Prayer 04 Prayer-His Commandment — Alden Gannett

Lord's Blessing and Fellowship. We rejoice in this opportunity. Will you turn to 1 John Chapters 3 and 4? 1 John Chapters 3. We turned to Chapter 3 last night from a negative point of view. Tonight, I want to turn to it from a positive point of view.

The Commandment to Believe and Love

The issue is so important and so far-reaching that it is meant to be turned to this subject. Let's begin reading with verse 18. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

By this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him. For if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things. We love it if our hearts condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God, and whatever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that appeal to Him.

This is His commandment. We should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us. Amen. Precious Father, it is a joy it is tonight to turn again to the Word of God, and to hear what Thou didst have to say in it for our hearts.

In this needy, needy hour in which we live, give us proof of Thy Word, and it shall prepare us the more to reach this generosity that is offered to us. Lord, keep us firm in Jesus. This morning, we were studying together one of the great conditions for prayer, that of praying in the maze.

You notice in our text tonight another very fundamental condition for prayer, a condition which is actually twofold, but notice that it is singular in verse 23. This is His commandment, not commandments, plural, that we should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as He gave us.

Amen. This is His commandment. Believe, we love, that there is one condition for salvation that is faith in our Lord Jesus. When the Philippian jailer cried out and said, Sir, what must I do to be saved?

The answer came back, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. All of us who are believers tonight know that when we did that one day, when we truly called upon the name of the Lord to be saved, God did save us.

He brought forgiveness, and He likened us. Why then does John here say this is His commandment, singular, that we should believe and love one another as He gave His commandment? It is because one who genuinely believes expresses that faith by loving one another.

Faith is the condition of salvation. Loving one another is the evidence, clear evidence, that one does pass from death. Our concern tonight, again, is prayer, and did you notice, as we emphasized last night together, that John is pleading for reality?

Loving, verse 18, not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth for reality. He has just said, verse 17, Whosoever hath this world's goodness, he and his brother have need, and shut it up is the passion of him, how welleth the love of God in him.

There is a reality there when one is superficial in that exercise of love one for another. Now, if our hearts condemn us about a lack of love, if our hearts condemn us not, then have we confidence for God of keeping His commandment.

Sometimes we take prayer as a very matter. We can stand on our knees at any time and pray unto God and expect God immediately and forthrightly to answer, even though we have not kept His commandment, and John says it doesn't work that way.

It's conditional. It's conditional in our texts. Now, to illustrate this, chapter four, beginning with verse seven, through chapter five and verse five, I want us to see John develop this fundamental truth of love one for another, and I must say, as we begin our study of this tonight, the longer I study the word, the longer I live among the people of God, the longer I share in the ministry of the Word of God, the more I appreciate 1 Corinthians 13, 13, and now might have paid hope, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

You can take all of Christian experience, you can take every responsibility I have in my relationship with God as a believer, wrap it up right here, let us love one another, for love is of God. Everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.". See, remember now, that the context of 1 John, the purpose of 1 John, is the assurance of salvation. So, John is using love here as the evidence, one of the evidences for one knowing that he has passed the temple of life.

John says, "'Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and if you love, you are born of God, and you know God, but if you don't love, you've not been born of God, and you don't know God, for God is love.'".

You can't have God inside you without some love leaking out from somewhere. You just can't do it. You can't have God, who is love, within you, without power, if it isn't there, is. The word agape, which speaks of the presence of God, when we read in John 3, 16, that God is the counsel of the world, God is saying that the world, the individual members of this world, are precious to me, so precious that I gave myself.

God's Love Manifested in Christ

Here, he says, "'Let me amplify this concept of love in verses I have said, in this was manifest the love of God toward us, that God send his only begotten Son into the world we might live this wicked world, a world that would have no room for him in the end, a world that would try to murder all the infants two years old and young under, a world that would not receive him religious Judaism, orthodox Judaism of his day.

God would have to write of him he came unto his own, and his own received him not. He so loved I live, he is one of the grandest, most glorious, and in all the words of God, I know them not very well, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have what?'.

Think of it, here's the kind of love, here's the kind of love we're talking about, who taught God in heaven to send his Son. He asked for it, and he did not simply love God, but he loved us. He sent his Son to be the propitiation.

You love the Lord, sister. Don't talk about how much you love him. Here is his love, not that he's nailed on that cross. He was bruised for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The judgment of our enemies was upon him.

