First John 3:19-22 Confidence: before God
1 John 3:19-22 · Andrew Molloy · Jul 31, 2022
Letters of John (2022), No. 25
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261927574435

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, first john chapter 3 verses 23 and 24 is where we're at this morning I'm gonna go back. Um, I do a little 22 Because I sort of uh blew through that last week. Uh didn't get the last Um, uh second half of that verse, but here's a review from last week 19 through 21 review of first john 3 19 through 21 um 19 We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before him, in whatever our heart condemns us. For God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.

So, as a review, what I found, what we found out last week is, so if our heart is condemning us, we confess our sins according to 1 John 1.9. Then we can be absolutely confident that our sins are put away, forgiven forever, and put away by the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we can, he put it away, we can put it away. However, too, if something maintains a foothold in guilt or shame or something like that, which unsettles our heart, our kardia is the Greek word, God's grace is greater.

His mercy is greater. Love is greater. His forgiveness is greater. All of his essence is greater. His omniscience, he knows all things. He's greater than all that condemns us, is what that verse in 19 says, or in 20, I'm sorry. In whatever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

This gives us an assurance, and assurance is the absolute certainty in the reality of his greatness and infinite character. And this has been promised to give us peace and rest and tranquility and calmness of heart. The weast, some of those people he quotes, uses that word tranquility. I like that. Calmness of heart.

We are resting in his essence, who and what he is, right? And it's a substantive reality. If you're not in the reality of his essence, as Roy Smith says, to the effect of you are living in unreality. Because God's essence and his things are reality. If you are under condemnation of your heart and troubled, that's sort of an unreal situation.

When a thought that a sin is too grave for God to forgive, and we are troubled by sins that we have indeed confessed, or unsettled about anything regarding our standing before Him, our thoughts must take on these truths and be comforted by the truths in Scripture. And some of those are, let not your heart be troubled, be anxious for nothing, The peace that comes from God guards our hearts and minds, keeps our hearts and also our mentality and frame of reference in Christ Jesus from Philippians 4, 6, and 7 and John 14, 1. And especially, to wrap this review up, This is probably my favorite verse in all of scripture.

Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And I remember 20 or maybe 19 years ago, I was, you know, I was in a bad place and it was very, my heart was heavy. I was out of confession. I hadn't, you know, I was aware, just out of it for maybe three, a year, three years, I don't know. But I was just about a nervous wreck, having a nervous breakdown. I came to this verse and Boy, when I read it, it all melted away. And it was like, whoa, that was it. And so this is a wonderful verse if you ever find yourself in that situation. 1 John 3, 22 through 24, verses for today, actually 23 and 24, but I'll start with 22.

And whatever we ask, we receive from Him. because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. And this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he commanded us. The one who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him. We know by this that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us.

So a little, here's the part of verse 22 from last week that I want to touch on again. So a second review, a review upon a review I guess you'd say. Verse 22 is really where it's the prayer. Prayer is the subject there. From last week's lesson we learned that prayer is asking. Another word for that is prayer is petitioning or requesting.

And I think there's, Merriman said there's seven words for prayer. So there's one, two, three, four. There's four of them. I don't know what the other three are, but that's what you're doing, actually, is asking. So we are praying, asking, but we need to be confessed of sins. That's a requirement. 1 John 1, 9, for effective prayer, abiding in Christ, from John 15, 4, and 7. When you pray, abiding in the Word keeps you in the will of God when you pray.

1 John 2.14 and Colossians 3.16. Now, a critical thing is according to His will, but we have to jump forward to 1 John 5, so we won't get there.

So we've got to jump there, but we'll learn more about that when we get there, because that's a hard thing to study, right? To know what is his will. That's the million, that's the... Well, also be able to accept his will. Yeah, all right. That's the $1.365 billion question from the lottery, not just someone playing that. And boy, with all that money, he's going to, he'll find out what the will of God is, I guess.

Merriman brings up this, he was speaking on these verses and he said that 1 Peter 3.7, harmony and tranquility in the home is important because that section says, husband and wife, especially to the husband, that your prayers won't be hindered. So effective prayer is harmony and tranquility in the home.

