Confidence in God’s Faithfulness

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Transcript:

Go ahead and turn with me to 1 John chapter 5. We’re going to continue this morning looking at the subject of confidence from the Bible and the things that the Bible says that we’re supposed to have confidence about. Now, in thinking about this morning’s message, I couldn’t help but think of a conversation that I have, sometimes it seems like every day of the week, and in reality it’s probably a few times a week, but it happens a lot.

My kids are in the bad habit of getting up way before anybody else. Even when people have to be out the door early and to work. My kids are still up earlier than anybody.

And they want breakfast when the sun’s not even up yet. And then they’re whining by 9 o’clock in the morning that they’re hungry. Well, yeah, you’re hungry.

You got up and had breakfast at 4. 30. Maybe if you’d sleep in until a reasonable.

. . I’m sorry, sometimes should not.

. . Five o’clock should only come once a day.

That’s my feeling on it. If they would get up at a reasonable hour and have breakfast, then they wouldn’t be so hungry. They would be complicated.

Then I’ll be saying, if you get up at a reasonable hour, you could have had breakfast. Things change between 3 and 13, don’t they? But I keep telling them, if you get up at a reasonable hour, you wouldn’t be screaming for lunch at 9 o’clock. And all my life, lunch has been about 11, 11.

30, somewhere in there. Now they do get to have a snack certain times of the day. I’ll let them have a snack at 10 o’clock.

And then they’re screaming for lunch still. Screaming for lunch. I’m hungry, I’m hungry.

You’re really not hungry. I mean, you might feel a little bit. You’re not starving.

You’re not as hungry as you pretend to be. But still whining, Daddy, I’m hungry. Daddy, when’s lunch?

Daddy, when’s lunch? I will be standing in the kitchen, fixing lunch. Any of you ever experienced this with small children?

Standing in the kitchen, fixing lunch. They can see me. I’ve got their little plates with the animated characters that they know are for them.

And I am fixing their lunch, putting it on the plate. And Benjamin is in there. Daddy, I’m hungry.

When do I get to eat lunch? Do you see me fixing it? And then I will tell you, here’s where the conversation comes in that we have all the time.

I will look at him and I will say, has daddy ever forgotten to feed you? Now Benjamin’s a little bit of a smart mouth and sometimes will say yes. I have never forgotten to feed him.

And when I press him on it, he’ll admit, no, you’ve never forgotten to feed me. But that question I ask him, have I ever forgotten to feed you? The answer to that is no, I have never forgotten to feed him.

First of all, I know when I need to eat. So that reminds me, they need to eat. And even if I were to forget, and I don’t miss meals, but even if I were to forget, hey, it’s time to be hungry, they’re going to remind me.

And as a good parent would, I feed my children. They eat. My kids eat six times a day, okay?

When I say they’re whining that they’re hungry, I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m starving them. My children eat at least, at minimum, six times a day. Have I ever forgotten to feed you?

The answer is no. I have never once forgotten to feed my children. And if he would stop and think about that, but here’s my problem, trying to reason and logic with a four-year-old doesn’t always work out. He’s getting to the beginnings of the age where he starts to understand a reasoned argument, doesn’t mean he’s going to accept it.

But if he would just stop and remember, wait, my daddy has never forgotten to feed me. I know I’m hungry now, I know I want to eat now, but I know my daddy has never forgotten to feed me when the time was right. If he would just stop to think about that, that would cut out on a whole lot of the whining.

but folks the same thing is true for us how much of I’m just going to turn this on myself for a minute instead of turn I’m letting you off the hook with me now you may ask the same question of yourself but how much of my prayer time is spent asking for god to do something for me god when are you going to take care of this god I really want you to take care of this god would you take care of this situation or this need or this want that I have and there’s nothing wrong hear me on this There’s nothing wrong with going to God and sharing with Him the desires of your heart. Nothing wrong with it at all. God already knows what’s on our hearts, so we might as well just be honest with Him about it.

