A. Last week we took a one week reprieve from our 1 John Series in order to review God’s commands and promises about giving. And I hope that lesson was a blessing to you!
B. To get us started on today’s subject of assurance, I want to share an old story.
1. The story is told of a Lion who needed a little additional self-assurance, so one day he decided to go through the jungle and reassert his authority with every animal.
2. First, he came upon a monkey. He roared, “Who is the king of the jungle?” Quite frightened, the monkey replied, “You are, oh mighty Lion!”
3. Next, the Lion came upon a zebra, and roared, “Who is the king of the jungle?” The zebra, fearing that he might be lunch, replied, “You are, oh mighty Lion!”
4. Feeling much better, the Lion then found a giraffe, and roared, “Who is the king of the jungle?” The giraffe replied, “Why, you are, oh mighty Lion!”
5. Now feeling absolutely confident, the Lion then spotted an elephant and roared, “Who is the king of the jungle?”
6. The elephant reached down with his trunk, snatched up the lion, slammed him against a rock, picked him up again and slammed him against a tree.
7. Dazed and bruised, the Lion said, “Well, you don’t have to take it so personally!”
C. What is our source of assurance?
1. Are we confident of our relationship with God?
2. Do we have the assurance that we are saved and have eternal life?
3. Do we know that we belong to the truth?
4. Do we know that Christ lives in us?
D. These are very important questions.
1. These were questions that Christians were facing in the apostle John’s day.
2. And they are questions that all of us face at one time or another in our own lives.
E. We all base our assurance or lack of assurance on something.
1. That something may prove to be either real or misguided.
2. The lion in our opening story stretched the limits of his confidence a little too far.
3. He was beginning to feel pretty good about himself, but he failed to differentiate his FEELINGS from the FACTS of his situation.
4. The elephant gave him a reality check and refocused his attention on the FACTS.
5. Misguided assurance is based on fiction and feelings, but real and true assurance is always based on facts.
F. For years I have used a train to illustrate this principle and to help people have assurance of their salvation.
1. The train has three parts.
a. The engine is the facts of our faith (the truth of God’s Word).
b. The next car is our faith.
c. The caboose is our feelings.
2. To put anything other than the facts at the head of the train is to create problems.
3. To allow our feelings or even our faith to pull the train is to experience failure and a lot of ups and downs.
4. Our faith and our feelings are not consistent and strong enough to pull the train.
G. Another illustration I have heard that teaches the same thing goes like this:
1. The story is told of three people walking on a wall. Their names are Fact, Faith, and Feeling.
2. They were walking along in that order. Fact was first. Faith was walking behind fact. And feelings followed along at the end.
3. Everything went along fine until Faith looked back to see where Feeling was.
4. Every time Faith did this, he fell off the wall.
5. As long as Faith kept his eyes on Fact and not on Feeling, he did fine.
6. The moral of the story is that we need to keep our Faith eyes on Fact and let Feeling take care of himself.
H. I think that this is a profound truth.
1. We must base our faith on the facts of God’s Word and let our feelings follow along behind.
2. While our feelings are certainly very important, they are fickle and unreliable.
3. Our feelings cannot be trusted to lead us because they can lead us astray.
4. Our feelings can be influenced by so many things.
5. Therefore, our direction and our assurance must be rooted in something more reliable than our feelings.
I. And that’s really what John is working toward here in our text from 1 John.
1. John’s attention shifts abruptly from a discussion of practical examples of love to Christian assurance.
2. Both the beginning verse of this section (vs. 19) and the last verse (vs. 24) employ the phrase “this is how we know,” thus suggesting that assurance is John’s new concern.
3. As I’ve said repeatedly in this series, John’s community is one that was under siege, and his followers needed the assurance that they were indeed on God’s side and that they possessed the truth.
4. Because of the split in their fellowship and the departure of a segment of the congregation, they were experiencing insecurity.
5. Were they right with God? Did they belong to the truth? Was God hearing their prayers? Were they abiding in God?
6. These are important questions that beg answers at all kinds of times and circumstances in our lives.
7. Whenever we experience a crisis of self-examination where will we turn for evidence that we can trust about our condition?
8. Let’s see how John equipped his church to face this and any future episode of self-doubt and self-incrimination.
J. John’s strategy for facing moments of profound insecurity is to anchor our assurance in God and God alone.
1. John urges us to allow God to be the final arbiter of our personal spiritual well-being.
2. John writes in verses 19 and 20, “This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”
3. Ultimately, God knows us better than we know ourselves.
4. God is greater than our hearts – he knows all things.
5. Not only does God know our shortcomings and sins, he also knows our love and our longings.
6. He knows our struggle and our sorrow as we try to live in obedience to Him.
7. God knows how we are made and that gives Him the understanding that leads to His mercy and grace.
K. Look again at verses 21 and 22, “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.”
1. When all self-condemnation is gone, when God’s opinion of us is foremost in our minds, then we enjoy a newfound boldness and security in our relationship with God, which is discovered principally in prayer.
