…so everybody’s in a strange chair this morning – not in your comfortable one. Today we’re going to have a little theological background discussion for the next section in1 John. So in your handout if you’ll look yet again - get the flow of what’s going on here. We’re about to start that last section at the bottom of the chart from 2:28 to 4:19. Obviously this is the bulk of the whole epistle. It’s the largest chunk of material.
In order to pick up the text and some of the references that the Apostle makes there we want to be sure we understand some of the terms. So I’d like to run through again the flow; and then we’ll get into the theology that we need in order to understand clearly this massive section because this is the bulk of the whole epistle now that we’re starting.
(Opening prayer)
I wanted to in order to justify what we’re going to here in theology - those of you who are on that side of the room, it’s okay but you’re going to be looking at the chart here so you might want to - for the sake of your neck you might want to sit somewhere else. If you’re comfortable, that’s fine.
You’ve heard me over and over again talk about the flow – the idea that the Apostle when he writes has a coherent picture in mind. He has a goal in mind. When you and I write letters we have a goal in mind, namely we’re trying to communicate to somebody. This is a discipline that you want to pick up as a Christian. The discipline is that when you read the Word of God, you’re reading the words put there by a human being like you and one in whom the Holy Spirit has worked in a very special way to bring back the text but nevertheless a person. That person feels like he’s trying to say something. In order to track what they’re saying and get the coherence out of it, it requires a discipline of reading and thinking about it. One of the goals that I think we need to have as believers is not too many years after we’ve trusted in the Lord (become Christians), we want to at least have the ability and the skill to work through the Scriptures and have an idea of the flow of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. That doesn’t mean we have to know every single book of the Scriptures; but it does mean that we have to master the basic parts. We have to know about creation. We have to know that if I believe in the creation that means that I disbelieve in a pagan view of cosmology. We have to choose.
When the Bible speaks of the fall of man and that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God that’s a declaration about the human race and the human condition. In the Bible, the human condition is that we’re made in God’s image. We have tremendous value. We have purpose and meaning in our life; but it also means that we’re depraved. We have a flesh. We have a sin nature. We’re going to fail. That’s why we need a Savior. If we weren’t depraved we wouldn’t need a Savior.
That has ramifications, tremendous ramifications. We have people in politics today that don’t believe in depravity. They believe that the human race by social design can save itself. That violates the idea of depravity.
When you come down through the 8 centuries of the Old Testament and you have God actually revealing policies for a nation. That’s what’s so important about Israel. It’s not just Old Testament stories that we might have heard in Sunday school somewhere. Those 8 centuries are lessons so that we can peer into history and understand when God ruled a nation what were some of His policies; because if we read the Old Testament in the light of the policies that God has given then doesn’t that tell us something about what He thinks is important socially? If He prohibits certain things in the Old Testament, it’s not because He’s a meanie. It’s because He is the Creator who has designed us. When we violate His design, there are going to be costs. For the Christians, it’s going to be loss of reward - perhaps. For everyone, it’s going to be costly economically. Remember, if you live according to the design of God all other things being equal; it’s economically cheaper.
Think of the high cost of indebtedness. Right now one of the great balloons – one of the great balloons economically is going to be pricked is the whole massive problem of student loans. What these poor young people don’t realize is that the government has very cleverly eliminated bankruptcy from student loans. If you default on a student loan, you can’t get out of it by bankruptcy. That’s interesting because all other loans (commercial loans), you can get out of it with bankruptcy; but the government has so worked it out in encouraging students to indebt their lives; then they take away the right to default. So there are all kinds of things here. This deals with the structures of the Bible.
So again my exhortation is to have as your goal to be able to think the flow of Scripture and be able to pick off in your daily life where that flow collides with what you’re seeing in human organizations, in your life and so on. That if you are interested in the flow, of course I’m prejudiced, but on bibleframework.com on the net I show you the flow. That is one of many areas that you can find this idea of the flow.
