We study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel and I’m looking for, here we go, some slides that will be on here. Tommy’s the one I always go to over here. Tommy will help me with this, will you, brother? I know it’s on there. Old guy. We’re looking for that.
Anyway, if you’ll turn, you can either turn to I John in your own Bibles, and we’ve given out some paper ones. You can also up on the screen in a moment, there you go, is the QR code, which it’s not there.
Okay. You’ll have to run from up there. Thank you so much, you folks up there. Thank you for that, and just trust you to keep things moving as I go through this wonderful, beautiful text. So the QR code though up there gives you the sermon notes and quotes, and I believe there’s even access to a Bible online there. So if you’re looking for that to follow along, I think that’d be helpful for you.
We’re in the Letters of John. We’re calling our study That You May Know. And today in particular as we close out the book, we’re going to call it What Can We really Know? Kim and I were driving in this morning. We were talking a little bit about do we believe what we know. And that’s kind of one of those questions you ask after your second or third cup of coffee. It’s not one that you sort of start out of bed and first thing you’re thinking is, “What do I believe what I know?”
But when you think about the two terms, believing and knowing, they’re closely related but they aren’t quite the same thing, I think that there’s an element of the will involved. It’s a little broader, a little more comprehensive experience to believe something with conviction. That conviction, that belief, can sometimes be based upon facts. The facts may be accurate or inaccurate. You may believe something that isn’t true, and our culture is full of people who are throwing ideas out that are not true, and many people that are embracing those ideas that are not true.
What will happen to them? What kind of uncertainty will they live with the kind of uncertainty that we see even at the end of Jesus Sermon on the Mount where He says, “The wise man built his house upon the rock. The foolish man built his house upon the sand.” Which will you be? Which will I be? Great question to ask as we come to I John for the last time as we close out this, I think it’s 105 verses if I’m not mistaken, and a five-chapter book. And we’ve been told over and over and over, “By this, you shall know, or in this, you shall know.”
And I love his emphasis on that. He uses God’s title “God” 63 times. He uses the word “know”, to know something 36 times. And 36 times, he references the love of God, the love that the brothers and sisters are to have for each other. And so, it’s almost as if we’ve summarized the book over and over and over again. God wants us to rejoice in the knowledge of His love for us, express vividly in the person and work of Jesus, and God wants us to share His love with one another.
Would you read that with me? For the last time, let’s read it aloud. This is the summary statement from I John. I’d love for you to verbalize that. “God wants us to rejoice in the knowledge of His love for us expressed vividly in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And God wants us to share His love with one another.”
And this is so important. Do you believe what you know this morning? If you have learned this over and over again in these six, seven, eight, I don’t know how many studies we’ve done in I John, but if you believe that, it really has a massive impact on your life to walk in that, to rest in His love.
Chapter 3 begins with this, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed or lavished upon us that we should be called the children of God.” And that’s mind-blowing when you stop and think about it. And I am one who has to do that. It’s much like when I grew up in the Washington DC area, but I took for granted all of those things I was in proximity to.
I didn’t go visit some of those monuments downtown that everybody around the world would just love to fly into town and go visit those monuments, but my close proximity caused a certain amount of indifference. And sometimes, we get so familiar with the words, the concepts even of the Bible and of the gospel itself that we get dull to it, and I want to reawaken us, if you will.
What does the Bible have to say about the question of certainty? What you can know, and what you can believe? Do we really believe what is declared there up on this screen and throughout these five chapters of I John, or do we just have to nervously cross our fingers and wish upon a star that maybe we have balanced out the moral scales enough and that when we get to heaven, God will be, in some way constrained. He will owe us access to heaven because we’ve been so good 51% of the time or maybe 50.5% of the time.
What indeed is the reality that we can count on, that we can know? Three categories of evidence for authentic and saving faith around the next slide. And we’ve been referencing those over and over again as well throughout John’s letter here. We’ve seen the theological test. Do we believe Jesus Christ is the son of God? It’s that simple. What is your response to Jesus? You’re not kept out of heaven because you stole something. You’re not kept out of heaven because you didn’t wear a tie at church. You’re not kept out of heaven because you cursed or you committed adultery or you had an abortion. No, that’s not what keeps you out of heaven. It’s your response to Jesus, your no to Jesus.
