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Don Filcek, In the Light - 1 John; 1 John 5:13-21 Confidence and Community
Welcome to Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series called In the Light out of the book of 1 John by Pastor Don Filsek.
If you'd like more information about our church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.
This morning, John is gonna conclude his letter of 1 John to a hurting church by once again reminding them of their confidence in their relationship with God through Jesus. He's gonna remind them of the unity that they have in Jesus Christ together, and then he's going to issue to them, in a sense, a call to stand out from the world.
But John concludes his letter with flair. As you've gotten to know John through this letter, and as I've gotten to know him in studying, we find that he's not just kind of a passe character who just kind of tiptoes through the tulips and tries to get people, oh, I wish that you would just be nice to each other, and we find him being kind of a more boisterous individual with a lot of flair.
And so the confidence that he's going to express to us is ultimately through a radical statement about prayer. It's like him to make radical statements, not just kind of like, well, you should be praying, but he's gonna say some things about our prayer lives that will probably challenge us.
And then the unity that we experience is shown by helping one another deal with sin. Now, how many of you, that's high on your priority list of interaction within the church is helping each other as they are sinning?
Is that, that's probably one of the highlights of your relationship with other people in a church, right? And yet he's gonna highlight that as a source of community. That is a source of unity for us in a sense of helping each other deal with sin, praying for one another when we see sin in each other's lives.
And that, how many of you know that if you get down to the level where you know other people's struggles, you know other people's sins, that real community is starting to happen there? That's, we're talking about bedrock level type stuff where you're willing to share your sins openly with somebody else and ask them to pray for you about those things or interact with each other on the level of their sins and actually enter into somebody's life when you see them sin?
How many of you think that's pretty deep? Is that pretty deep stuff in the Christian life?
It is.
And that's the kind of stuff that John is going to be addressing here in our text this morning. And then he's gonna lastly say that the way that we stand out from the world is by worshiping Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life.
Some amazing statements about Jesus Christ himself in concluding this letter. The fact of the matter is, John doesn't conclude his letter with easy words of comfort, but with words that are going to make us wrestle and think.
These are, there's some academic aspects to this that are gonna force us to get our thinking caps on this morning, but I'm confident that confidence, unity, and a strong ministry are available to anyone willing to wrestle with these words at the end of 1 John with the goal of applying them.
We can wrestle with them academically, but obviously the goal of growing in faith is that we actually walk out of here transformed and changed, that we take on God's word, we listen to it, certainly, academically, get to the place where we understand it in our minds, but then that the spirit moves that from just an academic understanding in our minds to the application of it out in our lives.
And so that's our goal this morning. So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to 1 John chapter five, verses 13 through 21, the very end of this letter from 1 John, page 879 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you.
And again, I say this often, but if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you. We do want everybody to have a copy of the word of God at their home that they can read on their own. 1 John 5, 13 through 21, the very words of God to us here recast this morning.
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 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 sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should pray for that. All 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 and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Let's pray. Father, as we come to this text, there's just one word that keeps shining out clearly.
As I studied it this week, it just kept pounding like waves on the shore and it's the word know. And we can know that we have eternal life. That this letter has been written for confidence. And Father, I pray that you would provide confidence to your people.
That as we read this and as we study it, you would provide confidence for us in relationship, confidence to stand out from the world, confidence that we are indeed your children. And Father, if there's anybody here who lacks that confidence, Father, that you would move in their hearts to bring them into a place of confidence through Jesus Christ, not through our confidence alone.
And Father, for that reason, we're gonna sing some songs to you and we're gonna sing them because it is you who is the Savior. It is you who is King. It is you who are sovereign. It is not about us. It's not about our gathering together.
It's not about our efforts towards you. It's not about us singing so that you like us better. It's not about even just our exercise of our vocal chords because, hey, we get to sing some good songs today.
But ultimately, it is about worshiping you, Father. And I pray that you would receive these songs as worship and that we would offer them as worship to you who are worthy and are awesome and are glorious and you are our confidence.
I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen. I always love that song because that's exactly what I want as a pastor is for the Lord to speak to us this morning. And so I encourage you to have your Bibles open to 1 John 5, again, page 879 in case you lost your place.
But having your Bible open helps to make sense of what it is that I'm talking about because I'm talking about that text in 1 John 5, 13 through 21. Let me set the stage by saying up front that we're entering a text that has many various interpretations.
So some of you might have a study Bible sitting in front of you or sitting on your lap and it has some notes in the margins or some notes underneath that are gonna... And there are times when I may disagree with what your Bible says, but part of my preparation is to pray and ask for wisdom and direction as I study.
