Our Connection with the Father

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Well, several years ago, I was in another country visiting a missionary that worked down there and touring the work that they had going on there. And he came to me one morning and said, I know what we’re going to do today. After lunch, we’re going to go down to the gang area.

And I chuckled and said, I’m sorry, for a second, I thought you said we’re going to go down to the gang area. He said, I did. I said, is that a good idea?

He said, well, it’s just a gang. what do you mean it’s just a gang he said well it’s not a cartel like oh okay well that that’s reassuring that thanks for that I feel much better now um and as we’re driving down there to to see the the ministry that they have going on in the gang area I said are you sure we’re going to be safe he said we’re fine I know a guy and sure enough he knew a guy that had been a uh had been one of the leaders of the gang and had come to christ and was involved with their ministry and I was assured we were fine as long as we were with this guy. Well, later on in the same trip, sometime during the week, he said, today we’re going to go down to the prison.

I’ve seen episodes of Locked Up Abroad. They did not appeal. I did not sign up for this on this plan. And I wanted to actually start this story with, let me tell you about the time I went to prison in Latin America, but I thought that might raise a bunch of questions.

I said, are you sure? We walked in. That was one of the scariest experiences of my life, being in another country where the Bill of Rights does not apply and you hear those bars clink shut behind you.

I asked him, are you sure we ought to be doing this? He said, it’s fine. I know a guy.

He always knew a guy. But sure enough, there was a guy that took us around the prison and we visited with some of the inmates and we were fine as long as we were with that guy. And I’m thankful that wherever we went, he seemed to know a guy.

I don’t think I’ve been back. I think that was my last trip to visit with that missionary. But I’m thankful that he always knew a guy and there was always somebody there to open doors that we couldn’t.

And especially the doors to get out of those places when we were done. And I make light of it a little bit, but I’m thankful for the opportunities that we had to go and do ministry there. I’m just saying I was a little sheltered going into that, so it was a nerve-wracking experience.

But I’m thankful that we knew a guy to open those doors. And just like in so many circumstances, in so many situations in life, this all came down to who you knew more than what you knew. My dad told me that when entering the workforce.

He said, you’re going to find out that a lot of doors open more because of who you know than because of what you know. And maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but it is that way. And so I’m thankful that when it comes to spiritual things, we know a God.

I’m thankful that there’s, and I don’t use the term God disrespectfully, that’s just the phrase, I know a God. I’m thankful that there’s someone there to open the doors that nobody else can open. That’s what we’re going to look at this morning as we continue our series about who is Jesus.

He is the most important person for us to know when it comes to a connection with the Father. When it comes to opening doors in our relationship with the Father that nobody else can open. Jesus fills that role.

And so we’re going to look this morning at what John has to say in 1 John chapter 5. 1 John chapter 5, if you’d turn with me there in your Bibles. If you don’t have your Bibles or can’t find it, it’ll be on the screen for you.

And once you find it, if you’ll stand, if you can do so without too much trouble, as we read together from God’s Word. 1 John 5, starting in verse 13. It says, 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.

And this is the confidence 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. 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 a 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. 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. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

And you may be seated. describes here what the presence of Jesus means in our lives. Jesus brings with him some incredible blessings.

And I don’t think for a second that this is meant to be an exhaustive list. I don’t think the Apostle John sat down and said, here is everything that Jesus brings to the table. I think this is a good sampling. Because if we read throughout the New Testament, there’s all sorts of things that change in our spiritual walk, in our relationship with the Father as a result of the presence of Jesus Christ. But this is a good list to get us started of some of the changes that Jesus’ presence bring to our life.

And one of those is the presence of Jesus means that our prayers are heard and answered. And we see this in verses 14 and 15. He says, if we ask something according to his will, we can do that with the assurance that the God of the universe is paying attention.

And that is an incredible realization that the God of the universe is paying attention to you and paying attention to me. Sometimes it feels like when people are important or when they just think they’re important that they don’t really listen to us. Sometimes we do that with other people.