The Jews did put Jesus Christ to death. They cried, crucify him, crucify him. The Roman Catholic Church was in error when they exonerated the Jews for the death of Christ, for they did cry out, murder him.

The Gentiles also put Jesus Christ to death. Pontius Pilate, he released him to governor. So, he said he wanted his hands washed of the whole thing. He nevertheless had in his heart humanism, and he did it.

I put Jesus Christ to death. It was our sins that put him on the cross, for he was the lamb of God. The answer is not finally in any of these. Yes, the hatred was there in the press. Pontius Pilate did release him.

Your sins and mine put him on that tree. The eternal before the founders. This is the call of it. God's love in us. We love it if God's soul loved us. Eternal God pretended to unite and to love one another.

If that love would cause Jesus Christ to be nailed to a cross, then we ought to love one another. If that love would cause the God of heaven to voluntarily lay down his life for us, then we ought to love one another.

God's Indwelling and the Witness of the Spirit

God can do it. God dwells within us. We love one another. God dwelleth in us, and if love is protected in us, the moment we were saved, the God of heaven came to dwell with us. Love one another is delivered.

God dwelleth in us. One is protected in us, and continues to be reclaimed in the earth. You can think of continuity, the results and effects of it here. It goes on and on and on that way, since God who is love, and the God who manifested that love in sending his Son, the God who put his Son on the cross, that we might live and be saved.

By this, know we that we dwell in him as he in us, because he has given us his spirit. Another evidence that this God who is love is within us is that his spirit is there. Paul tells his enrollment remembering relations that his spirit bear witness with our spirit that we're children of God.

I pray that evidence that God is in you tonight is that witness of the Holy Spirit that says you're a child of the living God. Furthermore, we have seen and we testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him as he in God. Have you confessed Jesus? Have you said, yes, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Yes, I believe that he came into the world to save sinners.

Yes, I confess him as my personal Savior. Have you ever done this and done this constantly? Then he adds verse 16, and we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is that love in your life today.

Are you abiding in that love today? Does that love in your heart today for the Lord, and for one another, and for precious souls for whom Christ died? Do you know that precious love? Do you experience it?

Do you know the thrill of it in your own life? God says, there's your evidence, and it's positive. So, John gives us in these four verses that God is not only love, but enough because this is so. Verse 17, herein, notice her margin, herein is love made perfect with us.

Perfect Love, Assurance, and Judgment

We may have boldness in the day of judgment, because if he is in the stream of assurance of salvation, John says there's boldness in the day of judgment. In the day of judgment, our Dean of Students, Mrs. Carey, who's the long tank horse tonight, beautifully, she said on the way down as I asked her about my own courses, you know, these teens learn a lot, and they hear what the students think, and so I talked to her very frankly about my course, and she said the seniors scare the freshmen about my course in John and in spiritual life, and later on in doctrine, and they just trained them to be scared about my tragedy.

You know I'm not that. The manager of the class in front of the board is going to be there for 10 days of reckoning, when we have to go in and make our annual report, or whatever it might be. Fear of the day of judgment, the God who is love.

There's no fear when we shall stand before God. There's no fear in love. Verse 18, but perfect love passes out fear, because fear is formless. It appears it's not made perfect in love. What's he saying?

Why, he is saying that the child of God is dwelt by the Lord himself, or verse 17, as Christ is standing before God someday, and in this context he says that Christ is, so are we, is in respect to judgment.

So are we in this world. Will Jesus Christ ever be condemned for our sins, for his own sin? Never, never, never. In this world, he might be a righteous man. I rejoice in the excellence of John's argument here, because God's love then is inside us, and that love is grave.

God's love, of course, verse 19 of chapter 4, on verse chapter 5 of verse 5, the word him is not in the best respect. We simply love. We love the law for whom Christ died. For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen.

We just demand that we from him, that he who loveth God, love one another. How can we say we love the Lord when we don't love one another? If we don't love the people he has seen, how in the world can we say we love him?

Loving God's Children and Keeping His Commandments

I'll put that issue letter in practice in verses 1 to 5. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, he is born of God, and everyone that loveth him that's begotten. The father loveth him also that is begotten.

God says, if I don't love his children, and I'm a freak all night, go to bed. Oh, don't miss the principle now. This is the Christ born of God, and everyone that loveth him that begat and loveth him also that is begotten.

