Confidence Before God | In light of love | 1 John 3:19–24 | Ep.12

Welcome to Preaching from Bryanson Bible Church, located in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is our prayer that this teaching would bless you, deepen your love for God's word, and encourage you as you follow Jesus.

And if you are not a Christian, we pray that this message would encourage you as you explore the Christian faith.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him.

For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.

And he knows everything.

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.

Whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

This is his commandment.

We believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has commanded us.

Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, God in him.

And by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us.

There is something deeply unsettling about not knowing where you stand.

Sometimes it can be laughable.

I think back to a young guy that I was discipling, and he was convinced that this particular girl liked him.

There was no, absolutely no evidence for that, and so he would read into anything that she did.

And so one night at Bible study, uh she happened to bump him and spill her coffee.

And then at the end of the evening, when everyone had left, he stayed behind and he said, Justin, did you see that?

And I said, See what?

And he said, Did you see how she spilt her coffee?

Then I was thinking to myself, I reckon if she had spilt her coffee all over him and he had got third-degree burns, he would have still said to me, Justin, she thinks I'm hot.

Now not knowing where you stand means that you will read into all sorts of signs.

She loves me, she loves me not.

She loves me, she loves me not.

But sometimes not knowing where you stand is a lot more serious.

I remember my dad getting word that his company was going to be retrenching the majority of staff at their Cape Town office.

How do you just go on with your day?

How do you focus?

If I remember correctly, I think a lot of the staff just kind of went home early, not sure whether they'd still have a job in a week's time.

Every conversation, every meeting, every email becomes a loaded email or conversation.

Because you're saying to yourself, Am I safe or will I go?

Am I safe?

Will I go?

And so when you don't know where you stand, you don't have a certain tomorrow.

They want me, they want me not.

They want me, they want me not.

But I think not knowing where you stand can also be utterly devastating.

And I remember a young wife coming to see me at my office.

Her husband had been kidnapped and taken hostage by Al-Qaeda as he was riding his motorbike down through North Africa.

How do you grieve for someone if you're not sure whether they are alive or not?

How do you grieve when you're not sure if they're lost, if they're gone?

There were occasional proof-of-life videos.

The experts said that it was hard to tell how recent these videos were.

They couldn't give any indication how long ago they had been filmed, whether her husband actually was safe.

One year passed, then two, then three, then four, then five.

When you don't know where you stand, how on earth do you move on with your life?

She didn't know which way it was up.

Her whole life had been put on hold.

Will he hold me again or will he not?

Will he hold me again or will he not?

Three very different situations, but they all have one thing in common.

Where do you stand?

Because not knowing where you stand is paralyzing, it is crippling.

And I think one of the most common questions I've been asked over my years of ministry is how do I know for sure that I'm a Christian?

Because the most important question we can ask is, where do we stand with God?

Where do you stand with God this morning?

What we're talking about is assurance.

It's the confidence that we really belong to God.

And assurance is what gives the Christian life energy, it's what helps us to really live for God.

Because if that question is not settled in your mind, you can see how that will just lead to you feeling trapped and paralyzed.

Now, before we get into our text, I want to separate two things.

And those two things are security and assurance.

Security is what is actually objectively true, and assurance is what we believe is true, and that has more of a subjective component.

So there's security, what is true and what I believe is true is assurance.

And those two things are not always the same thing.

So maybe I can illustrate it in this way.

Tonight you lock your front door before you go to sleep, and you put the key in and you turn it, you hear the lock click, you test the door, and it is locked.

And now you can breathe easy and you can go to sleep.

So you have both security, the objective reality that the door is locked, and you have assurance you believe that it is locked.

But now imagine you go to bed and five minutes after climbing into bed, you're wondering to yourself, did I really lock the door?

And you start to have doubts and you start to think about it, and it starts to trouble you and impact your sleep.

Now the fact is the door is still locked, it is objectively secure, but your assurance is lacking.

You lack assurance because you don't believe the reality of that objective truth.

But the flip side can also be true.

How many of us have perhaps forgotten to lock the door?

I don't know about you, but I can recall one night, you know, getting up the next morning and saying, Oh, I've actually left the slider wide open.

And yet you were sleeping in ignorant bliss, you were dreaming wonderful dreams, and yet the door wasn't locked.

So there was not security.

There was not that objective reality, and yet you had a subjective reality that was not based on that reality, which means that's false assurance.

