If it's truth, if it's the testimony
of the word of God, whence cometh that understanding? How do you
know it's true? because he has given us an understanding. The natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God, says Paul in 1 Corinthians 2,
verse 14, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know
them because they are spiritually discerned. He hath given us an
understanding that we may know him. Two quick things in summary and
then we're done. It is faith and not flesh, not
physical evidence, not natural logic, not carnal reasoning,
not physical feelings, but faith. that gives us an assurance of
peace with God. It is that understanding that
God gives to us in Christ by His Spirit. Faith in the finished work of
the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross, faith in the power of
His blood, Faith that that blood has power to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness. If you have faith, you are one
of his, and it doesn't matter whether it's great faith or little
faith. Here's the point. Your faith,
if you have it, is the target on your back. Your faith is what
the world and the flesh and the devil will constantly attack
because that is the source of your peace and the source of
your help in this world. And that is the very thing that
the old man, the natural man, the flesh, is adamantly opposed
to and seeks to overthrow. It's the very reason for the
trouble in our souls. The presence of spiritual strife
is the evidence of spiritual life. That was the first of the two
things in my summary. Here's the second one. What an
interesting way John, maybe even an odd way, John finishes off
this letter. He could have finished it there
at the end of that verse 20, and we would have thought, what
a beautiful crescendo upon which to end. But then he says in verse
21, little children, keep yourself from idols, amen. What is he writing that for?
Did John anticipate that the Lord's people would have little
idols in their cupboards? Well, maybe he did. Maybe he
saw that that would come as well. But it's not the idols of silver
and gold that we need to be warned from, but rather it is the vain
imaginations set up as being true Christianity by the idolatrous
professors who name and claim Christ in this world but have
redesigned every apostolic doctrine to fit their own mould and serve
their own purposes. That will not do. We stand for
eternal election. We stand for blood atonement. We believe in imputed righteousness. We believe in sovereign grace. We seek that grace now from God
by faith and glory hereafter according to his promises. We
hear the Saviour say, whosoever believeth in me shall not perish
but have everlasting life. To deny any of those things is
to set up an idol of our own making. Thank you, Lord, for your love
and for your grace to this your servant, John. Thank you for
using him in writing this delightful little epistle. And thank you,
John, for all the benefit we and the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ have under the Holy Spirit from you and from your ministry
and from your writing. Amen.