One of the words that we want to deal with here before we get into the next section because life is going to come up, light is going to come up. We want to be sure that we understand what eternal life is. Eternal life is not a synonym for eternal existence. Eternal life is not a synonym for eternal existence. Satan is going to eternally exist; but Satan does not have eternal life so we have to correct maybe our predisposition to think in terms of eternal existence when we think of the term eternal life. It’s not those aren’t synonyms. Eternal life means something else. It’s the something else that we want to spend time today. If you’ll look at 1 John and look at the first four verses. Go back to the introduction of this epistle. Again John writes simply, but he writes very compactly. So observe the first four verses. Let’s take only 4 verses; and let’s watch how John introduces this subject.
He says:
NKJ 1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life --
Again verse 1 - what does that tell you that he is emphasizing? What is he emphasizing with those 4 verbs? That Jesus Christ came into history. Look at the fourth verb there.
and our hands have handled
Our hands have touched Him.
We’re not talking about a religious idea. We’re talking about an incarnate God who walked around, breathed oxygen in His human nature.
John says at the last communion, “I was the guy leaning on Him. My skin, my shoulders touched His shoulders.”
This is the claim, a serious claim here. God came into human history. So we have a problem.
People say, “ Oh, I have a problem with the Bible. I don’t believe God could possibly reveal Himself.”
What do you do with the incarnation? If God could incarnate Himself in a human nature and walk around, do we have a problem with the fact that He can’t take His ideas and put them in a book through people? Well, of course. If you think in terms of the incarnation that solves the whole philosophic problem of revelation. If you have a problem with revelation, you can’t believe in the incarnation. The two go together. The incarnation is the summum bonum of revelation. So He entered history.
So now watch. Verse 2 is the critical verse. Watch how he starts verse 2 and watch how he ends up at the end of verse 2.
He says:
NKJ 1 John 1:2 the life
Notice he doesn’t use the word eternal here to start with.
was manifested,
The reason he uses “the life” is because in the last clause of the last phrase in verse 1 is what? The Word of Life. Now he uses a different expression there than he did in the gospel. In the gospel he said the Word and the Word was with God. But here he says it is the Word of Life. So he’s adding something that he didn’t put that way in his gospel. This is the Word of Life, the word the expression of life. .
So then he says the life was- now what’s the first verb? Was manifested, was shown. Well, doesn’t that mean that it wasn’t shown before? “The life was manifested.” If you were going to manifest or show something, it must mean it wasn’t there before and it was now shown.
So he says:
NKJ 1 John 1:2 the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness,
The word bear witness is the word for “testify.” This is serious. The word testify means that John is saying, “I am giving a formal claim such that if this claim is wrong I’ve violated the 9th commandment which is ‘Thou shall not commit perjury.’”
NKJ Exodus 20:16 " You shall not bear false witness…
That’s the basis of the whole court system by the way. The whole criminal court system is anchored on the 9th commandment. Then we have people debating over whether we should mention God in the courtroom. Well if there is no god, what about the 9th commandment? How do you protect truth if you don’t have a transcendent God who judges people for lying?
So we have then:
NKJ 1 John 1:2 the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness,
“We are formally making the claim such that if you say this did not happen, I a Jew part of a Jewish community that holds to the 9th commandment as an ethical rule, I’ve violated my Jewish ethic.”
You can’t have errors with Jewish people operating in a Jewish ethic without compromising the ethic.
So he says:
NKJ 1 John 1:2 …and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you…
Now is the content of the message. Now he brings up the word eternal as an adjective to the noun life.
and declare to you that eternal life
Then where was he? Look at the next clause.
and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us --
Doesn’t that suggest that it wasn’t so manifest before? So now the eternal life has been manifested in Jesus Christ.
So now we want to go to this chart. It’s a little complicated, but this chart is the one that if you can get this right, you get the gospel right. If you get it wrong, you’ll synthesize or synchronize the gospel and compromise it with the culture of our time. So let me go through this chart carefully.
