That You Might Know

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

All right, we might be able to fit you all in my bedroom, but maybe not quite. For those of you in the audience, and there’s quite a few of you who have been there, this is the book that started it. First John was the book that the guy that I hired told me to read in the Bible, because I told him I was a Christian with several not Christian words. And I thought I was saved. I was the young Baptist kid who got baptized at nine and then lived like hell till I was 37. And I hired this guy and he told me, are you interested in studying the Bible? And I said, oh yeah. And I went around, I told stories in the previous sermons.

But he said to read First John. And I thought it was interesting how I did get saved reading this book in chapter two when it said, If you are doing these things, you’re not one of his. And I realized no way was I doing those things. So that convicted me. I got on my knees. I repented. And things haven’t been the same since. That was when I was 37. I’m now 72. And it’s been quite a wild ride. I got saved in February and started taking seminary classes in August, I mean February, and then got taking seminary classes in August. And first year Greek was my first challenge. I didn’t know English grammar. I got the little pamphlet they give out in seminary to learn all the parts of speech.

But first John is where they pound at home in first year Greek, because it’s very elemental Greek and it’s written in the present tense, most of the words. So it’s present active indicative. those Latin students probably know that. It means it’s ongoing action that has consequences for you. And that’s where people get screwed up, you know. He who does not sin, and the expression is ongoing sin. We’re all sinners. And he clarifies that in the book, you know. You who say you have no sin, you’re a liar, right? So we’re finally to the final chapter of it. And I want to read it, and it’s going to be short and simple.

It’s so direct. And I have one little rabbit trail about textual criticism that some of you that are students will, you can go down those rabbit trails and see how we got our translation. And I think it’s very beneficial to do that, because it gives you great confidence in your English translation to study that. Now most of you young people out here are going to ECS and you’re reading all kinds of ancient literature and when you start realizing how many textual references you have to Herodotus or the Caesars or any of that stuff, it’s like minuscule compared to the Bible. And so we have great confidence this is very, very close to what was written by the apostles, probably 99%.

and you can study all these things and we’ll get into a sideline discussion. First though, I’d like to pray that we that are here would understand it in that simple way and I would pray that people would read it. I think it was really interesting when this guy recommended that I read this after I understood where it was, I had to get him to tell me where it was in the Bible. You know, it’s page 778, reading the index there And I had people telling me, oh, you shouldn’t start there. You should start in the Gospel of John and everything. This book is so straightforward, you can’t read it and hide from what he’s trying to tell you, even though the same author did the epistles, or the epistle of John, or not the epistle.

So it’s just straight up Christian living by an older man. He’s probably in his 90s when he wrote this to people of how to live and how to deal with all the stuff that comes at you. So let’s pray and we’ll get started. Father, we thank you for your word. I thank you especially for this chapter. It did convict me. I ask that through the simplicity of your writer of this epistle, John, that that would come through to everybody. the, I think the wisdom of an old man who had been through all kinds of stuff, realized it had to be straight told so that nobody would misunderstand or get sidelined into all kinds of different tracks that is just straight up who you are and that you want us to worship you.

So we thank you for that. We thank you for this simple letter to us and help me now explain it in the right way. Amen. Okay, so first thing I want to do is read the text of the fifth chapter. It’s a big, what is it, 20, 21 verses long. Everybody can read that, right? Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey His commandments, for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God, that he is born concerning his son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe in God has made him a liar, because he is not believed in the testimony that God has born concerning his son. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his son. Whoever Whoever has the Son has life.

Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have the life. 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. And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, 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 the request that we have asked of him. 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 a sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should pray for that.

wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we 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, in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God in eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” All right, pretty simple, pretty basic out there. Maybe the only confusing part is the sin not leading to death.

We’ll get into that when we get there. Everything else is pretty straight up, okay? So in the first verse, he said, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. Interesting father, and as we’re here on Father’s Day, he is our father. He comes down to us in that way and models what we who want to be fathers, we men and young men that want to grow up to be fathers, he models how we should behave towards our children. So, we are born of him, and we’re adopted sons of God. So in every way, we are part of him. And so everyone who believes Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and adopted into his family, and whoever loves the Father, whoever has been born of him.