That is critical too. So result is doing things that are pleasing in his sight. And pleasing in the sight is aligning our viewpoint with his divine viewpoint. Aligning our interests with his interests and his desires. And then we can ask in the name of Jesus Christ and he'll answer us.

And it might not be affirmative, but Merriman was saying there's two types how he answers prayers. The specific request can be yes or it can be no. But then there's the desire behind the request. So the specific request and then what your heart, so the underlying desire. He might answer no on the request, but the desire he might he might be affirmative on, like Paul, where he asked for that thorn in the side to be removed three times.

And that was a negative, no. But God honored his desire, because Paul said, boy, if you can remove that, I can bring glory to you, I can really do this missionary and evangelistic job really well to glorify you. But God glorified him in that anyway. And he found that out and he said, I wouldn't remove it now because my, what does he say, my strength is, my weakness is, Well, he said, when I am weak, then I am strong.

Yeah, right, right. There you go. So, that's, you know, really important. So, there you go. So, those two things, specific request and the desire behind the request. So, here's a little note. See how I have these in verse 22. I've highlighted or bolded the verbs. We ask, we receive, we keep, we do the things that are pleasing in sight. So just remember why those are bolded. You'll need that for later. Yeah. Andrew, I've noticed even in the Gospels, I'm going through the Gospels.

Jesus said in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. It's not a matter of us willing ourselves to keep his commandments. What we need to concentrate on is loving God. And he says it in verse 23, again, says Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. You know, it's not a matter of effort in keeping his word or obeying. We just need to love him. Yeah. We will. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my command. Right. And that's good.

I know it's not our effort. Yeah. And I'm I never use the word. I don't use it often. The obedience, because then you think, OK, I'm obeying. Yeah. Obedient to what he says, but loving. It'll just I think I'll get to this later. in the lesson, but it's gonna happen. It'll just be out of matter. Yeah, and because there's something working in you, right? The life. You have the love of Christ in you. Yeah. So, the love of Christ is, He's gonna manifest in us. And He Himself is in us.

Yeah, and that's our, I just found out our topic today, union with Christ. I said, oh, that's the I didn't know that until yesterday afternoon. I didn't check what the title is today, but it's true. Okay, so this is His commandment. This is verse 23 and 24. This is His commandment.

One, that we love, that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. And two, that we love one another just as He commanded us. The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him and He in Him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

23 and 24, verses 23 and 24. And I put those numbers in there. Those don't occur in the text, obviously. Maybe in the Textus Receptus, I don't know. That we believe this first part of the command is Pestuo, we put our faith in, have confidence in, absolute certainty in, entrust ourselves in, in the name of, in his son Jesus Christ, is what the verse says.

The name, his son Jesus Christ, carries authority, and authority is I just thought of it and I thought, well, it encompasses deity and supremacy. His name has authority. His name is trustworthy. And all that his name represents, his essence. He is sovereign. He is all-knowing. He is all-powerful. That's the authority of His name.

And we ask in that for answered prayer. And two, that we love. That's the other part of this commandment. Agapa'o. The way we love is agape love. It's loving one another with a divinely sourced love. It's a fruit of the Spirit, and we've learned that many times now, because how many times does John mention this in these epistles? Many times. So we can move on from that. So here is the work. I'm going to show my work this morning. This is how I'm going to show my work.

Well, we're not going to go over all these, but up on the screen there's, in these verses 22, 23, and 24, there's I was going to go down like I usually do and go through these verbs and the phrases, but there's 12. There's 12 verbs in these three verses.

It's just huge. So how can you cover all those? So I just listed them and you see it's divided up into the red, blue, and green. The red is verse 22. The blue is verse 23. The verbs that are in green are verse 24, and that's just the takeaway from this little worksheet here. There's so many verbs, 12, so we can come back to that. But the main point, the main takeaway from these 12 verbs in these 1, 1, 22, 23 verses is Here are the main takeaways. There are no imperative commands, which is interesting. Theta to the 12 are active voice indicatives. They're not imperatives, so there's no command mode going on in these verbs. Instead, they are verbs given as realities of fact.

It's not do this, but it carries the The indicative carries the thought of, as you are doing this, or you are doing this, as you go on doing this. Three are subjunctive mood verbs, which just means we may or may not do something. and those relate to ask, believe, and love. Isn't it interesting that those are the three, the ask, because we may not ask, we may not believe, we may not love.