That’s what we’ll see over and over again as we study through the New Testament. Likewise, what is it that, in some way, brings you to the place where God welcomes you into his kingdom, welcomes you as one of His children, as one of His sons or one of His daughters?
And as we’ve seen in I John, He takes the initiative. He’s the one that lavished His love on sinner like me. And if He would do that for me, I know He would do that for you. And it’s not about whether I’ve been good or you’ve been good. It’s about His heart, His love for us. So I don’t earn His love. That means I can’t lose His love because I didn’t earn it in the first place. I didn’t acquire. He doesn’t owe it to me. He just loves me. That’s the kind of father He is as we hear on this Father’s Day to consider these things.
It’s our response to Jesus. The moral test is are we growing in righteousness in this social test? Do we love others? Are we growing in righteousness? Do you see a change? You look in the rear-view mirror at your own heart, your own life? Has the gospel made a difference in your life, in the way you manage your relationships, in the way you do your work, in the way you create? Does it matter? Does it make a difference? And that’s how we can kind of look. Along with John’s help here and see whether we have authentic saving faith.
So there’s the question of things we can know and how much certainty we can know them, a theological epistemology if you like. And then, there is this Christian gospel that just overflows with mysteries and verities, things that blow our mind, that God would love us, and then these verities things we can count on because they’re stated so clearly and so plainly as we’ll see even in our first verse. John Stott says that, “Certainty and humility do not exclude one another.” I love this. “If God’s revealed purpose is not only that we should hear, believe and live, but also that we should know presumptuousness lies in doubting His word, not in trusting it.”
So before I read it, let me pray that he will open our eyes. Lord, your word is lamp to our feet and the light and to our path. Come now and brighten our darkness, Lord. Grant us grace to hear Your word in humility with faith to believe it, courage to obey it. Give us strength to follow on the path that You now set before us. We pray for a clearer vision of Your truth, a greater faith in Your power and a more confident assurance of Your love for us. In Jesus’ name, amen and amen.
So here now the last few verses of I John chapter 5 beginning… We’re going to study 13 through 21, but let me read 11 and following . “And the witness is this,” you can tell he is kind of coming to a conclusion, right? “The witness is this, that God has given us eternal life.” Do you believe that God has given you eternal life, past tense. It’s already been done. And this life is performance based? No. This life is in His Son. It’s all about Jesus and your response to Jesus. It’s not about what church you attend. It’s not about your behavior. It’s about Jesus. How do you respond to Him? “He who has the son has the life.” It couldn’t be said more plainly than that. “He who does not have the son, does not have the life.” The definite articles there are really important.
He who has the son has the life. He who does not have the son, does not have the life. I love clarity, in an age where everything is amorphous, everything is sort of vague, everything is sort of see-through and transparent. Nothing’s certain. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken. Here comes a word of certainty with clarity. I don’t know about you. I find that refreshing.
“These things I have written to you,” John says, “who believe in the name of the son of God in order that you may,” say it, “know, that you have eternal life.” This is so interesting because in the gospel record, what we have in chapter 20 verse 31 is we’re told these things have been written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing in Him you might find life in his name.
So the Gospel of John is written for the purpose of persuading people to believe in Jesus. The letter of John that we’re studying is written to not unbelievers but believers. Why? Well, because they need assurance that their belief, their convictions, their faith is well-founded, well directed, well-placed.
And so, he comes with that assurance and a very clear statement to say “These things I’ve written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life.” If you’ve trusted Christ, you can know that you have eternal life. Thus, the title of our sermon, What Can We Know?
This is something we can know here. I know many of you have grown up in the American Western culture. Sometimes, well-meaning people sometimes will say things that come off a little harsh, or they’ll draw things that are triangular and poke the truth at you. It’s almost like a needle or hitch over the head with it like it’s a hammer. Somebody may have said to you, “If you were to die tonight, do you know you’d go to heaven?” Is that a good question? Might be a good question. It might be not be. I don’t know. I’m simply saying it’s been one that some people have asked because they want to bring you to the place of at least considering your eternity, and I think that’s a good thing.