And the Bible has a lot to say about false assurance, thinking we're saved when we're not.

And John's letter has been giving us all sorts of tests to be able to talk about people who are either lacking assurance or people who have false assurance.

But today's message is to encourage those who are lacking in assurance.

The reality, the security is there, but you're struggling to believe it.

So assurance is a major theme in John's letter.

There's two Greek words he uses for the word no, and he uses those words 42 times.

And I know because I counted them.

No, I didn't really.

I used Bible software.

There's 42 times.

So just imagine how short this little letter is.

42 times he's using these two combinations of words for no.

And near the end of his letter in chapter 5 and verse 13, he tells us why.

This is almost at the end of the book, he's telling us now why he wrote it.

Here it is.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

John wants us to know that we have eternal life.

And when we lack assurance, John doesn't tell us to just ignore the evidence in our lives.

He says, I want to take you back.

I want to show you this door, so to speak.

I want to show you what Christ has done objectively upon the cross for you.

So, what do we do when our hearts condemn us?

Well, John wants to give us five gracious invitations, five places to turn when our hearts condemn us.

Because John doesn't want to silence our consciences, he wants to redirect them.

And each one of these five is going to point us ultimately back to God.

So you ready to dive in?

Number one, look outward.

Look outward.

This is a compassionate heart.

Look at the evidence of God's work through you.

So look where John first directs the heart that is struggling with assurance.

He says, look outward.

Look at the evidence of what God has done in you and through you.

Look at the evidence of your love for other believers.

Look at the evidence of the compassion that you feel for a brother or sister.

Because the accusing heart says, you don't love God's people enough.

But the assuring heart says, God has produced in me genuine love for my brothers and sisters.

So look at verse 19.

He starts the section with two words.

By this.

By this.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts before him.

So what is the this referring to?

It's referring back to what we looked at last week.

And if you were here, I took us through verses 11 to 18.

The love that we are called to have for brothers and sisters.

So by this we know.

So he's going back to verse 18, which says, Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.

And John is a good pastor knows that last week's message was very hard-hitting.

And now, as his readers are reading, he knows that some of them are going to say, Well, maybe I'm not a Christian.

Because I don't always love God's people in deed and truth.

My heart isn't always open to the need.

Sometimes I find my heart closing.

And John's already told us back in chapter one that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.

So if you have a tender conscience, and as you left here last week, or even as you hear this morning, if you've got a tender conscience, you might hear these verses and say, Well, am I really a Christian?

But don't just assume that because your love is not perfect, that your love is not genuine.

Just because your love is not perfect doesn't mean that your love is not genuine.

By this we know.

And so John's saying, look out to it, look at the fruit of God's work in your life.

John is saying, don't manufacture the evidence.

I want you to see the evidence.

I want you to recognize it in your life.

God has produced something in you that wasn't there before, a genuine love for brothers and sisters in Christ.

You know, when I first became a Christian, and my folks became Christians around the same time that I did.

And so when my dad and I became Christians, we decided to visit this Bible study that the church had actually started in the house across the road from us.

I think some of that was they knew we were new believers, and they thought, well, there's a few people in the neighborhood, let's start it across the road and that can disciple us.

And so I can remember my dad and I, I was sort of grade eight, beginning of high school.

My dad, I think, was 40 years old at the time, had come to know Christ later in life.

And as we went to this Bible study week after week after week, there was a genuine love in our hearts that developed for these believers.

We were always quite a private family, and so I think it surprised me.

Even though Christians can be really, really weird.

Okay?

And we're from an unchurched background.

So imagine like everything that's in our Christian subculture that we don't yet notice.

And so we would go in and we'd say to one particular person, so, how are you doing?

And the answer, praise the Lord.

And then we would say to someone else, Oh, we heard that you got a promotion at work.

Congratulations, praise the Lord.

Remember my dad and I saying, Do Christians just answer every question, praise the Lord?

And then somebody in the group gave me a cassette tape of a Christian group called the Fisher Folk.

The Fisher Folk.

I mean, you can tell by the name, it was the worst music my dad and I had ever listened to.

We said, this must be what Jesus meant when he said, carry your cross and follow me, because we're gonna have to listen to this music.

This is what Christians listen to.

I remember us honestly saying that to each other.

And yet the fact is, despite all of this, I loved those people.

And they loved me.

And they were willing to have my dad and I ask all the weirdest unchurched questions.

