Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Confidence on our Knees 1 John 5:14-17 Get Real: A Study of 1 John Sermon #23 A woman was at work when she received a phone call that her little girl was very sick with a high fever. Quickly, she left work and stopped by the pharmacy to get some medication but when she got back to her car, she discovered that she had locked her keys in the car. She didn't know what to do, so she called home and told the babysitter what had happened. The babysitter told her that the fever was getting worse and then suggested, “You might find a coat hanger and try to use that to open the door.”   So this Mom looked around and found an old rusty coat hanger that had been left on the ground, possibly by someone else who at some time had locked their keys in their car. She looked at the hanger and said, "I don't know how to use this," so she bowed her head and asked God to send her help. Within five minutes a beat up old motorcycle pulled up with a dirty, greasy, bearded man who was wearing an old biker skull rag on his head.      This woman thought, "This is what you sent to help me?" But she was desperate, so she was also very thankful for any help. This man got off of his motorcycle and asked if he could help. She said, “Yes, my daughter is very sick. I stopped to get her some medication and in my rush, I locked my keys in my car, and I must get home to her. Please, can you use this hanger to unlock my car?” He says, “Sure,” walks over to her car and in less than a minute he has the car door open. She hugged the man and through her tears she said, "Thank you so much! You are a very nice man." The man replied, "Lady, I am not a nice man. I just got out of prison today. I was in prison for car theft and have only been out for about an hour." Then, the woman hugged the man again and with sobbing tears cried out loud, “Oh, thank you God!  You not only answered my prayer, you even sent me a professional!”   As he comes to the conclusion of his letter, the Apostle John gathers together some of the themes he’s dealt with previously in this book and addresses them one more time. As he ties up this letter, John urges us to have Confidence on our Knees. Turn to 1 John 5:14-17 (p. 864).   One of the most important subjects in the Christian life is prayer. Yet there are few subjects more puzzling to more of God's people than prayer. On the surface we might think that prayer should be the most natural and uncomplicated part of Christian living for what should be more natural than to share one’s heart with one’s Heavenly Father? Nevertheless in practice Christians often are confused by prayer and ask: What is prayer? Does prayer change things or does prayer merely change the one praying? How should we pray? What should we pray for? Can we be sure that God always hears prayer? Can we be confident He will answer it? John answers many of these questions in these verses which form the first half of the postscript of 1 John.   John also talks again about confidence. Closely coupled with the subject of prayer is the subject of confidence or boldness before the Lord. Three times previously in this letter John has talked about our confidence before the Lord: 1 John 2:28-we can have confidence before Him and not be ashamed at His coming; 1 John 3:21-we can have confidence toward God; 1 John 4:17-we can have boldness or confidence in the day of judgment.   Boldness is a part of the Christian life. One characteristic of those early Christians was their boldness. With great boldness they gave witness about the Lord Jesus Christ. They were constantly praying that God would give them boldness in their life.   We have the privilege as children of God not only to witness to the lost with openness and freedom of speech, but also to approach God in prayer in a spirit of openness, talking freely to our heavenly Father. Boldness in prayer is something we can claim in our daily life. “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded” (Heb. 10:35).   The outline for John’s discussion on prayer is simple. These verses contain two subjects: confidence in prayer (vss. 14-15) and prayer for others (vss. 16-17). Each of these contains a promise followed by a qualification. Let’s start with though… 1. Answered prayer is always based on a relationship, v. 13. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” Last May Jerry Falwell went Home to be with the Lord. Over the course of his ministry Falwell was involved in several controversies. One of them was about prayer. In August of 1980 in agreement with a comment made by Bailey Smith, then president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jerry Falwell said “I do not believe that God answers the prayer of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew.” He took a lot of flak for it in the media but Jerry Falwell was right.   