This eternal life that was with the Father, this is the trinity. This is a diagram of the theology of the trinity. In each one is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There are 3 nouns that show qualities for parts of His essence or attributes. Start up here with the Father. He has righteousness and justice. Those two words are very close in meaning. The way I’m using them is that righteousness is the standard that either blesses or condemns. Righteousness is a standard. Think of a ruler. It fits or it doesn’t fit - righteousness. Justice is the implementation of the standard. So like for example in the Old Testament if something was a sin, it was cursed. If something met God’s righteousness, it was blessed. The imposition of the results of righteousness is justice.
Now right there, that second noun justice is one that has been wholly misunderstood in our day today. On college campuses everywhere we’re talking about social justice. In politics you’ve heard the term social justice. But in those conversations where you have heard that word social justice, do you ever hear what the standard is? The only standard that could possibly come out of an unbelieving society is a public opinion consensus, right? Either it’s me, my standard, or it’s the thousand people out of 1,800 that are surveyed - the majority opinion. So the standard of righteousness socially in everyday conversation, politically and otherwise, the standard is usually a statistic. It’s a statistic that lumps together thousands and thousands of individual subjective opinions. So ultimately the standard is nothing more than the subjective notions of people. That’s all it is.
So when you hear in a conversation something about social justice, maybe if God leads you in the conversation and it’s appropriate and you can do it without threatening the other person and making them feel that you’re self-righteous is to innocently ask this question. When you think of social justice, what are the yardsticks that you’re using when you…?
“I’d just like you. I’m talking to you. I hear you but could you explain a little bit about in your thinking what standard are you thinking of when you talk about social justice?”
Then you shut your mouth and you listen…and listen…and listen to what they tell you because once they start answering that question to you they’re telling you their heart. You’re getting intel. Before you engage the opposition you need intelligence. What about the target area? I need intelligence. I can’t just go in there and deal with the situation. I’ve got to know ahead a time what I’m dealing with. A surgeon that is going to operate on you needs to do tests before so he knows what’s going to happen when he gets in there. So by asking that simple question - what is you notion of justice? Where does it come from? What is the standard you’re thinking about? Sadly often times when you ask that question – and again it has to be done very, very carefully and diplomatically because if they sense that we’re attacking them they’re going to close up. Their defenses are going to go right up and the conversation is going to end and become just a push-pull contest. So you have to do this with the Spirit’s leading. But when they come forward you’ll notice that you’re getting pretty loosy-goosy stuff back.
In one sense that should encourage you. In another sense it should make you more depressed. It should encourage you in the sense that the Word of God is true and you can see the contrast between what the Word of God is telling you and what the alternative is. The alternative isn’t very pleasant and doesn’t really convey much hope. The depressing side of listening to someone try to answer this question is – “Oh man there are probably 50, 60, 70 million people in this country that think the same way. No wonder we’re screwed up.” That’s the depressing side of what you’re going to get back.
So anyway back on the essence of God now - righteousness and justice. Now we’re going to add a third noun. The third noun is love. God loves righteousness and justice. Many verses - I gave you two there. God loves righteousness. What is the object of God’s love? It’s His virtues, the virtue of righteousness and justice. So the object of His love is that standard. What we’ve done now by combining those three nouns is they are inseparable. You can’t separate the love of God from His righteousness and justice.
A pastor of mine years and years ago, Colonel Thieme, argued that you could summarize righteousness and justice with this word which is the theme of the Praetorian Guard. In ancient Rome the Praetorian Guard was special guard around the emperor Caesar. These guys were sort of a special forces of self-defense. One of their salutes where they slam on their shields – integrity. Integras was the Latin word they used. So he (Thieme) coined the word integrity. God has integrity which He will never violate. So these words here, the righteousness and justice of God are very important because you cannot separate love from integrity.
Now let’s go to our society. What’s happened in our society? What is the definition of love as we normally think of it? Some gooey sentimentalism. No integrity.
“Well, I love that.”