I don't think we stopped.

Some evenings was just us and our questions, and next week we'd bring back another list of things that we didn't understand.

We hadn't manufactured that love.

God had produced it.

And that's what John's saying.

And as I think back to that time and I think about what John's saying, I say, yes, Lord, it's true.

I haven't loved God's people perfectly, but there's something genuine that was there.

I remember visiting a lady in KwaZulu-Natal.

At that time, it was regarded as one of the poorest areas in our entire country, extremely rural.

And I'd met her six months before and she'd come to know Christ.

And as we went into her home, she welcomed us.

There was such rich fellowship, even though we couldn't speak the same language, even though she had absolutely nothing.

She was such a blessing, such an encouragement.

And as I left and I walked away from her mudhat, again I thought to myself, Lord, this is something that you've produced.

How do I explain these two people who are so different, myself and her, and yet there's a genuine fellowship and love between us.

Now I know for some of you, maybe that hasn't been your experience.

Maybe you haven't been welcomed by Christians.

Maybe you haven't felt that love.

In fact, maybe you feel like you've been hurt by Christians.

And all I'd say to you this morning is that I understand.

Because I've been in ministry for many, many decades, and there have been seasons of my life where as a past I've also recoiled from God's people.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's this sheep can bite.

Don't fool yourself.

They look so innocent just there, like cute and cuddly, they bite.

I feel like I should say nochal, they bite.

They really do.

I was two years into ministry and I remember getting an anonymous note from someone.

Judging by the handwriting, it looked like it was an older person.

They said, as a preacher, you are useless.

You missed the boat and going into ministry.

My recommendation to you would be move back to Cape Town.

Man, that flawed me as a new pastor.

If there weren't people in my life at that time to encourage me, but all I can say is here I stand all these years later, and by God's grace, there's still a genuine and deep love for his bride.

The bride is not perfect.

I'm not perfect.

We're not lovely people.

That's not what John is saying.

The point is that God transforms us, and John is saying, will you recognize what God has done in you and through you to enable you to love his people warts and all?

But what if your heart still condemns you?

That's where John invites us next.

Number two, look upward.

So we've looked outward at a compassionate heart.

Let's look upward at a convinced heart.

Rest in God's knowledge of you.

God knows, so will you rest?

Verse 19 and 20.

By this by this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before Him.

For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything.

We all listen to so many voices on any given day.

Think about the voices.

The voices of the radio when you're traveling to work, the voices of colleagues, of bosses, of friends, of family, of teachers, of lecturers, the voice of our phone, the notifications that don't stop, the social media, just voices interrupting our lives.

But there is no voice that we listen to more than the voice in our own head.

The voice in our own head.

And that voice can be incredibly persuasive.

It tells us whether we're doing well or whether we're failing.

That voice reminds us of everything we've said and everything we've done.

That voice compares us to other people.

That voice replays our worst moments over and over again.

And sometimes for the Christian, that voice even condemns us.

Now that doesn't mean that that voice is always wrong.

That doesn't mean our conscience can't rightly convict us.

This is not a sermon to unpack a theology of the conscience, but the conscience is given by God.

It does truly convict us of sin at times.

John isn't giving us permission to ignore our hearts, but he's reminding us your heart doesn't get the final word.

The heart is not the final word.

Look upward, look upward.

Your heart is not the highest authority in your life.

Jeremiah the prophet puts it starkly for us in chapter 17 and verse 9.

He says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

Can you fully understand your heart?

Never mind the hearts of other people, just your own heart.

Our hearts can deceive us, our hearts can minimize sin.

But you know what?

Our hearts can also do something else.

Our hearts can be harsher than the very grace of God.

And I think that's sometimes the common problem for us.

Yes, can we be falsely assured when there's no security and we're actually a false believer?

That's possible, but that's not what John's covering here.

He's talking to believers whose conscience is tender and it keeps accusing them harsher than the grace of God.

Because look what Jeremiah says next in verse 10.

Who can understand our hearts?

I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind.

God knows your heart better than you do.

He knows your frailty, he knows your weaknesses, he knows your motives, he knows all that's going on there, even the things that right now you don't understand about yourself and even what makes you tick.

So when your accusing heart says, You have failed again, you don't have to pretend that you haven't.

You can say guilty as charged, but neither do you have to let your heart have the final word.

You can say to your heart, Yes, I've failed, but God is greater than my heart.

God knows everything.