Verses 13 and 14 are closely connected. The Greek text of verse 14 opens with the word, "and.” Confidence in prayer is founded on the assurance that you have eternal life, that you have a relationship. If you don’t have eternal life, there’s no way that you can pray according to the will of God, except to pray that God would save you from your sins. The promise of our text is only for God's children. It’s a family promise.   Some of you are familiar with the name, Kay Arthur. Kay Arthur has written several Christian books and has her own radio program. She tells about one day, she was getting out of the car, her arms loaded down with books, and not wanting to go into her house. She was a young widow with two children, and it had been a bad day. She was hurting. As she stared at the grass, her mind went back to a time in her childhood when she had been running through the grass toward her dad, terrified and screaming. Her Dad had scooped her up in his arms and given her comfort and she wished that she could be a little girl again. She wished that she had someone to hold her right then.   As she turned to go into her house, she suddenly saw herself in her mind’s eye, a little girl in pigtails, flying down a vast marble corridor…oil paintings bigger than life hung on the walls. She could hear her little shoes on the marble floor and see the tears that ran down her cheeks. It was a long corridor. At the end, two huge gold doors glistened in the sunlight which filtered through beveled cathedral windows. On either side of the imposing door stood two magnificently dressed guards holding huge spears and blocking the entrance into the room beyond.   Undaunted, the little girl ran straight toward the doors, still crying, “Abba!” She never broke her stride for as she neared the doors, the guards flung them opened and heralded her arrival: “The daughter of the King! The daughter of the King!” Court was in session. The cherubim and seraphim cried, “Holy, holy, holy!” and the elders sat on their thrones, dressed in white, wearing crowns of gold, and talking with the King of kings. But none of this slowed His daughter! Oblivious to everything going on about her, she ran past the seven burning lamps of fire and up the steps leading to the throne, and she catapulted herself into the King’s arms. She was home and wrapped in the arms of His everlasting love. He reached up and, with one finger, gently wiped away her tears. Then He smoothed the sticky hair on her face back into her braids and said, “Now, now, tell your Father all about it.” And Kay Arthur walked into her house, left her books on the table, walked through her house, knelt by her bedside and then she proceeded to tell her Heavenly Father all about it.   While you and I have do not have access to many of the important people in this world, we have access to the King of Kings. We have access to God because we’re His children. Answered prayer is always based on a relationship...that we are part of God’s forever family, that we are born-again and know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. 2. We can have confidence when we pray, vss. 14-15, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: 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.”   a) Prayer is not some spiritual shot in the dark. Certainty is a rare thing in our day. You can hop on an airplane in New York confident you will end up in Los Angeles, and the next thing you know you’re in Kansas, or is it Texas? Even for Christians there are many things that are uncertain. It is true we know Who holds our future, but we do not know what the future holds. There are many question marks. Will I marry? Will social security collapse? Will I get laid off? Will I need to move into a nursing home and give up my house? Will our child which is about to be born be healthy? When will I die? But the basis of our certainty in prayer is the simple fact that God listens to our prayers. The word for confidence is an interesting word. It’s the word parresia and originally meant freedom of speech, that freedom to speak boldly which exists in a true and a great democracy. Later it came to denote any kind of confidence and boldness.   With our Heavenly Father we have freedom of speech. He’s always listening and more ready to hear than we are to pray. God is always waiting. We never need to force our way into the presence of God, or to compel God to pay attention to us. He is waiting for us to come. To use a very human analogy, we know how we’ve often waited for the knock of the mail carrier or the ring of the telephone to bring us a message from someone whom we love. In all reverence we can say that God is like that with us. He’s waiting to listen to our prayers.   John has already brought up this idea of having confidence in prayer and of a promise of answered prayer, if we’re obedient to God (3:21-22). Now he repeats it for emphasis. Prayer is not optional for God's children. It’s absolutely essential, because if you don’t pray, you’re not living by faith in God. If you don’t pray, you’re trusting in yourself, which is exactly how the lost world lives. What breathing is to the physical man, prayer is to the spiritual man. But our confidence is never in ourselves, but rather in Christ. In Hebrews 4 when the author reminds us of our sympathetic high priest, the basis of our confidence is never in anything in ourselves, but only in Jesus Christ, whose blood gives us access to the very throne of God.   