Sometimes if I’m not careful, I catch myself doing that with my kids. I’m only half listening because I think I’m doing something really important. Be careful what you agree to, right?

When you’re half listening to your children. I think mine have started to learn to take advantage of that. I can ask when he’s only half paying attention.

There’s very little that I’m doing that is that important that I can’t take a moment and stop and listen to my children. You know, sometimes we’ll talk to our elected officials about something important and we just feel like nobody’s listening because they think what they’re doing is too important. And so it makes it all the more incredible that verse 14 tells us that because of the presence of Jesus in our life, the God of the entire universe, who has more important things to do than God does, right?

And yet the God of the universe, the God of creation listens to us. John says he hears us. And not only that, we know if he hears us, verse 15 tells us that he’s going to do something about it.

If we ask according to His will, He’s going to give us the things that we ask for. He hears us and He’s going to do something about it. That is not a blanket promise that everything we pray for we’re going to get.

I’m still waiting on those millions of dollars. Many of you are still waiting on those millions of dollars also. But it’s if we ask according to God’s will.

If we are asking for the things that God has already said, yes, I want you to have that. Yes, I want to bless you with that. yes, I want you to grow in that way.

Yes, this is going to be good for you. And God is just waiting for us to ask. We can ask with the assurance that God hears us and God has our best interest at heart and he’s going to take care of exactly what we need.

And that’s an incredible realization that the God of all creation cares about us that much. And we actually have the assurance that he hears us anytime we talk to him. And it’s not because we deserve it.

It’s not because of our performance. It’s because of the presence of Jesus. It’s because Jesus has connected us to the Father if we belong to Him.

And then we go to verse 16 and we see that the presence of Jesus means that we’re shielded from temptation. Verses 16 through 19 teach this. In verses 16 and 17, John digresses a little bit into discussing the dangers that stem from sin and its consequences and the way that it entraps us.

He talks about the sin that’s not unto death and a brother being overtaken and a fault. And honestly, I’ve wrestled with that section for years. Why is that there in the middle of everything else?

It just doesn’t. In my mind, it seems to break the flow of what he’s saying, but I’m sure there’s something there that I’m just not understanding yet. I go to the Scriptures with the mindset of if there’s something I don’t understand, it doesn’t mean the Scriptures are wrong.

It just means I don’t understand yet. And so I understand that he’s making some kind of point that’s connected with the rest of this. And the best I can come up with why he goes into talking about the sin unto death is he’s talking about the dangerous consequences of sin.

Because it is so important that Jesus shields us from that. As a matter of fact, verse 19 says the whole world is in bondage to sin. The whole world is in bondage to sin.

This world is not the way it’s supposed to be. And we look at all the wickedness, all the that takes place around us and we can easily say, how did God make this? How did God do this?

But the scriptures acknowledge this world is not the way God created it to be. This was not plan A. This is what happens because we deviated from plan A.

And now the whole of the world is in bondage to sin. And so we come back to verse 18 and in contrast, he says that if we belong to Jesus, Everyone who has been born of God does not keep sinning. And this is why I picked a little different translation from the one that I normally use.

I felt like of all of the ones I looked at this week, this was the best explanation of what the Greek is saying in verse 18. Some of our Bibles will say that if we’re born of God, we do not sin. And that causes some of us to really doubt.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Look at what I did this morning.

Look at that attitude that came out of me this morning. I must not be born of God. The Greek there is an ongoing thing.

It’s saying that if we belong to him, if we are born of God, we are not going to be able to continue long-term in that same old lifestyle that he saved us out of. And that if there is no change, we don’t become perfect on this side of eternity. But if we don’t see any kind of change from who we were before, that is incompatible with the idea of being born again, being born of God.

And so I like the way this explains it in English here. Everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning. I feel like that’s a good way to explain the Greek phrasing there.

If we belong to Jesus, we’re not going to be able to go on sinning the same way. Now, even that may bother you because you may sit there and think there’s still sins I struggle with, but you struggle with them now. There’s a change.

