God knows his children’s hearts

Introduction

Good morning brothers and sisters. It is so wonderful to be here with you today and to have to opportunity to worship with you. To everyone who was out of town last week, we missed you all very much and I am so happy to see you today. Our text today will be 1st John 5:13-17, if you will all please go ahead and turn there in your bible’s.

Over the last few weeks and months (both inside and outside this church) I have had it asked why I choose to preach the way that I do, why I preach expositionaly. I sometimes get asked, wouldn’t you rather preach on a topic or even just on something that is important to you? My answer to that is no, and I would like you to hear my heart on this, it is because I believe that taking in the full council of God is vital for our faith lives and far more valuable than one off sermons, so I want to be a pastor and preacher who gives just that. This week I read an article on this by Jason K Allen on the Lifeway website where He gave several points as to why expository preaching is the best way. The first is that Expository preaching best fulfills the biblical command regarding preaching, looking at scripture like 2 Tim 4:1-5 and 1 Tim 4:13-16 as proof texts. Second, expository preaching affirms a high view of Scripture, which I think we all have. He then goes on to give a total of 12 reasons, my favorite of which is the 8th, that it most consistently presents Christ and a robust Gospel message. I want to be a Christian that is always pointing to God, pointing to Christ and saying, “Look at Him!” I want to honor God all I can, that is why I do it this way. We need to all be believers like this, pointing to Christ. This is very good and stands to reassure me, as every sermon affects the preacher/pastor too, we all need to be transformed and bring Glory to God. This brings me to and is very much like our sermon title today, “God knows His Children’s hearts.”

Scripture

If you will all please rise for the reading of God’s word today. As usual, please read it along with me out loud, it will be on the screen above me. Then when I am done, I will say “this is the word of the Lord” if you will all please respond with “Thanks Be to God.” Before we do that though, let’s pray. Father God, you are so great, so mighty, so powerful, so beautiful. I thank You that You are who You are. You are more than my words will express. Despite this Father, I pray this day that Your Holy Spirit moves in this place, that You would be known better by us and those around us. I am just a man Father, but your word is so great. Empower me this day Father that every word would be Yours and honoring to You. Father, attune our hearts to Your will, attune our hearts to Your word. Help us to put aside anything that keeps us from hearing from You. Whether it be distraction or anger, help us put that aside and take on the purity and goodness that can only be found in Your word. You word is truth and we thank You for this truth. Take this, what You are about to share with us, and motivate us Father to know and do Your will hear on Earth. It’s in these things that I ask and in Jesus Christ’s Holy and Precious name that I pray, Amen. 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. 16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. This is the Word of the Lord (thanks be to God), Thank you, please be seated.

Context

So, we continue this week in our Expository Journey together through the first book of John. Good news for us all around, after this week we will only have one more week in this book. So yes, next week is the last week of 1st John…. Then we will spend a week in 2ndand 3rd John respectively. This will take us up to 2 week’s of thanksgiving sermons and then an advent series for Christmas time. I’m really looking forward to what is going to show us all together through His word!

As we are rounding out this book, I want to encourage You all to read it again this week during your personal devotion time, this will help our understanding of next week’s sermon as John puts the final conclusion all together for us. I want you also to remember today (and yes I know I have said this many times but it bears remembering because it hugely impact the interpretation of this text) that he was writing to a group of confused believers, not only where they confused from witnessing and learning many false teachings about God and the Person of Jesus Christ, but also because of this they were confused on their own salvation and even on ideas like praying for others (perhaps even if they should, which we know and I want to affirm that we should).

Something you may notice in your bible, and one that I have noticed in many different bible’s is that the subheading, may or may not be in this place. I want to be clear here, that the subheadings in Your Bible’s are not scripture and should not be treated as so, so personally I do not have much a problem as such, in fact our Bible’s didn’t even begin to include Chapter markers (let alone verse markers and subheadings) until the mid-13thcentury, and honestly most of the different divisions I have seen do not take away from the meaning of the text in any way. Crucially though, last week’s message ties into this week so I want to recap on it quickly. Last week’s main idea was that God’s testimonies are true, we saw this several ways which were described in the text. First, we saw that Christ came us, He came to us in flesh and dwelled amongst us. We also looked at specific testimonies of Christ, that was by “The Water” what happened at His Baptism, “The Blood,” His death on the cross, and “The Spirit,” the Holy Spirit’s attestation and conviction on the truth of Jesus Christ. We then moved on into resting in those testimonies and having confidence that Jesus gives us eternal life when we have our faith in Him. So, with all of those things in mind, let’s delve deep into this week’s text.