And so you're gonna get the results of both my study academically, but also my conviction by the spirit as I try to work through this. But I wanna make sure that you understand that as I preach to you, I wanna preach to you with both boldness and what I believe the scriptures say, but also with humility saying that there are other people who think different things about the text that we're at and they're very wise and very godly and very spiritual as well.
And in the end,.
I believe that the application looks the same even if we get some of the nuances of what's going on there. So I just wanted to start off by saying that, not hopefully to make you discouraged by what you're about to hear, but actually just to kind of encourage you that we can approach the text with humility, but asking God to show us what it means and then going out with conviction based on that.
And so we ought to, on the other hand, always be testing what we say according to others and kind of looking at those who are more knowledgeable than us and those who understand the original languages and things like that and figuring things out.
But John has written this letter, the entire letter to believers. He identifies that for us in verse 13. I write these things to you who believe and they've gone through a horrible church split. Remember we've seen that in the early parts of 1 John back in chapter two.
He talked about how some had left from the church that he's writing to. Probably he's writing to the church of Ephesus. Just to clarify, relationships have been torn apart. The central role of Jesus Christ has been called into question.
Is that a pretty significant doctrinal problem if the church, some in the church are saying, well, I'm not sure if Jesus is that important. Would that be a big issue in a church? If there's some people who are saying things like that, I'm not sure if he's the Messiah.
Maybe there are many messiahs or something like that. And so John has actually openly declared that some of these who have departed from the church have proven themselves to be against the cause of Christ.
He's even applied the word to some antichrist. He's actually said they have proven themselves from the get-go to be against Jesus because of the way that they are now speaking against him in out in the community and around and in the way they're trying to win people from the church over to their thoughts.
And they are denying that Jesus was the Messiah. And so one of the main themes of 1 John has been the role of confidence for those who have remained behind. How are they to move forward? How can they be sure that they're the ones on the right side of the equation when these others are trying to win them over against Jesus?
And so one of the main themes has been for him to instill in his believers there in Ephesus who have remained a sense of confidence in the believer's life. And even when he was not been writing directly about confidence, like that word appears in the text, confidence has been like the main support beam running the full length of the book of 1 John.
Have you guys got that? That even when he's not talking about confidence, he's still trying to instill confidence. He's still, in essence, talking about it even when the word doesn't occur. And John states directly in verse 13 what his purpose for writing is.
And see in it, see in his purpose, the lack of the word confidence and the feeling of confidence in it simultaneously. 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.
Do you hear the confidence without the word? Do you hear him saying that you might know like a rock solid knowledge that if you, if you believe in the name of the Son of God, you may know that you have eternal life.
What is the name?
Okay, so he says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God.
Anybody say the name? Jesus, the name of the Son of God, Jesus. Most of our kids in Sunday school class would have gotten that right away because that's the answer to everything. Who built the ark?
Jesus.
Who led the people out of Israel?
You know, just everything in answer. And you're almost always right. But what does the name Jesus mean? So those who believe in the name of Jesus. I mean, how many of you, you don't really think about believing in a name very often, right?
Like believe in this name, believe in my name, believe in his name, whatever. Well, it's understanding what the name means. That is the nature of what we believe. And the name Jesus means he who saves his people.
Okay, he who saves or he who provides salvation. And so Jesus Christ being the Messiah, the chosen one who saves his people. So he has been writing to those. John says, I've been writing to you who trust the good news that Jesus is indeed the Savior sent by God as his chosen means of providing salvation to anyone who would believe in him.
And so I'm writing to you who believe that that is true, who believe that Jesus is the Savior, is the Messiah. And he wants everyone who believes to know that they have eternal life. He desires confidence and assurance for all who believe in the name of the Son of God.
His purpose is that believers would walk away from reading this entire letter convinced that they have eternal life.
Why?
Confidence because of them, no confidence in the Son of God and confidence that they are indeed in the Son of God by faith, by belief. And so that's the logic that he's basically addressing here. But following that theme of confidence then, we've seen already in the book of 1 John that he highlights confidence, that the confidence that we have is expressed through prayer.
So our confidence, it leads into relationship with God, relationship with God and expression of that relationship, not a secondary thing that you do. Are you getting what I'm saying by that? You understand what I mean when I say that we can tend to think of it as something we just tack on to a Christian life, when it is in essence the central pillar of a Christian life.
It is something that Christians do.
What does a relationship with God look like.
In the Christian faith?
Prayer is a part of that. It is a outcropping of or a response to a relationship with God. And not just any type of prayer life, but a prayer life of confidence, John here is saying is key. Verses 13 through 15 really are all about confidence and relationship with God, even though it's primarily, you're gonna see in 14 and 15, primarily about confidence in prayer, it's about relationship.
And we need to remember that the primary purpose of prayer, hear me carefully, the primary purpose of prayer is an expression of relationship with God our Father. It is communication in relationship with Him.
