Dear Lord, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to come into Your house on a Sunday morning. Thank You for the opportunity You have given me to stand here and lead Your word in Your house. I pray for Your understanding and Your Spirit to be among us this morning. Amen.
So the reading this morning, it's 1 John 5:13-21. So if you'd just like to find it, you can follow along. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God, 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 what we asked of Him. If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life.
I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I'm not saying that he should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin and there is sin that does not lead to death. We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin.
The one who is born of God keeps him safe and the evil one cannot harm him. We know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We also 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, even in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
So starting a sermon, it's a bit of a terrifying thing. You get up and you sit there, read the passage and go, oh man, how do I start? KJ makes it look easy, you've seen people preach, but when you've got to start, it's just kind of this, alright, you know, what do I do? What do I do? So naturally, the first thought that came to my head was dogs.
I know. If for those of you who don't know me, I adore dogs, and if you don't, keep your dogs away from me because I will steal them and you will never get them back. The thing about dogs though that caught my eye is that they reflect their masters. If you treat a dog well, it is going to be loyal, it's going to love you, it's going to be a beautiful animal. And we see that a well trained dog is even able to protect the life of their master, and that just really stood out to me. But today, I want to talk about what it takes to get God to call us a good boy.
So what is it? What does it mean to have confidence in God? This passage breaks down hope and confidence in God into three different areas, prayer, understanding and trust. In 1 John 5:14-15, we read, 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.
For those of you who sometimes feel like you may be asking the wrong thing, don't. We are encouraged to go to the Lord with our needs and with our burdens. Matthew 7:7-8 says, ask and it will be given to you. For everyone who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. At times, it can feel like God doesn't answer our prayers, but John tells us the complete opposite is true.
We can have full assurance that God answers our every prayer. Whether the answer is yes or no, we can have faith that in accordance to God's will, He answers us. Now John goes on to something that when I first read it seemed a bit weird, it seemed a bit out of line with the message of the letter, and it's in verse 16. He says, if anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death, for there is a sin that leads to death.
I'm not saying that he should pray about that. So John's telling us not to pray for those who are lost. That seems a little counterintuitive to what the Bible is telling us. Right? But what is this sin that leads to death?
What is he actually talking about? Well, we find that in Matthew 12:31, Jesus says to the Pharisees accusing Him of demonic activity that every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit leads to death. This is the sin being mentioned that we should not pray for. Does this mean if someone takes Jesus' name in vain, it's cool, but you know, Holy Spirit, He's like the next tier up on the Trinity. If you blaspheme Him, it's all over.
No. What it means to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to reject God's will in your life, is to completely be apart from Him, and to be apart from God in its entirety is certain death. We know that we can only come to Christ through the Spirit working in our lives for the understanding of Christ's death and the enormity of that sacrifice, and with the love of the Father in our lives, but without the Spirit first enabling us, then we will never truly understand what Christ's sacrifice is for us. To become born again or to understand what God has done for us in our lives, it means that our attitude will shift. So I implore you, brothers and sisters in Christ, pray for those who don't have faith to find God, to allow His Spirit to work in their lives, but do not pray for their sins to be forgiven without first coming to the Lord.
It is a follow on effect, if you will, that believing in Christ leads to saving. One cannot be saved and forgiven of their sins without first having relationship with Christ. And as much as we might want our friend to be forgiven, we don't know where they're at, we need to pray faithfully that he will come to Christ. This prayer, this asking, this continuation, this gratitude of being saved and loved will work in our lives. If you truly believe and truly have seen God work in your life, there is gratitude and it changes you.
It helps us understand to see what's truly important. We learn to trust our lives in the hands of the Father. Like a naughty pup that's grown up in the rules and customs of his master's house, so too we see the necessity of avoiding sin and following God's laws. John says in verse 18, we know that everyone who has been born again does not keep on sinning, but he who is born of God protects him and the evil one does not touch him. If there's one thing we know, it's that John loves dealing in absolutes.
Everything is black and white to him, light and dark, good and evil. Now, this has a little to do with the context of the letter. You see, the people he was writing to, there were a lot of false preachers using terminology like light and dark, and in a way, he was mimicking them to try and get the point across so they would understand culturally what he was talking about. But in a way, all of God's laws are absolute. They're black and white.
He tells us clearly what is right and wrong, and he doesn't just give us a rule and then not explain it. Okay, we know killing is bad, 10 commandments. But he goes on and says, yes, that means hatred, that means in your heart wanting to kill your brother, in your mind, that is also bad. Yes, you have to love your enemies, don't hate them either. You have to look after yourself, love yourself in a way that honours God.
He goes on and tells us, he explains, he helps us understand. So if you're ever unsure, God works in our lives to help us understand. He's given us the tools, He's given us theologians. He's given us preachers and a book of His word, His holy word for us to refer to. He's given us family, spouses and friends to understand what it means to love and to care and have communion in Him.
See, understanding is not always a process, a list of steps to follow or a YouTube tutorial. You see, sometimes it's the understanding of a hug on a bad day, the feeling of a broken marriage or the feeling of new life. These things can't be explained with words. No matter how hard you try, language just doesn't do it justice, but we understand. We know understanding doesn't always mean an explanation.
The literal Greek translation for understanding is a word that I have no hope of pronouncing, and I won't try because it would be embarrassing, but it directly translates to mental perception. So this implies to me in the context of the verse that we are given perception from God. So there's like this cool psychology study that was done in the nineties, and basically what happened was you had 20 test subjects come in and they were shown a clip of a five minute basketball game. They were told to count how many times the ball was passed during that five minutes. They all got the number of passes right, but 14 out of 20 completely missed the guy in the gorilla suit walk straight past the screen.