So it like circles back around to tell you if you believe you’re one of his, just straight up. By this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

So if we’re the children of God, We love God and obey what he wants us to do. Do we obey perfectly? No, but we strive to do that. And if we strive to do that, we love one another. We treat each other as they would, or as we would have them treat us, we live out the golden rule, and things are great. And it really is amazing to me how simply, day by day, you can see that lived out when you live in a Christian community. because somebody screws up, I’m sorry, will you forgive me for that? Then we move on to the next thing. And we get through another couple hours and then maybe you gotta ask somebody else to forgive you.

But then you get better at it. And pretty soon you’re starting to live in a harmonious stream that goes along. And I think it’s really interesting that in the school, I know you guys can feel this, when you’re all in the spirit and tracking along, It’s a, there’s a great momentum that happens. And to be part of that is exciting. And that’s all part of living out the Christian faith. I think we demonstrate it in our services, I’ve talked about this a lot, that in our morning worship, our liturgy conforms us to that image. And if you were a true believer and you’re here, you confess your sin and then you hear the message and then you get the charge and we have communion.

There’s something that’s happening there that’s supernatural and causing us to become stronger and stronger every week, every year. So that’s the commandments are not burdensome. So you obey the commandments, they’re not burdensome versus the Old Testament law. Those of you that have read your Old Testament readings as you read through the Bible, there’s a lot of them in there. And can you imagine trying to live as a pious Jew in the Old Testament era and keeping track of all that stuff. And all that was a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ to realize there’s no way they could keep the law. They needed the ultimate sacrifice to bring them out of that.

And then when Christ comes, He tells us His yoke is light in Matthew 11.30. So His commandments are a light And why are they light? Because if you’re walking in the Spirit, God is doing them through you. You’re really not doing them. The Christian life is a supernatural life. If you’re doing it right, it’s God working through you, not you grinding it out, not you trying super hard. God uses you in all kinds of bizarre ways to make it happen.

So we don’t have to worry about the commandments being heavy on us. For everyone who has been born of God and overcomes the world, and this is the victory that he has overcome the world, our faith, whoa, our faith in what Christ has done has overcome the world. There are days and times in your life when you don’t think so because the world is beating you down, but the story is not over, just keeping the game because the end result is we overcome, okay? Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Okay, this is one of those points where you get to do the Nike shoe thing. Overcome is Nikka Ka’o, and the conqueror overcoming, win the verdict, is the definitions and Greek dictionaries of it. So, you are the overcomer. You are the conqueror of these things. But the only reason you overcome the world is why? Your faith. The overcome the world through our faith and the one that overcomes the world Except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. So only through your faith do you overcome that? So in your faith you walk by the Spirit and you get stronger every time you get up to that Then verse seven comes along, for these are three that testify, the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three agree.

So there is a testimony from God himself of what Christ has done to witness to us what he did. The spirit testifies with our spirit, the water it is baptism, and the blood it is crucifixion. And all of these things agree. And the spirit was instrumental in all those parts. Remember, it is baptism and is crucifixion, all these things, and we, by having the spirit, are able to recognize that witness.

Now we come to the interesting part. I don’t know how many of you have King James Bibles or have gotten into the King James only debates and all of that kind of stuff, but there’s a famous textual problem that happens here in 1 John 5, 7, and 8. So in the King James Version, instead of saying, for there are three that testify, it says this, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.

Well, there’s a slam dunk for the Trinity, isn’t it? That verse alone, if that were in the Bible, For there are three, the bare record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. Now, can you extrapolate that from verse seven and eight that I read before, the spirit and the water and blood, and these three all agree? So if you’re looking at your ESV, I believe you can make a case that those things are in there also. But if you have a King James version, there you have it spelled out so nobody could argue with it. Then in 1 John 5, 8 in the King James Version it said, and there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree in one.