It is not so much a technical support hotline. Now, how many of you have, if you're honest, you have at times been guilty of treating God like a technical support hotline. My life is broke and I need you to fix it, okay?
So I'm coming to you to fix this situation. And how many of you, if you're just being honest, you delighted and rejoice in conversations with the guy at the other end or the lady at the other end on the technical support hotline?
Like that's a good conversation. You're like, can I call you back again tomorrow and we can chat again? Like, is that your response to the, if you can even understand them, right? I mean, you're getting what I'm saying.
So it's, it is, is prayer different than that? Is prayer intended to be something different than a conversation like that? It ought to be more like a phone call between friends who enjoy the conversation, who want to interact on a regular and routine basis and want to share the details and the things that are going on and want to, you know, share life together.
And boy, could we do this again soon, right? Do you have friends like that? You don't even want to hang up, right? It's like, I don't really want to hang up. I want to just keep this conversation going.
I've heard people say things like this. Why pray when God already knows what he is going to do? Have you ever heard that one before? Why pray when he already knows what he's going to do? Why pray if prayer really doesn't change things?
Why pray if he already knows what I need? And this shows, I'm going to suggest a completely wrong, misguided understanding of what prayer is in and of itself. Like those are the wrong questions to ask.
If you are asking those questions, it betrays the notion that you are only going to God for something. He is a technical support hotline to you if the only concern is getting what you want in response.
Are you getting what I'm saying? And so in essence, I liken this to, I mean, I wonder if some of the same people would ask those questions regular and routinely wouldn't also ask, why talk to my wife?
Do you know what I'm saying? Well, I mean, sure, I'll talk with her when I need something. Okay, whoa, is that a pretty rough comment? All of a sudden, you're kind of like, oh, that kind of puts some perspective on this, right?
Why talk to my husband? I mean, the faucet's not broken, right? So I don't need anything right now, which isn't true because you've always got a list of things for him to do.
But... Wow.
Got to get back on track here. But are you getting what I'm saying? The illustration here that I'm just trying to point out is what is the communication about? Why are you coming to him? Why are you talking with him?
Is it because of what you stand to gain from it? Or is it that you have a relationship of love between you and your heavenly father that you talk to him about your day? You talk to him about the big meeting coming up.
Certainly, you ask, and John takes for granted that we are going to ask things of him. The text takes for granted that in a relationship like that, there is a sense in which he is God and we are not. And so do we come to him with requests?
Yes, absolutely. But do we come sometimes just to share our frustration? Do we sometimes come to him with praise and thanksgiving? Do we sometimes come to him with intercession for others, not just for ourselves?
There's all different kinds of modes of prayer, and it's about all of it. Every aspect of it is about relationship with our heavenly father. John states in pretty clear terms, though, and again, I say in John's flair and his aggressiveness, he just takes things on, tackles them directly.
John states that when we ask anything of God, according to his will, he hears us. And the phrase hears us has a favorable tone to it in the way that John uses it regularly in his gospel, in his letters, and on and on.
The phrase hears us means something beyond auditory reception. It's not just that, oh, he takes it in. He doesn't even have ears. It's not, God is not, God is not like us in that sense. It's beyond auditory reception.
It is that he looks favorably upon the requests that we make but the requests that we make that are what?
Does the text say?
According to his will. And we know that if he hears us, John goes on to say pretty directly, we know that if he hears us, we know that we have the request that we have asked of him. Now, we've covered this type of passage before, and how many of you have had prayer requests that you asked, you thought, boy, this sounds like the will of God.
This sounds like a good thing, and it wasn't answered the way that you thought it was. I didn't get the request that I asked for. Well, we covered that a few weeks ago, but here John adds the prerequisite that really ought to help our understanding significantly in this regard to the prayer of confidence that is always answered.
The phrase according to his will modifies what we ask for. In other words, prayer is relational. Prayer is seeking his will above all. Consider that Jesus asked for something that was outside of the will of his father.
Now, I'm gonna be careful here on this because in his core and in his essence, he ultimately turned it back to my will is with you, but what was Jesus asking in the Garden of Gethsemane? If there is any other way than me going to the cross tomorrow,.
Could we go that way? Could we do that?
Because I'm not looking forward to this, Father. I'm not looking forward to the cross. I'm not looking forward to being bloodied and hung on the cross, dying of asphyxiation for those sins of the world and letting all those sins rest on my shoulders.
If there's another way, I mean, Jesus saying, as a human, he's like, I don't really wanna go that way. So if there's anything else, if there's any other way that your will could allow for this to happen without me going to the cross, let's go that way.
But how did he conclude his prayer? Not my will, but yours be done. Jesus, in his core, was saying, I'm willing to align what I desire with you. I'm willing to align that up with your will, Father. As cheap as this sounds, we can always be sure that a prayer like that is heard and even answered by our sovereign God.