Well, John says be careful because remember we just got through studying 1 John 2 and he says, “Love not the…love not the world.” So he’s saying you’d better watch out what the object of your love is. You’re responsible for it. I’m responsible for it. We make choices on what we love, what we are going to be loyal to, what attracts us. That’s a personal choice. But as far as God goes, it’s very clear what He always chooses, always has chosen and always will choose – righteousness and justice. That’s going to figure now in this next section. So all this is preparatory to where we’re going in 1 John.
If I get into 1 John 3 and following we’re going to have all kinds of questions if we don’t settle this first. This is all a prelude to that next section. Now we have the trinity here. Now you see the arrows that I’ve outlined. God the Father loves righteousness and justice. The Son has righteousness and justice. The Father loves the Son. The Holy Spirit has righteousness and justice. The Father loves the Holy Spirit. So their interpersonal relationship is built on integrity. They have a loving personal relationship; but it’s a solid stable non-changing relationship because the character behind the love is stable. It’s immutable.
“I am the Lord. I change not.”
You can say the same thing again down here. The Son too loves righteousness and justice. If He didn’t He wouldn’t have gone to the cross. So the fact that Jesus Christ decided to go to the cross. The Son, the Father sent Him to solve the problem of righteousness and justice. The greatest act of love (think about this in terms of l-o-v-e) – the greatest act of love in history was the cross of Jesus Christ. Was integrity involved? Yeah. The greatest act of love was centered on integrity. Those 3 nouns cannot be separated. That’s one of the disciplines mentally we have to as believers in our society; we have to link those. Those 3 nouns have to be cemented together. They can’t be ripped off and spewed around as separate things.
The Holy Spirit is righteous and justice. He loves righteousness and justice and He loves the Father and He loves the Son. That has implications in 1 John 3 because the Holy Spirit indwells us. If the Holy Spirit indwells you and indwells me, then when we talk about loving the brethren as John is going to do – be careful you understand he’s not saying when you love the brethren you love everything somebody does. When he says love the brethren, he means love what the Holy Spirit is doing in that person’s life. That’s the object of the love. If people don’t get that, then they confuse what John is talking about as some sort of sentimentalism. That’s the triune Godhead now.
Now we want to go to the next slide. The other misunderstanding comes when we talk about salvation is that there are three phases of salvation. The three classic words are justification, sanctification, and glorification. You could say phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3 whatever. These are categories of salvation. Confusion rises if you’re messing around and mixing the categories. At phase 1 we trust in Christ and are regenerate. Right here we deal with phase 1 and phase 2. Here’s the cross and notice again we have integrity. We have justice. We have righteousness satisfied. That’s the word propitiation. Jesus Christ, John says, is the propitiation of our sins. What does propitiate mean? It’s a word you can look up in the dictionary. It means satisfy. So Jesus Christ satisfied God’s righteousness. So the standard was never violated. The righteousness is satisfied. That means it’s not satisfied with anything outside of the cross of Christ. Why? Because God loves righteousness and justice.
People can say, “Well, I did 8,452 good works.”
“Sorry, that doesn’t meet My standard.”
The only standard that is met is God’s own standard; and that’s only met at the cross. So we have righteousness satisfied. Justice has to be executed because justice has to express itself against sin so when Christ becomes sin for us He has to take the just sentence against sin.
So when people say, “Well God is a meanie God. He’s holy and He’s against me,.” - What do you mean He’s against you? What did He do here? He bore our sins. He bore your sins on the cross. Never mind He is against you. God is not against you. God loves you. So now we have the things that fall out in phase 1. There’s justification. There’s regeneration. The easy way to remember this is RIBS. That’s the acrostic I always used to remember the 4 things: regeneration, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, baptism into the body of Christ, and sealing (pledge of resurrection plus dozens of other blessings.)
When Dr. Chafer at Dallas Seminary wrote his Systematic Theology back in the 30’s, he said there are 32 different blessings that come at the instant of salvation. Most of us walk through life knowing about 3 of them. There are actually at least 32, maybe more, specific blessings given to us when we are saved and believe in Jesus Christ. So that’s phase 1.