Before we come to Christ, we sin and we love it. After we come to Christ, when we sin, it should bother us. The unrepentant sinner loves their sin and hates God.

The repentant sinner, the one that belongs to Jesus Christ, loves God and hates our sin. And so just the very fact that God has now put that Holy Spirit in you that causes you to hate that sin and actually struggle against it instead of giving into it instead of wallowing in it is indication that something’s happening, that there’s a change there. But it’s called conversion and it’s called being born again for a reason.

There should be some change in our lives. It doesn’t mean that we become perfect overnight. It doesn’t mean we become perfect on this side of eternity, but there should be some kind of change.

And the reason why we’re able to do that is because what verse 18 says, this is because of Jesus protecting us. It says, he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. That’s Jesus Christ protecting us.

That’s Jesus shielding us from temptation. And the Bible does teach that he has made a way of escape in temptation. Sometimes we will read that verse and misinterpret it and say, well, God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.

Oh, absolutely he does. There is no doubt in my mind God gives us more than we can handle, but not with temptation. God always makes a way to escape if we’re willing to look for it.

We just have to be willing not to say, oh, there’s temptation. Guess I’m doing this now. We have to look around for that way of escape, but he’s made a way of escape.

And Jesus is willing to shield us from temptation so that as Christians, we are not slaves to sin. Yes, we will continue to sin because we’re human. But we’re not bound by our nature to have to do that.

we have the choice now of following the Spirit and being obedient to God. We see also, starting in verse 20, the presence of Jesus means that we’re granted a degree of spiritual understanding and discernment. He says in verse 20, we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding so that we may know Him who is true.

That means if we belong to Jesus, He has given us the ability by His Holy Spirit to understand His Word in a way that we could not understand before. That’s why I’ve told you, be careful watching anything the History Channel puts out on the Bible, because they’ll have these experts on there that I feel like have never actually seen a Bible in its natural habitat. Like, I’m hearing some of their answers and thinking, what Bible are you looking at?

But some of these people, some of these people by their own admission are not believers in Jesus Christ. They’re not even believers that God exists, but they’ll have PhDs in biblical literature or something and they’ll get up and they’ll be expert maybe on the language, but they have no idea the spiritual depth and complexity of God’s word. And so you can have somebody with a PhD in Bible who does not know Jesus Christ, who has less understanding of God’s Word than somebody with a fourth grade education who knows Jesus Christ and has walked with Him for years and years. Doesn’t mean the PhD doesn’t know a lot of stuff.

He has a lot of knowledge, but with Jesus we get a lot of understanding of what His Word says. But it’s not just an understanding of God, of God’s Word, but also of God Himself. Because He’s given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true.

It’s not just about us learning facts about God’s Word. It’s about us learning and understanding who He is. And this is possible because He’s revealed who He is in Jesus Christ. We’ve looked at that in some of the passages we’ve already gone through in this series about who is Jesus.

About how God has made His nature known. He’s put it on display in Jesus Christ. There are some Greek phrases in the New Testament that if this English phrase was around when they translated it, they might have said Jesus was the spitting image of his father. That if you look at Jesus and understand who he is, it gives you a very clear picture of who the father is.

And so when we look at Jesus and when we have the presence of Jesus in our lives, we’re able to discern truth from error when it comes to God. That’s all thanks to Jesus Christ. The presence of Jesus means that we can have confidence in our relationship with God. Verse 20 says we are in him who is true in his son Jesus Christ. Now, if we’re in his son Jesus Christ, then we’re also in him who is true.

That’s not saying that Jesus is not true, but the him who is true, they’re referring to the father. We have a relationship with the father because of Jesus Christ, and we’re assured of that relationship with the father because of Jesus Christ. If you and I have to be righteous in order to have a relationship with the father, we don’t get there on our own and we don’t keep it on our own. It’s of Christ. And so we’re able to come to our relationship with the Father understanding that it’s not based on our performance, and if I mess up, the Father’s just going to kick me to the curb.