Always, always answered.
Because what did Jesus ask? Not my will, but yours be done. Trust in his Father to do what is best, to do what is good, what is going to result in the best glory for him.
Get it?
And so what kind of things do we ask for? Prayer looks a lot more like aligning my will with his will, letting my desires be known and then asking for his good, loving, and perfect will. In the end, a prayer that asks for God's will is a prayer that says, I trust you, I love you, and I believe that you have the best in store for me, whatever that might be.
And another way of clarifying this passage for me this week was to actually do a mental exercise of thinking what the opposite of asking according to his will is. Have you ever thought about that? So sometimes if you see a phrase and you're like,.
What does that mean?
Sometimes if you put it in the opposite, it's kind of like, oh, that snaps it into focus.
Like, I get that now.
So if we're told to ask according to his will, the opposite of that looks like asking according to my will, telling him what I want. And that really brought it into focus for me this week. Am I asking for things for myself or am I asking for things for his glory or for him?
Often I would suggest to you that we couch our own desires and our own will as if they are in his best interest, and then run with that. Are you getting what I'm saying? I mean, like we would pray this.
God, think of how much glory you would get if you healed me. You see how we would, wait, turn that and tell him what is best? God, think about how much glory you would get if you dropped $1 .7 million on Recast Church right now and we could start building a building.
Think about how much glory you would get, Father, if that would just happen right now. Wouldn't that be glorious and amazing, God? And so we can take our will and almost disguise it as if we are asking for his.
Are we pretty, if you're being honest, as a fallen human being, can you be pretty manipulative? Really? Now, the irony is when a created human tries to manipulate God, do you think he sees through that stuff?
I think so pretty well. But we have a tendency to try to disguise our will, wrap it up in a package and give it to God and say, oh, wouldn't this really be awesome for you, God? Wouldn't this really bring you glory?
Rather than saying, God, you know what is best to achieve the greatest ends, we package this stuff up and give it to him. But what we ought to be saying is, Father, you do know how to achieve the greatest ends.
And even though you slay me, even though it goes to the point of my death,.
I will trust in you.
Even though it comes to suffering for me,.
That's what it means to resolve your prayer life with not my will, but yours be done. May it be done according to your will. So is this confidence? Now we set the stage for according to your will. So is John here saying, rejoice, church, step forward, I'm gonna conclude my letter, and I wanna give you the confidence in obtaining stuff.
Do you see how if you study this in context, it becomes hard to preach this like a health, wealth and prosperity gospel preacher preaches this stuff. By the way, this is a text that they love to take.
This is one of those texts that just, does it look at face value? Can you see how somebody, if you rip it and wrench it out of its context, you could actually say, well, God will give you whatever you want, you just have to ask for it.
Just ask. And they can pull it out of there and sideline and marginalize the part about according to your will. Well, God's will is that you're healthy, that you're wealthy and that you're prosperous, right?
And so you could actually see. But I don't believe for a second that that's what John has in store for his church here, that he's trying to in the end of this letter about confidence in Christ, trying to say, and by the way, you can have confidence in riches and wealth and all of this stuff.
Where has he been placing the confidence squarely all throughout his letter? On the shoulders of Jesus Christ, not in obtaining stuff. I think he wanted them to have been caught, ultimately to have confidence in a God who genuinely loves them.
And he says, trust him, trust him and ask him for things certainly, but make sure you're asking according to his will and turning all of your will in submission to him. Can you let God know what you want?
Is that okay? Absolutely, as long as you're concluding with peace and trust in him for what he actually does give you. I wanna remind you that by the time John was writing this stuff, the early church had already experienced a good dose of suffering and persecution.
Some had already died for their faith and some within the church that John is writing to, no doubt had already lost loved ones and some had even lost their lives because of their faith in Jesus Christ.
So I believe the church knew full well that they were not in forgetting everything that they asked for in prayer.
They understood that.
They'd already been down that road of asking for healing, already been down the road of asking at times for someone to be delivered out of prison that was actually delivered up to ultimate suffering and death.
But he was telling them here to come before God in confidence, asking for his will to be done, trusting in God as good. He will give us his answers to our requests according to his will. Couple of other illustrations.
Paul, the apostle, prayed for physical ailment to be removed from him three times. He said he was delivered, he was given a thorn in the flesh and three times he prayed and it was not taken away from him.
In 1 Peter 4, so we have Peter, the apostle, actually addressing the same type of issue and I love this, this is a beautiful text. If you're taking notes, just jot this one down. I love this. 1 Peter 4, 19, Peter wrote these words.
Listen to them carefully and think about the way that the prosperity preacher deals with a passage like this. Therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good.