Do you know where you go when you leave this life? Do you just fade to black, and there’s nothing, or is there life after this life? And how will you spend that if there is such a thing as life after this life?
The Bible tells us there’s a thing called eternal life. By definition, it means this life is not all there is. By definition, eternal means eternal. And by definition, John is telling you, “If you trust Jesus, you have eternal life.” Do you believe that? That’s what he’s claiming right here.
Verse 14, “This is the confidence.” I love the stuff he’s talking about here. “This is the confidence we have before him that if we ask anything according to His will,” that’s the qualifier, not just if we ask anything, “He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.”
Say it again, I’ve said it before. This is not God just simply pulling out his wallet, handing you his American Express Platinum Card and say, “Go get something you like.” The qualifier here is if we ask according to his will. Jesus modeled this for us in the garden of Gethsemane. Father, not my will, but thine be done. There are preachers out there that will say that if you say, “Not my will, but thine be done,” that’s not a prayer of faith. I like to connect the dots for them and say, “I’m going to go with Jesus on this one rather than you.” Pray with Jesus. Pray for God’s will to be done. And what John says here is that every time I pray for God’s will to be done, God hears me, and God will bring about His will, and I can count on that.
That’s certainty, man. That’s beautiful certainty. Even every Sunday, no matter how many years I’ve been doing this, every Sunday I get up here, there’s always that little bit of me that’s going, “I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know… What am I going to do? What I got to do?” And I’m reminded all the time that the weight is on the word of God. And the only power that ever comes, the only transforming bit of anything that ever happens from any of us to teach up here is what God does, not what we do, but what God does.
And so, I prayed according to His will this morning, “Lord, speak to us this morning, reassure those who need reassurance this morning. And one more time, remind those who might be resting in your love right now, but remind them one more time so that when the storm flow, when the giant has to be faced, when the news isn’t so good, when they’re just doubting because of any number of things, remind them once again that on Christ, the solid rock they can stand.” And it’s about Him. It’s not about how I feel.
Verse 16 and 17 are fascinating when you think about others in the body of Christ. “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death. I do not say that he should make requests for this. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading to death.”
And I’m just going to tell you, I’m probably not going to be able to satisfy all of your questions about verses 16 and 17 this morning. And the reason I can say that with confidence is that I’m still not settled myself. And I’m happy to be honest about that. I think there are some good ways of looking at this. They seem better than some others. But ultimately, I think I come down on saying this, the sin that leads to death or actually the second death as we typically might think about it is that one whereby we say, “No, God. No. I don’t need You. I don’t want You. I Don’t need a savior. I’m not a sinner. I belong to myself. I’m going to do what I want regardless of Your will, regardless of Your revealed will, regardless of what the Bible says, regardless of anything. I’m the final word myself.”
But you pray over this. You can read many different viewpoints on this, but I think that’s where this goes. The point is the idea is that we should be praying for one another. This is really important. Some of you sitting here today, and if I ask you to raise your hand, a lot of hands would go up, know somebody that has deconstructed as they commonly call it in sort of more recent language about people’s faith. They’ve deconstructed in some way. They stopped. They call themselves exvangelicals or whatever it might be. You might have even drifted in that direction yourself.
I don’t know. But I would seek to persuade you that we should be a praying people, and we should pray according to his will. And we should always be praying for one another for each other. We should always be building each other up in the faith. When you come in the door,
switch from being a guest to being a host. This isn’t about the people up here entertaining you or the rest of the people sitting around you entertaining you or if you’re online just getting something from it yourself.
This is about us being the body of Christ. And sometimes, the knee itches, and you got to scratch. You need the hand to come along and give a little scratch like this. Went for a hike yesterday with 26 TVC’ers. Any of you go? Who went? Anybody in the room? Couple of us, and I’m kind of barely still walking. I got to be honest. This is a pretty serious hike. It was good, but these puppies were really tired last night, and I needed to go massage the feet a little bit and make sure…
Yeah. And sometimes, the body of Christ, we just need to be there for each other, to encourage one another. That is to pour courage into each other, courage to believe, courage to respond lovingly in obedience to God, courage to do the right thing when it comes to our relationships, courage to do the right thing when it comes to our work, et cetera, et cetera.
