A Relationship with the True God

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and what you’re doing. And for me, it always seems to do that when, it never does that when I’m headed down a street here. It’s always when I’m headed down an 18-lane highway in Dallas, coming up on one of those, I call them spaghetti bowls, you know, those big intersections.

And I don’t know which lane I’m supposed to be in, but by all means, the GPS, take your sweet time figuring out where we are. If you’ve ever been in that, is that not a nerve-wracking feeling? And you want to just stop, but of course you’ll kill yourself and everybody behind you, so you try to plunge on in the uncertainty, but there’s this frantic moment of, I don’t know if I go left, right, straight, or other left, or other right, or other straight.

I don’t know what to do. I run into this at home, too, because one time I punished Benjamin for something I believed he did and that he swore up and down he didn’t do. And I later found out he didn’t do it.

And I felt about that big. And so now I’m very big on the beyond a reasonable doubt thing, like a court of law. And so even last night, one of the kids did something.

We heard that Charla and I had dismissed them all from dinner and we were still sitting there finishing because, you know, parents eat last. They just gobble it up and we’re still left there. And we hear the sounds upstairs of what sounds like one child jumping out and screaming and scaring another child and then laughing about it. Okay.

Not a huge deal. We enjoy doing that to the kids, except the heart patient. That’s a bad idea. The others, you know, that’s part of the fun of being a parent is getting out to getting to jump out and scare them.

So, but Charla asked a question about it and they all said, oh no, we didn’t do that. She said, and she looks at me and she said, they did scream and scare the other one, right? Yeah.

And they did laugh about it. And that’s when I said, I don’t know. I think that’s what I heard.

There’s so much going on. And, you know, men were not great at multitasking, right? I’m not sure.

And I could tell from the look on her face, That was not the answer I was supposed to give. But I wasn’t sure. And there have been numerous situations like that where I’m getting on to a child for something I think they’ve done.

And then I think, wait a minute, am I absolutely certain that’s what I heard? Am I absolutely certain that’s what I saw? And sometimes I’m not absolutely certain and so I’m stuck there.

Do I possibly let the criminal go free? Or do I take the risk of punishing somebody innocent? And I’m stuck in that uncertainty.

So most of the time, like the justice system is supposed to, I err on the side of letting the criminal go free. But that uncertainty just paralyzes me sometimes. I’m not sure which way to go.

And we run into that in the world around us with so many things. How many of you over the last year and a half have been confused about some or all of the information you’ve gotten about COVID? Anybody?

And I’m not even talking about conspiracy theory stuff. I’m talking about when I had it, the doctor told Charla she had to quarantine for 10 days and the state told her she had to quarantine for 14. They couldn’t even get together on that.

We were confused. That’s why so many people I think are hesitant about vaccines. That’s why so many people, there’s confusion.

There’s uncertainty. In Afghanistan, how many people, how many Americans and how many Afghan allies were left behind. I’ve heard numbers as low as 240.

I’ve heard numbers as high as 80,000. Somebody’s math is off somewhere, right? But you and I are not on the ground.

We don’t know. We don’t know which end of the spectrum the truth falls on. And it’s confusing.

And without that certainty, I don’t know just how enraged to be, right? There’s so much around us. There’s so much going on.

It’s like the last four or five years have been sponsored by the word uncertainty. And there are so many things where you and I can get into a spot where because we don’t know with absolute certainty what’s going on and what’s happening, that we can get paralyzed and not know what decision to make, not know how to move forward. But I’m thankful that in a world filled with uncertainty, there are some things that we don’t have to be uncertain about.

In fact, some of the most important things in our world we don’t have to be uncertain about. And as I’ve been thinking about uncertainty, it drew my attention to the book of 1 John. Now, if you’re familiar with the book of 1 John, you probably see already where I’m going with this.

If you’re not familiar with the book of 1 John, the Apostle John wrote it to believers who were scattered throughout the Roman world. There was a lot of uncertainty for them too. And he wrote to them to reassure them about the things that they needed to know and understand and be confident in.