While doing good. Let those who suffer according to the will of God entrust their soul to what kind of creator?
Faithful creator.
Do you hear how the will of God could for your life and mine entail some suffering? Could the will of God be for us to go through some hard times and some difficult times? And would he be any less loving for it?
As a matter of fact, that would be an expression of his love to us to not let us go with chintzy and cheap living and just ride the surface. But he wants us to be deep. He wants us to be connected. He wants us to be dependent upon him.
Our prayers, by the way, don't get down on my knees and pray for suffering. Don't get me wrong. There's something psychotic to a person who gets down on their knees and says, God, could you just please bring suffering into my life to sharpen me?
Nobody prays for that. And I don't think John is saying he prayed for that. And I don't think Paul prayed for that. Paul prayed that it would be removed from him, didn't he? So there's nothing wrong with that.
But our prayers are often for the easiest road. And sometimes his will leads us down the harder road. How do we process that? We ask for things that we desire, but base it according to his will. The fundamental question of confidence that I believe John wants to leave us with is do you trust God to listen and hear your prayers and then give you what is best?
And really, ultimately, do you trust God? That's the fundamental question. This only makes sense if prayer is about much more than just rubbing the lamp and having the genie offer us our three wishes.
It's about fellowship with our creator. It's about acknowledging his authority. It's about acknowledging his goodness. It's about aligning our will with his. Even Jesus prayed, not my will, but yours be done.
Let him be the model for us. And now we come to the confusing section of the text. The next part gets fun. John has been consistently telling us to love one another. Have you seen that theme in the book of 1 John?
Love one another, to have confidence. We've mentioned that theme earlier. To avoid walking in darkness. And now in one injunction, one command, he marries these three ideas together. Loving one another, having confidence, avoiding walking in darkness.
And the command is given through an illustration, and that's where I think it gets a little bit confusing. It's found in verse 16 is the illustration. But I'm gonna just modernize that for you. So he says, you see somebody, if anyone sees a brother committing a sin.
Let me give you an illustration. Imagine you observe somebody from your church. They get out of their truck. They've been pumping gas down at Speedway. They get out of their car. You're standing in line at Subway.
I don't know why you're standing in line,.
Because it's good food.
And you're standing there, and you see them over by the candy bar aisle. And there they are. And they come from, they're from your church. And before you're able to make eye contact with them, and they don't see you, but you see them.
And you see them, and they slip a Mounds bar, Mounds candy bar, off the shelf, and slide it in their pocket. Nobody's looking. Jump in their truck, and off they drive.
Okay.
Well, I want to start off just by saying, just clearly, they have chosen a delicious candy bar. They have been wise in their selection. But, has maybe a sin been committed in there somewhere? Has something gone wrong?
Yeah, I mean, they've just, you watch them, you watch somebody from your church steal from the Speedway. I mean, would anybody kind of go like, what's just happened here? Would that be a little bit confusing?
And by the way, this is just an illustration. This isn't a real life account. According to much of scripture, do we have a responsibility to go to that person, and confront them? According to what you see throughout the rest of scripture, what should be your response?
Yes, and I don't think what John says here in the text, it goes against any of that. I think that there's still an obligation to confront a person in love. But what John adds to this, is that we are to pray for someone in this situation, and we are to ask God on their behalf to give them life.
We are to actually pray for an individual that we know is caught in sin, or that we ourselves catch in sin. That's the heart of this part of the text, is a life of prayer for one another, a life of connectedness, a life of actually doing real life together with them.
But we are to intercede for one another. This reminds me of Job. A little known passage at the start of Job, who was known to offer sacrifices for his children on their behalf, in case they sinned and defamed the name of God.
It actually says he would intercede for them. And I mean, he's actually, in a sense, I mean, we don't think in terms of confessing other people's sins for them, do we? How often do we do that in the church?
Do you go to God and confess other people's sins? And John is kind of saying intercede, step in the gap for people, and pray for their forgiveness. Pray for them to come to a place of repentance. Pray for them that their hearts would be changed, when you see them stealing candy bars from the speedway, pray for them.
You know, when you see these kinds of things, or you see their life, or you see the hostility or the anger between spouses, do you pray for them? I mean, you've seen that before. Have you seen that in your friends?
Have you seen that in people where they're at each other all the time, and you're like, pray for them, be in prayer. We should be interceding. But what gets confusing in this passage is the entire notion of a sin that leads to death.
How many of you, when I read that, you were like, what is he talking about here? What is this about a sin that leads to death? And it occurs a bunch of times here in verse 16, all the way down on into 17.
Well, it's especially confusing because John is calling the one sinning brother in this context. And throughout the book of 1 John, we've made a pretty strong case that brother is a euphemism, a figure of speech for what?