Verses 16 and 17 remind me that, yes, I am involved in your life and, yes, you should be involved in praying for me as well. Verse 18, “We know that no one who is born of God’s sins,” the idea is habitually sins, “but he who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.”
There’s some debate as to who the ‘he’ that is in the middle of verse 18. There’s some debate as to who the referent is there, is he who was born of God, is that Jesus? Is that speaking about Jesus or is that speaking about a brother, or is it speaking about some kind of a Christian or what is it?
“He who was born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.” I know that I’m not powerful enough, wise enough, smart enough, discerning enough to keep anybody. I’m going to say it’s Christ is the reference here. And He who was born of God, Jesus, born of God through Mary, came into the world, the incarnation. And He’s the one who keeps me, and He’s the one who keeps the evil one from being able to touch me. See, I can’t do that for you either.
I don’t have that power, but Jesus does. And He will hold me fast, and He will hold me safe. I’m safe with Him because I belong to Him eternally. And even at the end of this life, I’m still His. Nobody can take me out of His hands. So important for us to know that I think..
Verse 19, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding in order that we might know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true in His son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.”
Do you realize how broad that statement, “This is the true God. This is the eternal life.” That’s a massive claim. There’s so many religious belief systems in the world, and John is saying, “This is the one true God.”
This is the living God. This isn’t the God of our imagination. This isn’t the God that a bunch of us got together and voted and said, “Yeah, that’s God.” No, this is the one true God. He’s the true
God, and He’s the eternal life also. It’s wrapped up in Him. And again, this is about Jesus, and this is about this wonderful, beautiful gift that has been offered to me and to you in the person and work of Jesus Himself who is the way, the truth, the life.
Definite articles matter in the scripture, and there it is. This is the true God, eternal life. Do you believe? There’s the theological test, Jesus is the Son of God. He is the Christ. He’s the source of life. The moral test has been inferred all through here. Is it affecting the way you behave? Not because you’re trying to earn salvation, but simply because you’ve received salvation. And all of a sudden now, you want to respond to your Father who has loved you.
Sinner, though you are, you want to respond to Him, and you want to respond to Him in a way that delights Him, and He delights to use you and me in the lives of others.
Wear His hands and feet out there, and He wants that to happen. And so, Jesus even talked about that people would see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven. Do you believe this?
Are you living that way? Last verse. This is amazing. It’s almost like he takes a sharp left turn. “Little children,” that loving beautiful address that he’s used several times, “guard yourself from idols.” All right. Raise your hand if you think that was like a change of subject or something like that. I’m going to, “Whoa, where’d that come from, idols? What are you talking about… All of a sudden, talking about idols.”
Yeah. Well, I’ll get to that. Let’s do this. I’m going to give you some summary statements as we go along, and I’m going to try to answer that question. What can we really know? First of all, verse 13 says that we can know that believers in Jesus have eternal life. You can know that. It says that in verse 13. You’re saying that you know that, if you say you know that, if you believe that, you’re saying that based not upon your own sort of romantic notions of a good doting grandfather up in the sky, kind of a God who just would be so nice to everyone.
No. You know that because this is what the Bible says. The Bible actually teaches that believers in Jesus Christ have eternal life. It’s not just something tagged on at the end. It’s something that you’re actually walking in now. And it goes on into eternity forever and ever with Him. Again, this letter is written to believers to reassure them.
What can we know? Secondly, we can know that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. I love that. We see that right there in verse 14 as well. What can we really know? We can know that we have the request we’ve asked from Him in His name. When we pray in His name, we can trust, “Lord, your word says this. Lord, you’ve told us this. I believe you. I trust you.”
Now, we have to make sure we have that right. I know there are a whole lot of people that think they’ve got it right on this point or that point. And I’ve had many discussions with many people over the years who I think actually had it wrong.