When I looked up all the variations of the word no, K-N-O-W, not N-O, K-N-O-W, looked up all the variations and looked up all the instances of where the Greek words for that word are used. I came up with, and it depends on the translation you use, the numbers are going to be a little bit different, but I came up with over 40 references. It’s a short book by biblical standards.

Five short chapters came up with over 40 references to knowing. John says over and over, I’ve written this so that you may know. And if this is true, then we know that this is true.

He goes through and 40 times plus, he uses that and he’s writing to them to inspire confidence, Not in themselves, not in their government, not in their society, but confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I want to spend the next several weeks, as we are dealing with an uncertain world, I want to spend the next several weeks on Sunday mornings going through some. We don’t have 40 weeks to. .

. I guess we do, but I’m not going to spend 40 weeks on this. But we’re going to spend several weeks looking at some of the things that John says we can know.

Because in all the things that we can’t know, we need to be reassured that there are some things that we can know. And so we’re going to be in 1 John this morning. We’re going to start in chapter 5.

We’re going to start at the very end of the book and work our way backwards. It won’t be necessarily in chronological order. It’s going to be sort of an order of he says this, we can know this.

And because of this, we can know this. Because of this, we can know this. And it begins with us in chapter 5.

We’re going to start in verse 18. If you have your Bible and can turn there with me, please do so. If you’re using your phone to look at your Bible, there’s a link in our bulletin where you can pull that right up or it’ll be on the screen for you here as well.

And if you can stand without too much difficulty, let’s read from God’s Word together. Starting in verse 18 of 1 John chapter 5, We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. I want to insert right there, this is not one of the no statements that we’re going to be talking about, but there’s been a lot of confusion about this statement.

We know that whoever is born of God does not sin. That does not mean that if you commit a sin, it does not mean that if you fall into temptation, that you are not a child of God. This is talking about the ongoing lifestyle of sin, that somebody who is born of God is not going to be able to continue in that old lifestyle of sin in perpetuity.

And we’ve talked about that in recent weeks, some about how the Holy Spirit is responsible for changing us and demonstrating to us that we are a child of God. But it does not mean that every time you sin, it’s proof that you are not a child of God. It’s just proof that sometimes he needs to take off the belt with us, right?

But he said, whoever is born of God does not sin. The Greek verb tenses there could tell us that he does not continue in sin. Verse 19, We know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who is true in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

You may be seated. So in this passage, first of all, to me, as I was reading this, trying to come up with an overall, what’s the overall purpose of this section of the text? It’s kind of hard to do because it sounds like he’s, it sounds like Proverbs.

If you’ve ever tried to take a chunk of Proverbs and what’s the overall theme of it, it’s hard because it’s just a series of, some parts of Proverbs are just a series of separate thoughts and wisdom sayings that are put together, and they’re not all necessarily talking about the same thing. On the surface, it kind of feels like that’s what John’s doing here as he wraps up his letter. Here’s some last minute thoughts for you.

And like they’re all just crammed together in there. But really what he’s doing is he’s writing to a group of people who’ve struggled with uncertainty, as I pointed out. This was the Roman world.

They were facing persecution. They were facing false teachers. They’re upheaval like even we couldn’t believe.

And part of this, part of the uncertainty was because of the false teachers that they were bombarded with. We look around us and we see cults, we see false teachers on television and on the radio, and we think, my goodness, it’s never been this bad before. None of this started in the 20th century or 21st century.

None of this is new. There have been people who have been trying to twist the gospel since there was a gospel, all right? And attempts have been underway to twist God’s word since the Garden of Eden, when Satan came to Eve and said, did God really say this?

And presented a question to her that God didn’t actually say to try to trip her up. This has been going on all along. But they were bombarded with false teachers.

Some of the false teachers they were bombarded by, they were dealing with the Gnostics. The Gnostics had the idea that there was secret knowledge out there that was only for the initiated. And to have salvation, you needed to have this secret knowledge.