For a believer, a fellow believer. And so, is there a sin? And so, some have actually interpreted this and gone, well, is there a sin that could lead to my spiritual death? Is there a list of sins that if I commit them, now I'm gonna spiritually die?
And how many of you think that might be, like, if that's true, if that's the correct interpretation, then it would be good to have that list? If there's a sin that I commit that results in me going to hell, I need to know that list now, okay?
Because I've got a list of things that I wanna avoid if that's what he's talking about, is some sin that leads to our spiritual demise or something like that. Well, I'm gonna tell you that I don't, that's not how I see this text.
I don't buy into the notion that we can compile a chart of sins that lead to death and sins that do not lead to death and then go down the category. And when I see the guy at Speedway steal the candy bar, I can go down the list and go, is theft on this side or is theft on this side?
And then decide whether or not I'm gonna pray for them according to whether or not they committed this kind of sin or this kind of sin. By the way, this is the way that mortal and venial sins have come out of the Catholic Church.
Have any of you ever heard of that classification of two types of sins? There's a type of sin that is not, you can't even do penance for it, okay? You commit this kind of sin, the priest goes, you know what, you're not welcome here anymore.
Okay, there's a list of sins that's just like, this is, these are mortal sins.
You've done it, okay?
And then there's a list of venial sins, which are the kind that you can do penance for and do confession and all that kind of stuff and you're free to go. And they've actually listed those out. I think if that's what John had in mind, I think he would have given us a list here.
I think if that's what the Holy Spirit had in mind, he would have let us know, okay, here's the list. I mean, he's not gonna let us fly blind on something that's that significant of a list of things that if you commit these, you're out of the faith or something like that.
I don't think that's it at all. But after much study and prayer, I humbly suggest to you that we can determine a sin that leads to death in very simple terms. I believe in a method of Bible study. Here's your big word, hermeneutic.
Hermeneutic is a method of interpretation, a way of understanding interpretation and how do you go about it. I believe that when you see a word, you should interpret it literally unless the context requires you to make it a figure of speech.
In other words, when we see the word death, what should we be thinking of when we see that word unless the context requires, we should be thinking of physical death. When I see the phrase in the Psalms, the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Well, there's some things that require me to interpret that as a figure of speech, namely that trees don't have hands. And so we kind of have things that clue us into this being a figure of speech. I don't see anything in the context that requires me to interpret death as anything other than literal death.
And so a sin that leads to death is easily discerned because there is a corpse involved. When somebody commits a sin that leads to death, there is a corpse. That's the way you know it. Someone has died.
Because of something particular to that sin. I'm not talking strictly about the judgment of God on the individual in the sense that, like how many of you remember the story Ananias and Sapphira in the Bible?
Was there a sin that led to death in that situation? And what was the sin, by the way? It doesn't make, it's on the venial side. It's not on the mortal side in the list of the Catholic Church. And yet there was a sin that led to death.
And what was it?
Lying.
They lied.
And they were struck dead by God. They're standing in the church in front of Peter. Okay, was there a sin that led to death? Yes, and so there's an illustration of a sin that led to death. And how did you know that was a sin that led to death?
They died.
There was a corpse there. I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be. So let's go back to my super chintzy, my super chintzy candy bar theft illustration here. Imagine the same scenario, but the cashier is observing what's happened and a chase ensues and the person runs out onto Cole Avenue, the thief runs out onto Cole Avenue, is struck by a car and killed.
Oh, okay, he has committed a sin that has led to death. And John says, I do not say that one should pray for that anymore. I don't say you should pray for that anymore. The person is now in the hands of the judgment of Almighty.
I'm saying don't pray, and so in one sense, he's saying there are sins that result in death and to clarify, the phrase, notice I've turned it to result in, but result in is an accurate, acceptable translation for the words lead to, and so you can actually, anywhere that you read in that phrase, anywhere that you read in this text, lead to, you could translate as result in, and so there are sins that result in death.
So what we have here in this text is John telling us to pray for those who are caught in their sin, but to not pray for the dead, which to some of you kind of seems like a stretch, like you might just kind of go, well, why would he be telling us not to pray for the dead?
And for the, I mean, particularly those of us who were raised in Protestant churches, it seems of little consequence, like why would he waste ink and paper to tell us to not pray for the dead? But let me just tell you that having significant Catholic roots, my dad's family were like Polish, Roman Catholic, devout, go-visit-the-Pope kind of Catholics, and so right now, in Auburn, Michigan, where my father is buried, he's buried in a cemetery.
I was there when he was baptized in a Baptist church in 1979. His parents were livid that he would be baptized outside of the Catholic church and into a Protestant church, and it was a significant, huge blow-up in my family.
I don't have a relationship with my grandparents on that side, I didn't up until their death, because they ostracized our side of the family because my dad had become a Protestant, all this business. He's buried in a cemetery that's got a dividing two-track right down the middle of it.