There’s not a problem at all. As a matter of fact, the Bible encourages that we’re to take our petitions to God. But there’s a difference between taking our petitions to God and sort of praying in this desperation that, God, I’m going to keep asking you, but I really don’t think you’re going to do anything.

Have any of you ever prayed in that capacity and thought, I’m going to keep asking for this. I’m going to keep whining for this, maybe would be a better way to say it. But I really don’t feel like you’re listening, God.

Would you just hear me? Hello? I need you to take care of this.

Sometimes we do that without even praying. We just get anxious. Boy, I wish God would take care of this.

I wish something would happen. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish. And we forget, has our Father ever forgotten to feed us?

has our father ever forgotten to take care of us the answer to that just like with me and my kids is no I’ve never forgotten to feed my kids I’ve never forgotten to take care of my kids and I tell you what god is a way better father than I am he’s never forgotten to take care of us he’s never neglected to take care of us and sometimes we lose sight of that and so we start to worry. We start to fret about it. Fretting is a good word to describe the whole, I’m ready to eat.

When’s lunch? When’s lunch? When can I eat?

You’re fretting because you’re worried it’s not going to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, God has never neglected to take care of us. At this point, you may throw up an objection and say, well, what about this situation in my life?

You don’t know about. . .

Okay, God always takes care of us. It just doesn’t always take the form that we expect it to. The answer to our prayer is not always yes.

And if we’re expecting that when we pray, the answer is automatically going to be yes, then we’ve misunderstood something from the Bible and we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. Sometimes the right answer that God gives us is no. You know that? Sometimes the right answer that God gives us is no. Sometimes the right answer that God gives us is wait.

Sometimes the right answer that God gives us is, I’ll say yes to part of that, but on the other part of it, I’ve got something better for you over here. God knows what’s best for us the way a parent knows what’s best for a small child. A child doesn’t always see that.

Now, I’m mean because I won’t let you stay up until midnight and eat candy. I know that’s not best for you. I would love to make all your dreams come true, but I also know it’s not best for you.

And God is the same way with us. Ladies and gentlemen, God has a track record of faithfulness in taking care of His children. I can look back over my life as relatively short as it has been and see all the good and the bad that there’s been in it.

And even though there are things that I don’t understand to this day and there are things that I didn’t understand at the time, in many of the things that I didn’t understand at the time, I can look back now and say I don’t completely understand why that happened, but I see now that God was working on something through that. And I can look at the good that’s happened to me and see where God has provided because some of the good things that have happened to me, I think there’s no way that could have happened apart from God working and doing what was best and being faithful to take care of me. And even some of the bad things that have happened, I look back and think, I can see how God was faithful to take care of me in the midst of that situation.

God is always faithful to take care of his children. We doubt that sometimes when we forget his faithfulness. We doubt sometimes that he’s taking care of us when we forget to look back at his track record of faithfulness.

Folks, this is nothing new. This is nothing new that sometimes we begin to doubt and wonder, is God really taking care of me? Can he really take care of me?

This is something that people were worried about in the earliest days of Christianity as well, because it’s addressed in the Bible. They were worried about it. in the earliest days of Christianity, is God really taking care of me?

And the answer from the Apostle John here is that this is something God’s faithfulness to take care of us, to protect us, to provide for us, again, not necessarily in the way that we expect it to happen, but in the way that he knows his best. The Apostle John says that God’s faithfulness to take care of us is something we should have confidence in. It’s not something that we as believers have to walk through life and say, well, I hope he’s taking care of me. I hope he’s going to work it out.

I hope he’s going to fix this. It’s something that John says we need to understand with certainty that he’s doing. We can know that God is taking care of us because of the promises that he gives all throughout Scripture.

One of those promises is recorded in the book of Hebrews where he says, Let your conversation be without covetousness and be content with such things as ye have. For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. Now that’s in Hebrews chapter 13.

