Presentation 11

Presentation 11

Presentation 11

IntroductionThe tests in this epistle far from being designed to undermine believers and drive them to sordid introspection has been to deepen their confidence in God and their assurance of salvation as they discern the activity of God's grace in their lives. John had written to ‘make their joy complete’ 1v4 and that joy flows from the unshakeable assurance that their lives were bound up in a living eternal fellowship with God.

Paul expresses the same idea in Rom.5v4 when he talks of 'experience that works hope'. The experience of God at work within is what the Holy Spirit witnesses to as he cries out in our hearts, 'you belong, you belong'. Now John indicates four areas where this assurance has real practical bearing on Christians.

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New Assurance In PrayerJohn would reject the ‘slot machine' attitude to prayer. Prayer is not an attempt to get God to see things our way and to extract from him what we want. Rather as we grow in grace and assurance we find a new awareness of what God wants of us. Instead of bombarding God with our desires, we find ourselves caught up in his grand purpose.

Answer to prayer comes not as a result of a brilliant diagnosis of need but through our childlike submission to the Father's will. As we get to know God and his loving purpose for our lives we will begin to ask big prayers and make bold petitions because God has put it in our hearts to do so.

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I have a number of filing trays on my desk. One of them is a ‘future’ tray. Into it I put those things of secondary interest or importance which I intend to look at through at some future date. There is no sense of urgency attached to them because they are not seen to be of any great priority.

God does not have a future tray. This is brought out in the verb tense John uses in v15, 'we have what we asked of him.' It may take some time for the answer to work itself out in our lives but our prayer is answered at once.

New Assurance In Prayer

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A New Assurance In PrayerIn v16-17 John turns to a specific example of prayer. He describes the inevitable reaction of the Christian who sees his brother falling into sin. He says that we owe it to one another as children of the same Father to have a loving concern for each other's well-being whether material or spiritual.

Do we take seriously our responsibility to pray for those who fall into sin. Sadly, we often spend more time criticising them than we do praying for them. If we reversed that pattern we might see backslidden members of God's family restored more speedily than they sometimes are.

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A New Assurance In PrayerPrayer for some individuals is discouraged. God told Jeremiah not to pray for Judah, when they persisted in their sin. [Only the corrective judgement of God would be of benefit to the nation and not prayer that they would be spared that judgement].

When John speaks of a ‘sin unto death’ he is not suggesting that a believer can lose his salvation. He is probably referring to the physical death brought about by continued carelessness over spiritual things and by continued rebellion against God's law. Note that he adds a safeguard in v17 insisting that all unrighteousness is sin, lest after all this talk of a ‘sin unto death’ we believe he is suggesting that some sin is not serious.

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A New Relationship To SinThis prepares the ground for John’s confidence inthe believer’s new relationship to sin cf v18... Christians do not go on sinning. John has already covered this ground in 2v29 and 3v6,9 where he teaches that the Christian is no longer at home in sin in the way he was prior to his conversion. When the Christian sins he is behaving unnaturally. He is not being true to his knew Christian nature.

How is the Christian kept from habitually sinning? John's answers 'the one who was born of God keeps him safe'. That is a reference to Jesus! We no not break free from sin by our own efforts it is the life of Christ within that defeats it and this fact should lay down a strong foundation of confidence in our hearts.

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A New Relationship To SinChrist keeps God's children safe so that Satan cannot literally, 'fasten himself' upon them. Satan cannot succeed in getting us back into his grip. cf Jn. 10v28-30.

In the final analysis It is Jesus who keeps us from falling. Jesus said to Peter, 'Satan has desired to have you to sift you like wheat but I have prayed for you.' And in Jude 1v24 we read, 'He is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless'.

When we struggle with sin in our lives we do so from a springboard of confidence and not from a black hole of despair.

World

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A New Attitude To The WorldThirdly, note that by definition the children of God live quite differently from the world. The family of God is a bridgehead of grace in a fallen world.

The whole world order may still be under the dominion of Satan but within this world there is a people who live under a different authority and who have the protection of that unchallengeable authority despite the fact that at times circumstances seem to argue to the contrary.