Message

Our first point, God affirms His children

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

So, what exactly, is John talking about when he is saying “these things?” It could be a lot things, after all, we are at the end of an Epistle. To put it simply, I want to quote Walvoord here, “John wrote these things … so that his believing readers would knowthat they had eternal life (cf. vv. 12, 20). The words “these things” are often wrongly taken to refer to the whole epistle. But similar expressions in 2:1, 26 refer to the immediately preceding material and the same is true here.”[1]So, John appears to speaking more about what was immediately in front of this text, which brings us back to the three testimonies we talked about last week and recapped earlier. However, it seems to be best summed up in verses 11 and 12 ,” 11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. So, John is overall saying, that if you have received the true testimonies, those that attest to Jesus being the Christ, the savior, and have accepted them and taken on the promises of those as your own, then you have nothing to fear; you are redeemed.

Remember, the original audience was unsure of this, they were a confused one, they had many things being told to them that would make them believe otherwise. These things were both big and small and all things in between. They had an influence around them that, much like we do today (our culture), wanted them to disregard Christ. WE have a culture today that wants us to disregard Christ. Brothers and sisters, we have the best testimony in the world, that from God The Holy Spirit Himself, believe Him. Believe Him without fear. Stand affirmed in Your adoption into the kingdom of God. In fact, understand who you are, when you confess and truly believe that Jesus is the Christ, the redeemer for your sins, you become as a son or daughter to God. You are precious to Him, you matter (a lot) to Him. Brethren, ignore any falsehood or lie that tells you otherwise. If you are saved, you are saved. If you are a child of God, live in a confident way in that. There is no need to question, know that when you have those little doubts or thoughts, that it is probably Satan seeking to deceive you. Believe in The Lord Jesus and turn away from what separates you from God.

A second point, God hears our requests

14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him

What a beautiful passage, and I would call this the key verses to this scripture passage this week. John is saying here something wonderful, something that he has touched on before. This is about prayer. So confident are we to be in our faith, that we know that when come to The Father in prayer, we can say without a doubt, He hears us. Now, that being said, there is both answered prayer and unanswered prayer. Why is this? Well, we all know that God has the big picture and is always working towards an ultimate good, one that we can’t see and don’t understand how it will play out or what that requires. More importantly thought, is understanding what our prayer is and what it is for.

You see, prayer isn’t about us, it’s supposed to be about God. In fact, if it is in any way about us, it should be about attuning our hearts and desires to what God wants. In and of itself, “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his. It is by prayer that we seek God’s will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. Every true prayer is a variation on the theme ‘your will be done’.”[2]In a sense, prayer is saying, “God, I would like it very much if you did _____, I am asking for this please. However, if this is not what You desire, turn my heart to what You desire for _____. This is what the theologian Stott has said on prayer, let me share with you another, “The pages of the Bible and the pages of history are filled with reports of answered prayer. Prayer is not spiritual self-hypnosis. Nor do we pray because it makes us feel better. We pray because God has commanded us to pray and because prayer is the God-appointed means for a believer to receive what God wants to give him. Prayer keeps a Christian in the will of God and living in the will of God keeps a Christian in the place of blessing and service. We are not beggars; we are children coming to a wealthy Father who loves to give His children what they need.[3]” This quote is from Wiserbe. I like both of these very much.

Know this brother or sister, no matter if God’s answer to your prayer be “Yes” or “No,” He hears every single one of them. He marks them, He keeps them close to Him. He isn’t just ignoring you. There is no such thing as, “there isn’t any use.” Because God treasurers prayers and He going to use them in some way to help us learn about Him and glorify Himself through them and through us. He is refining us through our prayer. He is helping us understand and come into (if we were out) His will with them. Know this too, if It is in His will, you can know with confidence You will have it. What we really have to ask ourselves is this, “Do I want His will?” or “Do I want my will? ” We should always be seeking what God wants for us, not what we want for us. Hopefully, these things are one in the same. If not, God is patient and He will take as long as He needs to show us why they are not. In this process, He will also refine us to want what He wants/desires/wills for us and our lives.

Another point, God forgives repentant hearts

16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.

I know what you are thinking, yikes that is a scary passage. I would have to agree to that thought, yes, yes it is. This is one of the good things of expository preaching, it doesn’t allow for the preacher/pastor to overlook/ignore difficult passages like this. When looking at these verses together, it is easy to get off track, so I want to be clear here.