So it’s kind of a muddled, shuffled together version of the seven and eight that are in your ESV. Now the problem with this is, and this is known as the comma, Johenium, it’s probably pronouncing that wrong, Johenium, made its way into the third edition of Erasmus Greek, Greek New Testament in 1522. So Erasmus came out with a previous edition that didn’t have that. Then he got criticized by the Catholic Church and in 1522 he came out with an edition that had that verse in it because of pressure from the Catholic Church. After his first edition appeared in 1516, There arose such a furor over the absence of the comma, those two verses that I just read out of King James, over the absence, that Erasmus needed to defend himself.

He argued that he did not put it in the comma because he found no Greek manuscripts that included it. So he was trying to be faithful to the information that he had in the 1500s of the few Greek manuscripts he could get his hands on. Now he did other damage to the manuscripts in Revelation and things where he added things, but he was trying to be as faithful as he could to older documents to bring forth a true translation of the word of God. Remember in the 1500s, the only thing that most people knew was the Vulgate, which was a Latin translation of Greek manuscripts from the 400s. So he’s really a thousand years after that and he’s trying to bring it back to the original autograph.

Now, he argued that he did not put it in because he found no Greek manuscripts that included it. Then there was one manuscript that was produced, Kodak 61. Now when I say Kodak 61, if you can get a Greek New Testament, a USB, or one of those little red ones, and the Nestle’s has the most textual criticism, you open it up and there’ll be little verses at the top that are what they consider should be in the And then there’s the rest of the page is all these references, you know, Codex this, Codex that, this, and all these letters and all this stuff. And what it’s saying is this manuscript has that, that manuscript has this, all these kind of things.

The problem with Codex 61 was that it was written by one Roy or F-O-R-Y. Okay, they’re not sure how to interpret the writing of this guy. He produced this manuscript, this Greek manuscript in 1520. So they’re looking at a manuscript that was produced two years before Erasmus put it in. And Erasmus is being pressured by the Catholic Church to put it in, to get that Trinitarian reference put in there because it was in the Latin Volga. So he put it in because he realized that if he didn’t put it in, you know, things weren’t good for people that challenge people in the 1500s of Catholic Church. So he put it in. So what I’m trying to say is that verse should not be in your Bible, but the thing is when you study why it’s in the Bible, it’s kind of a jump into the whole realm of textual criticism. Now think about this, if we have 5,000 manuscripts, more than that actually of the New Testament, and you You start putting them all together and putting them in columns and matching them up and everything.

You find out that like 98% of the Bible is in these manuscripts. It just lines up perfectly. And then there’s like the rest of it are these crazy little, maybe a guy got a letter wrong when he was spelling it. And remember, there was no printing press, no copy machines. Everybody was handwriting this stuff out. So if I misspell a word, if I get two letters wrong, that’s a copyist error. So that goes in the error column. And out of all these 5,200-some manuscripts, it’s like 98% spot on, and the rest of them are like spelling errors or words get combined or there’s a famous one called Homo Itelieton, which means the copyist was looking at the end of the line.

He goes back here to copy the thing and he gets messed up because he’s looking at the end of the line and he recopies it. Well, now it’s obvious he made a copy error, but it’s still an error. So that goes in that 2% error rate. So you can have great confidence that when you look at these things, the majority of it absolutely agrees. And when it comes to doctrine, anything that’s a doctrinal distinction, it goes out to like .1 or something. I mean, it’s ridiculous. And like I said, if you just read verse 7 even in your ESV, you can see that the Spirit, the Father, the Son, all these things are mentioned over and over again in these chapters and you come up with the Trinity.

But it is an interesting sideline because you’ll hear people, if you have some Baptist friends that are in fundamental churches that are King James only if you haven’t heard that debate, they say that the King James only is the Bible we should read because It’s the only one that God superintended throughout history to make it absolutely correct. Now keep in mind, the King James Bible was a translation of Greek manuscripts that were available to people in the 15 and 1400s, and then it was brought forward to us. Then we start discovering other things and other manuscripts and start putting them together when we realize, oh, there’s a little problem here that looks this way and that way.

