Since 1947 there has appeared an image on the cover of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; it is called the “Doomsday Clock,” reflecting how close these scientists believe we are to nuclear apocalypse. They reflect how close they believe we are to this point of nuclear destruction by the proximity of the minute hand on the clock in relation to midnight. When it began in 1947 we were seven minutes from midnight, got as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the united States and the Soviet Union both tested hydrogen bombs, and have been as far as seventeen minutes to midnight in 1991 when the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, announcing further unilateral cuts in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Currently, the clock stands at nine minutes to midnight, shifting significantly as Indian and Pakistan each tested nuclear weapons in 1998. In these scientists minds, we are quite close to nuclear destruction.

In a world where we can observe such unsettling things, how do we live with assurance, banking on certainties, living in confidence, as we go about our tasks? Or an even more pressing question is, “Knowing that Jesus Christ will one day return to judge the living and the dead and that those who do not know him will be thrown into the lake of fire, how do we walk with assurance, hold to certainties, and live in confidence as we go about our tasks?

This is the issue that John has tried to answer through this letter. He wants his readers to walk in assurance before the Lord, not fearful of the end of their lives or of appearing before the Lord. This letter is meant to be very comforting to those believers who might be struggling with doubt and lack of assurance. And in this final section, John reminds us of a few more blessings and words of encouragement. In short, in this section he gives three words of encouragement, citing our privileges as Christians, and ends with an exhortation. Therefore, we will end our time studying through this book with these same encouraging notes and this exhortation.

First, John reminds us that we can be assured that we have eternal life (5:13)

He writes in verse 13 his purpose for the entire letter. He writes, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”

As I have mentioned in the past, assurance was a difficult topic for me growing up. I often doubted my own salvation based on questioning of if I could remember if I had prayed the “sinner’s prayer” (which is absent from the Scripture, mind you) correctly. And the other mistake I made was giving people instant assurance. I remember going along the riverfront in Paducah with a couple of friends witnessing to individuals when we spoke with an old man and shared the gospel with him.

Finally, we asked him if he wanted to pray to receive Christ. He said, “Yes.” And he prayed after one of my friends. Then, after he finished praying, we said, “Sir, are you going to heaven when you die?” He said, “I guess.” That was almost offensive to me. I couldn’t believe he said, “I guess.” So we took him back to the text in Romans 10:9 which says, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Then we asked him again, “Are you going to go to heaven when you die because you are saved?” Again, he replied, “I guess.” So we asked him if he did what the text said. He said, “Yes.” And we pressed him again to make sure he really believed the text.

The thing that is good about those kinds of things is that you’re trying to teach people that the ultimate basis for our assurance is believing that the Bible and all that is says is true. So, my great assurance is that I didn’t create this idea that one believes on Christ and is saved, but the Bible tells us this. It is true. And the truthfulness of God and the work of his Son is our ultimate basis of assurance.

However, John has pointed out, that this is not the only basis for assurance. It is the ultimate basis, even as Chad pointed out last week that God has testified of his Son and whoever has the Son has life. So my ultimate assurance is that Jesus died for me. However, many can claim this and be deceived. This is what those who had gone out of the church were doing. No doubt they thought they were saved and were doing right. But they had deceived themselves.

So is that all we’re left with, saying, “I think I believe, but I could be deceiving myself?” No. John says there are other grounds of assurance as well. In fact, he has listed them throughout the book. He shows that righteous living, love for fellow believers, having eyes opened by the Spirit to accept the Word, and persevering in such things are all signs of assurance. Therefore, John clearly wants his readers and us to be able to know that we have eternal life. He wants us to look at our confession and then see evidences in our lives and be assured that we indeed belong to Christ. For not only can we do this, but this is the desire of God for us. It’s why the Spirit inspired John to write this entire book. God wants us to have assurance before him. We can know that we have eternal life. And I pray that as we have studied through this book you have come to know that assurance before the Lord.

Yet, John gives us more words of encouragement. For not only can we know that we belong to God but …

We can be assured that he hears and answers our prayers as we pray according to his will (14-17)

John writes in 14-15, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 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.”

One benefit of knowing that we belong to God is having confidence in prayer. But, if we are honest, I would imagine that we would all testify that prayer is sometimes mysterious to us as well. After all, what is it and how does it work? I mean, I think our questions concerning prayer at times take all the blessings out of this verse.

That is, we will accept that God hears us, and we know that if we pray according to his will that he will answer us in the requests that we have asked of him. But how to know that we are praying according to his will is often thought of as a tough issue.

At the end of the day we range from praying simply, “God, your will be done” and stopping (because we think that’s the only safe and sure thing to pray) to giving up on the idea of knowing God’s will altogether and simply praying for whatever seems good to us. But most of us probably fall somewhere in between. Our prayers do not simply consist of “Father, let your will be done. Amen.” But nor do we just pray for whatever. Most likely we pray and voice in our requests, “Let all of this be done only if it is according to your will and will bring you glory” because we don’t really know if we’ve prayed in line with God’s will, but nor do we want to ignore this thought of praying God’s will. But what is really the right picture?