John is not trying to turn our attention to (if you are anything like me) what our minds want to go towards here. That is thinking, “what on earth is the sin leading to death and the sin not leading to death.” More specifically, “What is the sin that leads to death!?” Rather, John is more or less putting a tag ending here on that on previous verses about prayer, and is trying to highlight that the we are to pray for other brothers and sisters and have concern for them and their sin. This is one of the reasons we congregate together, this one reason why the Universal church and our church exists, to help one another with sin, helping one another get it out of our lives and glorifying God through defeated sin and changed hearts. Of course, many other important reasons exist such as: administering the ordinances, mission work/making new believes, and discipling/equipping believers to do the work of the mission, and worship. However this is a important reason we exist as church family too.

So, what John here is saying is to pray from your brethren! Pray for them that their sin may be repented of and forgiven so that God can be glorified in this situation. He does though, make provision to not bother to pray, and that is prayer for sin that leads to death. What then are these sins that that do and do not lead to death. This took me awhile to understand this week. This was a difficult text. So, what are the sins that we are to pray for here, I found this from John Piper and found it very useful to help me understand. This kind of sins is, “Any sin that we commit which by God’s grace we are capable of truly confessing and repenting from, as 1 John 1:9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So, what then is this bad sin that we are not to worry ourself on? It is sin that a person is steeped in, such a hard habit that a true confession and repentance is impossible. Hebrews 12:16-17 touches on this, 16 that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. 17 For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.” Here, Esau was so far gone that he did not have the ability to repent. We also read about this kind of sin in Mark 3:28-29 28 “Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”And Let’s not also forget Jesus words in Matthew 12:30-32, “30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. 31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. 32 And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

This is hard, and this is all true, it is beside the point though. The point here is that we are to help one another as believers, as the whole point seems to be with this entire book. That is, we are to always be loving God and loving people, especially the brethren that God would be glorified.

What does all this imply? It implies that those that love God, that seek to honor Him also seek to get rid of sin in their lives. Sure, it may be difficult, but when He says, “quit it” our life will begin to move in a way that does so (though it may take some time). When our hearts are soft, seeking the will of God, God sees this and loves it. He sees your repentant heart and rejoices in it. He forgives it, He forgives the sin of all people in Christ when they honestly ask for the forgiveness and honestly endeavor to put the sin aside. What is the message? What is the application here? It is this, which it almost always is. Believe in The Lord Jesus, and what He can do for you, and repent/turn away from your sin. God delights in this. He delights in us when we do this.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, beloved know this; God knows his children’s hearts. God affirms His children; He wants you to know that He loves You and His promises still stand (no matter what). God hears our requests, He doesn’t ignore you. He loves all your requests, weather He gives it to you or not, it Honors Him and He will shape you through it. Also, God forgives repentant hearts; He knows your heart He has so much forgiveness that the fountain of it will never run dry (as our fountains on Earth do). He will forgive is children, His adoring children as our God who delights in us as a Father or Mother delights in their children. Let’s do this. Every one of us, let’s look deep down at ourselves. Let’s honestly ask and say, “What I’m I doing, or thinking, or saying that isn’t honoring to Him?” Where is my sin small, where is my sin big, where is it shallow, where is deep? What am going to do to remove it from my life? This is the life and questions that a Christian is always to be asking ourselves. This is part of the repentant life.

For others in this room, perhaps you aren’t here quite yet. Let me tell you right now; you are about to hear the truth, the ultimate truth of the universe. You are accountable to God, you cannot plead ignorance anymore, not that it would have mattered if you did. Friend, God created everything. He created the heaven and the Earth and he created everything good. However, through our own free will and our own desire, sin entered into the world today and is upon every person, this sin separates us from God. It separates us so far, that only one bridge will make up the difference. This is the bridge or better yet, the Cross of Christ. Only through accepting Jesus Christ’s death to pay the penalty for your sin can you no longer have a deep and wide chasm between you and God. Only this will restore you to a perfect fellowship with Him. Accept this, and the blessed assurance of eternal Life is yours friend.

With that, let’s conclude today. If you have anything you would like to talk about or need prayer, I will be here during our last song together, I would love to talk and pray with you. All you have to do is come forward. Also, after our song we will share testimonies before adjuring into our business meeting. With that, let’s pray. Father, thank you thank you thank you for your word today. It is Holy and precious to us. Father, purify us, help us become more holy. Show us where we need to better, and guide and support us through this. Strengthen us where we need it, comfort us where we hurt. We know you can and do there things. We know you make beautiful things, but they all only slightly reflect Your beauty and your glory. Help us bring more glory to You. It’s in these things I ask and in Jesus Christ’s Holy and precious name that I pray, Amen.

[1]Walvoord, John F., and Roy B. Zuck, Dallas Theological Seminary. The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures. Victor Books, 1985, p. 902. [2]Stott, John R. W. The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary. InterVarsity Press, 1988, p. 185. [3]Wiersbe, Warren W. The Bible Exposition Commentary. Victor Books, 1996, p. 529.