Because our relationship with the Father is based on the righteousness of Christ. And so we have that assurance. We’re in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. And the presence of Jesus also means that we have eternal life. This idea kind of sets us the bookends of the passage at the beginning and at the end.

He says in verse 13, 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. If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, we’re not just talking about believing that He exists. I’ve done a lot of study recently into the historical evidence for Jesus Christ. There are atheist historians who believe that Jesus Christ was a real person.

As a matter of fact, most historians believe that Jesus Christ was a real person. Does not mean they believe in him as the son of God. That’s who John is talking to.

If we believe in him as the son of God, then we may know we have eternal life. And then it says in verse 20, he is the true God and eternal life. Jesus is the only source of eternal life to the believer.

We have eternal life because of his presence, because he’s in our lives, because we belong to him. So we see this list, this incomplete list of the blessings that Jesus bestows on us. And folks, we have these blessings.

Jesus brings these blessings because he’s the son of God. A lot of people are present in our lives without bringing these things. I have not brought any body, eternal life, or our direct connection to the Father.

Has never happened. Because I don’t have the power in and of myself to do that for any of you. Knowing me is not going to get you to heaven.

Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is able to do that because of who he is. He’s able to do that. He’s able to provide all of these blessings that John talks about because he’s the Son of God.

In this list, Jesus is described four times as the Son of God. It’s mentioned in verse 13 once. In verse 20, he’s referred to as the Son of God twice.

And it’s implied in verse 18 where it talks about him who was born of God. All throughout this passage, John ties the idea of these incredible blessings that we have because of Jesus Christ to the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. That’s the only reason.

If he was just a regular man, he couldn’t do any of this for us. John’s point is that Jesus is able to do all of these things for us precisely because of the fact that he is the Son of God. So what does it mean that he’s the Son of God?

There’s some things that we need to address in order to understand this because it can get a little confusing. And part of that, I think, is our fault as a church, not specifically our church, but most churches in the way that we use some of this language. A couple things I want to address.

To call him the Son of God, does that mean Jesus is less than God? No. People will make that case.

Well, he’s the Son, so he’s less than. I guess, Benjamin, that means you’re less than me. Sorry.

No, I hope you’re better than I am someday. For Jesus to be the Son, it describes His relationship to the Father. It describes the relationship in a human term that we can understand.

And it really speaks to the sameness of His nature. When somebody was called the Son of something, it reflected that their nature had something to do with the nature of what they were the Son of. So when Jesus called James and John the sons of thunder, He was saying there’s something about their personality that was tumultuous.

It was something to do with their nature. When he told the Pharisees they were sons of their father the devil, he was saying you are liars by nature just like Satan is. When the Bible calls Jesus the Son of God, it is saying that he shares the same nature as God.

Not that the Father is up here and Jesus is halfway in between somewhere. We talked about that last week. That he’s not just greater than man and less than God somewhere in the middle.

That he’s God who became a man. Jesus is not less than God. To call him the Son means that he shares the nature of the Father.

But then there’s also the question, how can Jesus be God and the Son of God? I’ll hear skeptics say, oh, what, was he his own dad? That makes a lot of sense.

Never read YouTube comment sections, by the way. That is where brain cells go to die, and that’s an argument that you’ll hear there. Is Jesus was his own dad, according to the Bible?

No, that is not true. Jesus is God and the Son of God, that does not mean that Jesus is His own Father. It’s because of the imprecise way we use these terms. There’s no contradiction here.

Son of God, what we mean is that He’s the Son of God, the Father, because we believe there’s one God in three persons, Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All one God, three persons, eternally distinct, and no, I cannot explain the full mechanics of how that works. I just know that the Bible teaches that there is one God.

I know the Bible teaches that all three of these are identified as God, and yet they’re all separate persons. And if God wants to be something I can’t explain, I don’t want to be the one to tell him he can’t, right? So we say that Jesus is God because he’s God the Son, he’s the second person of the Trinity.