There are no Ph.Ds in the school of prayer. You enroll in the school of prayer at the beginning of your Christian life and you continue to grow and learn about and grow in prayer all the way through your Christian life.   b) We must pray though according to God’s will, vs. 14b, “if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” E. Stanley Jones, the great missionary statesman, illustrated this point this way, "If I throw out a boat hook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. "   Prayer to be answered must be in accordance with the will of God. Four times in his writings John lays down what might be called the conditions of prayer, 1) He says that obedience is the condition of prayer. We receive whatever we ask, because we keep His commandments, 1 John 3:22. 2) He says that remaining in Christ is the condition of prayer. If we abide in Him, and His words abide in us, we will ask what we will, and it will be done for us, John 15:7. The closer we live to Christ, the more we will pray correctly, and the more that we pray correctly, the greater the answer to prayer. 3) He says that to pray in Jesus’ name is the condition of prayer. If we ask anything in His name, He will do it, John 14:14. One of the supreme tests of any desire is; Can we take it to Jesus in prayer? The ultimate test of any request is, Can we say to Jesus, "Give me this for Your sake and in Your name?” A prayer of which we can honestly say that will usually be granted. 4) Here we have the great principle of prayer. Prayer must be in accordance with the will of God. Jesus teaches us to pray: "Thy will be done," not, "Thy will be changed." Jesus Himself, in the moment of His greatest struggle and agony prayed to His Father, “not as I will, but as You will” (Mt. 26:39). Stott writes “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending His will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to His. It is by prayer that we seek God’s will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. Every true prayer is a variation on the theme ‘your will be done’.”   Nearly everyone, believer and unbeliever talks about prayer and pray. Many who do not know God pray but they’re not seeking God's will in prayer. Instead they’re trying to use Him (whoever they conceive Him to be) to get what they want. Biblical prayer and what John is talking about, is not trying to talk God into giving us what we want. Rather, it’s submitting our will to His will. It’s praying, as Jesus instructed (Matt. 6:10), "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."   It would be very foolish to pray for your will to be done as opposed to God's will. For one thing, it would mean that you know better than God what’s best for your life. But He knows everything and has assured us that He loves us far more than the best earthly father loves his children. So it only makes sense to submit to and pray for His will for your life and for others. Also, to pray for your will against God's will would be asking God to abdicate His sovereignty over the universe and submit to you as the sovereign! Again, this would be the epitome of stupidity!   But the difficulty is, how do we determine what God’s will is so that we pray in line with it? What is God’s will? There are two myths concerning God’s will that we need to blow out of the water. First, many people think that God’s will for their life is super specific. They believe God has a plan for their life that encompasses every detail including where they go to school, what they do on a specific day, and what car they drive. They wonder if God wants them to purchase a Chevy or a Ford. Are they supposed to go to Penny’s or Sears. Should they shop at Sentry or Wal-mart? None of those things are that big of a deal and really don’t matter all that much. A lot of folk believe that God has every footstep laid out on graph paper and that He wants to guide you into each and every step along the way, but that’s not what Scripture teaches.   Secondly, many believe that discovering God’s will requires a life long crusade of earnest searching. They see God’s will as a something that only the most dedicated Christian can find. God’s will becomes a sort of “Holy Grail” that is hidden away in some cave somewhere and is guarded by either the Knights Templar or maybe the Cosa Nostra.   It’s just not that tough. We know what God’s will is because we have God’s Word. God’s will is revealed in His Word and our Heavenly Father shows us His best and His desires for us in His Word.   