Let us spend a moment in prayer before
God.
Let us pray.
Inasmuch, our Lord, as we can neither read
thy word nor write, nor understand it, let
alone apply it to our own hearts and
lives, without the aid of thy Spirit, we
cry now, as children in need, come, O
Spirit of God, among us afresh, and let
this holy word of thine become alive to
us, and meaningful and relevant and vital, bringing
us into the fullness of thy purposes for
us at this hour, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
Amen.
We have come in our studies in the
first epistle of John to the paragraph that
begins with verse 19 in chapter 3.
And last Lord's Day morning we were thinking
particularly of verses 19 and 20.
We took the theme, the cure for a
heart that falsely condemns.
And perhaps it might be helpful if we
just read those verses again, because they're so
intimately related to what we have before us
today.
Hereby we know that we are of the
truth, and shall assure or reassure our hearts
before him.
For if our heart condemn us, God is
greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
And now today we take up the thread
with verse 21.
We've entitled this New Horizons.
Here it is.
Let us read these four verses together.
Beloved, says John, If our heart condemn us
not, then have we confidence toward God, and
whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because
we keep his commandments and do those things
that are pleasing in his sight.
And this is his commandment, that we should
believe on the name of his Son Jesus
Christ, and love one another as he gave
us commandment.
And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in
him, and he in him.
And hereby we know that he abideth in
us by the spirit which he hath given
to us.
We turn this morning then from the cure
for a heart that falsely condemns, to the
consequences of a heart being divinely assured.
If our heart is assured before God, and
we know something of the meaning of Christian
assurance, then there are certain new horizons that
open up to us that never did before.
The doctrine of Christian assurance is infinitely precious.
There can be no computation of the value
and the wealth of this tremendous experience that
the Bible holds out to the Lord's people.
The privilege of being assured before God that
we are his people, and because we are
his people that we have a right to
plead his promises.
Because we are his people we may think
of him and live before him as one
who is indeed our God and our Father.
And we may expect of him that he
should act in accordance with his word and
his promises and his covenant.
Now this is Christian assurance.
It is exceedingly precious to know this.
And should there be among us today those
who do not, may I suggest to you
that really this deserves to be the main
quest of a person's life.
Search the scriptures and search them prayerfully and
seek the Lord through the scriptures because this
is indeed one of his covenant promises to
those who trust in his Son and obey
his word.
But now very remarkable, that benefit, great as
it is, is not what John is majoring
upon in our text today.
He is telling us that if we are
assured before God then there is something even
more precious than that for us.
There is something beyond mere assurance or reassurance.
And it is to this that we come
today.
Let me just read again.
If our heart condemn us not, then have
we confidence before God and whatsoever we ask
we receive of him because we keep his
commandments and we do those things that are
pleasing in his sight.
New horizons indeed.
The consequences of a heart divinely assured.
Now no less than three things invite our
attention here this morning.
The first is this.
John is first of all speaking of a
condition of being where there is no longer
any confusion, no confusion of uncertainty within the
soul.
Look at that verse 21 again.
It reads in the RSV in this way.
Beloved, if our heart do not condemn us,
we have confidence before God.
If our heart does not condemn us, we
have confidence.
The absence of confusion within oneself.
The tragedy of being uncertain of God or
uncertain of ourselves in our relation to God
is that we're always confused.
We never know the way we're going.
And the uncertain man cannot do great service
for God.
In prayer if a man is uncertain, as
we shall see in a moment, there are
limits to what he can ask with faith.
He can say his prayers but he can't
pray them with expectation.
There's a world of difference between saying your
prayers and praying them.
The Bible never tells us to say our
prayers but to pray them.
But we can't pray with the expectation of
faith if we have no assurance.
Neither indeed can we evangelize if we have
no assurance.
In vain do we go out and seek
to win men and women for Jesus Christ
if we are not sure that he receives
us when we come.
Did he receive us?
Are we sure?
Did he pardon our sins?
Are we certain?
Has he brought us into the family of
God?
Are we sure of that?
If we are not certain of things in
our own souls, then we're always in a
confused state.
And one could proceed at great lengths along
those lines.
But now, says John, this has come to
an end.
With assurance, we come to a state of
things where there is an absence of inward
confusion.
We have confidence before God.
If our heart do not condemn us, we
have confidence.
I wonder, my friends, what our condition is
this morning.
I am thinking especially of the first part
of that verse.