J.R.

Packer, in his classic book, Knowing God, puts it beautifully.

He says, There is tremendous relief in knowing that God's love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me.

So that no discovery now can disillusion him about me in the way that I am so often disillusioned about myself.

Just think about that.

There's nothing new that you can discover about yourself that God doesn't already know.

There's no sin you can uncover.

No failure you can remember.

No ugliness in your heart that will make God say, Oh, I didn't know about that.

If only I'd known about that in your life, then I wouldn't have saved you.

If I'd only known about that thing, that ugliness, then I wouldn't have saved you.

But he already knows the worst about you and he sent his son while we were still sinners.

Christ died for us.

So your security is not in what you know about yourself, your security is what God knows about you and He knows everything, even the parts where your heart won't let you off the hook, and He says, My grace is sufficient.

I think the problem is that you and I listen to ourselves rather than preach to ourselves.

Instead of listening to ourselves, what if we preach the gospel truth to our hearts?

Sometimes we say, Well, I feel like I can't be a Christian, therefore I'm not one.

I feel like God's abandoned me, so then he must have abandoned me.

Your conscience has a voice, yes, it does, but it doesn't have the final say.

You mustn't make your heart the supreme court over your life.

When your heart condemns you, preach gospel truth to that heart and rest in the truth that God is greater than your heart.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 4, the 1 Corinthians chapter 4, which is exactly what I said in the first service.

1 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention 1 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

I'm about to get to Paul.

So in 1 Corinthians 4, Paul, not fall, says something astounding.

Here it is in verse 3.

I do not even judge myself.

If you read the context and it's A great chapter to read.

Paul has a clear conscience.

But he says, just because I've got a clear conscience doesn't mean I'm innocent.

My conscience is not the final court of appeal because look what he says in verse 4.

It is the Lord who judges me.

And so for those of you here this morning who've got overactive consciences, you don't have to keep reopening the case.

You don't have to keep putting yourself on trial.

Have I done enough?

Have I repented enough?

Am I good enough?

Have I loved enough?

There's a difference between honest self-examination and this relentless, endless self-accusation.

Ultimately, your assurance doesn't rest in your ability to say, hey, I give myself a clean bill of health.

That's not where your assurance lies.

God is greater than your heart, so let God have the final word.

Now notice where John invites us to turn next.

Because a heart that rests in God's knowledge is a heart that runs towards God.

Here it is, number three.

Move towards God.

This is a confident heart.

God hears, so will you come.

Verse 21 and 22.

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, so that's taking all that he's said so far, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.

And whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

A reassured heart moves towards God.

What's our response when we sin or our conscience is troubling us?

We want to run, we want to hide, we want to go in the opposite direction.

We want to say, Lord, I'm not worthy enough to pray.

I've had a bad week and I haven't spent time with you.

Maybe I'm not worthy enough to pray.

Or Lord, let me first get my act together so that you can see I'm serious and then I'll come back to you.

That's not what John says.

John says exactly the opposite.

When you feel like you want to run from God, that's exactly when you can come boldly and confidently.

Not because you're worthy, but because Jesus has made a way.

Think about a little child with a loving father.

That child doesn't have to earn access to their father.

They can just go right into the room.

They can sit on his lap, they can enjoy his company because they belong to him, they're in relationship to him.

And that's the kind of confidence John wants us to have when we approach God in prayer.

God has invited you to come, so come.

God has invited you to ask, so ask.

Why do we complicate things?

Why do we convolute our minds?

It's like it's quite simple.

God says, I want you to come.

Come.

I want you to ask.

Ask anything, small or great, ask.

Now, verse 22 says, And whatever we ask, we receive from him.

Maybe that sounds like it's a blank check.

This isn't all that John teaches about prayer.

He isn't teaching, oh, and if I have enough confidence, then I can twist God's hand and he can give me whatever I want.

No, a few verses later in chapter 5 and verse 14, he explains, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

So Christian confidence in prayer is confidence that God hears us, that he longs for us to be in his presence, that he wants us to bring whatever is on our heart before him like that little child, and to trust his will.

John also says, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

John isn't suddenly saying, well, perform well enough, and then you know God will let you in and then you can twist God's arm.

Obedience is not the price of admission, it's evidence of a right relationship with God.

If you're honoring God and obeying his commandments and living to please him, well then the chances are your prayer life is being shaped to pray prayers that are in alignment with his will.