Now that was not written by John, probably not written by John. But what he’s talking about there is the tendency that we have to worry about the things that we need and want and how we’re going to provide for them, how we’re going to take care of ourselves. And the writer of Hebrews says, don’t worry about those things.

Be content with what you have and realize that God is never going to leave you. He’s never going to forsake you. and that we can look at God and say that he’s our helper and that there’s nothing in this world that we ought to be afraid of.

Does it mean bad things won’t ever happen to us? Absolutely not. But when you look at it from an eternal perspective, there’s really nothing that the world can do to us.

I like the Apostle Paul’s position on this. When he was looking at all the threats that people had made against him and all the danger that he was in, his thought on it was, If they throw me in jail, I’ll just get to preach Jesus in jail. If they turn me loose, I’ll get to go preach Jesus to the people who are outside.

If they kill me, I get to go be with Jesus. When you start to adopt that perspective of life, what can anybody do to you? So I’m not saying that nothing bad can ever happen.

But when we look at it from the perspective of God is always with us and he’s always taking care of us, what really is there that can happen to us? I’m not there yet. Please don’t think I’m lecturing you and saying, you need to be as spiritual as I am.

I’m saying I’m not there yet either. But I realize that the Apostle Paul has it right, and I desperately want to get to that point. Or I can say it doesn’t matter what happens.

God’s going to take care of it. Yes, they may kill us. Yes, we may be persecuted.

Yes, all sorts of bad things may happen to us, but I know God’s still in control, so what’s there to worry about? Coming back to what John wrote in 1 John 5. He was writing to a group of people who evidently lacked confidence about a lot of things.

Because 1 John is written, he says over and over, I’ve written this, that you may know, that you may know, that you may be assured. He talks about confidence. Folks, this idea of confidence, again, I told you this every week, this idea of confidence, The definition I’ve come up with based on what the Bible teaches is that confidence is a courage that comes from the conviction that what we believe is actually true.

We know it’s not just something we believe. It’s actually true. It’s actually true.

I believe that if I drive north on I-35 as far as I can go, that it’ll get me close to the Canadian border. I believe that because somebody’s told me I’ve seen it on a map, but I’ve never actually driven it. I’ve never seen it for myself.

I don’t know for a fact, know from personal experience that it’s true. I know from personal experience that if you drive south on I-35, you’re going to get to Dallas. I know because I’ve been there and I’ve seen it.

That’s the difference between believing it’s true and knowing it’s true. And he says there are some things that we can know are true. There are some things that we can have confidence in.

One of these things is the faithfulness of God. He was writing to a group of people whose minds, and I think I’ll talk about this a little bit next week when I come in and talk about the hope that we have for the future, John addresses this as well. He was dealing with a group of people who had gotten their minds all twisted up by some teachers who came in denying some very foundational truths of Christianity.

They came in denying that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. You say, what’s the big deal? Jesus Christ came as a spirit.

He could still teach us everything he taught us as a spirit. Let me ask you this, if a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bone or blood, you see where I’m going with this, how could he bleed and die on the cross for our sins? And I tell you what, if Jesus Christ, this is not just me speaking, the apostle Paul bears this out as well.

If Jesus Christ did not come and die and rise again, then our faith is vain. Everything that we’re studying here, everything that we’re doing, everything that we’re trying to do is worthless. And he says, you are yet in your sins.

The end result of this teaching is that we’ve made a hideous mistake and we’re still in our sins because he didn’t come and die for them. And their idea was that then you’re saved through secret knowledge that you had to work to attain. And it sounded like this new and novel idea, but really we just get back to all of these works-based religions.

You’ve got to do something in order to be saved. And so he wrote to them and said, you need to be assured of some things. Because they were undermining the very basis of the Christian faith.

And one of the things, he not only goes through and discusses, you need to know that Jesus Christ has come. You need to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He was born in the flesh. You need to know that He died for our sins.

You need to know, you need to know, you need to know. You get down the list and we get to chapter 5, and he starts talking about you need to know something about your relationship and your interaction with God. So if you’ve not already turned there, this morning in 1 John chapter 5, we look at verse 14.