And I want to stress it again, if
I may.
Not until our hearts cease to condemn us
do we really get away from the condition
of inner confusion and commotion which is necessary
as the springboard of genuinely God-honoring Christian
activity of any kind.
As we indicated last time, if the Holy
Spirit is convicting us of sin, therefore, there
is only one thing to do.
Let's acknowledge it.
Let's plead guilty before God.
Let us acknowledge what God is convincing us
of and let us come with penitence to
the fount where sin is washed away.
Let us accept the promises that if we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just
to forgive us our sins and even to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Let us do that.
If, on the other hand, our conscience is
a little bit morbid and it's out of
tune and it's overworking and it's not rightly
attuned to the will and the purposes of
God and we can never feel happy about
anything, well, let's come back to the test
that we saw and considered last Lord's Day
morning.
It's a very sad state of affairs where
people even question whether they've repented enough, whether
they've got enough faith to be served, whether
they do anything sufficiently.
I remember spending months, literally months, two or
three times a week with a certain family
and they were all in this particular condition.
When it came to the command of Scripture
to repent, yes, we repent, but have we
repented enough?
Then they looked at the command to believe
and to obey.
Do we believe enough?
Are we obedient enough?
Now, John brings us to the point, he
says, look, don't let your conscience confuse you
because God is greater than your conscience.
And God says this, if you love the
brethren, that's the implication of what we've seen
before, I'm bringing it out again, if you
really love the people of God as the
people of God, not because they dress in
a certain way, not because they belong to
a certain class in society, not because they're
of a certain color, not because they're of
a certain background, but because they are the
people of God.
If you love them just because they're the
Lord's people, and you love them in this
sense, that when you see a brother in
need, you don't shut up your bowels of
compassion, as the King James Version puts it,
but you come alongside of the brother in
need and you say, I'm a brother of
yours.
What's your problem?
Can I help?
Then, says John, you may know that you
are of the truth, of the truth.
Don't worry what your conscience says to you
anymore, if your conscience is out of gear,
God is greater than your conscience.
And God says this, now this is very
precious for some people, the absence of confusion,
oh blessed condition.
It may not prove that we are on
the highest scale of maturity, but it certainly
proves our pedigree as the people of God,
as the children of the King.
And that's the first thing that John envisages
here, the absence of confusion within oneself.
My good friend, I trust if you don't
know what this means as you come to
the house of God today, you will before
you leave.
Take God at His word.
But now, the next thing is this, the
presence of confidence before God.
You notice we are moving away now from
the absence of confusion within ourselves to the
presence of confidence before God.
We have confidence before God.
Now let's examine this in a little more
detail.
Let's look first of all at the substance
of the boon that is referred to here,
this confidence.
Christian assurance is no mere negative.
It's no negative benefit.
It is not simply the absence of doubt,
fear, uncertainty, or of an accusing conscience.
On the contrary, it is a vitally positive
factor.
And John expounds it as such in this
context.
Now, the word that John employs for confidence
really means openness, openness of heart.
It means that kind of openness of heart
in which you find absolute freedom to speak.
Now, can I illustrate it by contrast?
Perhaps you go to a doctor's office in
fear and trembling.
He examines you, and you know what happens.
You sometimes get dry in the mouth.
You're afraid to speak of the symptoms that
you know so well.
You know, you really lose your powers of
speech.
There are other circumstances.
I could enumerate quite a few this morning.
I don't think there's any point in doing
it.
But you know there are situations in life
where really you can't speak.
You just lose your powers of speech.
Now, this is the exact opposite.
There are other situations where you can feel
absolutely free, uninhibited, and you can just speak
up and speak out and say exactly what
you want to say and what you ought
to say.
And that's what this word confidence means.
C.
H.
Dodd says that the word referred to by
John here originally had reference to a person's
most basic right within his own community, his
own society, to speak his own mind about
any subject.
Freedom of speech.
Whereas its connotation later widens, says C.
H.
Dodd, there always hung to it the special
association with the thought of freedom of speech,
unhampered by fear or by shame.
So then, this is what the word basically
means.
Confidence means the ability to speak clearly, freely,
openly.
But now, this openness of which it speaks
is not to be confused with brazenness or
with impudence.
Now, there is a kind of openness which
is nothing other than insolence, arrogance, impertinence, shamelessness,
where people blurt out something that it would
be far better if they kept in, inside
somewhere under lock and key.