Part of it led to the idea that Jesus could not have possibly died on the cross in the flesh, which is a problem because if He didn’t die for us, we’re still in our sins. But Gnosticism was all about this secret knowledge. And you’ve got to dig deeper.

And you’ve got to go past what God’s Word says and you’ve got to kind of feel your way through it. There was mysticism. It was all about these experiences and feelings.

Like so much religious teaching today. It’s all about experiences and feelings. But it was like the pagan gods that many of these people had been saved out of those religions.

That you’d go and you’d go worship in the temple and you’d drink to excess and you’d work yourself up into a frenzy and you would feel like you had a religious experience and that would lead you to the truth. Well, there were Christian mystics who said, well, you do the same thing with the Holy Spirit and it’s an ecstatic thing and that’s how you find the truth. They were bombarded with this as well.

They were bombarded with something called antinomianism, which is a fancy word for no law. They were taught that you just go out and sin and And it’s okay, the Apostle Paul wrote about this where people said, if grace abounds where there’s sin, shouldn’t we sin more so that there’s more grace? Now that to us sounds crazy, but people like that idea.

And sometimes people run with that idea, even today. There’s a group of people in the Russian Empire about a hundred years ago who believed you should sin as much as possible because that’s how, the more you sin, the more you know the forgiveness of God. And so to grow closer to God, you go out and sin as much as you possibly could.

Man, we could pack a church, right? Teaching that kind of stuff. But they were being bombarded with this.

Just go out and live however you want because that’s how you get close to God. Then there’s legalism. This idea that if you just stick with the law, you follow the rituals, you do all the festivals and the washings, and you follow the law to the letter, and that’s how you get close to God.

They were being bombarded with all of these ideas and more that were probably causing some uncertainty, especially among the newer believers, about how is it that we get close to God? How is it that we know God? Is it through the secret initiated knowledge?

Is it through the mystical experiences? Is it through engaging in as much sin as we can? Is it through engaging in as little sin as we can?

How is it that we can have a relationship with God? How is it that we can know Him? And writing to a group like that, John understood sometimes we need reassurance about our relationship with God, especially when we are being bombarded with false messages.

Some of these teachings are still, actually all of these teachings are still around today, and then some. And this reassurance about our relationship with God, about their relationship with God, is what John wrote to provide. Look at some of what he says here.

In verse 18, we know that whoever is born of God does not sin. Again, I talked about that meaning continuing on in a lifestyle of sin. It doesn’t mean every instance of sin in your life.

But more importantly, there’s this idea of being born of God. The Bible calls it being born again. And as a result of this second birth by the power of God, something that the Holy Spirit does in us when we come to Christ, this ties into what we’ve talked about the last several weeks with the Holy Spirit about being adopted into God’s family.

He’s reminding them here that they belong to God. They were adopted into God’s family. They were reborn into God’s family.

They’re His. They’re His children. And as a result of that being brought into God’s family, we are changed by Him.

He says we cannot continue on the way we were. That does not mean that when you come to Christ, you’re going to immediately be perfect overnight. I don’t want anybody to panic and think, I still struggle with this sin or that sin, so I’m not saved.

No, no, the fact that you’re struggling with it instead of just giving into it is a sign of the Holy Spirit working in you. This doesn’t mean we become perfect overnight. It means the Holy Spirit begins at the moment of conversion to change us and mold us into what He wants us to be.

So we have this reassurance that we’re in Him, that we belong to Him. And it says, but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. Now this word keep means to guard.

And I looked really hard at this this week trying to make them fit together. There’s a Greek word that’s used here that’s similar to another Greek word. And I thought, man, that would be a great illustration.

They’re not related. They just sound alike. But it made me think of the picture.

If you’ve ever seen drawings or paintings of the ancient soldier formations that the Greeks and Romans would do when they would gather in a line and several lines together in a group, and they would have their shields out in front of them, and then the ones behind them would put their shield over them. and they called it the phalanx. They’re not related, unfortunately.