Their expectations of God were more akin to they thought of themselves as the puppet master, and God as the one who was down here, the puppet, responding to their…as if they were sovereign, and they were in charge instead of the other way around.
So we don’t know everything God knows. So it’s really important that we pray right alongside of Jesus for the will of God to be done, not my will but thine be done. What can we really know? We can trust that God is eager to forgive stumbling sinners, but will allow belligerent unbelievers to have the eternal autonomy they have demanded. Let that sink in a little bit.
God is eager to forgive stumbling sinners. That’s me. That’s you. But He’s going to allow belligerent unbelievers, no God, to have the eternal autonomy they have demanded. Now, what could be more fair of God than that?
People question God’s fairness, “How come there’s only one way?” And I’ve said it a million times. I think the bigger question is how come there’s even one way? What does God owe us, rebels that we are?
This is really beautiful. When you’re reminded that you, the stumbling saint, every now and then you stumble, and he’s eager to forgive you. I don’t know where you’re at in your faith relationship with him. Maybe, you’re stumbling right now, and you’re laying face down in the mud.
This promise is for you. He’s eager for you. He’s eager for you to come home to Him. The prodigal son story reminds us of that. He’s watching from the windows to see you in the distance coming home, and He will run to you to receive you back. Are you eager for Him like that? Yeah.
What can we really know? We can know that no one who has truly been born of God indulges in habitual sin. Even if they stumble, they would be held fast by Christ.
Verse 18, what can we really know? We can know we belong to God, not to the evil one or to this world system. Verse 19.
The darkness is great out there. I know the darkness is great out there. I mean if you take in any kind of media, whether social media or movies or TV shows or whatever, there’s so much thought that goes into the stories and the characters and the way they’re portrayed and the script and the way it’s written. And most of us don’t proactively think about that when we watch something.
We just want to be back in our lazy chair with the remote control three liter bottle of Diet Coke and big bag of chips and just come at me. But we need to have an examined life, and we need to examine with some level of critical thinking, and I’ll go for Christopher Watkin’s title of his book, Biblical Critical Theory.
Let’s have that kind of an approach to literally every aspect of life and everything we take in. Let’s do that so that the world system doesn’t just overtake us.
What can we really know? We can know that Jesus, the son of God has come, has revealed Himself to us and offers us eternal life in Him. The offer’s on the table this morning. If you’ve not received Him as your savior, if you’ve not received, you’ve not recognized Him as your Lord just yet, the offer is on the table right now.
What would keep you from wanting to respond to Him? I beg you, if you’re not a believer, if you’ve not made the decision, the choice to follow Jesus, do it today. Why wait? I can’t think of a good reason.
He’s so beautiful. He’s so gentle. He’s so kind. He’s so eager to forgive you. He’s so eager to use you and His kingdom as well to encourage others. What can we really know?
Well, that last verse, we can know that we need to remain on guard against worshiping anything that is not God. That’s what an idol basically is. I know we don’t have very many little statue like they did in ancient days where we set a statue up on a… Although there are places in the world where they do.
But in our modern, sophisticated way here in the West, we’ve learned to worship other things, not statuettes but vocations, opportunities, persons, relationships, people, human sexuality. We’ve learned to worship all kinds of different forms of money, sex and power.
And to put those things in the center as if they are the only thing that really matters and that has completely derailed our worship of God because we put those things in the center. And the call from John as he’s closing up his letter right here is, “Little children, guard your heart from idols. Watch out.”
Why? Because our hearts are idle factories. We can make an idol out of anything. We can make an idol out of good things. We can try to turn them into the main thing they’re never meant to be. What an amazing list of assurances we’ve just gone through from this last little bit of I John, things that Jesus wants us to have some certainty about, to know. If the Bible is true, these are not wishes in the dark. We’re not just hoping there’s no ghosts.
No, we can know this. Do you know this? Do you believe this? These are promises from our creator God who has not been silent. He’s spoken into spacetime history through His word here. We can rest in these promises because we can trust the one who made those promises, God Himself. I can approach the throne of grace with confidence.