We intrude into other people's affairs with our
words when it would be better that we
should keep to ourselves our unwise and sometimes
unloving thoughts.
Now, John's not thinking of that.
Not the kind of openness that somebody claimed
in my presence not all that long ago
by saying that she had been given the
gift of discernment and could sum up a
situation just like that and always had the
word for it.
Everybody else didn't agree, but she thought so.
And that's not the openness and the freedom
of speech that John is speaking of.
This is not impertinence.
This is not arrogance.
It's something quite different.
What John has in mind is the openness
of a child who has never had occasion
to lose confidence in its father or mother.
There is nothing more beautiful in the whole
world than this.
Now, you parents, perhaps your children have left
the hearth a long time ago, but you
know what it is.
You know, Johnny or whatever her name is
comes running in and says exactly what's happened
and how it happened.
And when that continues for a few years,
perhaps into teen life you know, it's a
most precious thing.
The feeling that I can tell mummy, I
can tell daddy, I can open up, I
don't need to hide anything.
There's nothing I need put in the drawer
or in the cubicle.
Nothing I need cover over.
Right out it comes.
You know, that's wonderful.
That's what John is speaking of.
Confidence before God.
Knowing that I can tell him everything.
That's the substance of the boon.
John expresses here the sphere of its benefit
by saying, if our heart condemn us not,
then have we confidence before God.
He wants to bring that out.
You see, our dealings in prayer, as he's
going to say in a moment, are essentially
before God.
Right then, we need to have this confidence
that remains in the presence of God.
We can have confidence before men.
Some of us can bluff people.
And we can put on a show and
men don't know any difference.
They think we're all right.
And we can get away with it sometimes.
Not always.
Even men may find us out from time
to time that this is confidence before God.
All things are naked and open before Him
with whom we have to do.
Nevertheless, says John, there is the possibility of
this experience of real confidence before God.
My conscience that doesn't work properly may accuse
me.
But God knows all things and God listens
to everything I say.
And I can tell him everything.
Now mark the contention itself.
For it is in the covenant for every
child of God there is the conscious presence
of the almighty God here.
God in His holiness, God in His righteousness,
God in His wisdom, God in His greatness,
God in His infinity.
And yet the child can come into His
presence and be free to say everything.
And this is what John is speaking about.
When we have learnt from the word of
God how to deal with sin and how
also to deal with a morbidly nagging conscience,
this is the privilege that awaits us.
Confidence before God.
There are two things then.
The absence of confusion within oneself and then
the presence of confidence in the presence of
God.
And you know, I believe that if we
only had that much to say and if
John only said that much to us this
morning from his word, it certainly would be
something for which we should praise God.
But there is always this exciting element about
Scripture.
You know, that's only the stage set for
something that goes even beyond this.
All this, says John, all this opens up
a new era and a new dimension of
living.
And he puts it like this in verse
22.
The end of verse 21 and on into
verse 22.
We have confidence before him and whatsoever we
ask we receive of him because we keep
his commandments and do those things that are
pleasing in his sight.
I want to speak of this third feature
here as an active commerce with God.
Now, I'm not bringing in this third C
just because they go together.
I think that commerce is the right word
here.
I deliberately employ it because its dictionary meaning
is this.
The exchange of materials or products.
And this is exactly what John envisages here.
The exchange of products between the praying man
and the listening God.
The man brings his petition before God.
Here he is, envisaged in this context, he's
talking freely to God.
He's opening up, hiding nothing, child talking to
father.
And in all the liberty, the unconfused state
of that glorious blood-bought privilege, he comes
to the end of talking with God and
he begins to pray.
And he asks, notice, he moves from speaking
to God and now his speaking takes on
a particular turn.
He asks.
He offers the petition or the request to
God and God gives him what he asks.
This is commerce.
Now, the dimension of experience envisaged here is
something which I believe will challenge all of
us this morning because, unfortunately, Christian people generally
have ceased to realize that this kind of
dimension is within the reach of every child
of God.
The apostle is thinking of the actual experience
of communion with God and confidence in him
whereby specific things are sought by name and
received.
Sought from God and received from him.
Nothing less than real and effectual commerce with
heaven.
Now, of course, prayer is much more than
this, taken generally, using the word prayer now
in its most comprehensive sense.
Prayer involves, I suppose, in the first place,
adoration.
In this general sense it begins with an
appreciation and an adoration of God in his
glory.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God the Creator and God the Redeemer.
Of the person of God and of God
in his activities.