That would be a perfect metaphor for this, but the words are very similar. That they were guarding every possible direction. And even if they’re not related, still to me, that was a vivid picture in my mind of how we ought to be on guard against sin from every direction because we do belong to Him.

Not because we’re afraid we’re no longer going to belong to Him if we sin, but because we do belong to Him and we want to please him. We should keep ourselves. We should guard ourselves.

And the wicked one does not touch him. That means Satan is not a threat to our relationship with God. It doesn’t mean that Satan can never have an effect on us.

It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t cause us trouble. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t put temptations right in front of us. But listen, for us to belong to him and be born of God and be keeping ourselves by the power of God, that doesn’t mean keep ourselves in salvation, that means guarding ourselves against temptation, but to be doing all of that and be told that the evil one does not touch him, cannot touch us, it doesn’t just mean he walks up and goes, tag, you’re it.

It means him causing severe problems in our relationship with God. This is reassurance that even Satan himself cannot come between us and God once we belong to him. And we know that we are of God, verse 19, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Do you ever feel that way? Do you ever turn on the news and then turn it right back off Because you feel like the whole world is under the sway of the wicked one. Or at least the whole world is under the sway of something that made them lose their ever-loving minds, right?

The world is crazy. Guess what? That’s nothing new for us either.

And I know I’ve heard some of you talk about how it used to be quiet. It didn’t used to be like this. I remember a couple of decades ago, as a child, it didn’t seem this crazy.

It didn’t feel like this. The world’s been under the sway of the wicked one all along. We just hear about it a lot more because we have more cameras.

we have more access to media, we just see it and hear it. It’s always been there. But for him to say, we know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

Don’t take this as an us versus them thing. That, oh, we’re of God, we’re better than them out there because the whole world is under the sway of the wicked one. In the context of this reassurance that he’s talking about, this is a reminder to us that no matter how crazy the whole world gets, no matter how much Satan and his influence run amok, no matter if everybody around us goes over to his side, that does not affect our relationship with God.

That does not destroy our relationship with God. If you belong to him in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter what everybody else around you is doing. You still belong to him.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the only one. And there may be times when you feel like in your circle, I’m the only one. Even if you’re the only one, it doesn’t mean you no longer belong to him.

And we need that reassurance. We need that reassurance because things do feel out of control. And sometimes it can cause us uncertainty about where we stand with God.

But here’s what he tells us. We can know the true God because his son came to reveal him. And this is the main focus of this passage and of this message this morning.

Verse 20 says, we know that the son of God has come. Why is any of what I’ve already talked to you about possible? Why is that relationship possible?

Why is it possible to have that assurance? Why is it possible to stand and not be touched by the evil one? It’s because the Son of God has come.

And he doesn’t say, we think He’s come. We heard reports that He’s come. They’re saying on the news that He’s come.

John says, we know that the Son of God has come. For John, it was a matter of certainty that God’s Son had appeared on earth. Why is John so certain about it?

Because he was an eyewitness to the whole thing. John was there for Jesus’ ministry. John was there for Jesus’ trial and his execution.

John was there for Jesus’ burial. John was there when that tomb was empty later on that Sunday morning. John was one of the first to see it empty. John saw Jesus risen from the dead, came to visit him numerous times.

John saw it. And as John is writing these things toward the end of his ministry, John is at this point probably the last living apostle. He’s probably the last one to have seen Jesus in person.

And so he is more qualified at the time that he’s writing this, John is more qualified than anybody on earth to tell people the Son of God has come because I have seen him with my own eyes. There’s not a bit of doubt here in John’s testimony. John was able to identify the Son.

He says it’s His Son, Jesus Christ, in verse 20. But He also said He has given us an understanding that we may know who is true. So by the Son coming, by Jesus Christ coming, He has given us a knowledge of the truth of who God is.

You know, He wrote earlier in His Gospel, in John 1. 18, No one has seen God at any time. He’s referring to the Father.

No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. What John was saying is you can’t see the Father.