And there’s all these rules that conform to the more difficult translation is probably the one to choose because that would be harder to copy, so that’s where most errors go. There’s all kinds of little crazy rules. And I recommend that if you want to get into this, get online, type in textual criticism, and you’ll start down the rabbit trail. But it’s really fascinating because when you study it yourself, it will confirm what you have in your hands. It will make you very confident of what we have, not the vice versa. I’ve heard people say, never bring this up with people because it confuses them. No, bring it up with them and make them understand what we’ve got. I hope that everybody understands this English big book you got with this black cover is really not the Bible, okay?

Okay, it is a Bible, it’s a translation of the Bible. We don’t have the original autographs. So we’re attempting to put together as close as we can to what we believe the original autographs can have. And when you start studying this, you find things like the Old Testament. We have a Masoretic text from the 1200s. Was copied by Jewish scribes that if they made one mistake on one page, they tore the whole thing up and recopied it. So then they discovered these caves in Qumran, and they start unrolling these scrolls, and they find out that in Isaiah, it’s letter perfect, coming from like 90 AD, all the way to the 1200s, in the Hebrew text, which has just more words than you can imagine.

I mean, the size of the Old Testament versus the New Testament, that’s a lot of words. And in these particular passages that they discovered, It was almost totally correct. So the copyist errors are hardly anything in the Old Testament when you have the scribes and people that were copying it exactly. The Greek New Testament is harder because you pass it on to all these people and Bob and Ephesus gets one and he goes, oh man, Paul just gave us this letter and he’s scribbling it all down. Pass this off, take it off to the next village. So now he’s made a manuscript copying it. So there could be more errors because he’s not under the discipline that the Masereites were under.

So as you go along in this, you find out that there’s slight errors, but it could be this copy, that copy, that kind of thing. But it’s fascinating study. Now, back to our text. It doesn’t really matter that that’s not in there. It doesn’t cause us great harm or anything like that. Because the ones that we can agree are in there, And godless people would agree with this textual apparatus kind of. Textual criticism is called lower criticism. And that’s what they do with any manuscript you have, like Beowulf. I don’t know how many copies of Beowulf are out there to study. But they want to arrive at how many words in Beowulf.

They use the same rules that you use with the Bible. Which one is older? Which one do I think was copied from that one? That kind of thing. Another little rabbit trail that I like to get down here is, I’ll try to describe this. So I’m living in Jerusalem, and Paul sends me a letter from Ephesus, and it’s the Ephesians. And I copy it down, and I’m a Jewish scribe, and I’m really, I know, this is, you know, he’s witnessed by God, and he’s got the spirit in him, so I wanna be super careful. So I copy this thing down, and I’m really good at it. I maybe miss one letter out of the whole letter of the Ephesians. Now, he also sends a letter over to Jim, who’s down in Alexandria.

So Jim gets his letter, he goes, oh yeah, man. Now Jim is really super fast, but Jim might make 10 mistakes. So he’s copying all this stuff, and he’s just sending, you know, take this over down south of Egypt and go over here in Arabia and distribute this one and here, take that one, take that one. So he generates maybe 30 copies. I maybe generated one that’s super accurate and I just put it in a cupboard and it’s only hanging around Jerusalem. This other guy makes 30 copies and distributes it all over, but he might have 30 errors in it because he’s super fast. Now what do I do with that when I come with the thing and I’m a textual critic and I’ve got 30 copies that have this reading and only have one copy that has this reading, but this one is actually the most accurate.