And when we say that Jesus is the Son of God, we’re referring to God the Father, the first person of the Trinity, as God. And maybe we should say that, Son of the Father, but the Bible uses the term son of God. And so we go with it, but understand it’s just because we’re not specifying son of God, the father.

So no, nobody’s saying that he’s his own, his own son. When there a song like that years ago, I’m my own grandpa. Yeah, this is not one of those situations.

So being the son means that Jesus is made of the same substance as the father. And I don’t mean made like created. I just mean He’s the same type of being.

It’s hard sometimes even to find words to explain what the Bible’s talking about with the nature of God because He’s so far beyond our comprehension. But He’s the same type of being as the Father. And also by Son, we’re seeing that He has the closest of all possible relationships with the Father.

There is nobody closer to the Father than Jesus Christ. Where you and I can be the Father’s children through adoption, And the Bible does say that we can become His sons and daughters. We are adopted into His family through Jesus Christ. While we can become His children through adoption, Jesus is His Son by nature. And He’s the only one.

He’s the only one to be Son of God by His nature. John frequently uses a word monogenes in Greek, which means the only one of its kind. When you see the phrase only begotten written by John, it’s usually that Greek word and it means something unique.

And I don’t mean unique in the watered down way we use it. Oh, that’s unique when we mean rare, because there are others. I mean unique in the sense that there is literally only one of this kind.

And so when John says that Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father, he means he is the only person, the only being in all of the universe who can claim to be the Son of God in that way. Nobody else is as close to the Father as Jesus Christ is. And this is important because here and elsewhere in the New Testament, it teaches that our relationship with the Father is completely dependent on Jesus’ ability to reconcile us to Him.

You and I do not get to a relationship with the Father through good works. You may be puzzled this morning at the idea that you were going to come to church and be told you didn’t have to be good. Being good is a good thing, but it does not get us a relationship with the Father.

You are not going to get a relationship with the Father by going to church. You’re not going to get a relationship with the Father by giving money or going through any kind of religious exercise or activity. We only get a relationship with the Father by coming through the Son, by believing that Jesus Christ shed His blood and died for us on the cross, that He rose again to prove it.

And then we throw ourselves entirely on His mercy for our salvation, realizing we can never be good enough, That only Jesus could be good enough to pay for our sins so that our slate could be wiped clean and we could have a relationship with the Father. The message of the entire New Testament is that Jesus Christ is the one that our relationship with the Father is dependent on. And so it’s just awfully fortunate for us that the one we are dependent on is the one who’s closer to the Father than anybody else.

If we want to be reconciled to a holy God, it’s a good thing we know a guy. It’s a good thing that there’s somebody there to open the door. We are dependent on the one who has the closest of all possible relationships with the Father, the Son.

Jesus Christ is God’s Son, and as God’s Son, He is uniquely qualified to reconcile us to the Father. There’s no other way. If you’re counting on Central Baptist Church to get you to heaven, you are going to be sadly mistaken and disappointed.

If you’re counting on your baptism, your Lord’s Supper attendance, your giving to the poor, your being a good person, if you’re counting on any of these things, or you name it, you name it make a list of all the things you think you can do to get a relationship with the father and if you’re trusting in those things you’re going to be disappointed because you and I can never be good enough Jesus Christ is the only one good enough to reconcile us to the father he’s the only one who had the access because he’s the son because he’s now seated at the right hand of the father and all that remains for us to do is as John says believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God. That means trusting Him as our Savior. That’s what it means to believe in that sense.

That we believe that we sinned, we disobeyed God, and our sin separates us from Him. That we believe that Jesus and only Jesus could reconcile us to God, and He did so by paying for our sin on the cross, taking responsibility for our sin, being nailed to the cross, and dying in our place, and then rising again three days later to prove it. This morning, if you believe that, if you believe what God’s word says about the subject, then you can ask for God’s forgiveness.

And because of Jesus, we have the promise that you’ll have it. You don’t have to wonder if he’s forgiven you. John says right here in verse 13, 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.