Into the Light: Four Things to Be Certain of in an Uncertain World

All right. Good morning. Good to see everyone at Eagle Creek Church today. I’m the pastor here. I’m sorry if I haven’t met you, I try to meet everyone, and I am not great at remembering everyone’s names, but I will say it 12 times until I get it down and figure you out eventually.

But Sherry and I, we got to share our good news. We’re grandparents again. Woohoo, come on, come on. As of Friday at 4:18, Friday at 4:18, we had another, oh, they have pictures, oh, we have pictures, I like that. That’s stretched out, her face is not quite that fat. She was 8 lb and 20 inches long. I guess that she would be born before 4:30, she was born at 4:18. So I was pretty close, I was in the ballpark, but I was off by a half inch and off by 4/10 of a pound. So I was close, sorry, Noah’s family did the whole everyone-guessed-the-length-and-the-weight thing. I did not win, but I won on the time, I figured that one out. So, I’m still a winner. Actually, I have a grandbaby, so I’m still a winner.

Anyway, so I’ve got a grandson now and a granddaughter, it’s pretty cool, pretty exciting. And they’ll be home this afternoon. When I say home, we live in the country and they own the property on the front of ours, so we get to see them a whole lot. So, that’s very exciting for us.

Hey, as we jump into the series, we’re finishing up our series on the book of First John. We’re going to be in chapter 5. You can open up the Eagle Creek Church app and get my sermon notes if you want. Today, we’re going to work on being super encouraging, because the Apostle John ends the last chapter of the book of First John in a way that’s really encouraging. So, I’m going to give you four encouragements as we go through this.

How many of you have a kid that whenever you go to the pool, when they were little, or maybe they are little right now, you have to keep your eye on them because they just might run out and jump in the deep end of the pool before they’re ready to swim in the deep end of the pool. Okay, some of you like that. Now, whenever our kids were little, we lived in a neighborhood that had a pool. And my brother John would hang over with us a lot because he had five kids, we had four kids, so we’d be walking down with nine kids. And John’s kids have zero caution, caution is thrown to the wind. His oldest son, Jericho, attends here, he was a whitewater rafting instructor in Colorado out of high school, and then he started climbing and doing that free climbing, like the free solo, you know, no ropes, nothing like that. And we were all like, “Oh my gosh, we’re going to get the report that Jericho died.” Now he’s married and has two kids, so he does less of that, but he’s still go go go go.

So literally all five of his kids would be jumping, diving in the pool, and we’d be chasing them down trying to jump in and grab one and grab the other, and some of them could swim and some of them couldn’t. Our kids were a little more cautious than that. But Emerson, the one who just had our little granddaughter here, Emerson would run in and she would not dive in unless you were in the pool. But if you were in the pool, it was all bets off. She might jump in half the pool distance away from you and think, “Well, you’re in the pool, so it’s safe.” It’s like, “No, I’m in the pool, so it’s safe where I’m in the pool, it’s not safe on that end of the pool.” But she just had confidence that I would get there, and I would get there. And there were more than once I was grabbing an arm, pull the kid up, head above water. I remember once my youngest daughter doing the floating underwater with her eyes open looking up, you know, she’s like two years old, I’m like, “What in the world, why are you in here, you should not be.”

Anyway, so with kids like that, why am I telling all this? Because I’m thinking about the kind of way we look at God, the kind of faith we have. Some people have the kind of faith that just says, “He’s in the water. I think God’s in this. I don’t have it all figured out. I don’t know how to swim in everything just yet, but I know if I jump in the water where God is, that he’s going to help me, right? I know if I go for it where God is right now, God could do something really good.” And here’s the good news, if I’m off a little bit, I have a really good Father and he’ll get to me really quick and yank me up out of the water. He ain’t going to let me drown.

So, I want to encourage you as I preach this message this morning, just giving you four encouragements to be able to jump into the water in these areas and say, “I may not get this all perfect, but boy am I going to go for it a little bit more, I’m going to go for faith.” As we start into a new school year, there’s a lot of students here, I want to encourage you to think about that and to say, “Wherever God is leading me at school, whatever he’s calling me to do, however I’m supposed to be a witness or be a light, be an example, I’m going to jump out, I’m going to step in.” Parents with kids in school, where you’re getting involved and saying, “How do I get involved? How do I jump out for what God has for me?” I encourage you to start doing that.