Let’s start at verse 13. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. He says, I have written all of this to you so that you will know, so that you’ll believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life and you may believe on his name.

And he says in verse 14, and this is the confidence that we have in him. Because of him and because of his coming, we have this confidence in him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Think about that.

They were getting twisted up in these ideas that came from these pagan philosophers, I think were influenced by the Greeks and such. Their gods weren’t really personal, weren’t really responsive, in a lot of ways weren’t really better than they were. You read the stories of the Greek gods, they’re just a bunch of children running around and pursuing their own agendas.

And he says here, instead, we have a God who loved us enough to sacrifice his son for us. And because of this, you can know you have eternal life. And he says, if you serve a God like that, you can have confidence that if you ask anything according to his will, he hears it.

Now that word doesn’t, that word here, read that and understand the word to be listen. He listens. He pays attention.

I believe that’s what it meant when they translated this, but our language has changed over time. I hear lots of things without listening. The women in my family get very irritated later on when I don’t know the details to things because they weren’t talking to me.

Well, we talked about it right in front of you. Nobody said anything to me, so I wasn’t listening. And they get mad.

Well, who does that? It was ingrained in me growing up. Don’t eavesdrop.

You’ve taught me for almost 30 years now. Don’t eavesdrop. And now you want me to eavesdrop on you.

I can hear they’re talking. There’s all sorts of chatter going on in the background. I’m going to pay for that word, chatter.

There’s all sorts of talk going on in the background. I can hear it. I hear there’s talk.

I have no idea what they’re saying because I’m not listening. It’s not addressed to me and it’s not about me, so I’m not listening. Folks, when we read that word hear, understand it to mean that God not only hears us, but that He is listening.

He’s not some far-off deity. He’s made out of stone and sitting in a temple somewhere in Greece. We have a personal God who sent His Son to die for us.

Because we deserved it? Because we were wonderful? No.

But because He loved us. And He offers us eternal life because we’re wonderful? Because we deserved it?

Again, no. Because He was kind enough to offer it. And He says, with a God like that, you can be confident. Remember, not just believe it, but you can know it, that if you serve a God like that, when you pray and you ask things according to His will, He hears you.

And so this morning, the first thing that you need to know about this confidence in God’s faithfulness is that God is faithful to hear us. God’s faithful to hear us. It’s an incredible thing that God is even willing to hear us when you think about it.

I know we expect our voice to be heard. We’re all important and we’re all special and we all matter. That’s what we’re trained to believe in the world today.

Folks, he’s the God of the universe. He’s the creator and he’s the king. Go back to Genesis 1 and with the words of his mouth, he said, let there be and there was.

And go forward to Revelation. Standing before all the armies of darkness, Jesus slays them all with the words of his mouth. An incredible amount of power.

The word incredible doesn’t even begin to describe his power. But suffice it to say that it is a power that could snuff us out and not give it a second thought. He doesn’t have to listen to us.

He doesn’t owe me a single thing except, apart from Christ, death and hell and separation. He doesn’t owe me anything. He doesn’t owe you anything.

He’s under no obligation to hear our desperate cries, but he does. That tells you something about the character of the God we serve. He’s faithful to hear us.

He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to pay attention to the little people, but he does. And John said, we can have this confidence that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

He listens. Now that word according to his will, or that phrase according to his will, we ask according to his will. We don’t get to just ask anything we want and expect him to answer.

I we can ask for anything we want, but there’s no promise that He’s going to answer everything we ask for. God, I would like to have a new truck. I have no indication that that’s His will.

So I can pray it all I want, I have no promise there that He’s going to provide that. I ask Him for things I know to be His will, though, and He’s going to answer those things. If I ask things that are consistent with His will, He’s going to provide those things.

Now, what is His will? There are some things that are spelled out for us in the scripture that are his will. He’s not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

You ask God to speak to somebody’s heart with the Holy Spirit to convict them about salvation, he’s going to do that. Now, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to make that decision to trust Christ, but God’s going to work on them. God’s going to make a way for the gospel to be presented to them.