I don’t mean that every time you pray, God will give you a verse of Scripture to tell you what His will is in a specific situation. But as we study and meditate on God’s Word, we begin to think His thoughts and are better able to discern His will. If we pray in light of God’s Word, then we know that our requests are in harmony with His will and that He hears us. 3. We are to pray for other family members, vss. 16-17. “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.” It’s easy to miss that this is directly related to verses 14 and 15. John has given general principles about prayer and now he gives a special encouragement to pray for a brother or sister in spiritual need. It’s very significant that when John speaks specifically about one kind of prayer, it’s not prayer for ourselves, it’s prayer for others. Prayer must never be selfish; it must never be concentrated entirely upon ourselves and our own problems, and our own needs. Prayer must be an outgoing activity; prayer must be prayer for others.   Too often when we see a fellow believer in sin, we talk to everyone else.   John doesn’t say, "If anyone sees his brother sinning, go tell the pastor so he can deal with it." Nor does he say, "If anyone sees his brother sinning, call up your friends and tell them about it so that they can pray." That’s a thin spiritual cover for gossip. Nor does he say, "If anyone sees his brother sinning, he should shake his head in disgust and ask, 'How could he do such a thing?'" That’s called "judging your brother." Rather, he says that if you see a brother in sin, pray for God to give life to him.   While we’re all responsible for our own sins, only God can truly deliver us from sin, because only God can impart life. So we're dependent on God to deliver but at the same time the sinning brother is responsible to turn from his sin and take the necessary steps not to fall into it again. Also, before we speak to a brother about his sin, we need to speak to God about the brother. Prayer is essential in the restoration process!   John is telling us that if we’re going to talk about a brother or sister, it needs to be on our knees before the throne of grace. We’re a family and we need to love each other and must pray for one another, particularly when a believer is in the deadly path of sin. I think it would blow our minds if we started regularly praying for straying saints and what God would do if we just cared enough to pray. Prayer implies responsibility and part of that responsibility is intercession for others. 4. Sin is always serious, “There is a sin that leads to death.” In a heartrending section of John Bunyan's spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Bunyan describes a time, early in his Christian life, when he thought he’d committed the sin which leads to death. In a genuine agony of spirit which lasted for weeks on end, he searched Scripture trying to find some clear indication that his case was not hopeless. He compared his case with Peter, but felt that his sin was worse than Peter's; then with Judas, and found that, in his mind, he had done exactly what Judas had done, and so he thought his lot must be the same Judas had earned for himself. He took his problem to an older Christian, explained what blasphemy he had uttered in his heart against the Lord, how he had succumbed to a temptation to deny the Lord; and that foolish old Christian told him that he also thought that Bunyan had committed the sin  which leads to death. Light eventually came, but through what a torment he had to pass, because Bunyan took so seriously, though mistakenly, this passage in 1 John.   So what is the sin that leads to death? While John’s readers were no doubt familiar with the term since he doesn’t explain it to them, Bible students for two millennia have debated what he’s referring to here. And in one sense all sin is a sin unto death in that all sin, apart from the cross, results in both physical and spiritual death. But that’s not what John is talking about here. There are four main views of what this sin is, but I'll warn you in advance, no view resolves all the problems.   a) The "sin unto death" is some terrible sin that God will not forgive. The early church father, Tertullian, taught that some sins, such as murder, idolatry, fraud, denial of Christ, blasphemy, adultery, and fornication could not be committed by true Christians, and that God would not forgive these sins. The Roman Catholic Church divides sins into venial sins, which can be forgiven, and mortal sins that result in spiritual death. But the Bible makes no such distinctions. And if Tertullian's list were applied to those in the Bible, David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul would all be in hell! We can reject this view.   b) The "sin unto death" is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Jesus warned the Pharisees about this sin (Matt. 12:31-32) and said that it could never be forgiven. Jesus was referring to the continued, willful rejection of Him and attributing His works to Satan. Stott argues that it is such hardened, willful rejection of known truth that constitutes the sin unto death. He also argues that both groups of sinners here are unbelievers, because God will give life to those not committing the sin unto death. This implies that they were spiritually dead. So for those whose sin is not unto death (those not blaspheming against the Holy Spirit), believers may pray and God will save the sinner (give him life). For those blaspheming the Spirit, there is no promise of life in response to our prayers. They have hardened themselves beyond the possibility of salvation.   