So, as we walk through this, I’m going to give you these four encouragements from 1 John chapter 5. Here they are.

Our Faith Overcomes the World

Number one is this. Our faith overcomes the world. Let’s all say that together, and then I’ll explain it. Let’s read it together. Our faith overcomes the world. You got it? Okay.

Now this is what it tells us in 1 John 5:4-5. It says this, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” Now three times he’s saying you’re going to overcome the world, you’re going to overcome the world, you’re going to overcome the world.

Now how is this happening? How is this victory happening? And what does it mean? First of all, I’ll tell you what it means. It means this. It means the world has a system of thought and belief that wants to weigh in on a Christian’s values. How many of you know the world would love to weigh in on the way you raise children and put pressure on you to raise it the world’s way? Raise your child the way the world wants you to raise your child. How many of you know the world puts pressure on parenting? Right, amen. How many of you know that the world puts pressure on what success looks like? Even if you’re a Christian, you’re pressured to look like the world says you have to do this to be successful. I feel like I need to do that to be successful. You know it’s wrong, but you feel the pressure. Anyone in this room, you ever feel the pressure of the world when it comes to success? Of course you do. It’s natural to feel that way.

And so, there’s a lot of outside pressures where the world is trying to overcome our value sets with its value set. And it says here’s what happens when you are in Christ Jesus. When you have faith, the faith that overcomes is faith that Jesus is the Son of God. Now what does that faith result in? If you have faith that Jesus is the Son of God, how many of you would say, if someone really believes, I mean really heart and soul they believe Jesus is the Son of God, they would think that he probably knows how to run my life. Come on, someone give me a big amen on that one. Okay, one more time. If you think Jesus is the Son of God, do you think Jesus knows how to run your life? Okay, so that’s faith. You say, “I have faith in that.” Well, is Jesus’s way to run your life the same as the way the worldly system would run your life? That’s an emphatic what? No. Absolutely not. There’s no way it’s the same.

So, how do we overcome the world’s system of running our lives? Well, we have faith that Jesus is the Son of God. He knows how to run our life. And we’re going to follow his way. And when we follow his way, suddenly we’re not doing worldly parenting anymore, and we just overcame the world’s system for parenting. Hallelujah, amen. And suddenly, we just overcame the world’s system for dating relationships. God has a better plan than the world does for how to meet your spouse. Amen. How to meet the person you’re going to marry. The world has a system, God has a system, they’re diametrically opposed. But we have faith that Jesus is the Son of God, so we just want to meet the kind of person Jesus wants us to meet. We want to date them in the way Jesus wants us to date people. Honor them in the way Jesus wants to honor them. And then eventually marry them the way Jesus wants us to get married to people. Right? So we just say, “I’m going to follow Jesus,” and that’s going to be a defeat for the world running my life.

Now I would love to see every Christian here have victory after victory after victory on every area of your life, to say, “You know what, we started living God’s way with our finances and we overcame our worldly idea about money. We started parenting in God’s way and we started overcoming worldly ways to parent kids.” I say this often, but I don’t think people get it, so I’m just going to keep saying it, okay? The world has a way to raise a successful child. And in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, it involves sports and scholarships at the cost of relationship with Christ for your child, if that’s necessary.

Everyone tries to say, “Well, it’s not necessary. You don’t have to raise your children in a way that they don’t serve God. We’re going to give it to them at home. We’re not going to teach them that being part of a church family is really that important. Mom and dad will do it at home.” Amen, mom and dad should do it at home. But how many of you know as a mom and dad, the Bible already tells you that you’re not supposed to forsake the assembling together of the brethren, as some has done. In other words, being in church is part of God’s way. It’s not like, well, church is only, it’s just this side thing that you don’t really have to do. It’s like, so Christians don’t have to really do what the Bible says Christians have to do, or do they have to do what the Bible says they have to do? But the worldly system says you don’t.

You can just raise them to get a scholarship, and they go to college, and where do you get a scholarship that’ll pay for their schooling? Well, you get a scholarship at a secular university. And what happens at a secular university? Half of you lose your children to secular mindsets. So my big win for my child is a 50/50 chance that they’ll get a scholarship, and then a 50/50 chance that they’ll lose their faith. And that’s my win by following the world’s system. And I’ve literally watched child after child after child after child fall away from Christ. They got the scholarship, they lost the faith. How is that a win? How is that? Honestly, how is that a win?