In all things, especially in his grace in
Jesus Christ.
Prayer is essentially the outgoings of the soul
in adoration and in worship.
Prayer goes beyond that.
Prayer is confession.
Or should we say that confession is part
of prayer.
The acknowledgement of our sin.
The acknowledgement of our awareness that things are
wrong when we come into the presence of
God.
And the acceptance of responsibility for the things
that are wrong and then putting them right,
seeking forgiveness, seeking pardon and cleansing and so
forth.
All this is part of prayer and much
else.
Intercession, asking for people in distant places as
well as near at hand.
And then the rededication of oneself.
Prayer should never come to an end without
our placing ourselves afresh at the mercy and
at the disposal of God.
But this is essentially a part of prayer.
It's petition.
It's asking for something tangible, real.
Calling a spade a spade.
I know what I need and I just
don't continue to talk about it or think
about it.
But in the presence of God, now that
I have confidence before him and I can
speak freely, I say, Father, please give me
this.
Now my friends, how many of us are
living on that level?
You see, when we talk about worship and
about adoration and about confession, you have no
certainty that you're being heard.
We can go through these other aspects of
prayer and the prayers are outgoing, but you
and I are not sure that they're arriving.
There are multitudes of men and women in
the Christian church this morning who are not
sure that God is a prayer answering God.
But in petition, you learn that.
Petition means commerce, asking, receiving, pleading, getting.
Now, here I would just like to interject.
Of course, one could illustrate from one era
of church life or another, but what I
want to ask you to do and urge
you to do, my good people, is to
read the Bible in this light and see
the men of God from Genesis right through
to Revelation, besieging the throne of God and
asking and receiving.
And not only that, of course, we can
turn to a whole wealth of Christian literature,
biographies and autobiographies.
If time permitted, I would like to point
this morning to Robert Murray MacChain, who's one
of my great friends, bringing heavenly blessing to
the parched needs of Scotland in his day,
with his tears having dug literally a hole
in his desk as he prayed for his
country.
And he brought God down into the situation.
See Murray MacChain there.
See a man not as well known, perhaps,
but a man who did something mighty for
God in the west of England, Billy Bray,
who called himself the King's Son, one of
the quaintest of men in his day.
I suppose that reading the life of Billy
Bray meant something more to me than reading
many another biography.
As I watched this man of God, very
simple man, walking down into the Cornwall and
moving around the countryside and praying, Lord, which
village shall I claim for you?
What families shall I pray into the kingdom
today?
And he would pass by one village and
another until the Spirit of God would come
upon him and he would know in his
heart, this is the village or this is
the town.
And Billy would begin to pray.
And he would go literally on his knees
around the village and he would bring every
family, every father, every mother, every grandmother, grandfather,
grandson, granddaughter.
He would bring the whole community before God,
perhaps for six months.
Then he would have liberty in his soul
to go in and he claimed them for
God.
And he did.
That's where the Methodist churches of the west
of Cornwall have sprung from.
Fundamentally from the prayers of Billy Bray and
some of those that gathered around him.
Of course, everybody knows of George Muller, how
he built and sustained his orphanages.
It was sheer prayer, asking and receiving, doing
commerce with heaven.
Not just throwing petitions out into the open
and forgetting about them, but out of confidence
in God and before God, asking and receiving.
And so we could go on to David
Brainerd and we could easily cross the Atlantic
and stay here a long time.
But you see, this is a principle enunciated
in Scripture for all the people of God.
John is not thinking by the way of
a mere isolated answer to prayer.
He is thinking of this as a consistent
order of life.
Life goes on in this way.
A constant confidence before God and a constant
asking and receiving.
The dimension of experience envisaged here and then
the condition of such experience explained.
John tells us all this is explained in
so far as we can understand it.
We receive these things from him, he says.
We receive from him whatever we ask because
we keep his commandments and we do what
pleases him.
Now something must be distinguished here.
Not only must it be distinguished here, but
we must always distinguish between two things in
Scripture.
We must particularly distinguish very clearly between the
meritorious cause of something and the conditions of
its possession.
Now the meritorious cause for answers to prayer,
for God hearing us and receiving us and
sending us what we ask, the meritorious cause
is not in us.
The meritorious cause is in the precious blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ offered on the
cross of Calvary.
He died for this.
And he rose again for this.
And he deserves this.
And it's because he has deserved it and
he has procured this right for us.