So when your heart whispers to you, stay away from God, God says, Come.

And when your heart says, You don't deserve to ask, God says, Come, ask.

A confident heart comes because it is confident in God's invitation in Christ.

And you know the verses in the New Testament that say, Come boldly, come before the throne of grace.

Because we don't come in our own worthiness, we come clothed in Christ.

So God hears, will you come?

Number four, look away from self to Christ.

Look away from self to Christ.

This is a Christ-centered heart.

God saves you, so will you trust him?

What does it mean to look to Christ?

John tells us in 23, he says, this is his commandment.

You want to know what the commandment is?

Here it is.

It's a commandment that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he commanded us.

So assurance doesn't ultimately come from me staring hard at myself.

I look away from myself to Christ.

It's beholding Christ, it is believing on Christ.

I look at me and it seems like I'm on sinking sand, so I have to look away and look at Christ.

He's my only sure anchor in hope.

One of my favorite hymns of assurance is before the throne of God above.

And I believe we might be singing it next week.

But this is what the second verse says.

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there, who made an end to all my sin.

Where do you look when your heart condemns you?

I hope you look to Christ.

My confidence is in Christ.

My confidence is, in a sense, what Christ has done, this secure door, this eternal security.

My assurance isn't grounded in how strongly I'm holding on to Christ.

My assurance is grounded in how strongly Christ is holding on to me.

What is that promise?

Nothing or no one can pluck you out of the Father's hand.

And sometimes we think, oh, it's all about how much faith I can muster up.

I've got to have lots of faith.

If you're on a swing somewhere, that swing will hold you because of that swing's strength.

Not because of your faith.

Even a little bit of faith and a strong swing will hold you.

So it's not as though you're on the string, on the swing, and you've got to just muster up this faith.

At the end of the day, false assurances the rope is breaking and the swing can't hold you.

Doesn't matter how much faith you have in something that can't hold you.

And so that's why it's important to recognize that even the smallest amount of faith placed in a great savior called Christ is enough to save you.

And notice what John puts alongside believing in Christ.

He says, love one another.

Keep circling around.

We've covered this already.

He basically is saying, believe in Jesus, love people.

He's saying you can't say you can love God if you don't love people.

These two things are inseparable, and he's going to keep circling around to them.

That's John's summary of the Christian life.

And guess what?

It's Jesus' summary of the entire Old Testament, prophets, the law.

What did Jesus say?

Love God and love people.

The great commandments.

You know, over the years I've sometimes asked someone in a baptism interview or a membership interview if they were sure that they were saved.

I've asked them to consider whether they really belong to Christ.

And often there's one of two responses.

The one is people reflect on that, but so often people get angry.

How dare you ask me that?

Do you know how long I've been coming to this church?

I remember man telling me, Do you want me to take my money elsewhere?

Do you know how long I've been giving to this church that I was part of at the time?

It was like, yo.

I just asked you to think about whether you're a Christian, but that's self-confidence.

That's not Christ's confidence.

Because when you ask a true believer what's going on in their heart, they point to Christ.

They don't get all defensive because the identity is not wrapped up in their performance, the identity is in someone else's performance, Christ's performance.

Do you remember that parable in Luke chapter 18 with the Pharisee?

Luke 18 · chapter mention

He comes and he thinks he's praying before God, but I don't think we can really call it a prayer.

It really was self-promotion.

He rehearses his CV, you know, and he says, God, not only are you listening, but I hope the people that are here listening to me pray can also hear, I'm a righteous man, I've done this.

Thank you, God, here's my prayer of gratitude.

I thank you that I'm not like that guy cowering in the corner over there.

And then the tax collector comes and says, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And he goes away justified.

False assurance says, Look at me.

And so when you're doing well, then you get puffed up.

Look at me.

When you're not doing well, it leads you to despair.

But true assurance says, Don't look at me.

I'm looking at Christ.

And so if someone said to you, I'm not sure your faith is genuine, would you respond with, How dare you question me?

Or would you say, please would you tell me what you see?

I want to trust Christ more.

Maybe a way to explain this is that I think the longer we walk with Christ, the more aware we become of just how holy God is.

And we become more aware of how sinful we are.

If we think of two lines kind of going away from each other from the moment of conversion, when you come to Christ, you realize God is holy.

I stand under his judgment.

And that's because I'm a sinner.

I need the cross.

And you know what happens?