I don’t care that your kids play sports. All my kids played sports. I was at the ball fields all the time. I never thought any of them was going to be a pro athlete. I never cared if they got a scholarship. I cared that my children followed Jesus Christ with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength. Sports was second. God was first every time, all the time, no exceptions. Amen, amen. I have four children that don’t play sports in their mid-20s and they all serve Jesus. I chose to overcome the world by having faith that Jesus was the savior and the ruler of my life and my values and my family. You want to overcome the world? Great, it’ll cost you something.

In fact, Jesus describes the cost that it will happen in John chapter 16:33. It says this, “I have said these things to you that in me you can have peace.” Say, have peace, okay? So, you can have peace with God. I feel peace with God, I’m doing things and I have peace with God about what I’m doing, the way I’m handling myself, my marriage, my finances, my parenting, all of it. I’m good with God. But I’m not good with the world. “In the world, you’re going to have tribulation.” If you have peace with God, you’re going to have war with the world, right?

And a lot of you think, “No, I’m going to have peace with God and peace with the world. I agree with you, absolutely, you can have both.” And so, what do you do? You compromise the peace with God. “I don’t have to do it all God’s way. I don’t have to follow that prescription, because I can find this little mix where I say, well, sometimes we’ll go here and sometimes we’ll go there and sometimes we won’t go anywhere, and then we’ll do this, and we’ll listen online, and then we’ll,” blah blah blah blah blah, compromise. So, we start lacking the peace, and then we start experiencing tribulation, and we’re like, “What’s wrong? My kid’s 18, he doesn’t want to go to church, they’ve got all these different values, we’re in conflict, we’re struggling back and forth right now. My wife and I can’t get on the same page anymore, and we’re at it at each other, and there’s a big war over how we’re going to handle our money, and there’s a lot of pressure on them to succeed because now they’ve got to get that scholarship, because that’s the only success we can see is that scholarship, and otherwise we failed. And we’re so embarrassed in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, because our kid was in the same sport as their kid, and they got the scholarship when we didn’t, and our kid feels like a failure, and we feel like a failure.” And our kid doesn’t even have faith to back them up through this time of tribulation and loss, where the world didn’t deliver what we thought the world would deliver if we did it the world’s way. And they’ve got nothing seated under them to help them through this time of trial. And so now they’re questioning God and we’re questioning God and we’re at it with each other.

And once again, I’m not against sports, all my kids were in sports, I was at the ball fields all the time, but never to the compromise of what comes first, right? Okay, I never let the world win.

But take heart. “I have overcome the world.” So I just want you to know, I want you to hear some great victorious news. You can overcome the world system. Amen. Out in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, Greenwood, Missouri, Raytown, Raymore, wherever you’re from around here, Pleasant Hill, you can overcome the world system. No matter what everyone’s telling you you have to do, you can overcome this thing, and you’ll find peace in God. Amen. And I want to encourage you to do that. That’s a big victory that can be handed to you, and it’s not a hard thing, it’s a big decision. It’s a big decision. Okay.

God Hears and Answers Our Prayers

The second one is this, and I preached too long on that, so I’m going to preach the other just a little quicker. The second one is this. God hears and answers our prayers. Hallelujah, amen. I love that God does that. How many of you love that God hears you and that God answers you? Amen, that’s a beautiful part of scripture.

And I want to share this with you in 1 John 5:14-15. This is what it says. It says, “And this is the confidence,” everyone say confidence, this word’s going to come up several times, “that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will,” that’s an important caveat right there, so let’s all say that, what’s it say, “according to his will.”

You may have heard this, if you haven’t, I’ll give you a little freebie. Every promise of God has a premise. If this, then this. So so frequently when you read through the scripture, if you read a promise, back up a little ways, or move forward a little ways, and say, “What’s the premise that leads to the promise?” If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Well, that’s great, but I need more than God to hear. I mean, it’s nice to know that he hears me, but then what? “And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.”

Now, I love this phrase, I heard an old preacher say this one time. He said, “God answers every prayer you ever pray. Sometimes he says yes. Sometimes he says no, and sometimes he says not yet.” Sometimes he says, “I know you want to marry that girl and you’re sure she’s the right one.” Guess what? You’re right, but not right now, because you got to get some stuff right in you and she’s got to get some stuff right. How many of you know that sometimes you prayed for things and the answer was delayed, and when you finally received the answer, you’re like, “No wonder God waited, things weren’t lined.” He was lining things up for that answer, but it wasn’t lined up the day I prayed it, it was something that God was in the middle of doing, right?

