Amen. Good evening. You may be seated. Welcome to Mars Hill, particularly if you are new. If you would, please, get your Bible and go to 1 John Chapter 5, beginning in verse 14. This week we will finish our series on 1, 2 and 3 John, which has taken us through the duration of the summer. I hope you’ve enjoyed the book. Hopefully today we conclude well. We go right through books of the Bible and next week we will do the Book of Genesis. And so we’ll start the great one-year epic journey through the hillbilly, red-neck soap opera that is Genesis. It’s unbelievable. Everybody marries their sister, gets drunk, passes out naked in their tent like a NASCAR fan, it’s just – it’s just a great book. So you’ll love it and we’ll kick into it next week and next week you will get a 200-page commentary and introduction that I put together for us as a church to help you with your studies of the book. And so we will do that next week.

This week, a couple things you can pray about, as James indicated, for those of you that were here on time, both of you, faithful people. We love you both. This week, beginning on Wednesday, kicks off our mid-week programming. We will have over 600 people in various classes. We will have over 600 people in various community groups and Bible studies, so find your slot and get plugged in. The one thing we do need help on is Wednesday night, with our Jericho Junction, which is our ministry for the little kids, we need more workers. So if you can help there, it’d be great to have you sign up, in part because that gospel class, which is all of our new visitors and members and all kinds of people, have over 300 people. Okay? It’s the biggest theology class I’ve ever seen in my life. It runs 300 a quarter. And all those people are new and visiting, so we want to be able to also share God’s love with their children. So if you can help that way, please do.

The last thing I’ll say is if you’re a high school or junior high student, or the parent of a student, we’re really making a sincere effort to take things to the next level with students this fall. We will do Wednesday night worship. I’m gonna be taking the high school students through the Book of Romans. We’ve got a number of adult mentors. We’ll be training Christian students on ministry and will be then reaching out to share the gospel with their non-Christian friends and family members, and so we expect things to go real well with worship, concerts, Bible teaching, relationships, and just taking all that to the next level, which is something we have not done previously in the history of this church, but we feel like Ballard High School and some of the local high schools are a place that God really wants us to bring God’s love, and so that’s what we will be doing this fall. So lots to pray about. Pray about the concerts, the events, and the seminars, and about the community groups, and the classes, and the service. There’s just a ton going on, but it’s a great, great, great fall and typically we grow by 60 percent between October and January. We do every year. So we’re gonna be pretty tight and maxed out. So if you could, when you come, get here on time and scrunch to the front, scrunch to the sides, make sure that you pack in together because as people come in late we’re gonna need every seat we can have. So, it’s good to have you guys. I will pray and we’ll launch right into 1 John and finish this great book together.

Father God, we do love you because you first loved us. We thank you. We thank you so much that we can know that we have eternal life. We thank you that that life is in Jesus. Lord Jesus, we thank you for coming as a substitute in our place to live and to die and to rise so that life might be ours as a gift from the Father. And Holy Spirit, we thank you for imparting this gift to us, giving us a new heart with which to love, and a new mind with which to think, and a new life that we can live. We ask you now, Holy Spirit, to come and shape us, and lead us, and guide us, and instruct us, and encourage us, and rebuke us as each of us would need. We pray you would take the words of scripture and make them real in our hearts and our lives. And we pray that at the end of the day we would walk out of here, all be worshippers of you, but the grace that you give in Jesus’ good name. Amen.

As we get into 1 John, let me set it up for you, ‘cause some of you are new. 1 John begins, really, with the story of Jesus, that you and I, by nature and by choice, are all sinners that had separated ourselves from God. Because of that, we live in sin without knowledge of God and we die. God, though, loves us so dearly that he was concerned about our condition and what we had done to ourselves as we had run from him. And so he has pursued us faithfully. That’s the kind of good God that he is. He’s on a rescue mission to save us from ourselves. So, God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, gets off his throne, comes into human history born as a man. He lives a life tempted as we are, yet he never sins. He goes to the cross and he dies and there this wonderful transaction occurs where my sins are placed upon Jesus and he dies in my place, and then his righteousness is placed upon me as a gift, and I’m saved by God’s good grace, by his love and affection for me. So we love Jesus. He’s our God. He’s the only way we get out of Satan and sin and death. He’s the only way that we have eternal life. It’s the only way that we know God.

Now what’s curious is during his life on Earth, Jesus hand-selected after a night of prayer a few disciples that he was gonna pour his life into and teach. Okay? There were 12 disciples, and among them were three in particular, Peter, James and John, who were Jesus’ closest disciples and his dearest friends. John was the youngest disciple. He was like a kid brother to Jesus. They really loved one another as very dear friends. John was hand-selected by Jesus for ministry and training. John was there through the major events in Jesus’ life and ministry. He saw the miracles that the Bible records. He heard the sermons that the Bible records for us as well, faithfully. John was there when they crucified Jesus. He was there at the foot of the cross next to Jesus’ own mother, and Jesus looked down and appointed John to look after his mother, which indicates that they were indeed very close friends. John saw Jesus die. He saw Jesus get wrapped in burial cloth. He saw Jesus placed in the tomb and buried. And three days later John was the first man to see the empty tomb of the Lord Jesus Christ after his resurrection. From that point on John also saw Jesus appear alive and well after he had died, and then he saw Jesus ascend back into heaven. John then carried on Jesus’ legacy and ministry as a pastor and a preacher and a teacher and an author of the book that we’ll study tonight.

In so doing, all of the other disciples were murdered, except for John. He was – they sought to murder him, but he lived through it and he lived to be some 100 years of age. At this point in his life, he’s an older man. He’s served the Lord faithfully. He loves the Lord, and he has seen Christianity spread and flourish. Many churches get started. But now false teachers and false Christians have infiltrated the church. There’s a lot of confusion and infighting, and John is the elder statesman writing into those circumstances to clarify who is a Christian, who is not a Christian, who’s qualified to speak into the life of the church, and who is not.

And so the whole book of 1 John is about us knowing whether or not we’re Christians, and being able to know who the other Christians are, and who the counterfeits and fakes are that Satan has sent into the church in the same way that Satan sent Judas into the team of the disciples. And the book breaks down into three categories. I’m summarizing the whole thing for you. The first is that Jesus Christ is God. Okay? That’s the centerpiece of the whole book of 1 John. It’s actually the centerpiece of all of the books of the Bible, that Jesus Christ is the one true God. So it begins with this belief that Jesus is God and to be a Christian we must believe that. To have eternal life we must believe that. And then for those who do have Jesus as their God, there’s two consequences that are correlated to belief in Jesus. One is a hatred of sin, and the other is a love of people. Simply, if Jesus is your God, you will love what he loves and you will hate what he hates. You will hate sin and you will want your life to change, and you will want to live more like Jesus, and you will love people, and seek to lovingly serve them as Jesus did and does.

He told us, then, in 1 John 5:13 last week the purpose for the writing of the book. He says, “I write these things so that you may know that you have eternal life. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life.” I told you last week that the whole point of the book is to give us assurance that we have eternal life. For Christians to know that they have eternal life, and eternal life exists in two dimensions. One is it is a quality of life that exists in this life, and secondarily it is a duration of life that continues forever.

I told you last week my eternal life began in late 1989 when I met the Lord Jesus. My eternal life, my heaven, began then. My new life in Christ began. Some of you think, “Life is terrible. I just want to die and go to heaven so I can get on to varsity.” Well, heaven is varsity; I’m not going to deny that. It gets better. But heaven also begins right here because heaven isn’t just a place, it’s a person and his name is Jesus, and once you meet him your heaven begins. And so heaven, eternal life, is a quality of life that begins today and goes forever.

In this last section of 1 John, he’s going to give us three aspects of eternal life that are very, very important. One is that eternal life, that begins now and goes forever, it’s sourced in prayer, it leads to holy living, and it culminates in worship. So prayer, holiness, and worship are the results of eternal life given to us through Jesus. So these will be our themes, and I’ve set it all up for you. That’s the summation of the book at this point. We’ll start in chapter 5, verse 14. I’ll take a sip of water. We’ll get going.

He says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God.” The theme here is going to be prayer. “That if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.” First thing, one of the great benefits and blessings of being a Christian is the ability to pray. Now, lots of people pray, but they don’t know to whom they pray. As Christians, we know that pray to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. We know that because of Jesus, our prayers are going further than the ceiling, that they will actually make it into the presence of God because Jesus is the mediator between us and God, and our prayers can go to the Father.

Now some of you have a real misunderstanding of prayer, so I wanna, I wanna clear some of the misunderstandings of prayer. Some people think, “Well, I prayed and God didn’t do it. That means prayer doesn’t work.” Just ‘cause you ask something doesn’t mean you’re always gonna get it. When I was six, I asked my dad for a gun. Okay? My dad said no. It doesn’t mean that my inquiry failed. It just means he said no. And that’s how God is. You gotta look at it that we’re kids, God’s the Father, we go to the Father, we ask, he hears, but he doesn’t always say, “Yes.” Aren’t you glad you didn’t marry the first person you had a crush on, that you asked God? You remember your first crush. “God, please let me marry him!” Now you’re like, “Oh, thank you. The prayer did not work. Thank you.”

God’s, God’s like a good parent and sometimes when a child comes to a parent the answer is, “Yes.” Sometimes the answer is, “No.” Sometimes the answer is, “Later.” Like my daughter the other night, she’s seven, she says, “When do I get to go on a date?” “When you’re 43.” That’s later. That’s later. We’ll grant that request, much later. That’s – prayer is when we ask, and the promise here is that God hears. God hears all your prayers, friends. You can ask him about anything. You can talk to God, respectfully make inquiry of him about anything, and he hears. He answers, “Yes,” he answers, “No,” he answers, “Sometimes, later.”

Another problem that we have in prayer is that some people think that God is a pinata. Okay? Now what I mean by this, that if you want something, it’s up there. Hot wife, new car, a husband that has no unpleasant odors, if you would like something that there’s this big piñata up there called God and that prayer is a long stick. Okay? Now that’s some people’s view of prayer. And so you just wave the stick and eventually you whack God and out comes all the good things, right? Well, it doesn’t exactly work that way. God is a good God. Every good and perfect gift, James says, does come from God, but the problem with that view is it’s pagan. Paganism says that God’s up here, we’re down here and that God’s not going to be good to us unless we manipulate him. So we have to somehow arm wrestle with him. We need to pray, do incantations, spells, magic, whatever it is. We need to find a way to manipulate God to be good. The Bible doesn’t teach that God is capricious, that God is good, and we don’t need to manipulate God to do anything and we can’t make God do anything. Some people think, “Well, I told God what to do and he didn’t do it.” It’s ‘cause he’s God. And because he’s God he doesn’t take orders well. Right? It’s not like, “God, do that!” Or what? You’re gonna get out the wooden spoon? Like, well, you know, this is – we’re not in charge. We don’t tell God what to do. We humbly make requests and God does as he wills.

And some people take this verse, “If we ask anything he’ll give it to us. Woo hoo!” I’ve tried it. I’ve prayed, “Lord, make me tall and handsome.” The Bible says that Elijah was a righteous man and he prayed and if righteous men pray, we get our prayers. Didn’t work, man, as you can tell. It just didn’t work. The reason is – and I did pray that part when I was a little boy, and obviously it didn’t work – the point is that we don’t need to manipulate God in prayer. That God does hear prayer, that God does answer prayer. But that doesn’t always mean that we get exactly what we demanded. And sometimes God doesn’t give us what we ask for because he’s a good God and he knows it’s not the best thing for us.

The key in all of this, though, there’s the little phrase in here I’ll point out. “If we ask anything according to his” – duh! You’re all going, “Duh! I thought I was gonna get a hot wife.” Well, you may. You know, good for you. And maybe you’ll get an odor-free husband or a new car. Maybe God would do that for you, but the key in your prayer life is to pray according to who’s will?

Response: God’s

His. Now what many of us like to do is sin, and then, “God, fix it!” And that’s our prayer life. Right? That, well, we were not in his will. Right? “God, I know I’m not supposed to be sleeping with him and living with him, but he said he loves me and he plays guitar and I just couldn’t help myself, and – Save him! Make him Billy Graham’s assistant, please!” You know? No. That’s not his will. You’re not in his will. You’re out of his will. You can’t pray for God to come in and bless the sin. God’s will has to be lived in, not just something that we manipulate God to jump in and save the day when we keep self-destructing our own lives. So we got to pray according to his will.

Jesus taught us to pray this way: “Our Father, who art in heaven, holy, hallowed is your name, your kingdom come, your” –

Response: Will

“Will be done.” You know the line. “Duh! I didn’t want to hear that! I thought prayer is where I get my will done!” No. That’s where God’s will gets done. And so sometimes prayer is about us speaking to God and him responding, but oftentimes it’s about him speaking and us just listening. And sometimes prayer’s whole purpose is not to move the hand of God, but to change the heart of people. How many of you have prayed and found that God didn’t do anything but change you? And that disturbed – it was frustrating, because that wasn’t what you were looking for. Right? You say, like the Bible says, “Pray for your enemies.” Okay. “God, kill them. Amen.” And God says, “No, that’s not my will. I want to love ‘em and save ‘em. I want to make him a deacon.” Nah. “You sure that’s your will?” “Yeah, that’s my will.” Aw, man! “Do I gotta be nice?” “Yeah, you gotta be nice.” “Oh, man! Well who’s gonna lead ‘em to Christ?” “You are.” “Nah.” See, ‘cause what we want is we want our will to be done. “I’m king, sovereign and lord. Here’s my little throne. Ta da da da dah! God, now execute my plan!” God says, “No, no, no, no, no. I’m God. Off the throne. Now let’s talk about my will, read your Bible. Spend some time with me. Cultivate the relationship, you’ll know what my will is, and then when you pray you can pray in accordance with my will, not so that you’ll move my hand, but so that you won’t resist me and you’ll work my plan with me.” See, we have a perfunctory relationship with God where we want to use him to get our will. He wants a loving relationship with us where we are in harmony with him.

Prayer isn’t just about using God. Prayer is sometimes just about loving God and sharing his heart. He moves from prayer to talk about a specific kind of prayer, which I think really, in context, is particularly what he’s talking about here, and this is in the next verse. He talks about an intercessory form of prayer beginning in verse 16: “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin” – if a Christian does something bad, hypothetically – “that does not lead to death, he should pray to God and God will give him life.” Now, what he’s talking about here is that prayer life, for Christians, isn’t just about, “Great God, I have this huge list of things that I would like.” What he’s talking about is that when we are Christians our prayer life isn’t just selfish, where we pray for ourselves. It is also loving, and we pray for other people too. It’s intercession.

Now here’s what happens, hypothetically. Does anyone drive you crazy, other than me? Is anyone just annoy you, trouble you, bother you, disturb you, frustrate you, you should get in my seat. My seat’s so cool ‘cause I see the spouses look out of the corner of their eye at each other. Okay, yeah. That’s the person I’m talking about. See, what happens is people drive us crazy. People frustrate us. They don’t do what they say they’re gonna do. They do what they don’t say they’re gonna do. They disobey. The defy. They walk away from God. They ruin everything. They’re just nuts. They drive us crazy. And what happens is, sometimes we’ll talk to them and say, “You gotta stop this. This is wrong. This is out of God’s will. You’re just off track.” And sometimes that doesn’t work, so we have this proclivity to, to want to talk about it because we’re so frustrated. And what we do, then, is we talk to people about the person that we’re frustrated about. The Bible calls that gossip. So that’s not good.

So the question is well, what do you do with your frustration? Well, you don’t gossip. You intercede. If you have to talk about the person, talk to God. Okay? Get on your knees and intercede for that person. “God, I’ve said all I can say. I’ve done all I can do. I don’t know what else to do. So-and-so is not walking with you. It’s not looking good. Please, God, intervene, save them from themselves. Do the same kind of good thing for them that you’ve done for me.” Intercession is where people who drive us nuts are not an opportunity for us to join them in sin by sinning against them through gossip, anger, or bitterness. It’s a way of bringing God into the relationship so that it’s not just between us and them, but that God is involved and we trust God to work on the heart.

I’ll give you two examples. How many of you are wives? I’m gonna tell you a wife-trick. This is a secret wife weapon. Now, when we first got married my wife and I, upon occasion, would argue. This may shock you. I can be stubborn, and I have opinions, and I talk a lot, but I don’t listen well. Hence this job. And growing up, I wasn’t in a debate team or on a – I didn’t ever take a debate class in high school. For fun I joined a competition and won a college scholarship by winning a state debate. I didn’t even know what a debate was. But I was Irish and my genetic predisposition makes us particularly adept at this skill. I can argue anything with anyone, and the thing that I love about people is they get all emotional and you can spin ‘em like a top. I love that. And when they get a little emotional, they don’t make any sense. And that’s so funny, at least to me.

So I like to argue and spin ‘em and win and as they get all frazzled I get real clear and focused and chip away and just duh-duh-duh-duh. And I got ‘em dancing. It’s just so wonderful! Now, I tried this with my wife and – really, married – and I kept winning! But I never won anything. You know? You’re like, “Hey! I won the argument with my wife!” “What’d you get? Like a TV?” It’s not like a game show. You don’t get anything. There’s not a big victory. In fact, there’s time on the couch. It’s not a big victory. And so we would argue and I would always win and my wife finally pulled out the secret wife weapon. Rather than arguing with me when I get all angry and stubborn or mean, or bitter, she would go pray for me. She would get alone with God, she’d go into the other room, she’d get on her knees, “Lord Jesus, get him.” Okay? She’d pray this little sick-em prayer and God would just blast me. Okay? Some people think, “I need to fix that person. I need to change that person.” Well, you know what? Sometimes just sick God on them. This is my wife’s secret weapon. She – people ask her all the time, “How do you live with him? How do you do that?” and she’s like, “I pray, and God gets him.”

And you know what? The promise here is in the present tense. He answers this intercessory prayer. God gets involved if you ask him to get involved. Now, if you’re taking matters into your own hands, fighting your own wars, battling everybody, trying to fix everybody, trying to change everything, there’s no room for God. When you step out of the way, you say, “I’m gonna be over here and pray. God, you go get ‘em.” And this doesn’t mean you hate ‘em. This means you love ‘em. This doesn’t mean you’re angry or bitter, this means you just don’t know what to do and God’s the only one that has access to the human heart. God’s the only one that can change the human heart. So you just get out of the way and let God do his thing. That’s what he did to save you.

Second example, yesterday, my son, Calvin, he’s almost three, he’s like a photocopy of me. He’s just this little guy, and he’s a little stubborn. And he woke up yesterday just determined to break all Ten Commandments at breakfast, and it was just incredible. The kid – it was like someone took my kid and fashioned a demon that looked just like him, an exact replica, and just inserted that thing into my house. This kid got up, just eyes blazing, just, just hell-bent on death. His hair’s all crooked, he’s got snot coming out, and you just look at him. You’re like, “Hey, Calvin. How ya doin’?” He’s like, “Not so good.” You’re like, “It’s gonna be one of those days with my kid.”

So my kid comes down and he’s just whacking everybody, just chucking stuff, screaming, yelling, fighting, going crazy, we keep disciplining him. Nothing works. Nothing. Finally, he looks at me, he’s like, “Don’t tell me what to do!” I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” I got this kid by a lot of pounds. He’s not even afraid of me. I can’t intimidate him. So I got – aha! I was meditating on this verse – I’m gonna get him! So I thought, “Okay. I’m gonna pray for him. I’m gonna intercede. I’m gonna do this New Testament thing.” So I said, “Hey, Calvin, come here. Daddy loves you. Let me hold you.” “No, don’t hold me!” He’s freaking out. He’s like a perch on a dock, he’s just flopping all over. He doesn’t want me to touch him. So I hold him. I said, “Well, should we talk to Jesus?” “Noooooo! Not Jesus! Nooooo!” He’s just freaking out, just flipped his mind because he doesn’t want Jesus in on this. He knows what Jesus is gonna say. And he’s not real pliable at this moment, so I say, “Well, let’s talk to Jesus. Let’s see what Jesus wants for you. Let’s see what Jesus says.” He’s just freaking out. So I hold him against his will, and I got snot all over me and he’s spitting and yelling and I got him – finally I got him in like a full-nelson just to pray for the kid, and I’m sitting there with him, “Jesus, this is my son and he’s having some trouble, and I pray for him. Give him love, help him out, God, I don’t know what to do. He’s really frustrated about something.” And for the rest of the day, he’s this really sweet kid. Really nice kid. At the end of the day, last night, we go to have our Bible time, we call it “Young Theologian Time,” and we’re doing our little theology thing and I look at Calvin, he’s snuggling up with me, and I said, “Buddy, you were good today.” He said, “Yeah. God answered our prayer.” I said, “Yeah, he did answer our prayer.”

And so my point is simply this. Sometimes you reach a point with somebody and you just go, “Man, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.” Well don’t gossip about them. Don’t yell at them. Intercede for them. That’s a great benefit of the believer. ‘Cause everybody else is on their own. If you don’t know Jesus, you gotta fix it. If you know Jesus, you can call for help, and he will intercede.

How many of you have seen God answer prayer, change people’s hearts, work things out? Okay, if you’re here and you’re not a Christian and you’ve never prayed like this before, just look at the hands that go up in the air and say, “You know what? I’m gonna give it a shot.” One of the great benefits of the Christian life is prayer. It’s one of the effects of eternal life. Eternal life is a life where we don’t have to fix everything. We don’t need to know everything. We don’t need to do everything. God is involved and God is a good God and God loves us and God knows and God cares, and if we request of God he hears and he answers and he involves himself. That’s one of the great blessings of eternal life that begins today.

The second is holy living. And he moves on, in verse 17. Ha-ha. Oh, boy, here we go. This is, actually, this is – ah – this is – see, I was going to talk about holy living, which is the next section. This is the last half of prayer. I guess, unconsciously, I was trying to skip it, ‘cause this is the hardest part of the whole book. He says, “Intercede for people in prayer.” And then he says this. Okay, I’ve told you 1 John has Scooby-Doo verses. The Scooby-Doo verses are the scary ones. Whoooo. This is a Scooby-Doo verse. “I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death.” People we’re gonna intercede and pray for. “There is a sin that leads to death. I’m not saying that he should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.” So here’s the point. He says, “If somebody’s driving you nuts, pray for them. Intercede. Pray and intercede for everybody except for the people committing the sin that leads to death.”

Okay? Now it seems like we should know what that is because that seems important. That’s like me telling you, “All the roads are fine except for the one with the landmines.” You’d be like, “Well, which one is that?” “Oh, you’ll find out.”

Okay. You know, yeah-yeah-yeah. What is the sin that leads to death? That’s the great question. Theologians have debated this. Apparently it was an ancient colloquialism. The early church knew what it meant and now we don’t know what it means. So you say, “I know!” No, you don’t. You don’t know.

Okay, so here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna give you the various interpretations. Now, here’s the secret. When a pastor’s in trouble, he uses big words. Okay? So we’ll call this four exegetical options. There you go. And then, when a pastor’s in real trouble, he uses Latin. And when he’s in way over his head, he’ll use Greek words, and he’ll talk fast so that you’ll think he’s smart and just say, “Well, I don’t know, but he does and I trust him and whatever.” So, that’s what we’re gonna do now.

So there’s for exegetical options, okay? The first, some people think that the sin that leads to death is this: really bad sins, which is like really wet water. See, the Catholics will teach you there’s mortal and venial sins. And mortal sins are really, really, really bad sins, like being a terrorist or in boy band. Okay? Something that just disrupts the harmony of the whole planet. And that venial sins are bad sins, but not really, really, really bad sins. Like being a wrestling fan, or a NASCAR fan. It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as being in a boy band. Now this doesn’t make any sense, ‘cause you told us in 1 John 3 that all sin is wrongdoing and lawlessness and breaking of the law, and there’s nothing in the Bible that says, “Well here’s the good sins and here’s the bad sins.” All the sins are bad. So that doesn’t make any sense, the really bad sins. No. That doesn’t make any sense.

Second option, exegetical option if you’re a pastor who’s in over his head. Second option is – right here in my notes – some say it’s apostasy, that somebody was a Christian but they had reversible jersey and then they denied Jesus and they flipped the shirt over and Satan. For those of you that come back, this happens every week. For those of you who don’t, this happens every week. They flip the jersey over, they become a non-Christian. They say, “That’s it. I’m done.” But there’s some problems with this. First problem is he told us in 1 John 2:19 that those who are in the church that deny Jesus and deny orthodox doctrine and leave the church never to come back to Christ, they were never Christians in the first place. Second problem, he says in 1 John 3, “The Christian cannot habitually practice sin.” That they don’t live in sin. So they can’t practice it to the point where they become an unbeliever, and third, in 1 John 5:13 he told us that we have eternal life. Now eternal life would be a real bummer if it went for, like, four months. That’s like, “I got a car with an extended warrantee, ‘til tomorrow.” It’s like, “Well, that’s not very extended.” Eternal life should go at least a while, right? Are you with me on this? Otherwise, God’s like Lucy in the Peanuts episode and you go to kick the ball and whoop! Ha-ha! No. You go to Hell now. It’s like no, that’s not fair, that’s not eternal life. It’s not like God is gonna remove his kindness and you’re gonna fall on your face and then you die and go to Hell. That’s inconsistent. Jesus says no one can snatch us from God’s hand. Okay? Salvation doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to the Lord, Jonah 2 says. And we are in God’s hand. We don’t lose our salvation; it would take God to lose us. And it says in Romans 8 that “Nothing shall separate us from the love of God and he who began a good work will see it through to completion.” What that means is that if you’re a Christian you don’t get a reversible jersey. You’re just on team with God.

So the last two exegetical options that are perhaps the most likely is the unpardonable sin, or blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which is unbelief. Matthew 12:31 and 32, Jesus says, “I can forgive any sin. There’s only one sin I can’t forgive. That’s the sin of, of unbelief. It’s the sin of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit,” which is if you learn about Jesus and you see the works of Jesus, you hear the words of Jesus, you know all about Jesus, and you look at him and you say, “You know what? He’s not God. He’s Satan. He does all his powerful work by Satan.” What Jesus is saying is this: he can forgive every sin for those who believe and repent, but he can’t forgive anyone who has unbelief and unrepentance. Basically a non-Christian. Maybe that’s it.

The fourth one – and this may be the best, because I think any time we get confused with what John’s teaching, we need to go back to what Jesus taught, ‘cause that’s where he picked it up, and in John 17:9, in his high priestly prayer, the Lord Jesus says, “Father, I’m praying for those who believe” – that includes us – and he says, “But I’m not praying for the world.” So Jesus made a distinction. Praying for believers, those who would become believers, and those who never would. God makes the same distinction in Jeremiah 7 and 14 where he says to pray for the believers, but not for those who have rejected God. And this may not be just spiritual death, this may just be physical death, like Ananias and Sapphira died in Acts 5 ‘cause they withhold part of their tithe. 1 Corinthians 5, a man was told to be handed over to Satan so that his body might be destroyed, and his soul might be saved. 1 Corinthians 11, the Corinthians were mis-partaking of communion by having sin, and so some of them died.

I’ll give you my shot at it. I’ll give you my shot at it. I believe that sin that leads to death is simply this: You and I love people. If we’re Christians, the Bible just says we simply do. Because of our love for people, we want the best for people. I want everybody to know Jesus, love Jesus, have their sin forgiven, read their Bible, pray, live an eternal life. If they should get married, I want them to be happily married and a Christian marriage. If they have children, I want those children to grow up in a Christian home. I want their life to be filled with good people and good things. That’s what I want.

The hard part is that’s not what everybody wants. So for those people that you and I care about – and this is the most excruciatingly painful part of my job, and I know the elders would concur with me on this – is when there are people that you love that you wish good for, and that those people don’t love God and they don’t want good. They’re just determined to continually believe lies. They’re determined to continually commit sin. And they are unwilling to even consider the option of Jesus. They’re unwilling to give an audience to anyone who would come on his behalf. This is just heartbreaking for a pastor. What this does for all of us – some of you have family, friends, co-workers, people you really love. People that right now you’re really worried about. You see what they’re doing, they’re life is just going toward death. Sin leads to death. They’re killing themselves. They’re killing their marriage. They’re killing their friendships. They’re killing their family. They’re killing their kids. They’re killing their careers. They’re killing their opportunities. They’re killing their education. Everything they’re in, they touch, just goes to death. And you see this self-destructive nature of their life and what they’re doing to themselves and maybe you go to them and you speak to them and you say, “You know, it doesn’t have to be this way. Jesus is alive and well. He forgives people and he loves them and he transforms them and there’s another way.” And they won’t have anything to do with it. And so maybe for a long haul you intercede for them, “God, please save them. Please change their heart. Please intervene. Please.” I do believe, however, there comes a point where you just let them go. And I believe that’s what he’s talking about.

This is a very hard place. I believe John knew this place because he knew the will of God. One of the hardest things for me as a pastor has been for people that I dearly love, greatly care about, and deeply concerned for, the people that I stay up late at night praying for, the people that are on my heart and mind all the time, that what I want for them is not what they want for themselves. And it reaches a point where there’s nothing I can do. I’ve said all I can say. I’ve done all I can do. I’ve shed my tears. I’ve said my words. I’ve given myself and they don’t care.

Okay, you don’t need to raise your hand, but how many of you have experienced this? With friends and family, people you love. People that are just destroying their life and destroying the lives of other people that are connected to them. And you know exactly what they need to do. You know exactly what they need to be. You know exactly what God intends, and what God could accomplish. And they’re hard-hearted and their resistant, and they’re rebellious, and they’re stubborn, and they’re foolish, and they’re just Hell-bent on destruction. I believe what he’s saying is with such people, you pray, you love, you intercede, you speak, you try, and then at some point you just let go. You let go.

I believe this is important for a few reasons. One, if you don’t, you will take it personally. It is really not between you and them; it is between them and God. But as long as you insert yourself between them and God, you will start to take it personally, like they are rejecting you. They’re ignoring you. They’re disobeying you. The truth is, they are rejecting, disobeying, and ignoring God. Part of this, as well, is some of you just need to protect yourself emotionally. Some of you can’t handle it. Some of you lose sleep. Some of you are seeing the condition of your overall health or physical health, the overall condition of your life start to slip and to disintegrate because you are so worried about someone who doesn’t care about themselves. At some point we need to get ourself out of the middle and stop telling God what to do. Stop saying, “God, do this. God, do that. God, do this. God, do that. God, I prayed. God, I sang. God, I tithed. God, I pleaded. God, I fasted. God, I’m trying to move your hand. God, please do this.” We need to just back up and pray Jesus’ prayer. “Your will be done.” And say no more. Just leave it there.

Here’s the cold, hard, reality. Not everyone you know is going to heaven. Not everyone you love will love God. Not everyone that you care about will change. Not everyone that you want to fix will be straightened out.

I don’t think I learned this until about a year ago. And emotionally, I would just bleed out all the time, thinking that I had to save and fix everyone. And then it dawned on me that I’m not God; that I can’t change a heart; that I can’t save a person; that I can’t forgive a sin; that I can’t transform a life; that I can love people and point to Jesus; and I can walk with him and show the benefits in hopes that others would seek to walk with him, too, but I can’t save or change anyone. And I believe that’s what he’s talking about. Pray. Intercede. Speak your piece. Do all you can. But when you hit the point where someone is just going to do what they’re going to do, then let them go, just as Jesus told Judas, what you’re going to do, go do it. It doesn’t mean that it’s right. It doesn’t mean that you condone it. It doesn’t mean that you bless it. It doesn’t mean that you support it. It just means that you’re not God and you can’t stop it. So you let ‘em go.

Now in this, this isn’t a fatalism, and this isn’t a hatred, and this isn’t giving up. Okay? This is a declaration to God, “God, it’s out of my hands.” And some of you are so worried to let certain people and certain things out of your hands because you fear what might happen to them, and my good encouragement to you is this: Just because it’s out of your hands or my hands does not mean it’s out of the hand of God. That as we pull our hands back, we leave room for God to work. We let God’s will be done. And we see what God will do. He will save some, not all. He will change some, not all. Some people don’t want God. They don’t want heaven. They don’t want Jesus. They don’t want worship. They don’t want holiness. They don’t want prayer. They don’t want Bible. If that’s not what they want, then we need to accept that and still love them. And our heart’s desire can be that they would change, but ultimately that’s between them and God.

What had happened in this church is that false Christians and false teachers had climbed into the church. They had taught that Jesus wasn’t God and that sin was okay. That was the gist of their instruction. They had shredded the church, confused a large number of people. This church had had many meetings, many conversations. It had tried many times to work with these people, to encourage them, to instruct them, to correct them, and these people just grew increasingly more defiant. “Jesus is not God and sin is good, and that’s our mission. That’s what we believe. That’s what we’re committed to. That’s what we will die for. We’re going to encourage everyone else to live this way. We’re gonna encourage everyone else to believe this way.” And the leaders in the church said, “We love you, but you’re only welcome here if you’re not going to destroy the faith of everyone else. And so you need to repent of your wicked ways and your wicked doctrines, or you need to leave.” And these people left. 1 John 2:19 says they were never Christians.

And now the Christians are back in the church and they’re sitting there thinking, “Well, what do we do now? Weeks, months, years, we prayed for these people. We’ve loved them. We’ve interceded. We’ve brought them before God. We’ve asked God to fix all this. What do we do now?” And what John is saying is this: Let them go. Leave it in God’s hands. Move on with your life. Read your Bible, pray, draw near to the Lord, be a Christian, walk with God faithfully. Some of you, you have refused to walk forward with God because you didn’t want to walk alone. You wanted someone else to be with you and you’ve been waiting for so long. But it’s just the time where you need to just move on.

I know many wives who say, “My husband doesn’t walk with the Lord and I, I’m just waiting for him.” Well, if you know the Lord, then walk. Don’t leave him, don’t hate him, don’t despise him, but leave it between him and God and you read your Bible and pray and walk with God. Some of you are waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and it’s killing your own life. You need to love them. You need to let them go. You need to put them in the hands of God and you need to move on with God yourself.

Some people will die from their sin; some people will die in their sin; and I believe that is the sin that leads to death. Emotionally this is ultimately an act of faith. God, your will be done.

The blessing of this in the Christian life and prayer is this: That we can intercede, and when it’s out of our hands, we can let it go. The second blessing of the Christian life is a life of holiness. This next section is very, very important, beginning in verse 18. He says, “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin.” This is habitual, ongoing practice. His point is simply this: That a Christian and sin may meet, but never marry. “The one who was born of God” – that’s Jesus – “keeps him safe and the evil one” – that’s Satan – “can do him no harm.”

This next verse I will unpack as a word picture for you. I don’t claim to be a Greek scholar but, but all the work I’ve done, this is a very, very, very terrifying word picture I want you to ruminate on with me for a season. “We know that we are the children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” Here’s the word picture. Okay, I want you to pay close attention to this. Here’s how Satan works. One of the great benefits to being a Christian is knowing how your enemy works so you can protect yourself against him and live in holiness instead of sin, and taste life and not death.

Here’s how Satan works, friends. Here’s the word picture in the Greek New Testament. Now I’ll expand and embellish it a little bit, but bear with me. Give me some liberty. The picture is that Satan sits down, like a pedophile. Do you know how a sexual predator works with a small child? This is my greatest fear, by the way. Dying – I’m not really afraid of. What I’m most afraid of is that a predator gains the trust of my children. Parents, is this your greatest fear? That a predator would gain the trust of your child, to seduce them into a trusting relationship so that they could abuse them, harm them, and kill them. Every parent here, is that your greatest fear? That’s my greatest fear. That’s my greatest fear. My greatest fear is that, is that someone would abuse my child. I have two sons, two daughters, I adore my kids. The word picture here is that you and I are like kids and Satan is a sexual – I won’t just say sexual, I’ll say predator – he’s a predator. That what Satan does is what every predator does. What every predator does is he puts out all the things that kids like so they will come over to his house. And slowly, he gives them exactly what they want: ice cream, lollipop, action figure, doesn’t matter. He’ll give them whatever they want so that they trust him. As soon as they trust him, then he begins to slowly work them into a relationship for abuse. In time, the predator sits down. And the child sits on the lap of the predator. And the predator strokes the child’s hair, and the child feels safe and calm and secure, and they fall asleep. And then the predator does unspeakable things to the child, ultimately with the intention of harming them and killing them.

That’s how a predator works. Usually these predators are possessed. And the reason they’re possessed is they’re just working with the same means of attack that Satan himself uses. You need to know this. We all think we’re bigger and smarter and better than we are. We’re nothing but silly little kids. If you want sex, if you want money, if you want fame, if you want power, if you want knowledge, if you want control, I tell you what. Satan will be happy to give that to you. If you want to sin, he’ll give it. Smile at you. His whole goal is to draw you near so that you’ll trust him. Some of you actually believe that he is good, and you believe that God is not. You believe that God is trying to keep you from good sex and good fun and good money and getting high and having fame and being powerful and having attention. And you have this view of Satan as good, and God is bad. And that Satan gives you what you want, and that God tells you, “No.” Satan’s whole goal, friends, is this: to get us silly little kids to take his gifts so that he can earn our trust, so that we will climb upon his lap, so that we will fall asleep feeling we are safe and secure and protected, so that he can do with us exactly what he pleases.

That’s the picture where it says that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. The picture is that the whole world is asleep in the lap of Satan. That the whole world is asleep in the lap of the enemy. There is no fighting. There is no kicking. There is no defending. There is no recognition. Just peaceful, calm, sleep. Can you think of anything more terrifying? This is one of the most terrifying word pictures I’ve ever seen. The whole world has taken his presents, come to his house, sat on his lap, and sleeps in his arms.

When God says, “Sin is bad,” like foolish little kids, they argue and go, “You’re just mean. You don’t give us what we want. He gives us what we want. He really loves us.” Friends, he will give you anything so that he can abuse you. That’s what a predator does.

This just kills me because some of you love your sin. I mean, you love it. You just – you may even say, “I’m a Christian,” but the truth is that there’s something you want that God won’t give you, and you go get it and you’re not knowing who’s giving it. Don’t think that you yourself are providing the means for your own sin, and don’t think that God is providing the means for your sin. It’s coming from your enemy. And don’t just look at the goodie, look at the hook. All your sin is just bait to get a hook in your mouth so that he can reel you in. That’s all that it is. It just kills me, because when I see people run towards sin, they don’t understand that they’re fleeing from their Father to their enemy. That his whole plan is to give them what they want, for them to trust him and sleep in his arms so that he can abuse them and kill them. You need to know this about your sin. You need to know this about your enemy. You need to take this to heart. I see people take his gifts all the time, and eventually they just fall asleep thinking that their life is glorious. They don’t resist, or fight, or see anything.

The hero in all of this is the Lord Jesus, and he shows up in the next verse. “We know also that the Son of God” – that’s the Lord Jesus – “has come.” Here’s why he came. “He has given us understanding.” Okay, the picture is this. We’re asleep in the arms of our enemy, and just as he’s about to abuse and defile and kill us, the Lord Jesus shows up and he wakes us up. And we have understanding. We look up and we see the face of the enemy and we realize that grin is gone. And we see him for who he is, and we see his plan for what it was, and we see that sin does lead to death. He gives us understanding. The world sleeps in the arms of Satan. The Christian wakes up, eyes wide open, able to understand exactly the scenario they have been lured into.

Furthermore, he goes on to say, “He has given us understanding so that we many know him who is true. And we are in him who is true – even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” I want to camp on this real quick. “He is the true God.” Do you see that? Jesus Christ, he is the true God. Some people say, “Well, the concept of Jesus being God was a myth that accrued like a legend, fable, or folklore hundreds of years after the time of the writing of the New Testament. It’s never said in the Bible.” It is. Jesus Christ, he is the true God and eternal life. The Bible’s very clear that Jesus is God.

Here’s the picture, friends. God is a Father. God is a glorious Father. The more I read the Bible, the more I cry and the more I realize the kind of Dad we have. That’s why I get so frustrated when people say things like, “Don’t use the word ‘Father’ for God. It’s offensive.” Well, it’s offensive to God if we don’t. We have a great heavenly Father who loves us, and we, like silly little kids, have all sinned and just run away from home. And the first place we go is to the predator’s house because he’s got bikes, he’s got video games, he’s got ice cream and cookies. He’ll give the kids everything they want, definitely what their Father told them, “No.” He says, “Well, I love you. I’ll give you whatever you want. No discipline here. No correction here. No instruction here. I just give you whatever you want.” We say, “Oh, great! I love it here! I love it here so much! You’ll be my new dad!” “Well, here you go. Just climb up in my lap, let me brush your hair, just fall asleep. You can trust me.” And the whole world has done that.

And the Lord Jesus Christ gets off his throne and he comes into human history. and he shows up and he wakes up the children of God. and he takes them by the hand. and he runs them back to the Father. And he saves them from themselves. This is eternal life. It’s in Jesus Christ. Every life, apart from Jesus Christ, is just eternal death, sleeping in the arms of the enemy. As a foolish little kid who thinks that they’ve finally made it ‘cause they got everything they ever wanted. All the things they prayed about and God never gave them, all the things they told their dad, “I need this,” and the Father said, “No.” Well, the predator will provide. And then he will kill you, after he has defiled you. And like silly little kids, we just lay there, asleep. But praise be to God for the Lord Jesus Christ, who comes and wakes up the children of God. Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ who grabs the hand of the children and runs them at breakneck speed back home to the Father. And praise be to the Father, who embraces the children, who forgives them of their folly, who loves them, and who says, “My will be done, which is not for you to live in the arms of the enemy. My will is to save you from yourself. My goal is to forgive you of your sin. My goal is to love you in spite of your condition.” Friends, this is so important, because so many of you, you’re just, “Well, I’m just getting high. I’m just getting laid. I’m just having fun. I’m young. I’m single.” I’ll tell you where you heard that. It wasn’t from your Father. It was from your enemy. And he’ll tell you any damn fool thing that works to get you over to his house. He’ll even tell you that he loves you. He’ll even tell you that you love sin, and you love darkness, and you love death.

And what’s at stake here is eternal life. What is at stake is eternal life. Do you belong to the Father? Have you been running with the Son? Or have you been sleeping in the arms of the enemy? And is today the day where you wake up? And you get understanding, and you see that a trap has been set, and that not only have you tasted the goodie, but the hook has affixed itself into your mouth, and you’re being reeled in to death. And do you repent of sin, and give it to the Lord Jesus, and receive his life, and take his hand, and run at breakneck speed right to the Father? The gifts of eternal life are the ability to pray and have God on our side – or, I should say, for us to be on God’s side. A life of holiness where we wake up and see sin. And the picture here is that Satan may put out a temptation. Here’s a sin, and the child of God goes, “That looks good. Wait a minute. That’s not from my Dad. I don’t take things from strangers.” And the third thing is it’s a life of worship.

He closes with this in verse 21, “Dear children” – we’re the children of God. The Lord Jesus has grabbed our hand, taken us to the Father, now we’re the children of God. Meditate on that for the rest of your life. I’m a child of God. I’m a child of God. “Dear children” – here’s something that’s incumbent upon us, morally responsible adults – “keep yourselves from idols.”

I’m going to close with a word on idolatry. The book ends here. When it comes to idolatry insomuch as we know, we’re all idolaters at one point or another. Idolatry is this: worshipping anything other than God, worshipping God as anything less than he’s revealed himself to be, worshipping God plus any other thing or god, or worshipping God in a way that the Bible forbids. See, idolatry is worship that includes the wrong God or the wrong way. That’s why, as Christians, we don’t take our cues on worshipping God from other religions. People who are sleeping in the arms of the enemy do not tell the children how to have a relationship with their Father. When we want to know how to have a relationship with our Father, we read the Book. We read the scriptures. We see what the Father says. Just like with my kids. What I don’t look at my kids and say is, “If you want a relationship with me, go talk to a bunch of kids who don’t have a dad, that I’ve never met, and ask them.” What I say is, “If you’d like a relationship with me, talk to me, ‘cause I love you and I’m your dad. So I’ll communicate with you and I’ll tell you exactly how this relationship is gonna work.” That’s the Bible. The Bible is the way that the Father speaks to the kids to explain the relationship. That’s what it is.

So when we worship God, we worship God according to scripture. This is so important. And we worship the God of scripture. Now some of you, when you hear the word, “idol” you think of primitive nations and peoples that just carve a god out of wood or stone. Friends, we carve gods out of philosophy, religion, and science. We have our own imaginations that devise our own false gods. They make them with their hands; we make ours with our minds. It’s no different.

I remember thinking as a little kid how silly it was. I went to my Hindu – I can’t remember if it was a Hindu or a Buddhist’s friend’s house, but his family had an alter to their household god in the middle of their living room, and all the chairs were fixed around it and there was a little candle in it and they all gave money and good gifts to their little household god. And I remember walking home thinking, “That is so funny and so silly.” I was a little boy. And I remember walking into my house and seeing all the chairs lined up around the big television with cable, thinking, “Hey. We got one of those, too.” We all sit here and we devote endless hours to the god and it’s illuminated, and we give money to it and homage to it, and sometimes we stand up and cheer when our team scores, and we worship. And sometimes we don’t talk to each other because we’re having private, devotional time with the Lord. “Honey, don’t talk to me now. The game’s on.” What that means is the Lord is communicating to me and I need to sit here and meditate. Don’t interrupt. The Lord is working in my life.

Friends, we have idols everywhere. The reason we don’t see our idols is because they’re our idols. I have a friend in Visakhapatnam in East India. He’s a good friend of mine. His – if you go there, there’s huts with dead chickens, and there’s witch doctors and sorcery and demons and it’s crazy, and his wife told me she won’t come to America because she can’t stand the idolatry. Friends, we do this. You ever go to a concert, see people stand in line for days, give large chunks of their money, take time off of work to go in. They dress like the artist. They sound like the artist. They have the look and haircut and style of the artist. They sing every song. They raise their hands, and that is their god and they’re imitating him.

We do this at sporting events. We wear the jersey, the hat, the paraphernalia, we want to be just like our heroes. Next time you’re at the grocery store, look at the magazines. Those are the false gods. Entertainment, sex, money, family, fitness, cars, stereos, stuff. I’m not saying it’s a sin to have a sports team. I’m not saying it’s a sin to go to a concert. I’m not saying it’s a sin to buy a t-shirt. What I am saying is this: You better get straight who your god is. That you and I all worship – Peter Kreeft, a great philosopher, says that the opposite of Christianity is not atheism. It’s idolatry. That we all worship, we put our money somewhere. We put our time somewhere. We put our heart somewhere. It doesn’t just go out in a vacuum. And whatever we give ourselves to, that is our God. This can be a relationship, a hobby, an experience, a job. This can be any one of a number of things. But our god is that thing that we’re willing to sacrifice all else for. And so we worship that. We give worth to that. That’s what worship means, to ascribe worth to something.

The Bible says in Romans 1 that we worship either the Creator or the creation, things that were made, or the maker of those things. It goes on in Romans 1 to talk about that the result of idolatry is always sexual sin. Why? Because the human body is the most glorious and beautiful part of God’s creation. That’s why people worship sex. They worship perversion. They worship all kids of sexual immorality. Why? Because we worship. We’re a passionate people with money in our pocket and time on our hands and it has to go somewhere. And if you don’t know the Lord Jesus, it will just get you into the house of the enemy, sitting on his lap, him giving you what you want, you becoming an idolater, falling asleep in his arms, and dying to wake up with him in hell. That is the plan.

And so, dear friends, keep yourselves from idols. Idols. I’ll let you in on a little secret with this. There’s only one way to keep yourself from idolatry. It’s to worship God. Your money has to go somewhere. Your energy has to go somewhere. Your time has to go somewhere. Your life has to go somewhere. In a previous verse he told us that Jesus Christ is the one true God. We worship him, not idols. It all comes down to Jesus. If your time is going to Jesus, you won’t have time for an idol. If your money’s going to Jesus, you won’t have money for sin. If your heart is inclined towards Jesus, you will not have passion and energy to go over into sin and idolatry. Your goal is not to stop sinning. Your goal is to start worshipping. Do you know the difference? If you stop sinning, you will, you will get rid of this idol, and then you will pick up another idol. So you will stop drinking and start being arrogant. You will stop being a pervert and you’ll work 100 hours a week at the job. Your goal is not to stop sinning. Your goal is to start worshipping. Your goal is not just to avoid idolatry, but to pursue the Lord Jesus. And if you are pursuing him in worship, you will keep yourself from idols. It is really hard to read the Bible, sing a praise song, and write a tithe check while committing idolatry. It’s just really hard, because your heart, your mind, your time, and your wallet are all preoccupied with something that’s good.

The reason why we tell you at this church to give your money, to give your time, to give your heart, to give your sin, to give your life, is for this reason. We’re trying to help keep you from idolatry. That’s why God asks for first fruits of time, first fruits of money, first fruits of life, because if we give first, then that means we have to be careful with all that is left so that we’re gonna live a decent life. We don’t have anything left to waste on silly little gods that don’t bless. Every point, every point we hit this place in the service, I call you to worship, because you have to respond. You have to respond in worship, otherwise you will be an idolater. You worship yourself, you worship someone else, you worship sex, or power, or fame, or money, or glory. I’ll tell you what. It’s not – it’s not a sin to have sex. If you’re married, enjoy yourself. It’s not a sin to make money. If God should bless you, praise be to God. It’s not a sin to have power. If God should make you powerful, then praise be to God. It’s not a sin to be successful. If God should make you successful, praise be to God. But don’t worship an idol to get there. Worship the Lord Jesus. Devote your life to him. Send your time, talent, treasure, in his direction. Have everything in congruence with him, and then whatever he should give you say, “Thank you, God. Your will be done.” And you receive God’s will for your life, living as a child of God who loves the Lord and receives whatever he should give. And if he won’t give it, then don’t run around chasing idols and going over to Satan’s house asking him to give you what your Father said no to. Accept God’s will. Accept the good, pleasing, and perfect will of the Father.

And so here’s how you’re gonna keep yourself from idolatry. Some of you are non-Christians. You’re gonna give Jesus tonight your sin. You’re gonna wake up. You’re gonna realize that a huge trap has been set for you that leads to death. And you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna realize that Jesus’ death and resurrection is to take away your sin. If you give him your sin he will give you his righteousness. You should take that deal.

Some of you have been playing with the enemy. Some of you have been taking his gifts and his temptations and his idols. Tonight you need to repent to God and you need to give them back. And you need to take the hand of Jesus; you need to run to your Father. Some of you should be greatly encouraged. You realize what God has saved you from. How many of you, tonight, in hearing this go, “Man, I remember waking up and looking the enemy right in the face and realizing exactly what he was gonna do to me, and thank God for Jesus Christ. He grabbed my hand and I’m not there anymore.” Some of you are gonna be joyous. Some of you are ex-perverts, ex-alcoholics, ex-drug addicts because Jesus grabbed your hand and brought you home. And you’re not sleeping anymore; you’re wide awake. You’re not dying; you’re living.

We’re gonna call you to respond. Give God your sin. Give him your life. Give him your money. If you wanna know where your God is, just balance your checkbook. Where your treasure is, there your heart is. Look at your day planner. Where does your time go? Look at your life and see if you’re a worshipper or an idolater; if you are sacrificing for the cause of Christ, or if you are consuming for the cause of self. We’re gonna call you to communion, which is remembering Jesus’ body and blood shed for our sin. He is the one true God. If you’re a Christian, partake of communion. If you’re not, we love you, but consider the Lord Jesus. Give of your tithes and offerings. Give of your sin. Give of your prayer. And we’re gonna close our service today with singing and celebration and thanksgiving and worship. And we’re gonna leave here to go live lives of worship, and we’re gonna ask God to keep us from idols.

I love you guys. I hope you’ve enjoyed 1 John. I’ll see you next week for Genesis. I’ll pray.

Father God, we love you. God, you are a great God. God, I am convinced that you are better than I ever thought you were. God, I’m convinced that you’re better than all of us combined ever thought you were. God, I am convinced that we are worse than we ever thought we were, and that our enemy is indeed more despicable then we had even imagined.

Father God, I pray against the enemy and his servants and their works and effects in the lives of these people. I intercede for them now, Lord Jesus. I ask that you would wake up those who slumber. Wake up those who embrace sin, thinking that Satan is a wonderful provider who gives them what they want. God, please wake them up to know that what he gives them is death and lies and destruction. And that you, as a loving Father, discipline the children you love, not to crush them, but to correct them, to keep them out of harm’s way. That you give us what we need, not what we want because you are a great and glorious Father who adores his children.

Lord Jesus, thank you for coming and waking us up. Thank you for grabbing our hand. Thank you for being the one true God. Thank you for running us head-long into the arms of the Father. May we find ourselves eternally in his presence as his people alone. God, it is my prayer that you would enable us to experience this eternal life individually and corporately, that we would know the benefits of prayer and trusting you that even when things and people are out of our hands, they’re not out of control, that your sovereign hand of providence is also involved and we can sleep well knowing that you are a good God and in the end your will will be done.

God, we ask that we would experience this life of holiness, now and forever more. That if we should be tempted by the enemy, that we would see his scheming attempts to get us to lay asleep in slumber and trust upon his lap so that he could devour us; and might we run like children in terror back to the arms of our Dad.

And God, I pray for us all that you would keep us from idolatry, that you would keep us from idolatry by teaching us to worship with our time, and our talent, and our treasure, and our words, and our songs, in our life. That who we are, and what we do, and what we say, and what we have would not be directed toward false gods, but the one true God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and that our whole life would be lived in honor to him and in joy to us. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.