You can’t look at the Father. But when you look at the Son out walking among us, you know and you see exactly what the Father is like. For us, what God is like doesn’t have to be an abstract concept.

It doesn’t have to be something we speculate about because God came as God the Son and showed us exactly what He was like. That’s why Colossians calls Jesus the image of the invisible God. Paul was saying, you don’t need all these idols, you don’t need all these priests.

If you want to know God, if you want to know what God’s like, Jesus. Right there, He’s the image of the invisible God. Hebrews calls Him the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person.

And Paul said in 2 Corinthians, we see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This Son that John talks about coming and giving us a knowledge of the Father, the other apostles explained that He gave us a full picture of the Father’s glory, as full a picture as we’ve ever seen. We can know the true God because the Son came to reveal Him. Jesus demonstrates who God is and what God is like.

And the world will say, isn’t it narrow-minded to say Jesus is the only way? Listen, Jesus is the only one who claimed to be able to tell us, just by His presence, exactly what God is like. and then back that claim up by rising from the dead.

Because of Jesus, we can have a relationship with the one true God. This was written as it says in verse 20, that we may know. That we may know Him who is true and that we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. This word know here doesn’t just mean an acquaintance.

Still being new in town, people will ask, do you know so-and-so? Sometimes I’ll say, I know the name. I know of them.

That’s not what He’s talking about. When he says no, he’s talking about a growing experiential knowledge, what we would call a relationship. I know my wife pretty well, but I still learn things about her all the time.

Because it’s a relationship, it’s a growing knowledge. He’s describing here a growing relationship with Him who is true. That means God, that means the Father.

And he wants us to know that we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, being in Christ means belonging to Him, means being in a relationship with Him. And that puts us in a relationship with the Father. We are in Him who is true in Christ, according to this verse.

If we want that relationship with the Father, it’s the Son who provides it. That’s why He says this is the true God in eternal life. If you want to know the true God, and if you want to experience eternal life with Him, Jesus Christ is the only road that gets you there.

That’s not my opinion. I mean, it is my opinion, but it’s more than my opinion. It’s more than just the position of this church.

that is the testimony of somebody who walked with Jesus, who saw his ministry, who saw his crucifixion, who saw his empty tomb, and who saw him alive again. A lot of times we spend a lot of time with somebody and we begin to see who they are warts and all, right? We begin to see the imperfections.

We see each other at church and we can put on a good face, but stay at somebody’s house and you see who they really are. This man spent years with Jesus day in and day out and walked away convinced that the man was the son of God. This is the testimony of somebody who spent all this time with Jesus and said, you can know the father because you know him.

You can know the father because the son has come. And so this morning in a world full of uncertainty, even even uncertainty about religious ideas, you don’t have to wonder how you can know God. You don’t have to wonder, is it really possible for me to have a relationship with you?

Is it really possible to have a connection with my creator? This man who spent his life with Jesus came away convinced and said, because of him, you can know the Father. And so this morning, you can’t know God or have a relationship with God any other way but Jesus.

That’s not true because I’m saying it. It’s not true because Central Baptist Church says it. It’s true because the Word of God says it.

And that’s why he told them in verse 21, little children, keep yourselves from idols. This world has no shortage of things it can offer you that will supposedly get you a connection, a spiritual connection with God or the creator or the universe or whatever people outside want to call it. The world offers no shortage of those things.

And you can try to get there through practices. You can try to get there through rituals. You can try to get there through crystals and incense.

I don’t know. Whatever floats your boat, you can pretty much find out there promising a relationship with God. In their day, they went to statues.

That’s how they tried to get a relationship with God. And John said, you don’t need them. Keep away from those idols.

They’re not going to get you there. They’re not going to get you into a relationship with God. You need Jesus Christ. We’ve got to be on guard against those things that promise to bring us closer to God, but in reality push us further away.

There’s one surefire way. There’s one way promised in Scripture to have a relationship with the one true God. And it’s through His Son, who John says we know has come.