And so I look at that and say, so we get these places of saying, “I want to pray according to God’s will.” Well, if you want to pray according to God’s will, how many of you would say it would help to know the will of God, so that you could pray according to God’s will. And it’s not rocket science. How many of you know when you read the word of God, you’re reading God’s will. When you pray the word of God, you’re praying God’s will, unless you misapply the word of God. You know, and that happens too, you’ll be like, “Well, I pray the word of God.” You read the passage, they prayed, and you’re like, “Well, that ain’t about you, that was a promise to his own Son, Jesus Christ. Are you Jesus Christ?” Well, no, I’m not. Okay, well, that’s not for you, that was for him. But there’s a lot of good ones for you, let’s look at some of the ones for you. It’s okay. So, we start saying, “I want to pray the word of God, I want to know the word of God, I want to pray in line with, the spirit can reveal the will of God.”

And Jesus even told us that he would dispense the Holy Spirit, who would teach us all things, whatsoever he taught us. And so we want to have the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, living in your life. You need to pray and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. “Holy Spirit, I need you to fill me.” How many of you know you can be filled today and tomorrow you need to get filled up again? Yeah, how many of you know you’re all leaky, and no matter how much God fills you up with, by the day you might have leaked some of that out, right, with your attitude and with life and with stress and all this sort of stuff. So the Bible encourages to be being filled with the Holy Spirit. When it talks about be filled with the Holy Spirit, it’s a continuation, it’s be being filled, it’s a be in a continual state of being filled more with God. So like how many say whenever we were worshiping today, I was being filled with more of God’s spirit. Amen, man, that was good, I loved, I was just out here, I was, I’m tired this week, we had a baby. I watched a pug all night last night. Those are noisy, snoring dogs, they do, and they bounce, they bump around in the kennel. In fact, one point at night, I’m wiping tears out of my eyes because I’m so tired, but he bumped up in the kennel several times and it hit the wall, it was too close to the wall, and I’d pop out of bed and grab my gun, “Don’t don’t come into my house, I’m just telling you,” and I was walking around the house with my 9 millimeter. And Sherry’s like, “It’s a dog, go to bed.” I’m like, “Well, I woke her up too, like that dog gone pug.” Can’t wait till my kids get home. I’m hoping today, I think I have to probably keep the pug another night, but he’s sleeping somewhere else besides our room, in a kennel. Anyway, I don’t even know what I’m saying, but I’m so tired.

But what am I talking about? God hears our prayers, and it’s unrelated, I’m just talking. So I want to give you, just go to the next verse, then I’ll know what I’m talking about. Hebrews 4:16, it says this, “Let us then come with” what’s the word, “confidence draw near to the throne of” what, “grace that we may receive.” There’s two words that are very important, we may receive what, two things, “mercy and grace.” And why would God give us mercy and grace? Why does he want to do that? “To help in time of need.”

Now, here’s the big challenge. This is the big jump into the pool, God’s in the pool, go for it, jump in. The big challenge is this. Okay, so, God is saying, “Come with confidence.” But a lot of you don’t bring your requests and your needs and all this stuff to God in prayer, and you’ll say, “Well, I don’t know the will of God.” Well, yeah, I don’t know exactly where to jump in either, but I know God’s in the water, so I’m going to jump, you know, I’m going to be like, and I know he’s good, and he’ll grab me. So, but I don’t feel like I can jump because I’ve been such a rotten kid of God’s in the last couple weeks. I’ve been bad, I’ve done stuff bad, I’ve had bad thoughts, I got into it with my family and I got into it at work, I said some things I shouldn’t have said. And so now, because I did that, I think if I jump in the pool, God’s probably just going to let me drown.

How many of you know that any good parent, even if you mess up? Any of you ever drove your parents’ car and had a little fender bender, scrape, scratch, bump, if your parents are not here, you confess it today, go, you can confess it, okay? You did? I did that too. I took the station wagon through the bank drive-thru. They had these brick columns on each side. I was 16, I was taking a girl out on a date. She won there, I had to go get cash. I went through and I just scraped that whole car. And can I tell you how embarrassing it is when you scrape the whole car down? But you don’t know how to fix it, other than keep going or back up, and you’re like, “What do you do now?” And they’re looking out the window and calling other people over. So now you have a crowd watching you through the window as you’re halfway on there and you can’t get to them.