Now I’m going to skip phase 2 because that’s the epistle of John and we’re going to go to phase 3. Phase 3 is the resurrection. There is going to be a resurrection for everyone. That’s why Jesus said there are two resurrections. There’s a resurrection of life and there’s a resurrection of eternal death. That’s a sobering thing. Resurrection means you are ethically fixed for eternity. Fixed means set in concrete. There’s no change. There is not another fall. But on the other hand there is no more redemption either. It’s a sobering, sobering word resurrection because in resurrection we are frozen into for all eternity the destiny that we have chosen.
Easter is coming up next week and you know people talk about the resurrection; and we always talk about it in the Christian view that resurrection is a resurrection to be in God’s kingdom forever and ever and that’s true. There is also another resurrection. There’s the resurrection of eternal damnation.
For believers we have the BEMA Seat, evaluation of our phase 2 life, gain or loss of rewards. For unbelievers we have the throne condemnation, the Great White Throne substitution of human merit for the righteousness of Christ. The judgment ultimately at the final end in the Great White Throne, it’s not even talking about sins there. It’s talking about works. So the issue before the Great White Throne is God’s integrity again. Do you satisfy My integrity? The sad answer is going to be if you haven’t used the righteousness of Christ; you don’t satisfy My integrity. So all this to say the gospel is an integrated thing. It has many parts that all fit together. You can’t dice and splice this thing. It’s a package deal.
So when we go into this one. Now I want to go to the third slide. I want to do phase 2. Let’s look at the trinity now from the standpoint of the Christian life that John is emphasizing. The first is God the Father. He is righteousness and justice. That’s His nature. God’s nature is righteousness and justice.
Now there’s a little distortion because Jason says this projector has a little problem with color. Actually the Word of God here should have the same color as the Father’s nature. It just does strange things.
The Father here, His nature defines everything else. So we have to cope with righteousness and justice. So now what’s our relationship because we’re talking about the fellowship with God; but we’re talking about fellowship with God the triune God. So our fellowship with the Father centers on our acknowledgement of our sins which is what John says. Notice 1 John. Let’s turn again in the verse again looking at the flow of this epistle. Look at 1 John 1:5. In 1 John 1:5 he’s saying:
NKJ 1 John 1:5 This is the message which we have heard from Him
What does it say that God is? Light.
that God is light and in Him is…
And in Him is how much darkness? None. Remember we went through that emphasis. No darkness whatsoever because the false teachers were in a gooey mess here with good and evil.
NKJ 1 John 1:5 … that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
That’s the emphasis there.
This morning when my wife was reading out of... We start the day with the daily light thing here. For today it’s interesting it happen to be on light. Listen to all the verses that have to deal with God and light.
NKJ Isaiah 60:19 …but the LORD will be to you an everlasting light, And your God your glory.
NKJ Revelation 21:23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.
NKJ Revelation 22:5 …They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.
NKJ 1 Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;
NKJ Colossians 1:12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.
13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,
NKJ Ephesians 5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 5:5 You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.
NKJ Proverbs 4:18 But the path of the just is like the shining sun, That shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.
So you can see that’s one of the themes of Scripture. John isn’t making this up. It fits with the flow, the whole flow of the Bible. So that’s God’s righteousness and that’s His justice. We have to adjust to that.
That’s why in communion service we have 1 Corinthians 11 where “judge yourself lest you be judged.” What’s that all about? It’s to examine our hearts if the Holy Spirit’s convicting us of some sin in our life; we confess it. If we don’t pledge, “Well, I’ll be a good boy after communion and pay you back.” God isn’t interested in payback. He’s interested that I confess my sins to Him that the righteousness of Christ can flow into our relationship.
Now we come to the Son. Remember in 1 John going forward when we got into chapter 2, verse 3. Here now he’s shifting my fellowship not with the Father but with the Son. What does he say?
NKJ 1 John 2:3 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments.
What are His commandments? His revelation. So the Word of God He is the revealer of His nature. Notice the connection. The Father’s nature underlies the whole trinity. The Son is the one who reveals the nature in history.