The Bible says this is the will of God, even your sanctification. God wants us to grow to be more like Jesus Christ. You ask God, help me to be more like Jesus Christ. He’s going to help you be more like Jesus Christ. there are certain things that may be God’s will specific to you and we may come back I may come back in November and talk to you about finding God’s will that’s it that’s a great series of lessons I can’t tell you exactly what God’s will is for your life in particular but as you pray and you study his word I believe you’re going to know what you’re supposed to do God what do I do about this job what do I do about this situation in my family what do I say to this person I believe he’s going to lead you in that direction. You pray for things that he’s already told you he wants.

He’s going to listen, not because it’s my way or the highway, but because he wants to help us do his will and do the right thing. We ask anything according to his will. He hears us.

God, help me to be a better father. God, help me to be a better pastor. He hears us.

He listens. So you may be, you may feel like the child standing there in the kitchen, daddy, daddy, daddy, when are we going to eat? When are we going to eat?

Thinking he’s not, I don’t see food right in front of me. I don’t have it in my hands. You’re not doing anything.

Ignoring the fact that he’s standing over a hot stove stirring and he’s faithful and he’s preparing to give you what you need. God is faithful to hear us when we pray. That’s not just something that we can believe.

He says you need to know it. If you’ve got a God, if you’ve got a God who was faithful enough to love you and send his son and to offer you eternal life. You’ve got to know you’ve got a God who’s faithful to hear you when you call out to him.

Second of all this morning, let’s look at verse 15. And if we know that he hears us, and we do from verse 14, we know that he hears us whatsoever we ask, we know we have the petition that we desired of him. Okay, he’s not just faithful to hear us.

He’s also faithful to answer. He’s also faithful to answer. I mean, it’s incredible enough that God would take the time to listen to our requests.

It’s a completely different thing that God is willing to answer them. You know, I think of other powerful people, people in government, for example. Yeah, they’re willing to hear what we have to say, not necessarily willing to act on it.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sent a letter to my congressman or to my senator, either here or in Arkansas, And very few times do I get an answer back other than a form letter. And even fewer times do they do the right thing on the bill that I’m telling them. As my representative, you need to vote this way or that way.

Very few times do they do that either. Not much responsiveness out of people of power. What is it now?

I’ve not actually gone and looked at the site, but at the White House website, I think you can, or some website put up by the White House, you can go and start petitions. They’ll accept your petitions. Of course, you have to have something like 10,000 signatures to get an answer.

Hear me on this. You don’t have to have 10,000 signatures to get an answer from the king of the universe. Do you realize that?

Makes you sort of look at members of Congress and the president and go, who do you think you are? No, I realize they are finite where God is infinite and they couldn’t possibly answer things the way that he does. Folks, he’s the king of the universe.

He doesn’t have to hear us and listen in the first place, but he does. And it’s even more incredible that he takes the time to answer our petitions. It’s one thing for God to say, yeah, tell me what you want.

It’s an entirely different thing to say, and I’m going to answer. We know that if he hear us whatsoever we ask, we know we have the petitions that we desire of him. Again, this is all based on praying according to God’s will.

If I pray, God, help me knock over a bank and not get caught, would you say that’s God’s will, not God’s will, not sure? I’m going to go with not God’s will. I don’t think he’s going to grant that petition.

Well, I’m sorry. He will answer that prayer, but the answer to that prayer will be a resounding, uh-uh. Boy, what are you thinking?

Sometimes God answers prayers with, boy, what are you thinking? Maybe not to you. Maybe that’s just me.

God help me knock over this bank and not get caught. That is not in accordance with his will. You are not going to get that petition.

But looking back at verse 14, according to his will. Verse 15, when we pray that way, we know that we have the petitions that we ask. We know that he will grant those things.

He will still answer your prayer. He may still tell you no, or he may tell you wait. But if you pray in accordance with his will, he’s going to give what you’ve asked for.