There are several problems with this view. You have to understand brother to refer to unbelievers and the promise seems to guarantee salvation for everyone that you pray for who has not yet committed the unpardonable sin, which doesn't fit reality. Also, God has saved some pretty hardened unbelievers, such as the apostle Paul, who was a blasphemer (1 Tim. 1:13). Of course, John doesn't forbid prayer for such, but only limits the promise to the other group.   c) The "sin unto death" refers to apostasy from the faith. Some say that true believers can lose their salvation. But this goes against the truth that God keeps all whom He saves, which 1 John 5:18 goes on to affirm (also John 10:28-29 and many other texts). The Bible does describe those who make a profession of faith and look like believers for a while, but then they turn from the faith, showing that they were not truly born of God The context of 1 John, with his dealing with false teachers who’d been a part of the fellowship, but who’d denied the faith, lends support to this view. Again, John is not saying that we should not pray for such apostates, but he’s not extending the promise of God's giving life to these people. This view has the same problem as the second view, that it guarantees life to all that we pray for, as long as they have not gone into total apostasy. And, in some cases, life would refer to restoration of fellowship to sinning believers, not to salvation.   d) The "sin unto death" is physical death inflicted on believers who persist in some sin. In 1 Corinthians 11:30 Paul mentions some who had died because they were partaking of the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. Ananias and Saphira were taken Home because of their sin of lying to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:1-11). In this view John is saying that in the ministry of prayer, some Christians have gone too far. God will not turn back His judgment of physical death, and so it is useless to pray for them. This view takes brother in the normal sense, but it has to understand life and death as physical life and death, not spiritual.   The problem with it is, how do you know whether the sinning believer is too far gone to pray for his restoration before you see him die? So it’s a somewhat useless command. I used to be inclined to this view, but I probably now lean more toward the third view.   Whatever view you take, it’s still a difficult promise to apply, because John says that if the person has not sinned unto death, God will give life to him. Personally, I’ve not seen the guaranteed results John promises. I've seen many professing Christians go on in their sin without dying physically or being restored to the faith or getting saved…in spite of my prayers. So I have to confess that there is much that I do not understand about prayer. The bottom line though is that even if we cannot understand these difficult verses, we must pray for God to bring sinners to repentance and salvation and leave the results to Him. He alone has the power to deliver from sin. Conclusion: The difficulty with a discussion such as this is that it becomes strangely fascinating to some believers, so much so that they tend to spend all their time on the exception (the sin unto death) and not on the central message of the passage. Whatever the interpretation we give to the exception, we must always bear in mind that it’s the exception and that the burden laid upon us by John is to pray for any believer whom we see falling into sin.   We must not even be quick to note the exceptional case even assuming that we have been able to decide what the nature of such a case is. Jesus’ example of prayer for Peter should make us cautious. Peter spent three years with Jesus but at the time of Christ's arrest, when asked by a servant girl and others if he knew Christ and was His disciple, Peter denied the Lord with oaths and cursings. We might say, if we did not know the end of the story, that if anyone had ever sinned unto death, certainly Peter had. Yet Peter did not die, either physically or spiritually. He had a lifetime of useful service. Far from refusing to pray for him, Jesus, we are told, actually interceded for him. “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32).   We do not need to be encouraged to not pray. That comes too easily and naturally. We need encouragements to pray, particularly for others. In this responsibility we are greatly encouraged by John's teaching and by the example of the Lord Jesus Christ in His prayer for Peter.   May we be a people of prayer, praying in light of God’s will and praying for our brothers and sisters in Christ, particularly those who have strayed from the faith into sin!