And so I backed it up and got out, and I backed halfway across a lot, fortunately there were not a lot of other cars, but there were a few, and I straightened it up and I got back in and I did okay. And that’s so fun to explain when you get home what you did to the car, you know, that was a beautiful moment in my life. But you know what? My mom still let me eat. Here she is, I’m sorry I confessed that, mom. But you knew that, the car told the story, there was no getting out of there. She still let me have a place to sleep, she didn’t kick me out of the house, she still came to my wrestling matches, she was still part of my life, she still loved me even though I made a bad mistake.

Come with confidence. You have a father who sits on a throne of what? Grace. And you think he sits on a throne of judgment. But that’s not true for his children. He sits on a throne to graciously judge you with mercy. You don’t get what you deserve, that’s bad, and give you grace, you do get blessings you don’t deserve. How many of you are so glad that you serve a God that doesn’t give you the bad things you do, the judgment you do deserve. That’s merciful, right? And instead, he flips it over and says, “How about instead I just give you really good things that you don’t deserve just because I love you.” Well, why would you do that? Well, to help you. Well, why would you do that? Because you need help. Don’t you need help? Well, yeah, God, I need help. But why would you do it? Because you don’t know me yet. I sit on a throne of grace. And I love to give mercy to my kids, and I love to give grace to them. Even when I mess up, especially when you mess up, that’s when love means the most, right? When you’ve messed up, love means the most in those moments.

And so, I want to encourage this church. Start praying a whole lot more. I think John was probably thinking, “Guys, I’m praying like all the time to God, and God’s answering all these prayers that I’m praying, and I’m concerned that you guys don’t have enough confidence to be praying about everything.” Just start praying about everything, and just watch where it all lands. You might discover God has a whole stockpile of yeses in heaven for you, and you’re not accessing his storage room of blessing because you’re too afraid to go and knock on the door and say, “Do you have a blessing for me on this? I need some blessing on this, I need some help.” “Well, as a matter of fact, I do. I just was waiting for you to show up here and ask for it, so you would understand the blessing came from me and not from your own hand.” Amen. Come on, come on, I believe that’s good stuff. I hope that’ll encourage you.

God Works Through Our Prayers for Others

And then the third one, I want to give you this. God works through our prayers for who? For others, for other people in our life. How many of you have some people in your life that need some prayer right now? Maybe there’s spiritual issues in their life where they’re separated, they’re distant, they’re deceived. Maybe there’s relational issues, or maybe there’s just physical issues that are going on. This passage is dealing more with the spiritual issues in a person’s life that’s kind of messed up.

In fact, this one deals with a question mark, it has a big question mark in there. It’s like, are they going to heaven or are they going to hell? It doesn’t actually answer the question for us, it just leaves us sort of hanging, and then it calls him a brother and asks sort of like, are they experiencing life or death in this? And so it’s an interesting theological question, but the end of it, the point of it is not really theological. It’s just pray for people that need help.

And this is what John says in 1 John 5:16. “If anyone sees a brother committing a sin not leading to death.” Now, I’ve had some people say, does that mean, in fact, I’m going to pick on Sean for a minute, we were talking about this Thursday, we’re talking about does death mean like physical death, like when God struck Ananias and Sapphira down in the book of Acts for lying to the Holy Spirit? And my assumption was it was not speaking about that, because it goes on, I’ll explain why it’s probably not speaking about that, but I need to read more to even make the point. So, could it be that? It could be, but it’s probably not that.