Say, well, what’s the point of that? You’re just asking God to give you what he wants to give you anyway. Folks, it took me a long time to figure out that prayer is not about changing God’s mind.

Prayer is about changing my heart. Not a lot of amens on that one. Prayer is not about getting God’s heart lined up with yours.

It’s about getting your heart lined up with God. So if we’re not clear what his will is, maybe we need to pray and ask it. Because he wants to show it to us.

There you go. He wants us to know his will. He’ll tell us if we pray for it because we’re asking in accordance with his will.

But God, I don’t want to do that. You know what? Pray that he makes you willing.

Obedience is in God’s will. He’ll grant that one too. I have prayed many times this prayer, and people laugh about it, because I don’t think they understand until they’ve been there.

You know what God wants you to do, and I’ve prayed this prayer. God, I am not willing. Sounds awful for the pastor to say, doesn’t it?

I’m willing, or I’m not willing, but I’m willing to be made willing. And you understand that distinction. I hope.

God, would you make me willing to do what you want me to do? He’s faithful to answer us. So when we pray for our needs to be met, he will do that.

The Bible gives us a promise that he will supply all of our needs through his riches and glory in Christ Jesus. That’s a promise. It’s his will to keep his promises.

Just ask for the thing. Now, our definition of needs may be different from his. Ask him to meet your needs and he will do it.

Ask him to help you follow him. Ask him to help you do the right thing. Ask him to change your heart.

Ask him to do any of the things that you know that he’s just waiting for you to ask and he will do it. He will give you the things you petition him for. He will take care of you.

Finally this morning, in verse 16 it says, If any man see his brother in a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death. I do not say that he shall pray for it.

Now, a lot of times before when I’ve preached on 1 John 5, it’s been about certainty and things like this. And I always skip over verse 16, not because I think it doesn’t matter, but I’ve often looked at it and thought, God, why’d you put that there? It seems like it doesn’t go with.

. . Verses 16 and 17, look.

. . When I moved to Arkansas, my house, it was in a neighborhood, it was in a new housing addition, out in the middle of the country.

And it looked like, the way to describe it was it looked like aliens had just set a neighborhood out in the middle of nowhere where it didn’t go. And that’s sort of how I feel about these two verses, not that it was aliens. But God, you just, it sticks out, it doesn’t fit right there.

But I look at this again and realize he’s still on the subject of prayer. And he says, you’ve got a brother who’s sinning, and that sin is not unto death. There is a point where God says, you know what, you’re going to do too much damage to yourself and to others and to the name of Christ. I’m going to take you out of here before you can cause any more misery.

But he says, you see your brother caught up in sin, which is not to that point yet. Pray for him. He shall ask.

Ask God to spare your brother. Ask God to work on him, to change him. And he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death.

So he’s saying, when you see your brother overtaken in sin and it’s not quite to that point yet, pray for him. Pray for him and let God work. So we see that not only is God faithful to hear us and God is faithful to answer us, but also God is faithful to give us what’s best for us.

God’s faithful to answer those prayers according to what is best for us. And he sees what’s best for us differently than we do. He sees the whole picture, whereas we just see a little glimpse of it.

And what’s going to feel to that brother like it’s best at the moment is not really best. He’s going to get caught. He’s going to get chastised. He’s going to get disciplined.

That is never fun. But if it’s stopping him from getting to the point where it’s a sin unto death where God just says, I’m going to have to take you out. You know what?

I’d say that’s for his own good. And God says, I’m willing to grant you that. I look even at the sin unto death and say, God is gracious here.

God is gracious here that he’s going to look at somebody who’s hurting himself, who’s hurting everybody around him, who’s dishonoring the name of Christ. And, you know, God could do a lot worse things to him than just take him out of this world. But he won’t let him inflict any more misery on himself and others around him. God is gracious.

And whatever the situation is, God looks at it and says, here’s what’s best for you, and here’s what’s best to br