If we know that we love the children of God, which is men. It sounds as if God's going in circles. He is. He has a complete. I tell the Lord I love him when I love his children. I love the Lord's children when I love him.

I love him when I love the Lord's children. I love the Lord's children when I love him. Around he goes. For this is the love of God. You and I couldn't define love this way, could we? This is the love of God that we want.

Keep his commandment. We should believe in the name of the son Jesus Christ and love one another as he gave his commandment. And his commandments are not. I meet you lowly in heart. For my yoke is what?

Jesus. My burden is what? You're a Christian too anyway. Did you have anybody ask you that? Well, you don't have any fun at all. You don't go out and live it up at night. You don't get drunk. What do you do?

A foreign can like that. How are things going tonight? Is it much fun shooting here? Yeah, I sat on the telephone last night. How are things going, Parker the Fox? Are the folks enjoying it as much as that is?

The Joy and Scope of Obedience

You are going to be a Christian, my friend. What a joy it is to serve. Study to show thyself true. To work from the knee is not to be ashamed. Or are they dividing the word of truth? Commandment. To study, to give diligence to the word of God.

And not always. This is the commandment of God. Walk in the spirit. Be filled with the spirit. This is the commandment of God. The first day of the week that each one lay aside, as God has promised him.

Commandment. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every preacher. His commandments are not evil. So ye make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and all I will do always, even to the end.

For whatever is born. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world? But he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. He hasn't talked about worldliness in chapter two.

Here, clear over in chapter five, he brings up this subject in good terms. What does he say? In this world, this world may God. It's tough to have to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in your life.

The Lordship of Christ Is Not Burdensome

Oh, it's too burdensome, too grievous to make wrongs right, and to spend your time loving one another, and living for yourself in all you can, and become in this world. It's never too grievous. The devil whispers, it's going too far.

The devil whispers, it's going too far, you know, when you can't have your own way after all. Your soul's your own, isn't it? Can't you live as you please? It's going too far when you have to bow to me, to the Lord Jesus.

It's never too grievous. You mean I've got to give up home, I've got to give up loved ones, I've got to give up wealth, I've got to give up the material blessings of life, and go and bury myself in a mission field somewhere?

That's too much to ask, the devil says. He commands the grievance. This is a big prison. All I want is love in my life. He is commanding the grievance. I was a kid. The thing I hated worse, is when my mother learned quickly that she really wanted to see me.

I hated the one thing that I had to do to this, that solved most problems. Ah, but you know how it goes. Sometimes you forget. This young fellow forgot. Son, time to do the dishes. There was the old-fashioned dishpan in the cottage, on Supa Lake, one of the finger lakes of New York State.

Oh, did you know it? I can see myself right now, standing over that dishpan, with the tears literally dripping out of my eyes into that dishpan. Her commandments were urged to my I went to Oil City, Pennsylvania to see her.

Love Expressed Through Prayer and Missions

When you love the Lord, you love God's people. Difficult as they may be, obnoxious as they may be, carnal as they may be at the moment, rebellious and stiff-necked as they may be, unwilling to work together and fellowship together, you still love them with a love of Christ.

And your heart goes out to the people across the world who never heard anything like this. And you find yourself praying for them, and you find yourself getting concerns for missions, and you find yourself praying for your own children about their responsibility in going to the ends of the earth.

Our text in verse 21 of chapter... Beloved, if our hearts condemn us not for loving in deed and in reality, then have mercy on me from the name of his Son, Jesus. Go on loving one another. As we close this, am I meeting this condition?

Jesus, I love thee. Tonight in this room, and on these grounds, and back home from which you've come, you can say before God tonight, you do love the Lord. With their problems, with their burdens, with their carnality, with their needs, you express it by praying for them.

Hearts concerned for evangelism and redeeming the opportunity of this nation, in praying for them and supporting them. My heart once did throb with a love of Christ. I say immediately, this is explanation enough for God not having any.

Let us confess our coldness and difference tonight, our neglect of those who need us. Let us let the Holy Spirit apply. Did I come short? Not there at all. Will I do not love with a love of Christ? Am I doing something that is not love?

Let us love into our hearts anew. Let us trust in that love once more. We welcome our brother and sister, Travis, back to the heart of the Palm tonight.