Right. So we have some agency in this because they're active voice. So the main thing is 9 of 12, which is, anyone good at math? I think that's 75%. perhaps, are in the present tense active voice. And so we are continually doing these actions in the here and now. Active voice, we are doing it. Wiest always says, has this word habitually, but yeah, I don't know. Roger, do you like that or? You know, some people, I don't know.

Because I think of a habit as something that I practice and it becomes a habit. So then once it's a habit, and put in 10,000 hours and it's just natural. So that's what I think about habits, right? So I don't like habitually, I like continually. Yeah. So durative action goes on and on.

So, and two of the 12 are in the aorist tense. And that one of those things is relating to what Jesus commanded us that one time in the past, one particular point time in the past, he commanded us to love. And then the other heiress is that we believe without reference to, you know, just no reference to past, present or future. So there's in a nutshell all the verbs. Can we go back to them?

Oh yeah, yeah. It's chock full of nuts, chock full of verbs. I was thinking of Right. Or what's that cereal, the two scoops of raisins? And Raisin Bran, you know, they say, boy, this Raisin Bran. So these are two big scoops of verbs. So, yeah, there they all are again. We went back to that slide.

And the other thing about these verbs is this present active indicative that that verb mode is that says that this is going on right now and it's lively it's it's um the life of the holy spirit as uh jim will say is percolating right it's happening it's right now it's not dead it's not in the past because i was like wow this stuff is going on right and so these words his word the bible is active in a lot.

I just had the thought of percolating, or when you put in something and it's fizzing. Whereas if it was in the heiress' tents, It would be sort of more, a little more, it could be dead. Not dead, but you know what I mean? So I was trying to get to that.

It's very interesting. And there's a verse, I just thought of it. The Word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than two-edged sword. And there you see it, with 12 verbs and three verses, all in the present tense active voice. It's really quite amazing.

So, Roger, are you done looking? Or is it so beautiful you... So, yeah, if you're listening on the internet and you don't see the slides, you're missing out on a Just like it's like 4th of July So it's just a list of the 12 verbs that you can write out yourself So there we go Yeah, no imperatives so oh yeah Roy did you have something? Or just that you have described I believe very well from scripture.

This is God's reality This is what's really real, is that He is going on right now, you and I have the Holy Spirit in us. That's what's real, being expressed here. Yeah, and you've mentioned that several times, Roy, and now it's sunk in, and I've internalized that exact phrase, and I like what you said, and I've encoded you in that, and that's true. And one of the things about The unreality is, it's false. It's imaginary. It's what we make up. It's not real. It's not what's really true. And when you look at it, things of the world are... Imaginary. Yeah, they're not God's reality.

I wish I had done that. I had this... Did I send it to you, Roger? Yes, you did that. Cosmos, definition of the cosmos or the world. by Schaeffer, very good, I should have put that in. But yeah, and when you look down that list of what the world is, it's unreal. It's unreal, yeah, it's unreality. And today, boy, we can see that so clearly. Yeah, because it's governments, it's social structures, it's all these things, you know, culture. So it's real, but it's God's work. It's real to mankind. Yeah, real to mankind. Real to the natural self.

But the thing is, we're now heavenly creatures. We've changed addresses, right? Yeah. We're no longer... And so when this world wraps up, where's that stuff going to go? Yeah, it's gone. Yeah, yeah. I bet my dad isn't worried about some mortgage or how I'm treating his car. Or, yeah, politics.

He just, I bet he, I bet when you're in heaven, you don't, you have this fuzzy kind of remembrance of your life. And it's sort of like remembering back to, I just think about that a lot. Remembering high school, right? It's when you're in high school. It's alive and Wow, but now you remember you kind of it's fuzzy, right? It's like it's like a dream.