While they were concentrating so hard on what was in front of them, the simple task, they completely missed the actual point of the exercise. You see, sometimes this happens in our own lives. We can end up narrow focused, we can get caught up in what we want for our lives that we don't see the guy in the gorilla suit walk past. We don't see God's purpose in our lives. You can always come to God and ask for clarity.
As I said, the Lord encourages us to come to Him in prayer. If you're ever lost, if you're ever unsure, God will give you the understanding if you allow Him to work in your life. This guidance of the Spirit, this understanding that He gives us, helps us to trust in the Lord. It should give us this feeling of, okay, I've stepped back. The Lord's in control.
I'm gonna trust Him. We know that He gives us what we need in accordance to His will, and if His will is sovereign, then we are in good hands. Paul himself in Acts 20 goes forth to testify that he knows there will be hard times, but the Spirit constrains him to go forth and to testify. Sure enough, ends up in prison, but this is where we see prayer and understanding lead to some serious trust. So we know that the Lord is understanding in all things and that He gives us the perception we need when we need it.
The ability to come to the Lord without burdens and this knowledge and understanding in Christ, it leads to such a strong trust. We know He is us, His will is sovereign, He gives us the perception we need, and the ultimate understander is the Lord. If anyone's gonna understand what you're going through, it's God. He's the perfect Father, the perfect master. Now to break it up for a minute, I just wanna talk about something that I really enjoy, which is some maths.
Now most of you guys, know, maths isn't your forte, it's not your favourite thing. I'm hopeless with PowerPoints. It's just the way it is. PowerPoint is not so good, maths is good. So anyway, I did some calculations, went online and I found out the number of atoms in the universe is one times 10 to the power of 123.
So that's 123 zeros. Think of the entire universe, how big it is, how massive it is, and that's the number of atoms, the tiny little building blocks of life that make up our entire universe. Jesus fulfilling the prophecies, there were 60 major prophecies that Jesus fulfilled, and statisticians, Christian and non-Christian, have done some calculations and said that for Jesus to fulfil the messianic prophecies in its entirety at that time as one person would be one in 10 to the power of 147. That's an extra 25 zeros. That's a big number.
The fact that Jesus actually came to earth and did what was predicted, did what was prophesied, is enough proof that He is God. It's just it's an incredible insight in our own world, something real, tangible that we can understand that gives us understanding. God's always pointing to Himself, and everything that life gives you, it points back to Christ. You see, if we were to wander the observable universe and there was one atom that was marked amongst all of the atoms in the universe, we put on a blindfold, we walked in a straight line or in circles, anywhere you wanted, and you had to bend down and pick up that one atom, first try, that would be Jesus fulfilling the prophecies. That's the kind of odds we're talking about.
Now John emphasises the word truth a lot in verse 20. He tells us that we know Him who is true, or God, in Him who is true, so we are in God and His children, we are in God, His children, and finally in classic black and white repetitious fashion, he says it so plainly, He is the true God and eternal life. The final verse of this book seems to make a little bit more sense after this. You see, not every dog owner looks after their dogs properly. Some do so in unhealthy ways, feeding them things that could be poisonous to their overall health in the disguise of a tasty treat, grapes, bacon, avocado, things that you shouldn't be feeding to your dog.
Either that or the owner could be abusive and use the dog as an outlet for anger or in a way that is destructive to the pup's health. But the same goes for us in our life. We might think that alcohol, cheating or binge eating are good and enjoyable in the moment, but these things are our false masters. They're poisonous to our relationship with the true master. Keep yourselves from idols.
Why would you, who understands the truth of life in God through Christ, need to put your trust in something false like money, alcohol or social standing? We have the real deal, the truth of life, the meaning of life itself. It's not success, it's not having fun, and it's not the number 42. It's God. He is truth.
But what does this mean? What does this mean in a practical application sense? How do all these points tie in? What is 1 John leading us to understand? Have confidence in Christ.
Have confidence in the will of the Father. Have confidence in the hope that He provides. Have confidence in His absolute love. Through prayer, we may know and understand what the Lord needs us to understand. We know our sins are forgiven in Christ, and we know we can pray for the Spirit to work in the people around us.
With this understanding comes truth and the realisation that the Lord our God is truth, and with the most mind blowing and gracious, gracious truth of life given to us, how can we not turn our eyes to Him and follow Him and love Him with all our hearts, bodies and souls. Is this not the whole message of 1 John? Throughout the letter, we hear of God's love in almost every chapter, of His Son's protection and sacrifice, and he even tells us why we need to hear what he has to say in chapter 2. He explains everything so black and white, but ultimately, John is telling us to have confidence in God. God is the ultimate master.
He feeds us. He lets us outside when we need to run around, and even though we may feel uncomfortable, he trains us and makes sure that we get our flu shots. After a while, our attitude shifts to God, and sin becomes sour. It tastes bitter. It's gritty.
It's hard to swallow, and yes, I'm not saying we won't fall into sin. There's no ultimate perfection in us that we can find, but we know that through Christ, His Son, and in God, we are His children. We are loved. We can have confidence in the Saviour, Jesus Christ. So I implore you today, go out, ask, listen, and trust with confidence in your Lord and Saviour, the God of truth.
Let's pray. Dear God, I thank You that we can come to You in prayer. I thank You that You hear our needs and answer us in ways that benefit us. Thank You that Your will is done on this earth, Lord. Even though it may seem hard or we might have a tough time, we know that everything is to Your glory.
Thank You for helping us understand. Thank You for giving us perception, thank You for showing us that everything in this life ultimately leads to You. Lord, I thank You that we can put our trust in You, that our burdens and our stresses, we can give them up and know that You have the ultimate plan. And Lord, I pray that everyone here today can leave with the confidence to announce You as their Father, as their God, the God of truth, Lord, the ultimate master. In Your name, amen.