This side is Catholic, and this side is Protestant. He's buried on the Protestant side. Now, every single tomb, every single gravesite on this side has what they call an eternal candle. Any of you ever heard of this?
It is a candle, they used to light physical candles, now it's in a little electric solar-powered light. Basically, the idea is that as long as the light is lit, prayers are going up for the souls of those who are buried there, and the idea is that eventually they'll get out of, does anybody know the word?
Eventually they'll get their way out of purgatory, and so we pray for the dead. By the way, the reason I bring up this illustration is there's only ever one that I've ever seen on the Protestant side of that cemetery that's ever had one of those eternal candles lit at it.
Can anybody guess which one it is? My dad's, because my grandparents used to live right down the road, and my mom, being belligerent like she was, every time she'd go visit, she'd take it away, and I don't know how much those things cost, but I'm guessing that they spent a lot of money on eternal candles for my dad.
But prayers for the dead, is that a big deal.
The world around?
Maybe not in our little Protestant hovel in West Michigan, but it is around the world. It is on the other side of the state. It is in places where Catholicism is, and other religions, is there a significant, is it worth John's Ink to say don't pray for the dead?
It is, it's something that we need to know, and he's addressed that here. I wanna say lastly that I could be wrong in my understanding here, but I see plenty of examples of Christians being told to pray for those who are ill, and even to confess our sins to one another in the context of illness and imminent death.
James tells us at the end of his letter, it's ironic that this is, we're talking about 1 John 5, 16, but if you go over to James, same numbers, 5, 16, it says this, therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed.
The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. This is in the context of physical infirmity and sin, saying confess your sins and you may be healed.
Interesting.
I do not believe that John has specific sins in mind, by the way, when he says sins that lead to death. We know that lying could result in death. We know a variety of different things. So, I mean, you might think in your mind, okay, I know sins that lead to physical death, right,.
Like drug abuse.
Could drug abuse lead to death? Yeah, and it does routinely, but not always. No particular sin always results in death, and no particular sin never results in death. Any sin is a flirting with death.
You agree with me?
Any sin has the potential to lead to death, even lying has the potential to result in death. And so the way we can tell a sin that leads to death is the actual death of the one who has sinned. As long as a person remains alive who has been caught in sin, we are to pray for them all.
But all this debate removes us far away from the core of what John is saying. Love one another enough to walk through the issues of sin together. Bottom line, what he is saying here. As long as we have breath, we can repent.
We can include others in our lives, open up with them, and ask them to pray for us. We are not to be removed from each other's lives, but we are to be engaged, connected, and offering prayers and assistance to those who are being beaten up by sin around us.
True unity is messy, and it requires a willingness to jump into the tough situations of life together. Is that a pretty high calling, to actually engage with one another on the level of sin?
But I'm grateful that I've had people in my life who have had the nerve to come and confront me when they see me failing, or they see me going astray, or off. And sometimes that's been accurate, and sometimes it hasn't, and sometimes we've had a misunderstanding, or something like that.
But how many of you know that that's love? I mean, it might not feel like it at first. Somebody comes and confronts you for something that they've caught you doing, or a response that you had that wasn't.
How many of you, if you're honest, you're like me, and the defensive walls go up right away when that happens. But by God's grace, maybe we could pray and say, God, give me the grace to handle the criticism, and to see the kernels of truth that arrive in it, and to be sharpened by it, and to actually be humble enough to say, I'm sorry, and I am wrong.
Because how many of you are willing to admit, like, you sometimes are wrong? We're gonna need to work on those hands being raised eventually, because some people just not quite there yet, but God can work on you too.
So we need to be praying for life for those who have been flirting with death or sin. Connected and engaged with one another. And we know that those who belong to God's family will not be able to continue on in sin.
John goes on to say, again, just flair and directness. We will not make a practice of sin. We will not be perfecting it in our lives without repentance, without remorse. There will be a sense of frustration when we sin.
There will be a sense of brokenness before God. There will be a sense of saying, God, I'm sorry for this. And especially when it's brought to our attention, we will seek to make things right as followers of Jesus Christ.
We have the protective covering of Jesus himself, and the evil one is not able to touch us. Can we be tempted?
Yes.
Are we able to give into temptation?
Can we be owned by the evil one as followers of Jesus Christ? Just a few paragraphs back, John reminded us that greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. He who is in you is the Holy Spirit.
He who is in the world is the evil one. And the ways that we stand out to the world are found in these four we know statements in verse 18. This is where it starts, verse 18. We know that those born into God's family do not make a practice of sinning.
Number two, we know that we are God's ambassadors in enemy territory since the whole world lies in the power of the evil one, John says. Number three, we know the son of God has given us understanding.