So they look at it and they realize, oh, all these copies have this spelling error. And that kind of cast dispersion on, it seems like there’s a lot here, but there’s a lot of mistakes that get made. This one doesn’t have many mistakes, but it doesn’t have many other copies. So which one is the most accurate? And it gets really kind of tricky to know which one is the most accurate. One of the most fun ones to do is, oh man, I forget the reference now, but it’s in the Gospel of John. Shoot, I’m not going to remember it now. But anyway, it’s a fun rabbit trail to go down. All right, now back to first John. But it will give you great confidence the more you study it.

How about that? So now we move on to verse nine. So the thing to remember here is, for there are three that testify, the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree, okay? So now we have a testimony from God, the spirit, the water and the blood, and they all agree. And what they agree on, who Jesus is. And remember that John is battling the Gnostic heresy that Jesus really wasn’t totally man, totally God, he was kind of man and kind of this and kind of that. spirit being, you know, he’s saying he’s the real dude. So in verse 9 we have, if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God, that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his son.

All right, there’s one, two, two verses, pretty much a paragraph. Basically what it says, if you don’t believe who Christ is, you make God a liar, all right? You see, if we receive the testimony of men, he’s already attacking false teachers, And remember that he’s going after them in this book and in second and third John also. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God, that he is born concerning his son. Whoever believes in the son of God has the testimony in himself. And why do you have that testimony in yourself? Because the spirit of God, other part of the Trinity, right?

And whoever does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed the testimony that God has borne by the Spirit concerning his Son. So the whole thing circles back around and everything all keeps coming together. And how could somebody want to believe in a God that is not testifying to himself? That’s the great mystery of the Christian faith, that God is Spirit, God is the Son, and God is the Father, and all three work in perfect harmony in gospel living, showing us how we should live, right? And that’s where the Trinitarian whole element of our life, actually in most churches gets pushed away. That that whole element of spirit, God, Jesus, all of it together shows you how to operate as a family, how to operate as a body, how you operate just dealing with each other is the right way to come along.

If we all have the Spirit of God in us and we’re walking in the Spirit, we’re not gonna fight. We’re gonna see, oh, that’s okay, you do that, I can do this. That doesn’t mean we’re all a bunch of little robots doing the same exact thing, all dressing alike and all of that, we’re all unique. But the thing is, we’re all in concert together doing what God would have us do, moving his plan ahead. So verses nine and 10 are a severe indictment for people that don’t believe who Jesus is. And if you don’t believe that, you make God a liar. One of my favorite things with people when they say they don’t believe in God, I always go back to the general revelation, something bigger than you made all this.

And if you believe that, and they’ll usually go, oh yeah, I believe that. But now you’re using that trick thing about designers and all that kind of stuff. And then I said, yeah, so you believe there’s something bigger than you that made that? Oh yeah. I said, okay, the problem now is you’re not an atheist, so now you’re a liar about that. You just don’t know what his name is. What happens if he writes you a book and tells you who he is? Oh, now you’re bringing that Bible stuff in. Yeah, that’s right. We have this general revelation and now we have this special revelation. And if you reject that, you’re making God a liar.

Now they don’t like that approach, but the thing is, it is the true approach because they know in their heart, Romans says, they know there is a God that did this. And they choose to keep suppressing that truth, pushing it down. Okay, then in verse 11, John says, and this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. This is the testimony God gave us eternal life. And this is the life in his Son. Whoever has the Son has the life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have the life. Pretty clear, right?

He has a testimony, he has witnesses, he has the whole ball of wax of how you bring a case and he puts it right there. And if you don’t have that, you don’t have the life. Then he backs away a little bit, he’s pounded pretty hard, and he comes back to that kind of fatherly aspect. And he says, 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. He’s writing so that we may know, and this word know means in your heart, in the depths of your being, you know. Now, people come to me all the time. I read 1 John and there are times when I’m sitting and I don’t know and I have this doubt and I have this and I have that.