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A New Attitude To The WorldIn John Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress there is a time when Christian discovers that the way ahead appears to be blocked by two fierce lions. But he had been instructed to keep to the centre of the path as he advanced towards the celestial city. And while the lions roared for all they were worth they could not harm him. Why?

He discovered they had been chained to either side of the path which meant that safe passage was possible between them. They held no terrors for the children of those who had restrained them. Satan, the roaring lion, is on God's chain.

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A New Attitude To The WorldA similar picture lies before us here. The whole world order at times seems to be under the influence and power of Satan. His tyrannical rule orchestrates a terrifying rebellion against God’s rule. Daily news bulletins report one outrage greater than the next.

But in the midst of this the children of God are kept safe. They offer no allegiance to this dark world order for they are the children of light. The Psalmist writes, 'They that dwell in the presence of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty' Ps 91.

The world lies in the destroyer's grip. Christians know that this is so and they know why!

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A New Attitude To The WorldThe answer lies not in behaving like ostriches and closing our eyes to the evil around us. Nor does it lie in living as recluses in a Christian ghetto with the intent of remaining detached from the surrounding problems. Such response is a recipe for the demise of the church and fails to recognise that the church has been commissioned to engage in a rescue mission.

Amy Carmichael, missionary to Southern India in the 19thC was appalled to see children sold or stolen in order that they be used as temple prostitutes. She began her own rescue mission in Christ's name saving many from a life of degradation.

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A New Attitude To The WorldAmy Carmichael’s efforts provide us with a microcosm of a larger work to which we have been called. We are not only to be light and salt in a disintegrating society but communicators of a gospel which delivers men and woman from its dominion and influence. Jude puts it this way:

“Keep yourself in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt, snatch others from the fire and save them”. 1v21

How committed are we to snatching others from the fire?

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A New Awareness Of GodThe last ground of confidence found in v20 has been described as the sheet anchor of the Christian faith. We can say with conviction, 'We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding'. The unbelieving man seeks to disprove the existence of God travelling up and down one cul-de-sac of philosophical reasoning after another.

The believer can afford to smile at the cleverest and most convincing 'proofs' given with the greatest force and persuasiveness by humanists and agnostics aimed at demonstrating that the Christian faith logically and intellectually impossible to accept- for he knows that Christ has come. His is an unshakeable conviction. He has spiritually discerned the truth cf 1 Cor. 2v10-16...

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A New Awareness Of GodThe knowledge of the Christian is not mere knowledge about God, it is the knowledge of acquaintanceship. The believer has entered into a relationship which will never end because Christ has shared with us his own indestructible life. Both Luther and Calvin describe v20 as the most direct and unequivocal statement in the N.T. to the deity of Christ.

The false teachers who had been troubling the church claimed to be able to teach deep truths concerning God. John teaches that to be united to Christ is to be united to the life of God for all eternity. To have Christ is to have all that we can ever experience of God.

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A New Awareness Of GodJohn closes with a single yet monumentally important exhortation. 'Dear children keep yourself from idols.' An idol is anything that seeks to occupy the unique place due to God in our lives. The idols in John’s mind would appear to be heretical ideas. To be true to Jesus the true God means having nothing to do with anything that detracts from his glory.

Today this can mean not only the readily identifiable idols of materialism, power, and success but false ideas and the cardboard cut outs that attempt to rob God of his glory and bring him down to our level. Much modern theology has produced a pocket sized god, a god of convenience, who whatever else he might be is not the God of the Bible.

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ConclusionThis epistle which began by magnifying Christ ends in precisely the same note. The passion which John had for Christ and his church is a passion which we should share. His passion fired him to expose what was false - to distinguish between genuine Christianity and counterfeit faith. His passion was fuelled by his unshakeable confidence concerning who Jesus was and what his death accomplished.

Do we share John's passion for and confidence in Christ? Perhaps we need to pray that God would do such a deep work of grace in our lives that we are seen to be on fire for him.