It says it right there in verse 14 because I’m going to go before Him, and I’m going to do that asking according to His will. What’s His will for me? What’s His will for you as regards a relationship that He wants to have with me and with you? His will is that we would come to Him, that we would bow before Him, our King, offer Him our praise and our worship.
Repent. Turn away from our sin, and turn toward Him in faith-believing and with confidence able to enter the throne room of grace to receive mercy in time of need. And that time of need is all the time for me.
Jesus took my place, and He paid the price for all my sins and all your sins. He paid my ransom. And now, my life belongs to Him. There’s no other name under heaven by which a person can be saved. The book of Acts tells, us except the name of Jesus.
So we can rest in the promises of God, not just sort of the romantic religious notions that we might have about how God’s, the big G-man in the sky… He’s certainly a dotting grandfather that wants us to have everything we need, and make sure we can be happy all the time.
No, that’s not the God of the Bible. He’s way more concerned about my holiness than He is my mere happiness. Happiness is too cheap. I can be happy for a minute with any number of sort of anesthetic type. I’ll sort of solve my pain issue for a minute with this money or this experience or this opportunity. And we think those things are going to be the thing that causes our solar flourish, but no, they’re not. It’s Jesus. He’s where we find the life. Once we are saved by grace through faith and Christ, his saving power doesn’t stop there.
It’s not just about dodging hell or merely getting an entry ticket into heaven. According to I John here, it’s really beautiful. It’s much deeper than that. He teaches that we become new creations in Christ. What we used to want, what we used to find our identity in, what we used to find motivation and drive and all of that stuff, all of that is fading to the back now because Jesus, who is the light of the world, has shined brightly into our darkness, dispelling it and offered us His life.
I am His, and He is mine. We sing it all the time. Now, my thoughts, my motives, my desires, my ambitions all become more and more and more aligned with those of Jesus. Now, I find my identity in union with Christ and through an abiding faith in Christ. That’s clarity folks.
That’s not just the moral confusion that’s out there, the intellectual confusion that’s out there. None of that should be ruling and reigning in our hearts. What are the distinctive characteristics of a saving faith in Christ?
Well, in verse 13, it’s the object and confidence we have in Christ Himself. Two, it’s nurtured through engagement in prayer. We see that in 14 and 15. It’s wholly dependent on God’s grace and mercy. We see that in 16 through 18. And it inspires our confidence in Jesus and directs our worship to the living God, not to dead gods, not to false gods, not to idols, not to things that we on our human sort of this world system way of thinking put in the center over and over and over again.
Keller says it this way,
“Idolatry is always the reason we ever do anything wrong. Why do we ever lie, or fail to love or keep promises to live unselfishly? Of course, the general answer is “because we are weak and sinful,” but the specific answer is always that there’s something besides Jesus Christ that you feel you must have to be happy, something that is more important to your heart than God, something that is spinning out a delusional field and enslaving the heart through inordinate desires. So the secret to change is always to identify the idols of the heart.”
–Tim Keller
We live in a culture that foolishly and recklessly and self-destructively turns to worship the self.
John here is reminding us to turn our eyes upon Jesus, to look full in His wonderful face as we have sung since the time Jesus walked on this planet.
As the culture turns its worship toward the self, it’s unavoidable that those who don’t buy into the prevailing social imaginary of self-sufficiency and self salvation, those who, like us, will seek our answers and rescue from outside of ourselves. It’s unavoidable that we’re going to come into conflict in practical ways along the way with a culture like that.
That doesn’t mean that we should become hateful, mean spirit, all that sort of thing. Actually, no. Jesus calls us to lay down our lives for others. Jesus came into this world, into a world of his enemies, sinners, and lay down His life for us.
And if we want to follow Him, we follow in the way of the cross. And He said it this way, “If you want to follow Me, you’ll have to deny yourself, take up a cross, your cross and follow Me.”
We have a totally different perspective than the unbelieving world, a different set of values, a different set of standards and priorities. You see this clearly now with the cultural conflicts over questions like what does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to be male or female? What has gone wrong in the world, just even that one alone? What has gone wrong in the world?