“He shall ask, and God will give him,” what’s this, him, that brother, “life.” Now, how’s that work? Well, you’re praying for God to help them to come to repentance. You can’t pray and God gives them spiritual life without them coming to a place of personal faith and repentance in Christ. But how many of you know your prayers can be very powerful and effective towards sickening, I say it this way, we’re sickening the Holy Spirit on them. We’re saying, “Holy Spirit, your goal in your role,” Jesus said, is to convict the world of sin that people have committed, of the righteous call of God, of sin, righteousness, and judgment. That, hey, if you’re sinning or you’re not living the righteous life that God requires, judgment is there. And it says Jesus said the Holy Spirit will be sent to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

So, when you start praying for someone that’s in sin and they’re experiencing spiritual death, separation, maybe that means eternal spiritual separation, like they could go to hell for it, maybe it just means their present state is pretty dead spiritually. It doesn’t define it, that’s why I’m saying at least some question marks open right here. So, I won’t fill in the blanks that aren’t filled in in the passage, but I do look at it and say, if someone is experiencing real spiritual separation from God and some death in their life spiritually, then you can pray that God would bring life back. But how’s that going to happen? Probably the Holy Spirit’s going to come and convict them of the sin that’s bringing some separation spiritually in their life. Convict them of the sin, the righteousness God wants them to live out, and the judgment that’s going to happen if they don’t get it right. And so all of a sudden they’re squirming at church and they’re squirming when you talk to them and they can’t talk about God and everything’s like, and they’re uptight and worked up. You know when someone gets really worked up and uptight, you’re like, “I’m praying for them, it’s getting worse.” How many of you know that that getting worse probably means it’s getting better. It means the Holy Spirit just won’t leave them alone and they’re tortured. How many of you would rather the Holy Spirit torture you into heaven than Satan torture you in hell? Yeah. So the Holy Spirit’s there kind of getting after them, and they’re feeling really uncomfortable about now, about what’s going on.

“We’ll give them life,” those who commit sins that do not lead to death, that they haven’t completely isolated, cut themselves off, maybe become apostate to faith in God. So anyway, let’s go ahead and go to the next portion of the verse. It says “there is a sin that leads to death,” like maybe someone, you know, the sin of not receiving Christ or the sin of open apostasy, rejecting the faith, or whatever it is. There’s a sin that leads to death. “I do not say that one should pray for that.” So he’s like, I guess there’s a point where someone’s just gone.

How many have ever, I’m just going to confess something, I’ve never actually personally in my heart of hearts known that a soul was too far gone to pray for. Have you ever actually 100% known? Some of you may say you have, I’ve never actually known that. So, you know what I’ve continued to do for everyone? Pray for them, right? Because I think God knows that, I’m not sure that I know. So, I’m just going to assume that there’s still a chance for everyone, right? I’m going to keep praying.

“All wrongdoing is sin.” In other words, everyone’s sin, we all fall short of the glory of God. “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.” So, what about that? You pray, right? He’s like, “So, some folks, they’ve got a really good chance.” So, we’re going to be praying that God will do a work in their life, so that they would receive life. Now, we’re talking about praying according to the will of God, I think it’s pretty much praying according to the will of God. Would you pray that someone experiences spiritual life and not spiritual death? How you say, “It is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Right, that’s the word of God, we know that that is true. Since we know that that is true, then we’re praying according to the will of God. We know that he hears us, and if he hears us, we know that we have the petition that we ask of him.

And so, we’re coming to him, praying for miracles in people’s lives. But how do we come? How do we do this? How does this happen? In Galatians 6:1-2, it tells us how. It says, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression,” caught up is what it means, not like, “Oh, I caught you,” it means they’re captured by the sin that they’re in. If anyone is caught, captured in sin, their life is habitually sinful in this area of their life. “If anyone is caught up in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him.” Now, we know prayer is part of the restoration process, we just read about that, you pray for them, that’s where we start.

But then you do it “in a spirit of gentleness.” So not prideful, not like I’m better than you. How many of you know, without the grace of God, there’s that phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I.” In other words, I could be in the same spot without God’s grace helping me. You’re not good because you’re good, you’re good because you serve a good God who’s cleansing and working and purifying and calling you out of the world. It’s a work of the spirit in you, it’s not the work of you in you, it’s a work of God in you that makes you what you are, right? Amen.