And that used to be kind of a hard question to answer for me. I mean, I told him, hey, it’s a habit of life. I know you sin, you fall down, you get up again. I think one of the best explanations I owe to John MacArthur, he always, when people People come to him with that kind of question. He asks, what are you doing today? You know, because a lot of these people have doubts. I came to the Lord in 1957 and I remember I made the decision on 4th and Main, you know, and Bodunk, Iowa or whatever. And he goes, well, that’s really good you made that decision. But what are you doing today? Are you one of his? Are you trying to correct that bad habit you had or whatever was uncovered to you?

And how are you marching today in his ongoing testimony? And I think that really cures the problem because people have, oh, you don’t understand. I keep falling down. Okay, get up, rip pant, and don’t do that. And as you do that over and over, that one fades to the background. and you hear me over and over tell you, now you’ve peeled that layer of the onion, the next time you get up, it’ll be a whole different layer that you realize, oh, now I gotta work on that, but that’s just part of the Christian life. And the thing is, if daily you are trying to conquer that, you are in that march in the right way. So he’s writing these things because he tells you, if you say you have no sin, you’re a liar.

But if you’re struggling with that sin, you are one of his, and he is faithful and just forgive your sins and all the rest of it. So he’s writing these things to you who believe in the name by faith of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. So you know and you know it through relationship. You know if you have those feelings and you have those guilt feelings, who is that wrenching in your soul? It’s God himself through his spirit because each one of us possess that spirit. And when you try to quench the spirit, it gets worse. You can do that, you can’t hold that down. So don’t do that, let the spirit convict you and move ahead and change that attitude.

So knowing through relationship, all right. Then in 14 he says, and this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. Okay, this verse gets beaten over the head by all the Damon and Clamont people. Anything we ask in the Lord’s name we’re gonna get. I need a Rolls Royce, I need that jet airplane for my ministry. No.

The deal is it conforms us to God’s will. 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 we have asked of him. And that request may come to you in a whole different fashion than you thought it was gonna be. Now does that mean it’s wrong to pray for it this way or that way? No, I think he’s given us vision and dreams to pray for that dream. I wanna see us get a building, I wanna see us have some properties so we can have the school and the building and maybe even a retirement home on it, all this kind of stuff. Now, whenever we get that, is it gonna look like that?

I don’t know. But I know that if we’re doing the right thing, he wants us to continue to march in that thing. And whatever he has will even be better than what I can conceive because I don’t know how it all fits into the warp and weave of the whole fabric he’s making us in. So have confidence when you pray that if you’re in his will, it will be answered. Now will it be answered like you think it should? Probably not. Usually it gets answered in all kinds of crazy different ways. I pray for our business all the time. I pray for our household. I pray for our church. I pray for guys that I meet with. Rarely does it come out like I think it’s going to come out.

I do know with confidence the big end of it, but I have no idea how it’s going to work out in the middle part, how it all grinds together. And that’s kind of the exciting part to life. If we knew all that, it’d be pretty boring, wouldn’t it? And I think it’s great to be on the train ride that God has us on. So take comfort in that and don’t be upset. Just get in there and keep trucking, all right?

So we know through relationship, we have confidence that his will will be done. That’s the other thing too, you know? We pray that his will will be done, Lord’s Prayer, okay? If anyone sees, here’s another little tricky one. I don’t think it’s as tricky as people make it out to be, but lots of doctoral theses have been written on it, or THM papers, was a favorite one to choose. 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, He will give him life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. Then, there is a sin that leads to death.

I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is a sin that does not lead to death. What? So if you see your brother sinning, what would you do? You confront him. Hey, Bob, I think you’re sinning. What do you mean? You go through all that. You have that talk with him. He then says, you’re right, I shouldn’t do that. So he repents and off he goes. I don’t think he’s committed the sin that leads to death because he can repent from that. If you have a guy that has this ongoing problem and he keeps doing it and he keeps doing it and you think he’s even a believer, there’s a possibility he’s a believer and God is gonna take him out of the action because he is such a bullheaded person, and yet he believes he could commit a sin where God says, I need to bring you home because you’re not obeying correctly.