And some people are thinking the answer is found in some form of money, sex or power. Is there such a thing as right and wrong? Some people are saying, “No, there isn’t.” There’s your truth and my truth, and that’s the culture that it’s on its way out. When there is no consensus on what is right and wrong, the culture will crumble from within. I believe most of these questions must ultimately find their way back to the very biggest question of all which is, is there a God to whom we must bow?
And how can sinful human beings be reconciled with a holy and righteous God? Where do we turn for the answers to these questions that really do matter? Can we just look inside ourselves or do we need to have the answers that come from outside, perhaps from a book like this that stood the test of time, that has a unique origin, a source origin, and that it’s the word of God? It’s God speaking to us, revealing to us things we would not otherwise be able to know or figure out on our own. John Stott,
“Nothing provokes the world’s opposition more than the gospel of Jesus Christ. For it emphasizes such unpalatable doctrines as the gravity of human sin and guilt,” (that’s what’s wrong with the world) “the reality of God’s wrath and judgment,” (there’s a holy God) the impossibility of self salvation,” (boy, that’s contra everything we’re being taught right now) “the necessity of the cross, the freeness of eternal life and the dangers of eternal death. These truths undermine human pride and arouse human opposition.”
–John Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church
So the Bible teaches that we cannot save ourselves, but there is one who is eager to save, and He is mighty to save. And I say again, “Do you believe?”
Do you believe Him? Will you trust Him? Those who believe in the name of Jesus have eternal life in the name of Jesus. By the power of Jesus, they will be held fast forever. That’s good news. That’s the kind of message that flies, though, in the face of the social imaginary in our selfie generation.
“The person who is deluded always speaks about how ‘nice’ they were. The person who enjoys the full assurance of eternal salvation knows only we were sinners but we were saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. False assurance always speaks about what we have done. Real assurance always speaks about what Christ has done for us, and by His grace, what Christ has done in us.”
–Sinclair Ferguson
See. And believe it or not, well, I know the room and the folks that might be watching. I know there quite possibly are people who are not believers, people who have said no to God or who are… Perhaps, they’re considering God and that’s why they’re even here or tuning in or whatever. But I also know there’s a whole bunch of us that grew up in the church, grew up around religion, if you will.
And we might be a little more confident in our religion or getting our doctrine right and less confident in the person and work of Jesus. And so, I love I John for the way that it helps us push, reset, reboot. It’s all about Jesus. How do you respond to Jesus? What Christ has done for us, and by His grace what Christ has done in us.
It’s powerful. It’s beautiful. Let’s one more time read our theme from I John. What can we know? We can know this. God wants us to rejoice
In the knowledge of His love for us.
Expressed vividly
In the person and the work-
… Of Jesus Christ, and God wants us to share his love with one another. So brothers and sisters of the Village Chapel and online, let’s turn away from idols and turn to the One true and living God who loves us so much. He came on the run with rescue in His hand for us.
Let’s receive Him as Lord and Savior. Let’s respond to His overtures of love in humble Thanksgiving and then go out and live lives that glorify Him and are for the good of our
neighbor, to draw them to see Jesus, that they too might know Him, believe in Him, and find life in his name. Amen.
Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for I John. What an amazing ancient letter this is, how relevant for our own day and time. And even as we close out the study of this book, this letter, I’m praying for all of us in the room, myself included, Lord, that we will not just know but actually believe in this moment all of Your promises that we have found in this amazing letter that You’ll renew us, restore us.
Those that need to repent, Lord, that Your kindness, would lead us to repentance. Lord, that You would receive us once again as your sons and daughters. Lift up our heads, that we might gaze into Your face to see the love, the beauty, and the majesty of a King who came and died for those He would call his own, oh, Lord, for each and every one of us that we might walk in that grace today.
I pray that we would know You are our salvation. You are the life that we look for, the way we want to walk in, the truth that we so desperately need to know in such a dark and confused world in which we live. Move on our hearts. Draw us to Yourself, in Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen and amen.
(Edited for reading)