By the way, something a lot of people don’t understand - which of the 3 persons of the Godhead was speaking in the Old Testament? It had to be the Son. It amuses me when people say, “Well, there are two gods in the Bible. There’s the Old Testament God and the New Testament.” They’re the same.
Jesus Christ was the commander that came when Joshua was leading the armies of the Lord. Jesus Christ shows up in a general’s uniform. Joshua has to salute and say, “Yes sir.” That’s Jesus. That’s God the Son pre-incarnate manifestation. He is the revealer; but He’s the revealer of the nature of the Father because He has the nature of the Father too. So now what’s the emphasis in our fellowship with God here? It’s submission to His revelation. That’s our submission or not submission to the Word of God because the Word of God is the speech of God down through history.
Now we come to the Spirit. He is the worker of God and He spreads the influence of God’s nature. So whenever the Holy Spirit does things, He’s revealing and working in conformity with God’s nature. So now our relationship – see our relationship with the Father - acknowledge our sins, submit to the Word and we love His workmanship. That’s going to be a key in this next coming up section of 1 John. We love but it’s love to His workmanship. John is not talking about loving your neighbor here. God is not talking about loving people in general. There is a special emphasis here. He says, “Love the brethren.” Now it’s not because the brethren are better people than unbelievers. He’s saying love the brethren because of what God is doing in them. That’s love with integrity.
Let’s move on and we’ll go now to the next section here. Does the graph show up? This is a bar graph. Basically what I’m trying to show you here are the sections in 1 John and what I plotted here was the frequency per verse of the word love. Look at the remarkable alteration in frequency here. Now when you study the Bible seriously, vocabulary frequency is very important to objectively track sections of thought in the text. Clearly this section that we’re moving into from right here – it should be 28 (2:28 to 5:17). Look at how many times love occurs – 45% of the time John has that noun love involved in a verse. That is sharply different from what he did over here in that first section and this section talking about the situation where we’re in a hostile environment. So now he’s moved into fellowship. The issue of the Christian life and what we would say life in the church or said another way is the social expression of eternal life. When he’s talking about the social expression of eternal life in everyday Christian relationships, he alters his vocabulary. That sharply distinguishes what we’re talking about in this text.
Now we want to come in conclusion here today, we want to move to 2:28. This is the first section of this new section. We want to look at the theme of this bulk. This is the bulk of the epistle. Notice how many verse are here from 2:28 to 5:17. Then there’s little epilogue at the end. Then there is the little thing at the beginning, the prologue. Then there are these two sections which we spent enough time on so we know those. So now we’re going into this big section. The big section we can go through faster because there’s a lot of repetition where as the others we had to go through slow.
What is the theme of this? Again we look at vocabulary. The tool for analyzing text is what we call an inclusio. Here is what is meant by an inclusio. Think of a sandwich. What the author would often do is he’d introduce the topic. He’d talk about the topic. Then at the end he would include the topic again. So we’re tracking something here. The word notice is 2:28 – let’s look at the verse and see if we can figure out the key word.
NKJ 1 John 2:28 And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
What is the object of that exhortation? He’s saying abide in Him; but he’s giving a reason to abide in Him. What’s the reason that we have…confidence before Him? Because we are going to face the evaluation of our life. What have we done with the opportunities God has given us? That’s going to be when we get the real perspective of our life from Him.
He’s says, “I want you to be confident at that point when He comes back to have confidence before Him and not be ashamed.”
This is a very sobering reason why he says, “That’s why I want you to be abiding in Him.” Now if you go toward the end of the section, look at 4:19 – 4:17.
NKJ 1 John 4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness
The word boldness is the same Greek word, paresia.
in the day of judgment;
So again this thing comes up. If you look at how verse 28 of chapter 2 – how this verse when we get in there, you’ll see the rest of the text is anchored on those assertions. That was the whole point that he’s making here. Look now in between in the middle of the sandwich, 3:21. Now here the same word occurs, but it’s in a different context. It’s not talking about the BEMA Seat. It’s not talking about the return of Christ. It says:
NKJ 1 John 3:21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have
There’s the word.
confidence toward God.