That’s one interpretation of that verse, all right? The other interpretation is the sin that leads to death is unbelief. Now, does unbelief lead to death? Absolutely. That’s a cold, hard fact. If you do not believe in what Christ did for you on the cross, and you die, you’re going to be in hell forever, period, in the sentence. And for us not to tell that straight up to people, I think is a bad thing not to tell them that. Now people that do believe and keep on sinning, they could be in that sin that leads to to death where God takes them out. I tend to believe that this, the interpretation is correct, that people can be believers and do a sin that leads to death and God takes them out of the picture because they can’t get away from that and they’re damaging his testimony by that.

And they get hard and God just takes them out, but they’re still of him. Now, a more sure take on it is obviously if it’s the sin of unbelief, those people obviously, when they die, will not be with the Lord. So it’s interesting, all right?

So if the sin leading to death is deliberate, high-handed sin, that’s what MacArthur says in his little notes, deliberate, high-handed sin, it’s kind of, you know, I’m just doing it anyway. That’s one interpretation or unbelief. There’s two balanced things there. I’m not sure it’s really important what you understand there, but you do need to understand all sins are judged by God, and we as believers, we know when we sin, and what do we have to do? We have to confess and repent. And that gets tiring, but you know what? You get to do that until you die, because we still have that seed in us, Adam’s screw-up has given us that, and we have generations of decay going on where we are, so we’re not as smart as we think we are. I believe that the people in the ancient ages were a lot smarter than we were, because they didn’t have all the genetic degeneration through the They saw God face to face in those generations.

We don’t do that. So anyway, we have those problems, confess your sin and get on with it. I think it’s an interesting discussion and a debate to have within the household of God. But if you’re talking with an unbeliever and he’s reading this, and I did ask the guy that told me to read 1 John, he just flat looked at me and said, what do you think it is? And I said, at that time, being an unbeliever, Well, by this time I’d become a believer, I said, it’s somebody who doesn’t believe, that’s really stupidly simple. And he went, yep, that’s what I believe too. So I thought that was interesting that he believed that.

So anyway, that’s that verse. Now, whatever interpretation should not cause you to walk differently. Your walk is still, confess your sin, move ahead, don’t do that anymore. Confess your sin, don’t do that anymore. As you do that, it will fade to the background you’ll have a new one to confess later on. So that’s just the Christian life. Then we move on to 18. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning. Keep on sinning. Here’s that present act, even indicative. Everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, and that particular thing he’s involved in. But he who is born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.

Who does this bring into mind? I think it’s a perfect case to think back to Job. Job is going, what is going on here? He has no idea that Satan is meeting with God, saying I wanna mess with Job, he’s gonna deny you and all that kind of stuff. And Job is faithful to know that and still gets spun up in all kinds of stuff from bad advice from people. So the idea though, the evil one does not touch him. Remember, God protected Joe. You can do anything you want, but you can’t harm him. And that’s the same way I think it is with us. You cannot be harmed by the evil one. He can’t touch you, even though this is his world, which we’re gonna see in the next verse.

The next verse says, we know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. The world system is controlled by unbelievers, Satan. But we keep holding out the light to these people. And occasionally there are those people that go, oh yeah, what you’re doing is good, I wanna join that club. Off they jump. But on the whole, the world is controlled by Satan and the world’s system. But we can have influence and we do get to give the gospel to those people that jump off the train and come on our train, which is exciting, right? So the whole world’s system is controlled by Satan, But the children of God, we are either children of God or children of Satan.

And same book back in the 1 John 3.10, he says, you are either children of God or you’re children of the devil or Satan. Black and white. You’re not in between, oh, he’s a good person and God’s going to judge it because he did more good works than he did bad stuff. No, no, no. It’s only by faith in the Son. Remember, he keeps hammering on that. So it’s only by that, not by works. So you’re either a child of God or you’re a child of Satan. And then he goes on to say, and we know that the Son of God has come and given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true in His Son, Jesus Christ.

