Living In Certainty and Confidence
July 16, 2006
1 John 5:14-21
Last Sunday I took an unexpected detour from my notes and shared with you a comment that the Graduating Class of Covenant Bible College in 1994 heard from one of their instructors.
To the room of excited graduates, students who had just spent 9 months studying the Bible and its teachings, student who had traveled throughout Canada and parts of the United States doing ministry projects and concerts. To these alive, devoted and growing students came words similar to these, "Students, some would say that you are now entering the real world - the world of work, politics, finance, education, cars, houses, hospitals, athletics. But this isn’t exactly true. This world, what you have felt and experienced for the last 9 months is the real world. This God-drenched. This God-immersed experience is the real world.
Where you are headed, what you are leaving here to enter is a place that needs what you have and are."
Whenever we are on a spiritual mountaintop like these graduates were. Whenever we are feeling close to God, drawn near to Him like those of us who work at VBS are. It is the human desire to want to prolong it. To want to put down roots there. To set up camp and settle in. But most mountaintops that I’ve visited tend to be quite desolate. There are few if any trees. Little if any grass, seldom any water. We were not meant to live on mountaintops. No, instead these experiences often become the fuel, the motivation for us to live in the valley.
For the last 2 months or so, we have been reading through the book of 1st John. This book that finds itself between the 2 larger books also written by John - the books of Revelation and John.
These 2 larger books, 1 that tells how things will end up and the other, how Jesus’ life began are the mountaintop/mountain peak experiences and our text these weeks has been a text to help us live well in the valley.
1 John was written to a people who were seeking to live with God in the realities of work, illness, kids, errands and the like. John the writer of these words wants to give his readers hope for the present and hope for the future and so he writes these words that we have been studying.
In today’s text, a section titled "concluding remarks" in our pew Bibles; John wants to make it clear what God’s people are up against and what our response is to be.
Like my high school basketball coach. A coach who watched game tapes of our opposing teams to learn what we would soon face in the upcoming games and then created a strategy in order to pursue victory; so too is John doing this for us in these final 8 verses of 1st John. He tells us what we are up against and what our response will be.
1st - What are we up against?
I count 5 different things that John identifies as being against the way of God. 5 barriers, obstacles, stumbling blocks.
Death - v. 16
Sin - v. 16, 17
The Evil One - v. 18
The world under the control of the evil one - v. 19
Idols - v. 21
As John has done throughout this book, he is identifying, pointing out not tourist attractions for we spiritual pilgrims but instead potholes, detours and other things that keep us from the life God intents for us.
If these become the focus.
If these become our instructors.
If these become too prevalent in our life, we end up under their influence and heading down the road of destruction.
The five potholes if you will, that John identifies for us in closing verses are again (and I’ve listed them on the back of your bulletin)
Death
Sin
The evil one
The world under the control of the evil one
Idols.
These are at odds with God’s desire for us.
Now notice something.
John doesn’t identify these and say,
"Good luck. I hope you make it around these."
"I hope you make it over these."
John doesn’t name what we are up against and then retreat into his fortified bunker, where it is safe.
Instead he tells us of
The gifts of God.
The graces of God that are offered
given as gifts to those who are Jesus followers.
These gifts and these graces are not just out of this world’s realities but can be present ones as well.
John mentions 4:
In opposition to death is eternal life. v. 13
In opposition to sin is the reality that people do not have to continue to sin. v. 18
In opposition to the evil one, idols and the world is
God’s invitation to become his children. v. 21
To be found in him. v. 20
John will not let us live in the reality of what we are up against without telling us the gifts of God available to us, the gifts of eternal life.
A leaving behind of sinful ways.
Our identity as his children.
And the question before each of us is - where do you find yourself?
Are you caught up in a lifestyle of destruction or in habits that hold you captive or is your life lived with and for God?
And if you are like me, you say yes.
Yes, there are times, moments when God is evidenced in my life.
Times when I do believe.
Love.
Pursue righteousness.
But there are other times when this isn’t the case at all.
The desire and discipline is sometimes there, but at other times it is not.
Yes? What I want you to hear, before we look to see how John wants us to respond to this is that you are not alone. You aren’t the only one in this room with this struggle and this struggle is not a new one in our world. In fact this struggle was in Jesus’ earliest followers. One of them writes:
15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law, 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! Roman7:15-25
So what’s our response?
What are John’s words for us?
The 1st one is "Know". "Know."
John wants us to know some things.
John uses this word "know" 7 times in these 8 verses. (v. 13, 15 2 times, 18, 19, 20 2 times)
To know something is to use our mind, our head. To know something is to be certain about it. To not have any questions. To have something guaranteed.
To these people who like you and me, go from obedience to disobedience in a flip-flop motion, comes 7 phrases of assurance. 7 phrases that we can be certain of. I’ve printed them in your bulletin.
v. 13 - you may know you have eternal life.
v. 15 - we know that He hears us.
v. 15 - we know that we have what we asked of him.
v. 18 - we know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin.
v. 19 - we know that we are children of God.
v. 20 - we know also that the Son of God has come.
v. 20 - we may know him who is true.
These are 7 realities. 7 promises. 7 for sure statements. 7 givens that are ours through Christ Jesus. Note that 6 of the 7 are present or current realities. They affect us now.
Note that all 7 are the works or gifts from God. He stands behind them. His word is good.
Our 1st response/our 1st action toward what we are up against is for us to mentally know of these 7 God given realities.
We’ve got to believe these things.
And the 2nd response is for us to be confident. Confidence is a matter of the heart. Because we can know and be certain of these 7 realities, we can be confident. This confidence that is ours as followers of Jesus is not based upon
who we are.
what we do.
how much we make
what kind of car we have
whether we graduated from high school or college
No this confidence is based upon whose we are. As a child of God we can have supreme confidence because our heavenly Father is trustworthy.
I have a confession to make. I’m a back seat driver. From as early as I can remember, I was watching and not always saying, but watching what my dad was doing as he drove.
For some reason I especially watched the gas gauge. I was terrified of getting stranded, left along side the road.
And so I’d ask dad, "Dad are we going to make it home? We only have ¼ tank of gas?"
And he’d give me confidence, "Yes, we could make it all the way to Cleveland.
When I reflect on my own life this same reality surfaces.
God, are you sure we’re on the right track?
Am I going to make it?
Do you have the right person?
The emotion if I could label it, might be insecurity or fear, or being afraid the exact opposite of confidence.
Friends the Bible is made up of people, who were ordinary,
who had more excuses than merits
more disqualifications than qualifications.
And yet God came near to be involved in His good work.
John concludes his little letter by mentioning the opposition - yes - but by also telling us what we can be certain of. Who we can have confidence in.
But now we will leave. You will head back into your week. A week of living in the valley. Take with you God’s 7 certainties.
May you live into the confidence he has for you.
And may you continue to bring His real world into the world in which you live. Amen.
Q: So, good Christians, what would you do if you dared? What would you do if you were not afraid? What would you do if you knew that the Lord had gone out before you to prepare the way? What will we do?
(Krista Brumberg Stevens, The Covenant Companion, June 2006, p. 37)