The longer you're a Christian, the greater your awareness of God's holiness.

It doesn't become less, the greater the awareness of your sin.

Today, as I look at my life, as we get closer to the light, the more we see ourselves in truth.

I believe God is more holy today than when I first trusted him.

Not because he is, but my awareness.

I'm more sinful because now it's not just about external behaviors, but my heart, my motives.

And that can seem scary, but as this line gets further and further apart, what is it that bridges that line?

It's the cross.

So the cross should be getting bigger in your life.

You should recognize that you need it far more today than you did when you first put your trust in Christ.

Because the opposite is also true when we try and shrink these lines through pretending or performing.

Pretending says, Oh, I'm not as sinful as I think.

You know, I'm actually better than that.

So we pull that line up and then we perform.

We say, like, God's not really that only.

I can easily perform and meet that up, and we pull that line down.

But what happens in the process?

We shrink the cross.

That's all we do.

That's not the gospel.

That's not true assurance.

Assurance is not pretending and performing.

The gospel is I can look at God and all of his holiness, I can look at myself and all of my sinfulness, and then I can see how big the cross is and how much more I need the cross as I look at myself and then away from myself to Christ.

So, fifthly and finally, receive the Spirit's testimony.

This is a comforted heart.

And Pastor Mike is going to look at this in a couple of weeks' time.

He's going to camp here a little bit more about how the role of the Spirit and our assurance.

But let's just look at verse 24 briefly.

Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him.

And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us.

God doesn't leave you to wonder as to whether he's with you, whether he abides in you, because he's given you his spirit.

And what does the spirit do?

Jesus told us back in John chapter 16, the Spirit, He will glorify me.

John 16 · chapter mention

That is the Spirit's great work, is to make Christ magnificent and glorious in your life, to enable you to trust him, to enable you to cherish him, to see his beauty, to increasingly want to love him and live for him.

And so one evidence of the Spirit's work in your life is not necessarily some out-of-world, extraordinary spiritual experience.

It's that Jesus Christ has become more precious to you.

Has he?

Yes, your heart can sometimes feel cold, but has he become more precious?

Is there something that was there there now that wasn't there before?

It's a love for Christ.

When you sin, you don't run away, you run towards him, you return to Christ.

You want to know him, you want to please him.

So look at the ways that God's Spirit is magnifying Christ in your life and take comfort from that.

The Spirit's work is to accomplish everything John has been talking about.

Everything we looked at last week, these five things, if you see evidence, that is evidence that the Spirit is at work producing the very things John has spoken about.

So as we close, brothers and sisters, John hasn't given us five hoops to jump through to say, yo, look at what a great Christian I am.

No, he's given us five places to see the evidence of God's work in your life.

And every one of them points ultimately to God.

So when your heart condemns you, here's the five, and you'll find them in your seat pocket as well.

When your heart condemns you, look outward.

That's a compassionate heart.

God transforms.

So look at the evidence of God through your life.

When your heart condemns you, look upward.

That's a convinced heart.

God knows he's greater than your heart.

Move towards God.

That's a confident heart because God hears, so come confidently before him.

Look to Christ.

That is a Christ-centered heart.

God saves, so look away from yourself and believe on the name of Jesus Christ.

Allow his cross to become greater in your life.

And then fifthly, receive the Spirit's testimony.

That's a comforted heart.

Ask God by His Spirit to come and comfort you because He abides in you and has given you His Spirit.

So, friend, you can know that you belong to God.

Not because you love perfectly, not because you obey perfectly, not because you pray perfectly, not even because your heart doesn't condemn you.

You know because you trust a perfect Savior.

And that perfect Savior is sufficient, and the Spirit of God has given you his life.

The Savior is becoming increasingly precious to you, and the Spirit wants to conform you into the image of Christ.

So let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this encouraging message.

That when our hearts are faltering, you've given us five places to go, five gracious invitations, Lord.

I thank you for your spirit.

I pray that even today he might make Christ real to us.

That as we see you in your glorious holiness, your perfection, and we see ourselves in our brokenness and our sin, that we might recognize that our only hope is Christ, and may we treasure his cross and his work and his person even more.

I pray, Lord, that you would just come and encourage us, that we'd know that we know that we know that we belong to you.

Because you are the ones that you are the one that has done this work in our lives.

And so we bring our hearts before you, asking that you would heal them, that you would assure them, that you would come and fill us with your love again.

Because we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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