2. The astonishing statement of verses 21 and 22 echoes other similar expressions of confidence found in passages such as John 14:13-14; and John 16:23-24, where John says “whatever we ask will be given to us!”
3. John says much the same in 1 John 5:14-15, but there he modifies the statement with a condition: If we ask anything according to God’s will, we will obtain what we request.
4. It is common in the Scriptures to find conditions attached to such promises.
5. For instance, in John 14:13 the condition is that we must pray in Jesus’ name.
6. In John 15:7, the condition is that we must abide or remain in Jesus and keep his commands.
7. Here in verse 22 the condition is that “we obey his commands and do what pleases him.”
8. All of this presupposes a quality of intimacy that is in touch with God’s very heart.
9. Prayer according to God’s will is prayer that understands what is pleasing to God and makes its petitions accordingly.
10. Prayer that springs from a fruitful and intimate relationship with God is confident and effective prayer.
L. In the final two verses of this section (vs. 23 – 24), John goes back to the issue of balance that we raised in our last sermon, and really is an issue that John has addressed throughout this letter.
1. “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.” (vs. 23-24)
2. Using the singular term “commandment,” John proceeds to name two things that God requires.
3. First, we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ.
4. And Second, we should love one another just as he commanded us.
5. So here we again have that wonderful balance – believing and loving. Or as one writer put it “orthodoxy and orthopraxy.” (Rubel Shelly)
6 As John has shown through out this letter, these things are inseparable.
7. God is light and God is love, therefore we must walk in the light and walk in love.
8. We must be people of the truth in doctrine and in practice. It is not an “either / or,” it is both!
9. To believe in Jesus as the enfleshed, crucified, and raised Son of God is John’s doctrinal test.
10. To love the believers too much either to disrupt the life of the congregation with false teaching, or to allow any among them to go unloved and uncared for is John’s practical test.
M. To John, people who obey these two commands are the ones who live in Him and He in them.
1. This concept of abiding in God is clearly important to John, for he refers to it no less than 10 times in this short letter (2:5, 6, 27, 28; 3:6, 24; 4:13, 15, 16; 5:20).
2. In some of the instances, as here, the abiding is mutual – we believers abide in God and God abides in us!
3. How wonderful to abide in God and have God abide in us! Amen!
4. The concept of abiding truly separates those who should have assurance in Christ and those who should not.
5. Sadly, some Christians are essentially no more than visitors in their relationship with God and the God’s family.
6. But people who truly abide in God have deep roots in the gospel message, are filled with the Holy Spirit, and exhibit true Christ-likeness in their obedience to God.
7. All of this becomes the reliable evidence that we do belong to the truth, and that God lives in us.
8. God’s Spirit that He gave us testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:15-16).
N. I would like to end this sermon by drawing your attention to the great hymn written by Fanny Crosby named “Blessed Assurance.”
1. Fanny Crosby was born in 1820 in New York, and became blind at the age of six weeks.
2. She was educated at the New York City School for the Blind, and after graduation taught English grammar, rhetoric, and Roman and American history for 11 years in that school.
3. In the 1850’s, in her 30s, she began writing verse for songs.
4. A decade later, she began to write texts for gospel songs, and more than any other author captured the spirit of the 19th century American gospel song.
5. Her texts are numbered in the thousands, as poetical verse of Christian expression flowed unendingly from her Braille writer.
6. Fanny Crosby provides the following account of the creation of the hymn “Blessed Assurance:” “In the year 1873 I wrote ‘Blessed Assurance.’ My friend, Mrs. Joseph K. Knapp, composed a melody and played it over to me two or three times on the piano. She then asked me what it said. I replied:
Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O What a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story, this is my song.
Praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.”
O. What blessed assurance there is for all those who believe in the Son and love one another!
1. That assurance was for the late first-century church that was beset by the twin darkness of heresy and hatred.
2. That same assurance is for us the early 21st-century church still surrounded by the same evil powers.
3. Today, we can choose to live in the light of God’s incarnate presence and to walk in authentic love for one another.
4. As we do so, the Holy Spirit will breath his life-giving power into that choice in order to validate it for eternity.
5. That blessed assurance is ours because we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus, and because we love one another.
6. God’s Word is Truth. He has declared it and we believe it.
7. His Son Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. (Jn. 14:6)
8. For God so loved the world that he gave…(Jn. 3:16)
9. Jesus said, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” (Mk. 16:16)
10. Paul wrote, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1)
11. That is blessed assurance!
12. Have you found that blessed assurance?
13. God wants us to have that blessed assurance!