Yeah, so I don't know Yeah, just editing to your thoughts there Keep in mind that God's reality includes the physical doesn't exclude. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so Israel is part of his reality. And this world is part of his reality. When he created Adam and Eve, he said, you're going to rule and reign. You're going to be kings. First king and queen was Adam and Eve. And that's what he's going to set up is a kingship here on earth with him. And David is a cool ruler with him. And then there's a new heaven and a new earth where everything is perfect. I mean, God has that in mind to include the immaterial with the material. Yeah. We think separately. But God's got that all in harmony. I don't know how. Yeah. And then in the future, at the end of the age, he'll merge the two, the physical and the spiritual into one thing under under God, right? Right. You got it. Yeah. It's really hard to... We like to compartmentalize everything. We like to make it separate. Yeah, right. And it won't be... I like to... I'm guilty as charged. I do that a lot. Compartmentalize things, but...

But everything is really... His reality encompasses everything. You know, right now I'm talking to you through an electronics means, okay? It's quite true. Through this ethereal thing we call the Internet. Yeah. And you're talking to us through that Internet here in our house. But it's all part of his reality. It's all real. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's a little eschatology there for us. Discussion. That's great. Thanks. The magnitude of God is so great. I think sometimes we overlook that. You gave it, I think, a great thing there where you know that his nature, what is his nature? His reputation, who he really is.

Yeah. I'm sorry, guys. Oh, yeah. No, no, that's good, Roy. Thanks. All right. Back to the back to the verbs or the commands or the verbs. There's no imperative commands. And why is that? That's the question that came up in my mind. So I just put down some observations. I would say Paul would use a lot of imperative commands, you know, do this in the imperative. But John does not. And then I thought, well, I think I figured it out. And here's what I found. The commands, there were commands, imperative commands. They were given by the Lord himself.

Abide in me and love one another from the gospel of John. John 1334, 1512, 1517. The Lord Jesus Christ at one time Express these put down these commands so they abide and they go on and John is Remembering in them. He's restating them here in his letter and amplifying those commands that Jesus himself one time at one time stated in during the time of In order that We see the union with Christ that we have and what in order for us to see what abiding in him looks like in a present regenerated life And here you go Roy again is you you often say Roy brings up this point often and this is a good point and When John is writing to these believers that he's writing to, they know these things.

They've heard it before, and probably for years, because John spent time probably teaching these people all the things in the Gospel of John, and all the things. So they knew it, and they knew it well. And that's why he's so concise and, you know, Paul explains things a lot. in detail, but John just compact and he moves from one thing to the other. So, and we know it today as well. Here's the verse 220 that we covered a few weeks ago, but you have an anointing from the Holy One and you all know.

Another one from 1 John 2.3, by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments and from 319 we will know by this that we are of the truth and will assure our hearts before him the one that we covered last week and there's a there's several other we knows in this uh first john it's just so that's one of the main points and roy uh brings it up a lot and that's a that's a great point um merriman says that these verses are describing them are manifesting regeneration this is what regeneration looks like in our lives uh to our discussion earlier um and what jim was saying this is uh the Holy Spirit doing his work in us, right? And it's the proofs of being born again, or being a born-again one.

I think it was David Roxer that says... Oh yeah. Dennis Roxer. From Minnesota. He says in his book that John assumes a lot of stuff that they know, Yeah. He's not explaining to us. Right. And what does he call it? I forgot what he calls it. He calls it ubiquitous shorthand. So he uses shorthand and it's all over. He's telling them what they already know. They already know this, so they know what he's talking about.

We don't. Paul was more explicit. Yeah. Well, look at Romans, right? Yeah. It starts from the beginning, and then he develops it, and Romans is the whole thing laid out very clear. Yeah. John doesn't do that. John is... Yeah. He's apparently taught these people a lot of his stuff. Yeah, and plus it could be that John writes from a Jewish kind of mindset perspective, and Paul's from a Greek, and the difference is one's logical and one's more illustrative, illustrative maybe, yeah. But that's the challenge we have is to figure out what John is actually trying to say. Yeah.

Just figure out, you know, his ubiquitous shorthand and put that in there. Yeah, and what I found is you might not know what he's saying, but somewhere else in the letter, he describes it perfectly. So you've got to go and grab it from somewhere else. And then you say, ah, so that's the shorthand. He doesn't explain it right here in this verse. You've got to go to chapter 5, and then you'll state it, and you just cut that in and paste it in where you are and you have it. Yeah. Right. So, yeah. Amen. Yeah. Oh, good. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to assign Andrew that task. All right. So, here's another illustrative chart. Not a chart, but just the words from the Gospel of John.