All of us are where we are by the grace of God, so we’re not going to be prideful about our position, that way we can come to him with the right spirit, a spirit of gentleness. Then he says, “But when you do it, you got to be really careful about your own soul.” You can’t lose your soul in the saving of another, right? He says, “Watch, keep watch on yourself, lest you be tempted.” “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

I’ve given this example probably a few times over the years, but it’s one that I see happen. I see guys and I see ladies in the church typically when they have a friend who’s fallen away from church, from God. They’re struggling. And I’ll say the place I have seen it most often is in a divorce situation where a lady has left her husband and she’s run out, maybe he’s a jerk and blah blah blah, I don’t know the reasons for it, just, you know, it’s a situation where there’s a lot of bitterness, and there’s so much bitterness that she is talking down men altogether. Have any of you ever done that? Oh no. Have any of you ever known anyone who did that? How about that, I’ll let you off the hook, you’re like, “Well, yeah, technically not me, I’ve never done that, but I’ve known someone who’s that bad.” You know, but you just get to a point where you’re burnt with the opposite sex, with your ex. And then you start piling that on your girlfriend that wants to hang out with you because she feels bad.

And the girlfriend is sitting here at church, it’s one of you ladies here, and you want to be kind and you want to reach out and you want to help them. But after a couple times going out with them, you realize you’re getting dragged down by negativity, because she’s now ragging on your husband. “You put up with that? I would never put up with that. I can’t believe he would do that.” And you’re like, “I thought my marriage was fine till I went out to have dinner with you. I thought I was doing okay, and now I’m going home and I’m mad at him and I don’t even know why I’m mad, and I know what you’re saying, it’s not right, but I’m still mad.”

He said, “But keep watch over yourself, lest you also be tempted.” How many of you know when it’s time to step back and to say, “I don’t think I’m emotionally equipped to get down in the sewer with this person right now and come out clean.” And so, I’m going to be praying, and I love them, and if they want to show up to a church, I’ll invite them and say, “We’ll go out and grab lunch with my family, with my husband, with some other girls who can talk you up,” but I can’t jump in that raging river without getting swept away, and I know it. So, I’m going to throw you a stick, I’m going to throw you a rope, I’m going to reach a hand out, but I’m going to stay on shore while I do it, right? He says, “So, you start praying for them, and then you safely, gently reach out.” Safe, everyone say safely and gently. Safely for your own soul, gently towards theirs, that’s the proper approach. “Bear one another’s burdens,” and this is actually “fulfilling the law of Christ.”

And you’re like, “Wait, but I got to bear their burdens and fulfill the law of Christ.” But you can’t skip “keep watch over yourself,” can you? Doesn’t it say to do both? Okay, so, you’re going to do the very best you can, but you’re not going to lose yourself in the process. You’re not going to lose your marriage in the process. You’re not going to lose your walk with Christ in the process. Otherwise, you’re going to be no help at all to them. So, we’re trying to handle this in a really healthy way.

Christ Protects Those Who Belong to Him

And then this fourth and final thought. Number four is this. Christ protects those who belong to him. This is a really beautiful promise. Everyone read this promise with me. Christ protects those who belong to him.

Let’s read verse 18. 1 John 5:18. This is what it tells us. “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning.” Now, that’s a habitual lifestyle of sinning, it doesn’t mean you never sin, because remember, 1 John 1:8 says, “Anyone who says he has not sinned is calling God a liar and the truth is not in him.” Therefore, what do you do? You confess your sins to God who is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you of all unrighteousness. So, John has already admitted, don’t say you’ve never sinned or you’re being a liar, you got to bring it to God and confess it. So, it’s talking about something other than that.

“Keep on sinning,” it means a lifestyle, a chosen lifestyle of obstinate sin. “I’m just going to keep on doing that.” We addressed this on another week, so most of you know what I’m talking about if you were here that week. So, “we know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on” that lifestyle of sin. “But he who has been born of God,” that is Jesus Christ, Christ is the one who has been born of God in this passage, “he who has been born of God protects him.” Protects him, protects that one that is now born of God, a child of God, protects him. And “the evil one does not touch him.”

Now, this is a hard saying. “The evil one does not touch him” is both true and false, depending on how you’re defining it. Okay, here’s how it’s true. I have an eternal spirit created in the image of God, saved by Jesus Christ by his death on the cross for my sins. My belief in him is what God has said, because of your belief in me, I’m going to confer, I’m going to pass on to you atonement, a perfect sacrifice, paying for every sin that you’ve ever committed. Your soul, your spirit is saved, and you’re a follower of Christ, you’re adopted into the family of God. I’ve caused my Holy Spirit to dwell within you, whereby you cry, “Abba, Father.” All these good things. That spirit of mine is safe from Satan grabbing me and ripping me away from God. He just can’t touch that. He can’t touch that spirit.