This is the cause, this is the source
whence this kind of thing is possible.
But over and above that, God says, now
look here, it's all going to be out
of grace.
It's because Christ died, but before you can
enter into it, you have to prove yourself.
And you have to prove yourself fundamentally in
one way, by doing the things that please
me.
By using what I give you.
If I give you something, using it not
for your own glory, but for my glory.
And that's why you must prove yourself by
keeping my commandments.
You see, this is all it means to
keep the commandments of the Lord.
It's just to show that we please him.
We can put a very grim face on
the commandments of God, you know.
But fundamentally this is exactly what they mean.
Every solitary one of the abiding commandments of
the Old Testament and of the New.
They simply mean this.
This is what pleases God.
And his people who are going to do
commerce with him must learn to please him.
Now you see, this means that there's no
real problem for a man in this order.
Even if there is no known commandment as
to what he's going to do.
I'm in a situation and I read the
Bible and I don't find a specific commandment
which tells me how I ought to behave.
But I want to please God.
And if I want to please God, that's
all I need.
In the light of the commandments that I
know.
In the light of the books that I
read and digest and live by.
Now I will assess what pleases him.
Very well, says John.
If you do that, the confidence that you
have before God is such that will enable
you to ask and to receive.
Not because you merit it.
The merit is in another.
But you keep the conditions and you prove
yourself.
There are two statements in the gospel written
by John which I want to bring together
and I'm drawing to a close.
I would like you to notice them when
you go away.
The one is in John 8, 29.
And the other is in John 11, verses
41 and 42.
In John 8 and 49, Jesus says this.
I always do the things that please him.
That is my father.
Now that's a categorical statement.
It's a statement of intent.
It's an acknowledgement of the principle that governs
his life.
I always do the things that please him.
What does he say in John 11, verses
41 and 42?
Well, he's praying concerning the work that he's
going to do in relation to Lazarus who
has been buried.
He's coming to the graveside of Lazarus and
he's praying aloud.
And he says this.
I've asked this of you, Father, just for
the people around me to hear me asking.
I know, he says, that thou hearest me
always.
But for their sake, I'm asking it aloud.
Have you got it?
He always did the things that pleased the
Father.
He always knew that the Father heard and
answered his prayer.
And he's the pattern man.
In principle, then, there is one thing that
God asks of us, and that is to
please him.
But in pleasing him, we must express it
by keeping his commandment and especially to keep
on believing on the name of his Son
and to keep on loving one another.
Those who are thus loyal to him, John
says, abide in him.
Nothing comes between, like the branch in the
vine.
Surely John has the fifteenth chapter of his
gospel in mind here.
Those who live on this kind of level,
says John, abide in him and he in
them.
And out of that abiding communion with the
Lord Jesus and with the Father, they can
ask, according to John 15 and verse 7,
what they will.
And it shall be done.
There is an authority that is given to
the man who has learned to dwell in
the secret place of the Most High.
Brethren, it's a very challenging thing that came
again from Scotland, a statement from Murray Machen.
What a man or a woman is in
prayer, that he or she is.
And nothing more, nothing more.
I believe that the Spirit of God is
urging you and urging me this morning to
see this new vista that is open.
Not for some people, thanks be to God,
for those whom we recognize to be ahead
of us in these things.
Glory be to God for them.
But my friends, this is something for me,
this is something for you, this is something
for all of us together.
The cure for a heart that falsely condemns
the consequences of a heart being divinely assured.
Absence of confusion, presence of confidence, engagement in
commerce with the throne of God, with a
government of heaven, with a God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Are you assured?
Are you using your assurance simply for personal
luxury, enjoying it, but no more?
Or are you standing in that place of
assurance and exercising a ministry whereby you prove
to those who know you at all that
God is real and God is yours?
He hears and answers prayer.
O Lord, teach me to pray.
Teach me to pray the gospel way, asking
and receiving.
Heavenly Father, we bow, acknowledging first of all
the challenge of this kind of passage upon
which we have been meditating this morning.
Because it surely shows us up as being
far away from the sweet communion with thyself,
wherein we are meant to exercise the kind
of ministry delineated here.
Because this is so, we know that even
if we do not consciously sin and break
the commandments, we are guilty of withholding blessing
and of keeping back the praises of men
who, if they knew thee to be a
God such as this, might still list thy
praise.
O mighty God, lead us in the way
of obedience and enable us to serve thee
in our day to thy glory.
Through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.