NKJ 1 John 3:22 And whatever we ask we receive from Him we receive of Him…
What’s the context of that one? We’ve seen one use of the noun confidence at His coming, the other one confidence in our evaluation or judgment. But now what’s this confidence about? What part of the Christian life here? Prayer – and it’s remarkable that what he’s doing here is saying that our confidence in prayer is very much the same as our confidence at the return of Christ. Somehow our sense when we’re praying that He’s listening, that He is pleased with our petitions; that is the same kind of confidence. It doesn’t vary in kind from the confidence of expecting to hear the words, “You’ve done well.” So that theme is going to underlie this whole section here – it’s getting confidence before God which gets back to our first slide which was the slide of God’s integrity - that what kind of God do we worship?
It sort of goes back to two Sundays ago, or this last Sunday - I forgot when it was. We were talking about what would you do if someone asked you to get up in a public group of people to offer the invocation or the concluding prayer; that they whispered in your ear, “Don’t mention the word Jesus.” We were talking about what would you do in that social situation? How do you handle that one? That’s a hot potato because what they want you to do is they want a feel good thing but they don’t want it anchored to a specific deity.
So we have judges in the courts – and the judges to defend them, they haven’t studied the Bible that well. They don’t know what they’re talking about in this area but they come up with this generic deity. They call it a nonsectarian prayer. Now what is a nonsectarian prayer? It’s a content-less prayer, is it not? It’s a blank deity that you can fill in with whatever attributes you want to fill in. Our point as Christians is there is only one God that’s real – that’s the triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now which God do you want me to pray in? Now the secularist gets very uncomfortable when you press the point because if you press the point that the Muslim does not believe in the same god as Christians, that the Jews that are not Messianic Jews do not believe in the same god as the Messianic Jew and as converted Gentiles. The Buddhist doesn’t believe in any god. The Hindu believes that god is nature. So which of the 500 different gods out there do you want me to pray in?
Why do you think the secularist gets offended and reacts so emotionally if you bring this up? Let’s try to get in the secularist’s way of thinking. Why is this a disturbing thing that happens? Why do fireworks start? Something is going on here or they wouldn’t get so mad about it. What is the hot button that’s being pressed, do you suppose?
Comment Deep down they have a knowledge of God, but it’s suppressed.
Okay, Romans 1. Deep down they have the knowledge of God. They know very well, but it’s uncomfortable to deal with this God.
“It’s uncomfortable. I don’t like what you’re saying. You’re putting me into an uncomfortable situation.”
Well, then do without the prayer. Be perfectly comfortable.
“Well, we have to have something.”
You want a psychological catharsis. That’s what you want. Well, then call a psychiatrist because if that’s really what this whole invocation thing is about; let’s get a psychiatrist or psychologist up here and give a 5 minute hoopla. As far as I’m concerned I can only worship the God I’m told about who’s spoken and that’s the God of history who has spoken. So you put the ball back in the other person’s court even though you know this is going to create a little irritation. I think if it’s done in a gracious way; you’re not trying to show off; you’re not trying to impose yourself; you’re just trying to be gracious. That’s about all you can do.
Any questions? Gone through a lot today. Yes.
Comment
Yeah, we just have to think through as Christians because our society is becoming more and more hostile. We’re getting much more consistently secular. We could get away with things 30 or 40 years ago that we’re not going to get away with today. Yes.
Comment
Two things Nate said here and we’ve got to end because we’re over time; but one thing very important that Nate said here is that they are assuming that all religious truth is subjective. The other thing that Nate said that wasn’t his question - did you hear him say that he didn’t know how it came up in the conversation? Yes, I do know how it came up. If you are going to discuss anything in depth, it has to come up. If you are going to discuss things in depth, you can’t avoid talking about God.
(Closing prayer)