He is the true God and eternal life. Just a blanket rehearsal phrase by phrase, Jesus is God. When you have people tell you that the Bible never says Jesus is God and all of that nonsense, you can bring them to this verse and tell them to read it. In his son Jesus Christ, he, Jesus Christ, is the true God and eternal life. Oh wow, I never saw that. It’s right there, okay? That’s one of the great verses that says Jesus is God, period. And the other one I always like to do, and I’ll hammer this home, and I’ve done it with you guys at the school and everything, we’re Christians. We worship Christ. Now, why would we call ourselves Christians and worship somebody who was not God?

I did this in a church that we went to when I first got saved, and there were people there that were sketchy. And whenever I would bring that up, They were the type of people that would say, well, he’s the son of God. And I said, no, no, no, he’s God. If he isn’t God, what are we doing here? We’re worshiping the wrong thing. If he’s not God, what are you saying? And I said, we’re Christians. That means we’re worshiping Christ as God. Oh, well, he’s the son of God. No, no, no, no, no, no. He is God. And then you’d take him through these verses, and they’d, you know, well, yeah, but different commentators agree, you know.

And then I would use, I didn’t know it then, but S. Lewis Johnson was a famous hardcore Calvinist commentator from the 60s, and he had a church in Dallas, Texas. And his famous thing was, and this guy was a commentator also, he wrote lots of papers on the Bible and everything. But he says, commentators are nothing but common potatoes. But anyway, those people, you know, the issue is we’re Christians. We are here to worship Christ. That’s like, whoa, you know, really cool. All right, last verse. And he ends in such a way, I can just see this guy writing his thing down and then he’s looking back and he’s 90, he knows he’s old, he knows he’s probably going to go home and all that kind of stuff.

And then he just writes this little short verse, little children keep yourselves from idols. End of sentence, end of chapter, end of book. Keep yourselves from idols. Now, commentators go wild on this. The idols are all the false Gnostic teachers. Don’t follow those guys, don’t follow this. No, no, no, no. It’s way bigger than that. Little children keep yourselves from idols. Maybe the idol is Legos when you’re five years old. Maybe the idol is baseball when you’re 13. Maybe the idol is money when you’re 45 and trying to make a business. I don’t know what it is, but keep yourself from that. Maybe your idol is a guy or a state of life or whatever it is.

Don’t do that. God is the one to be worshiped. So keep yourself from all those false things to worship and stay on track and worship God. So I think that ends it in a very simple and direct way. I recommend to read this book. This is one you can read in about 30 minutes and one of the best things I’ve ever seen for Bible study. And you can do this with bigger books too, like if you’re reading through a big gospel, read five chapters, but read it 30 times in a row every day. And it’s amazing how you read something in about the 10th day, I know this stuff, this is boring. Then about the 13th day you go, whoa, I never saw that before.

You’ve been reading it for all this, whoa, what does that mean? And it draws you in and allows you to see more and more. This book has all kinds of those things, and yet it’s very simple and very direct. So keep that in mind, be warm and be filled from this book.

When people see that, I was looking around to see other tables watch that, and you saw people looking and smiling. That love demonstrated to us, just as it is written in this book, is an overflowing blessing to the community. Even though they don’t say it, they see it and they’re wondering what’s going on and help us to have the right words when those questions are asked of us, as in 1 Peter 3 15 happens for us. So we thank you for your word, we thank you for the blessings that you give us, and help us now in this next week to live these things out and to be those people you would have us be. So we thank you again for your son, Jesus Christ, and it is his name we pray. Amen.

When people see that, I was looking around to see other tables watch that, and you saw people looking and smiling. That love demonstrated to us, just as it is written in this book, is an overflowing blessing to the community. Even though they don’t say it, they see it and they’re wondering what’s going on and help us to have the right words when those questions are asked of us, as in 1 Peter 3 15 happens for us. So we thank you for your word, we thank you for the blessings that you give us, and help us now in this next week to live these things out and to be those people you would have us be. So we thank you again for your son, Jesus Christ, and it is his name we pray.