He has opened our eyes and has opened our hearts to the truth. And fourth, we know him. Now we're getting more relational. We start off, and this list goes from the head to the heart. It starts off with knowing about something to in the end, knowing him who is true.
Not the knowledge about him, but knowing him. We truly have come to know our heavenly father through his son, Jesus Christ, and he has opened our eyes to see who his father is. Compassionate, kind, merciful, just.
And here at the culmination of our confidence, remember John has written this entire letter to give us confidence, and now we're drawing to the end. We find the declaration that we are in him who is true.
And the one who is true is God's son, Jesus Christ, who John gives two amazing titles for here at the end. He says, Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life. He openly declares that Jesus Christ is true God and eternal life.
We worship Jesus as the true God. We experience him as eternal life to us. And for that reason, John concludes his entire letter with an amazingly appropriate encouragement for us to stand out from the world by keeping ourselves from idols.
All different kinds of idols. The main point of this text, we can know, we can know we are from God. We can know because the son has given us understanding. We can know him who is true. And if we know in this way that leads from knowing in our head to knowing in our heart, knowing our father in relationship, then we will avoid the idolatry that is so prevalent.
In the world around us by truly knowing him.
So as potentially as confusing as this passage could be, there are three things I hope we can take away from this this morning. First, a relationship of confidence is available with God in prayer. If you believe in the name of the son of God, then you are in the family.
And as a member of the family, your prayer life will take on the form of a discussion.
With the king who loves you.
And our prayers will begin to take the shape of dependence upon him in all things, asking for his will to be done. And we will pray trusting him as good and loving toward us. His will is no longer something to be feared for the believer of Jesus, but it is a thing of comfort for those who are in Christ.
His will is a comfort to us.
If we are in the family of God, number two, if we're in the family of God, we will care for its members. We'll care for the members of the body of Christ, for the members of the family of God. We will love our brothers and sisters in Christ enough to get involved in each other's lives.
We will be praying for life where we see sin's curse in our midst. We will engage one another in the hard stuff because we are all in this journey together. And so we will love even when love is hard to do.
And lastly, we will stand out in the world by the things we know. We will live with a sense of belonging to God. We will be uncomfortable with sin. We will be in relationship with God through his son, Jesus, which will be shown by a single-hearted devotion to Christ, which means an avoidance of the many idols our hearts are very prone to wander toward and are drawn toward regularly, even idolatry of ourselves.
Christ is at the center, and I want to bring this all, I love to bring this all back to him. Anytime I'm preaching, I want to bring it back to him, but Christ is the center. My hope doesn't rest in my ability to reject and say no to sin.
My hope doesn't even rest in you guys. I'm praying for me when I sin. My hope doesn't rest in me keeping myself from idols. My hope rests squarely on the work of Jesus Christ.
On the cross for me.
I've been adopted into the family of God through his sacrifice, and that is the only way that anybody can be adopted into his family. And we remember that adoption by taking communion. Communion is a community word.
We have both communion, relationship and unity with God when we do this thing. We're reflecting that and remembering the source of that is the cross, is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and we also are expressing unity or communion together with each other.
By taking the juice and the cracker together, we are identifying together that we are members together of the body of Christ. If you believe in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God's son for your salvation, then please take the juice and remember his blood that was shed for us on the cross to cover our sins.
Take the cracker and remember his body that took our punishment. He was our substitute. He stood in our place. And then lastly, let me conclude by saying this recast. I hope that you go out this week rejoicing, that you find yourself rejoicing that a way has been made for us to be brought into confidence in him.
That's what John wants for us, that if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, you are trusting in the name Jesus for your salvation,.
Then you have eternal life.
Our confidence is not in ourselves, but our confidence comes from the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the totality of his ministry, and anyone who believes in him has eternal life.
Let's pray.
Father, I thank you for eternal life through your son, and I thank you for the possibility of knowledge, of true knowledge, not just knowledge of you, but a knowledge of what you have given to us through your son, a knowledge of relationship.
And Father, confidence that we can have. And Father, I pray that you would make us a body who is engaged in one another's lives, not in a creepy stalker kind of way, but in a way that is genuinely loving and caring and compassionate, looking out for each other's best interests, and knowing that sometimes the best interest is calling out sin when we see it and dealing directly.
And Father, even just opening our own lives of sin up to others and trusting that they're not gonna just crush us, but to be a people that are worthy of that trust and dealing with sin in a loving and kind way, praying for one another, building one another up.
Father, I thank you for drawing us together here at Recast. And I pray that even as we take communion, we would reflect on the centerpiece of our faith, the place where we are all brought together in unity, together, where we are all united in Jesus.
And I thank you for the sacrifice that he made for us, that our confidence can be real.
In Jesus' name, amen.