But how many of you know that Satan can definitely touch you with temptation? How many of you know that he even tempted Jesus to sin? Right? Jesus didn’t, but he tempted him, he tried to get a hold of him. And Satan will try to get a hold of your life and he’ll try to rip you away from God. And that’s the thing Jesus says, you know what, I’m going to protect you from that. I’m not going to let Satan rip your spirit away from God. You may, if you make a choice towards apostasy, it’s your will, it’s your choice, you’re making choices about your life. But no, Satan, you can’t say Satan stole that person from God. That’s really not what Satan has power to do.

In fact, in Luke 22:31-32, this is what it tells us. Jesus is talking right before his crucifixion to Peter, who’s called Simon, Simon Peter is the way we know him throughout scripture. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to have you.” What did he do? He demanded, he’s like, “He’s mine, that one’s mine, I’m taking him. I’m gonna grab that spirit and I’m gonna drag that soul to hell.” That’s what he’s doing. “Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.” Wheat would have the chaff on it, you throw it in the air and the chaff would blow away, it’s just going to blow away. “He’s so whimsical about his faith that he’ll just quit on you as soon as I get a hold of his life. I know he will. He’ll be blown away, he will not follow you, I’m sure of it. Sift you like wheat.”

But Jesus said these words, “But I have prayed for you.” Did you know that the word of God tells us that Jesus ever lives to make intercession to God the Father for you and me, right? “Then that we do not have a high priest who’s not been touched by sin, but he’s faced temptation in every way just as we have, yet without sin.” So he gets it, he understands it, he’s lived it. And he says to Peter, “But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” Someone give an amen. Jesus is praying for you that your faith may not fail.

And some of you immediately say, “It didn’t work. It didn’t work, because I have failed. And I have failed. And I have failed. And I don’t even deserve to sit in church today. I don’t even deserve to hear about his throne of grace and his mercy to help me in my time of need because I have failed and I have failed and I failed.” And Jesus says, “Peter, I prayed for you that you might not fail.” And then what did Peter do? He denied him three times that same night. “I prayed for you that you might not fail.” And then Peter denied him three times that same night.

And then Jesus says, “And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” You see, we see the temporary failure as our permanent state. Jesus looks at it and says, “You know what your permanent state is? Child of God, loved by me, saved for eternity. And it may be a moment of failure, but I prayed for you, and you will turn again. And you will come home, and you’ll be stronger than you ever were. And you’ll be a blessing and a minister, and you’ll help those that need the help of God in their life.”

Amen. Church, that’s what God wants to do in this place, in your lives, through your prayers for people that you know and people that you love and people that are struggling and far away, that you pray, that you reach out with meekness, with gentleness, that God restores them, that God restores you, that God does the work, and God gets the glory. It’s never been about me or you, it’s always been about him.

And so I want to pray all across this room for miracles to begin to happen. For the promises of God to become yes and amen in your life today, in your home today, through your prayers today. The miracles you’ve been waiting on that have felt like a no, we’ll discover as we pray again, they were just a little bit later. Wait a little bit, be patient, wait, keep praying, in my timing, I hear you, and you’ll have the position that you’ve been praying for and asking. Trust me, jump in the water, I’m here, I’ll catch you, you’re going to be okay, you’re going to get through this.

Would you stand with me as we pray? As we pray, I’m going to invite people all across this room to begin to make their way in a moment and to just kneel around the altars and to begin to turn someone over to God that you have been praying for, for their salvation, for their repentance. You’ve been praying for one of your sons and one of your daughters and one of your parents, one of your co-workers, one of your friends. I want us as a church to pray, to intercede. Some of you have been needing a miracle, and you’re ready to ask God again. We have people that’ll be up here to pray for God to do a miracle in your life. Would you come and once again trust God? And where your faith is lacking, would you let someone else’s faith fill in the gap and let God do a miracle in your life? Will you trust him again to step in where you’ve come to the world? Will you trust God to step in and protect you and cover you from all of those things once again? Will you trust him again as we pray?

As we begin to do that, I’m going to find a place up front and just pray. There are people I need to pray for in my life, in our church, and I’m going to be down here praying. I want you to join me, and I want us to see what God will do, the miracles that God still has, the answers to prayer that we’ve been waiting on that are about to be revealed in our lives as we pray once again, expecting in faith that God is a God still of grace and mercy to help us in our time of need. Amen. Amen.