Well, I don’t think it is wrong simply to share with the Lord your requests in an attitude that is submissive to the Lord’s will. Paul prayed that God would remove the thorn in the flesh, and obviously the Lord’s will was different. And Jesus voiced his request in the garden while submitting to the Father’s will that he go to the cross. Therefore, giving our requests in an attitude that is submissive to God’s will is definitely right.

But I think John is driving at something else here. I think he is showing that as believers (i.e. those who have assurance before God and know that he hears us when we pray) we have this privilege of being able to pray God’s will and then know that God will work through that.

And before we all start saying, “But how do we know God’s will?” with questions like, “Who am I supposed to marry?” and “What job am I supposed to take?” I think that John’s idea of God’s will is that which he has revealed in his Word.

Therefore, John is not necessarily addressing here issues as to what exact individual you’re supposed to marry or the requests that we’re allowed to make in prayer. What he’s addressing are those things we are invited to be a part of in praying, knowing that God has revealed them as his will.

For example, as one prays for the elders of this church, he or she could walk down the list in 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and pray that these men would continue in these ways and grow in them. And it is exciting to know that you’re praying God’s will and to watch these prayers being answered. I believe we would marvel at the work of God if we began to pray consistently for those things that God clearly reveals as his will in his Word. In fact, this week I have tried to pause before praying for people and situations so that I might search through the Word in my mind to see if there was anything I might clearly pray in accordance with God’s will. And far from being boring or monotonous, it has been a week in which I really felt that my prayers were meaningfully productive.

But why do I think this is what John has in mind, this specific praying along the lines of God’s revealed will? It is because his expansion, his example in verses 16-17 are along these lines. He writes, “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.”

Now this text is extremely difficult, so let me clear up a few matters. I think that “life” in these verses mean eternal life, for this is how John writes of eternal life. Therefore, by the same token, the death is probably eternal death and more than just physical death. Thus, when he speaks of someone sinning a sin that leads to death, he probably has in mind the secessionists, those who had rejected the gospel and gone out of the church. Those who were showing themselves to walk along the lines of Hebrews 6:4-6. John is not exhorting us to pray for them, for apparently their hearts have been hardened to the point that repentance is impossible.

Instead, John tells us that if we see a brother sinning (not in the manner of walking away from Christ, but sinning), we should pray for him, and God will give him life. That is, the first thing we should do when we see a brother sin is to pray for him. Yes, there may be cause to speak to him, but the first and primary thing we should do is to pray for him. Pray that he might see his error, repent, and begin to walk in the ways of God. And, if he is God’s child, God will answer that prayer and give him life, for such is God’s will in regard to his children. Therefore, I think John is encouraging us to pray in a very confident and exciting manner, namely, for one another according to God’s will as revealed in his holy Scripture.

Thus, in a world of doubt and anxiety, we can know that we have eternal life and know that as we pray according to God’s will he hears us and will answer our requests.

Also, we know the truth about the Christian life, the world, and ourselves (18-20)

John gives three verses in 18-20 that all begin with the words, “We know.” He writes, “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”

In a world where there is much confusion and doubt, John tells us that we have a divine perspective on reality. Even though John’s original readers were hearing much falsehood from these false converts who had gone out of the church, these believers now knew the truth. They knew that no matter what one’s claim, a believer is not characterized by a life of sin. They knew that they were protected from their fears of walking astray into Satan’s grasp, for God held them and protected them. And they knew that the reason they knew all of these things is because Jesus had given them understanding and that they had eternal life.

Brothers and sisters, we know the same things. Oftentimes the church buys into thinking on the world’s level, devising plans and schemes and ways of doing things that seem to be most profitable instead of obeying God’s Word. We need not do these things however. It is like counting on your fingers to add thirty-three plus forty-seven when you don’t need to and know how to add those numbers in your head.

Do not put yourselves into the world’s way of thinking, for we know that they are held by the power of the evil one. Do not fall prey to thinking along the same lines and envying what they do. Do not attempt to mimic the worlds ways. For we know things they do not, and we have eternal life.

This thought then leads to John’s exhortation. He writes, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (21).

This is an odd ending to the letter. Letters in the New Testament simply do not end this way. But what is John saying? Well, it probably is that John means more than simply that his hearers should keep themselves from worshiping statues in their houses. Probably John is thinking that anything other than worshiping the true God in a manner according to his Word is to practice idolatry. And because idolatry would have been a hated thought in that world, John wants to drive how horrible such a practice of not living before God as he has taught us in his Word, so he groups it with idolatry. Thus, I think this final exhortation in the end is this:

Keep yourself from anything in life other than following the true God in the way that he has commanded (21)

And in a sense, isn’t this a privilege as well? For we know that God’s ways are not only true and right, but they are blessed. The adulterer is not getting away with anything and living the high life. Rather, those who know marriage with one spouse till death know greater joy.

Therefore, John’s letter concludes with a reminder of our great privileges. We can know that we have eternal life. We can pray with confidence before God and see our prayers answered. We can know the truth about life and all things in a world that is under the power of the evil one and believes lies. And we can live in the way that God has commanded and know his blessing. Therefore, may we be thankful as we come to the table and leave here this morning with a determination to walk a life reflecting that we are aware of these great privileges. Amen.

CONFIDENCE, CERTAINTIES, AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH