Basic Training -- How You Know, Know -- 1 John 2:1-6

So bow with me. Lord, your love for us abounds, and we are grateful for your presence in our lives and in this place today. We are overwhelmed by your love, your grace, and your mercy, and we thank you for caring for us and providing for us in ways that are obvious and in so many ways that we don't even recognize.

Lord, we thank you for meeting our needs, for comforting our souls, and for healing our wounds, both physical and emotional. Thank you for sustaining us through the pandemic and praise you, Lord, for giving us hope that it will end soon. Your compassion and care for us is deep, but we have fallen short of your glory. We have chosen our own ways over yours, and we haven't kept your commandments, and we haven't relished your word.

In spite of this, we ask that you would know our hearts, know our troubles, and that you would provide for us in ways unimaginable. We are your children, so immature and so needy. Praise to you for sending Jesus Christ as our advocate for his life and also for his death that won our salvation. Lord, our hope is in you.

And now let's pray as our Father has taught us.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

It is good to see all of you here and I have a couple of reminders for you before we turn to God's word. We are wearing masks inside for the next couple of weeks because when the governor proclamation came and the CDC's proclamation came, we had very little change over adjustment time. Starting July 4 that Sunday, we will be masks optional indoors. If you want to wear a mask, you're welcome to do so. If you're vaccinated, you don't need to do so. If you're working with kids in our children's wing, we do ask that you would wear a mask during that.

We also have needs for more volunteers for our children's ministry as we're beginning to restore that. We're offering classes now for up to toddlers and preschool. We hope to begin offering elementary school classes in the fall. We need your help in making sure we can do that. So if you're available and you can volunteer for that, we would really appreciate it. You can talk to Stephanie Massey in the Children's Ministry Wing or respond to our E-newsletter if you're willing to help.

We're going to read God's word together as is our custom. If you'd find 1 John chapter two verses one through six, it'll be on the screens behind me or in your bulletin. It's our custom to read God's word aloud together. We want to hide God's word in our hearts and in doing so, we practice saying it with our mouths together. So would you join me? You ready?

My little children, I am writing these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfect. By this, we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. — 1 John 2:1-6

This is the word of the God, the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You know, in September 1991, on the border between Switzerland and Austria, scientists discovered a man frozen in a glacier. He is known now as Ötzi and he is Europe's oldest natural mummy. Scientists believe he lived somewhere between 3400 and 3100 BC.

Now, the interesting thing about Ötzi is that when he was found, he had in his possession a small box—a little box that had charcoal embers in it that had gone out. So here's a man frozen in a glacier carrying with him that which actually could sustain life through a winter storm: fire. Such a bizarre juxtaposition of these two things. You can look him up at home later. It's kind of gross looking, a natural mummy, but Ötzi is named after the region on that border between Switzerland and Austria where he was found.

And I think this is a great picture for us of the danger for many people of being around the church and being around the things of the church and misunderstanding what it means to be a Christian. For like Ötzi, I think there are a lot of people in the Bible belt who know a lot of things about God, who have a lot of information about God, maybe who've grown up in the church and could have carried around with them knowledge about who God is, maybe even right theology. And yet there's something missing—something that didn't translate.

They have all the goods but it didn't translate into something that's life giving. This morning, I want to talk to you about this question which comes out of this passage: How do you know that you know? How do you know that you know God? How do you know know that you know God?

This may be the most important question that you ever are faced with. We answer all kinds of other questions all the time. We struggle with questions that we think of as the most significant: What will I do with my life? What job or career will I pursue? Who will I be with for the long haul? Where am I going to live? All those are good questions, but I want to submit to you that this is the most important question, and it's a theological question. How do you know that you know God?

Do you have a life-giving relationship with God? This book, First John, raises and answers those questions over and over again. John asks questions like the ones we read today:

We know we've come to know him if... — 1 John 2

A couple weeks ago, we read:

If we claim to have fellowship with him but we know that we're not of him... — 1 John

Those are all over this little book. This morning, I want to look with you and ask this question: How do you not end up like Uzi, spiritually speaking? How do you know that you know God?

I want you to notice something about this passage. It's written to people in the church. John writes his entire letter to people who are gathered as God's people in a church. He's not writing like, "Hey, if you're an agnostic or an atheist, how do you know that you're not a Christian?" He's writing to believers. He's writing to people who profess, "I have faith in Jesus," and he's writing this to us so that we might know, know that we have a relationship with God.

This morning, I'm going to set this up around a couple of questions, a couple of statements. I'm going to put it this way: You don't know God if...

The Foundation of Confidence Before God

First, you don't know God if you have no confidence before God because of your sin. John helps us in verses one and two to answer that. It's all bound up in two little words that I want you to walk out of here knowing. Two little words that are really important Bible words.

The first describes what Jesus did in the past for us. The second describes what Jesus is doing in the present for us. The first is this: propitiation. Can somebody say propitiation?

You gotta do better than that because I need the people outside to know that y'all can hear that. Say that again. Propitiation. That's what I want to know.

Here in verse two, some of your Bibles will put it this way:

He is the atoning sacrifice. He is the propitiation for our sins and not only for ours but for the sins of the whole world. — 1 John 2:2

I like to use technical theological terms. I like to use the real Bible terms, and I have a conviction that we need to know the big words because the big words have big meanings. Some people would advocate, "Hey, modern audiences, you guys can't handle that. Your attention spans are this short because you play too many video games." But I think you can do better than this. If you can order at Starbucks and memorize all the different names for the drinks, or if you're nine years old and you know all the cheat codes and all the bonus areas on the video games, I think that you can handle the big theological words. It's part of my job to teach you the big theological words because big theological words have big meaning.

You need to know propitiation. You need to know what it means and why we use it. Pro is a legal term—it's an objective word. Propitiation means that a claim against you has been settled. It's been satisfied. Literally in the Bible, it means God's wrath, which stands over you for your sin, has been dealt with by the cross of Jesus Christ. His ill will toward you because of your sin has been replaced by favor.

It's a legal term that you could think of in a court of law. For example, if I run into your car with my car this afternoon and do several thousand dollars worth of damage to your car, there will be a charge from you against me. Until that's resolved by our insurance companies and my deductible, that charge is hanging over me. Until that claim is propitiated, that stands hanging over me.

Every person stands before God—not as God haphazardly angry with us, but with a charge over our heads for the wrong we have done. The rebellion we have against God, the way we've treated one another. Did you know that God takes it personally the way we treat one another? Because He designed a universe where everyone and everything is designed to flourish, and everything else in His creation obeys except for humans. Humans alone shake our fist in His face. Humans alone are setting the wrath of God against us. So we have a charge hanging over us in the divine court.

This is only answered by God's own justice—by the provision of the cross, the death of His son, Jesus Christ. I've heard people say to me when I've talked to people who are not Christians: "I don't get you Christians. Why do you love blood and gore so much? The cross is so gross. It's so violent. It's so bloody. And then you sing songs like 'washed in the blood'—I mean, do you know what you're singing? This is disgusting."

And the answer to that is: that's exactly right. Don't miss that. Because humanity, we stand in a position where our sins are that grievous, that grotesque, that disgusting. And that requires—there's a charge over us, and only the cross answers this.

I read a story recently about a father and a son over one hundred years ago. They're in the Midwest. It's a really dry summer and there are prairie fires burning through lots of the prairies. So this father and son are in a wagon and they can see in the distance the smoke and the brightness of the fire on the horizon, and it's moving very quickly. So they're going full speed as fast as they can to outrun the prairie fire.

The father realizes over time: we're not going to make it. So he stops, halts the wagon, and gets out and begins to burn a ring—a big circle. His son is freaking out. He can see the fires coming. He can see the billowing smoke coming faster and faster. He's like, "Dad, we have to get out of here!" And his dad says, "No, we're fine. Just wait." He keeps burning. The son's like, "Dad, we're going to die if we don't get out of here!" The father takes the wagon and rolls it into the charred circle and says, "We gotta wait." The son is freaking out. He keeps reminding his son, "Just stay where you are." And as the flames come across, they engulf all the prairie around them, but the father and son are okay because they stand in the one place that can't be consumed.

This is what it means to stand in Jesus Christ. To be a believer in Jesus. You stand—if you're a Christian—by faith in the only safe place in the universe: the burned-over area. Jesus was destroyed on the cross for you, so that you may not be destroyed. You're in the one safe place to stand, and all you have to do is stand in that—because Jesus has propitiated the wrath of God for us.

See, you have no confidence. You can't be a Christian if you have no confidence of His propitiation for you, of what He's done, that He has been destroyed in your place. So all you can do is stand.

Advocate

Now, that's good news, but there's even more—like they say on the game shows, there's even more. Listen, I want you to know the second word of this passage. The second Bible word that's so important—it's right there in verse one: Advocate. Say "advocate." Advocate. Now say it again so they can hear out there. There you go. Can you all hear that? Yeah, okay, good.

Advocate is another word that you need to leave this place knowing. See, I find people all the time who grew up in the church and they understand the cross. They'll be like, "Yes, Jesus died for sinners. Great. That's great." And they have confidence up into a certain point. Then they begin to feel like they've run through God's patience with them. Or they think, "Okay, Jesus died for all the sins before I became a Christian, but now I'm on shaky ground. Isn't Jesus done with me?"

We all have a tendency to project our earthly relationships onto God the Father. So, anybody ever kind of exhausted your parents' patience? Nobody? Okay, just a couple people. Yeah, a couple honest people. Everybody else is liars here this morning. Right, like, you know what it is to exhaust your parents' patience, and we reflect that on the Father. Like, surely He is just sick of hearing from me. Or you think about your boss—you had a boss who was very exacting and you could never please—and you project that on God the Father. You're like, "That's what God must be like." And you think, "Surely I've done just too much. I'm the screw-up on the job. I'm the screw-up of the church."

He is sick of dealing with me and we project that stuff all the time. This is why we need this word from verse one: advocate. He is our advocate. Jesus, the righteous one.

Advocate is a legal term and it refers to a courtroom. Advocate can be a substitute for the word attorney or lawyer. One who advocates on behalf of the other. One who stands up in the bar of divine justice and appeals for someone else.

Now, here's the catch though. In our courts, when an attorney stands up to defend someone, they're defending their innocence. "Your honor, this person had an alibi that day. There's no way they could have been anywhere near what happened." But we've just established that every person in this room, every person sitting out in our parking lot or on camera this morning—all of us are people who have no innocence. We have nothing but a charge hanging over our head.

So, what does Jesus advocate for? On what basis does he advocate for us? Well, he's defending not your innocence but his own. He's arguing his propitiation. He's saying, "Look, I have paid once and for all for the crimes. There's no double charging in the justice of God. It's been paid for. Father, you can't hold Jeff's sin because I have paid for them. They're already done."

I used to think of this idea as Jesus standing as my advocate before God and Jesus pleading on my behalf, and it gave me very little comfort. I thought about it this way: It's like a picture of Jesus coming in with a large stack of those manila file folders and there's my name on one of them and your name on one of them and everybody's sitting in this room. Jesus has a whole stack of these things and he opens them up and he's looking at them and there are all these charges, and Jesus goes, "Okay, I got Jeff's here. You know, I'm so sick of seeing this name. Aren't you, God? Aren't you, Father? We're so sick of seeing Jeff's name, but here he is again. Can you please just give him another chance? I mean, I know this is like the seven hundredth time this week I'm having to appeal for him, but just a little leniency. I mean, do me a favor. All right, do me a pretty one, because I like, I died for you. I did the plan. So, let's show Jeff some leniency today."

Is that what happens in the court of God? No. Absolutely not. We read last week—Russell preached from 1 John 1:9.

When we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. — 1 John 1:9

It doesn't say he's merciful and lenient. Doesn't say he's like, "Oh shucks, they tried kind of hard this time." No. Jesus—we read here—Jesus has propitiated the wrath. He advocates on the basis of what he has done. God is just in declaring you righteous.

So when Jesus advocates, he advocates for you. "Father, I look through the pages here and they all say propitiated, propitiated, propitiated. There's nothing here."

Questions About Our Advocate

Let me ask some questions of Jesus, our advocate.

Who is this advocate for? What does it say in our text? All you need to have Jesus as your advocate is desire. Not just for ours but for the sins of the whole world.

When will we receive this advocacy? It doesn't say, "Hey, we will have an advocate in the future. You just might get lucky and get one." No, no. You have one today. You have an advocate today speaking on your behalf.

And why? Why is this advocate able to help us? Jesus is what? What's it say? Righteous. That's right. He is righteous. He's the only one who could argue in my defense and in your defense because he is the righteous one.

Even my best repenting, even your best being sorry—when you really, really mean it with the Father, when you're like, "I'm really grieved by my sin"—even that is tainted with guilt and sin and bad motives and all kinds of other things. And even that Jesus perfects. Even that he advocates for.

To be allied with this advocate is to stand in the circle that can never be burned over again. And note also the ongoing and personal nature of his advocacy. This comes up every time we need it. We have an advocate who's never going on vacation to the beach. He's never taking a nap. He's never too busy to hear from you. He advocates constantly for his children.

And yes, look, one thing we need to make straight: Christians sin and love to sin. We continue to do so. Even though we have been delivered from the punishment of sin, we're not done with the indwelling presence of sin and it's, we struggle. Anybody else struggled this week with sins where we're like, "I'm tempted. I'm struggling. I'm struggling in my heart"? Jesus continues to advocate even in those moments. Over and over.

We fail as Christ's disciples but his advocacy rises even higher. You're never going to run it out. You're never going to exhaust it. He's never sick of hearing from you.

One day, a lady got on a train. She got on a train.

She went to a very busy station where there are lots of platforms, lots of tracks, lots of movement. When she got on the train, she could see her time was about ready for the train to take off from the station. She gets on the train and she's a little nervous. She turns to the woman next door and asks, "Is this the train that's going to Saint Louis?" The woman says, "Yeah, we're going to Saint Louis. Yep, you're on the right train."

She begins to sit there and tries to relax, but then she's got this nagging fear. What if she's on the wrong train too? What if both of us are confused about this? So she turns around to the man behind her and says, "Is this the train going to Saint Louis?" He says, "Yeah, yeah, lady, you're on the right train. You're good."

She sits back again, and she's like, so much going on here. So many tracks, so many platforms. Is this really the right train? She sees someone coming down the aisle wearing a uniform with the hat and the badge, and she stops this person and says, "Is this the train going to St. Louis?" And he says, "Yes, I'm the conductor. I'm about to go start the train. You're going the right way."

She turns around and sits in her chair and goes to sleep. Why is she able to rest? Because it's one thing to be able to ask your friends, "Am I okay?" It's another thing to ask a stranger around you, but it's another thing to hear from the conductor of the universe himself. You are in the right place. I am taking you the right way. I am your propitiation. I am your advocate. You are entirely secure in me.

Brothers and sisters, do you have that kind of security? Do you know? Do you have confidence before the Father because you know these two words: propitiation and advocate? Jesus is my propitiation in the past. He's my advocate every day for me. Do you have that confidence?

I don't want you to be like someone carrying around the goods, but they're separate. They've not penetrated. That's not in your heart. You don't know God if you have no confidence before him because of your sin.

You Don't Know God If You Have No Obedience

Second thing I want you to hear is this: you don't know God if you have no response to his gospel in obedience. There's no fruit in your life. There's no obeying him coming out of your life. Look at verses three through six. After he says he's our advocate and our propitiation, this is what John tells us:

"By this we know we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, 'I know him' but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. Whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may be sure that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked." — 1 John 2:3-6

This may sound at first to many of you like John is taking back what he just gave you. Really? I thought you said this is based on what Jesus does—the end. What is all this stuff about obedience?

Well, two things I want you to notice in here. First is that order matters. Second is that obedience matters. Let me talk about both of those.

Order matters. In other words, the order of these things really matters. Verse one and two come before verses three through six. Not just in the flow of this passage but in the flow of your salvation. You don't obey in order to be accepted by God. You're accepted by God, and therefore you respond to him in obedience. Order matters.

You know this. This is true in baking. I don't know much about baking, but I can tell you this part: you get all the wet ingredients and you mix them up. You get all the dry ingredients in another bowl. You add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, mix them up, throw them in a pan, put it in the oven, and out come cookies. Right? That's how that works.

So what if you messed up the order of that? You mix up the wet ingredients, you throw them in the pan, you put it in the oven, and once they're done, you bring it out and you put the dry ingredients in. Does that work? No, you get a mess. Same thing happens with salvation. You get a mess if you change the order.

Obedience follows acceptance. It is a natural response of the heart that's been changed by Jesus to say, "I want to do what he says. I want to please him."

Obedience matters. Obedience is the fruit, the manifestation, the proof in the pudding that you are in a relationship with the living Jesus. So much so that if that's absent, if there's no desire to please him, you have to ask this question: Have I really been transformed by the gospel?

Now, I know some of y'all are struggling, especially with verse six in this passage. Did you hear this?

Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked — 1 John 2:6

Wow. What do we do with that? Anybody hears obedience matches Jesus's obedience? I don't think so. But look, let's really think about what this says. Because it's not talking about Jesus's perfection in his obedience, his consistency in his obedience, or his obedience as proof of his righteousness before the Father. This is speaking about our desires and our longing—whether we want to obey him.

I said this before and I think I got this years ago from Tim Keller. There's a kind of obedience that grows out of our relationship with Jesus, our acceptance. That's like that of the fairy tales. Remember what Prince Charming says to the princess in the fairy tales? "Your wish is my command."

What does he mean by that? He doesn't mean, "Man, what do I have to get it? What's the least I can do to placate this princess? What's the least amount of work I can do and still be Prince Charming? How can I just phone it in just enough so I can keep her on the line?" No, he's not saying that. He's saying, "I want to make her happy. I want to please her. I want to know what she loves and want to love that. I want to provide for her. Her wish is my command. That's what I want."

See, Christians—when we obey our Father, the Father doesn't expect that we're going to be able to obey perfectly or consistently. This is why we have this book written to us. My obedience, your obedience, is weak and it's unworthy and it's filled with mixed motives and inconsistencies and half-heartedness. You could picture someone planting a planter full of all these plants and presenting it to God, and it's half full of weeds.

One ancient writer said this: Christians look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their sins, adds incense to their prayers, and even gathers all the weeds out of their obedience and makes them all acceptable to God.

Remember the first words of this passage? "My dear children, my little children." I want you to think about how a father or mother reacts to receiving a homemade card from their child. They're not like, "Oh, thanks. The perspective in this drawing is really off. Can you fix that and bring it back? Or there's some spelling errors. I'm not even going to read this until the spelling errors are corrected." No, they're delighted. Why? Because their child in love offered something of themselves to them.

What about you who have little children? And you see the child for the first time obey you without being asked. You're like, "Yes! We made it. This might happen. This might grow up to be a civilized adult one day." Because you're thinking, "Wow, that child obeyed out of the heart." That's how our Father sees us. When we, even in our inconsistencies, in our imperfections, in our mixed motives, we say, "Jesus, I want to obey you. Not going to do it perfectly. Gonna mess it up all the time, but I want to. Jesus, your wish is my command." That is Christian obedience.

If you don't have that, even just a little bit—even just a little bit of like, "I want to please him"—you should ask yourself, "Am I a Christian? Is this real?" Because this is a real relationship. This is a real relationship we have with God the Father. It's not a bargain or a transaction. It's: I love him. He is my propitiation, my advocate, my Father.

Assurance of Salvation

One last encouragement for you this morning. Remember that this passage was written to people like us. I love this. This book was written by the Apostle John in his old age and it sounds like a guy in his old age. He kind of repeats himself over and over in this book. But he gives over and over all these "here's how you know" statements. Every time I preach this summer, I'm going to tell you, "Here's how we know." That's what we're going to talk about. But over and over—why is that so encouraging?

Because this tells us something about the nature of assurance of salvation. And assurance of salvation is not of the essence of salvation. Let me say that again because you may not get that: assurance of salvation is not of the essence of salvation.

There are days when you feel like a Christian, you're like, "I am crushing this," and days you're like, "I'm not even sure if this is real." You might feel that. I'm the only weirdo in here? Come on. Right? Like, aren't there days when you're like, "I'm killing it," and other days where you're like, "I don't know"? But listen, assurance of salvation is not of the essence of salvation.

You and I are like the moon. If you look up in the night sky over a period of a month, it waxes and wanes. Sometimes it's bright and beautiful and you can see everything around by it.

Sometimes it becomes smaller and smaller and smaller. Some nights you go out there and there's no moon at all. We call that a new moon, right? The moon comes and goes, but Jesus, our Savior, our propitiation, our righteousness, our advocate—He's like the sun. The sun gets up in the morning, goes down in the evening, every day.

You know a little bit more about science about this: Where does the light from the moon come from? The sun. It's all derivative light, right? It's all reflection. So us—we have a rock. We have a solid rock to stand on in Jesus Christ. He is never going to change. He is our confidence. He is never going anywhere.

Assurance of salvation is not based on how I feel, but on how solid that He is. But you and I, we go. We come and go. And the light that comes off of us, even on our best days, is just derivative light—just a little bit of extra Jesus showing through me to somebody else, showing that I am His and He's mine.

Look, this morning I want you to remember Ootsie. Remember this caveman who's got a box with embers in it. Brothers and sisters, we don't want to be Ootsie. We don't want to be people who are walking around with some content of information that's maybe life-changing and life-saving in a box. But here's how you know, know that you're Christian: there's not a fire in the box. There's a fire in you. The Spirit of God has been poured into your hearts. He's the one that reminds you of your propitiation, your advocate. He's the one who convicts you of sin and makes you want to learn to obey more and more and more.

As you have time this afternoon, I want you to reflect on the work of God in your life. I want you to spend time thinking. Let's do some soul searching. Do I know Him? Do I know, know Him? What's preventing me? If that's true, what's preventing more obedience? What's preventing that "your wish is my command" from flowing out of my life? What's preventing me from giving myself more and more to Him?

Let's go to the Lord in prayer together. Father, I thank you for those who are gathered here—Lord, in person, on screen. Father, we pray that every person this morning would grow in our confidence of Jesus, our propitiation. Lord, I pray that you would grow in us a confidence of Jesus, our advocate. Lord, that we have nothing to fear if we stand in Him. Father, I pray for those who are wrestling this morning with salvation. I pray, Father, that you would show them where they need to move toward you. I pray, Father, that none of us would walk away like Ootsie, buried in a glacier with a light in a box. Father, we pray that we would be men and women who more and more know you, reflect you, like the moon that's waxing and showing off your light in this world. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.