15, 7 through 17, if you abide in me and my works abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. And I won't read the whole thing through verse 17, but I've highlighted or bolded out how it's correlating to John's first epistle. So the phrase is, ask whatever you wish, That's John re-amplifying that here in 1 John.

And here's a purpose, by this my father is glorified. Abide in my love, if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love, that your joy may be made full. And John had that exact phrase in chapter 1, right? This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I loved you. We've heard that many times. So that's something we know. And then at the end, so that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, there we go, that's what we're studying today, He may give to you. This I command to you, that you love one another.

So this is, You know, 1 John is really John, Gospel of John, chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, all sort of wrapped into one. Especially 17 too, that union, right, with Christ. It's really amazing. So that's, I just wanted to put that up there because that helps.

John's kind of plagiarizing himself, I thought, by using his... I don't think you plagiarize yourself. That's what I was thinking. Can you plagiarize yourself? But yeah, he wrote that one, and it's a masterpiece, right? The Gospel of John. But Revelation is totally different. Totally different. Yes, it's pretty amazing. I'm going to sum it up by this. I got into charts. I like illustrations and I made this one up. Cool. And this is all the things that these things are saying here. There we are, we're abiding in Christ, we're abiding in his love, we're abiding in his word.

And what he says, we're in the light, we're abiding in the light, 1 John 2.10. And that overall, if we're in that place of abiding in the light, in his word, in his love in Christ, we are in the scope of God's will. There you go. That's God's will. If you want to know God's will for your life, make sure you're abiding. And so that when we pray, we ask in his name, we receive. That'll be a natural, just a principle, a principle that he gives us in scripture. It's from 1 John 3, 22. 1 John 5, verses 14 through 15.

I was wondering with this illustration, you know, you have these co-centric circles that are all in each other. Can you separate out these circles? Can you abide in Christ, but not abide in his love? His love is over here. The red circle is outside of that. I don't think so. I think this has to be all or nothing, right? Either you're in or you're outside. So if you're outside, you're outside of God's will and you're, you know, maybe in an unconfessed state or carnal, living carnally, and that's outside of God's will.

So I think these all have to go together. And for being in God's will, I have those scripture references in the top right-hand corner. John 9, Romans 12-2, Ephesians 6-6, Philippians 2-13, Colossians 4-12, and many from 1 Peter. He gives many being in God's will and that topic.

But I think we'll have to see how this illustration in this chart stands the test of time. I don't know. Maybe someone will say, well, that's not... But that's... We'll start with that and see if it holds its value there. But it's kind of neat, I thought. Then I did one more illustration because I was in the mood to end. So how do we get there?

We behold him, Christ, through his word, 2 Corinthians 3.18. And if we live that verse, we're doing a good thing, right, in our Christian life. This verse from Matthew chapter 6, 22 through 23, This never made sense to me, that Christ spoke, if the eye is the lamp of the body, so then if your eye is clear, your whole body is full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is in darkness, how great is the darkness.

And then, I was reading something from Darby, I guess, and he mentioned this verse in relation to God's will, and it really goes well with 2 Corinthians 3.18, because if you're beholding Christ through the Word of God, that's light. You're taking in all of His glory, all of His light. So the lamp of the body is the eye. Yeah, you know, if your eye is clear, your whole body, your whole life will be full of light by beholding Him and His Word. And that's an interesting... We'll have to see if that too stands the test of time, that correlation. But at least for this week, I think it's a good one.

So there you go. Okay, yeah, we'll close in prayer then. Next screen is a blank screen, so I must be done. I'll close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and your living and powerful word. And we thank you that you You gave us all of your thoughts and all of your ways in everything. And that's in scripture. And we pray that we just take it in and live by it. And we thank you for it.

In Jesus' name, amen. Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Andrew. Oh, yeah, you bet. Isn't it a privilege that we can have the freedom to open God's Word and that the Holy Spirit applies it to us as individuals? Man, what a privilege. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. And even corporately, right? The body of Christ here. Right. That's, yeah, it's really amazing. Hey, Sue. Hey, Lem. We love you. Love you, too. Oh, yes. There they are.