If you have your Bible, turn with me to 1 John, chapter 2. Just before we read that together, as John mentioned, Lois Devis did pass away this past week, someone who's been a really, really vital part of our congregation from before I was ever here. and right up until this last week when she went home to be with the Lord. Her funeral will be here at the church at this Wednesday, November the 4th. There'll be a viewing at 12 o'clock, and then the service itself will be at 1 o'clock. So that's this Wednesday. There'll be a viewing at 12 and you can come a little early and do that and then the service itself will be at 1 o'clock. And so you can also just be in prayer for the Divash family as they walk through these days together. Let's stand together. First John 2 verses 3 to 6. 1 John 2 verses 3 to 6. And by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Whoever says, I know Him but does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we are sure that we are in him." Now let me just pause on there. criticized the ESV very often, but actually here, this is just very unfortunate, because what he actually says is this. By this we know that we are in Him. So he's repeating the exact same language that he used to open the paragraph, and he means to use it to close it. And that's very intentionally done, and there's importance in it. And he switched it over, and by this we are sure. No, no, by this we know. By this we know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same manner as he walked. Let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we do ask with the psalmist that you would not be harsh with us in your anger towards sin and sinners, for we are often sinful, and we live in a sinful place. And we need you to be gracious to us, O Lord, especially when we find ourselves in trouble, languishing, up at night, unable to sleep because we are thinking about this. or that we are suffering with physical illness, we are waiting to find a job, we have relationships that are out of order and painful and disappointing, and therefore we find our souls, our lives, our minds greatly troubled And we want an answer from you. How long, oh Lord, does this go on? Some may surely feel that way about all that's related to this current pandemic in the world. How long, oh Lord, will this go on? And though there is an election this week and Decisive things will happen regardless of which way this particular election goes. As to our politics, we will continue to wonder with some regularity, oh Lord, how long will some of these things go on? We do thank you, Lord, that you are absolutely in charge of political life, not only in this country, but everywhere in the world. Whoever is surprised by election results this coming week, you will not be among them. You will not be surprised. You will have brought them to pass. You're in the heavens and you do whatever you please. And that's as true as in government, as it is in personal life, as it is in spiritual life. But we do call out to you, even as we were reminded this morning that there are people calling out to you all over the world, living in places where it is difficult to be part of the society as a Christian. And we acknowledge that it is getting and will continue to get more difficult to live in this society as a Christian. And we will find ourselves joining their chorus, deliver our life, oh God, save us for the sake of your steadfast love. Lord, we find ourselves at times weary with trouble. There's so many things that trouble us. But we have you to turn to if we know you. And may we be among those who know you. And not only know you, but who know that we know you. Father, as John speaks to us about how that might be our experience, I pray that you'd give us ears to hear, but also that you'd meet us in a fresh way at the table this morning as we remind ourselves of the fellowship that exists through the cross for those who know you, and what a sweet fellowship it is for those who know. that they know you. And may we be found among them, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Be seated. So those of you who know me very well at all know I'm a cheap person. And so I've always been attracted to discount tables. And 39 years ago, at the bookstore at Trinity Divinity School, they didn't usually have a discount table out, but there was. They had a discount table, wandered over there, and there was a little book by the Dutch theologian Herman Bavink. Herman Bovic. So for those of you who are not Dutch by heritage, let me just explain to you that if you make a baseball analogy, and so in Major League Baseball, all-time home run hitters, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, all-time great Dutch theologians, Herman Bovink, Abraham Kuyper, G.C. Burkauer, and they argue, actually, whether it should be Bovink first or Kuyper first, but he's up there, one of the greatest in the whole Dutch tradition, and it is a significant theological Tradition. This little book is on the topic of our text for this morning. It was on assurance of salvation. It was just called The Certainty of Faith. Less than a hundred pages long. And in the opening pages, Bavinck wrote these sentences. We must know that God is our God. We must be sure that we are reconciled to him and therefore can approach death and judgment without terror. In all of this, our greatest need is for certainty. It is the deepest, although often unconscious need, of the human soul. Now that's quite a statement. Our greatest need when it comes to things spiritual, eternal, God-related, our greatest need is for certainty. It is the deepest, although often unconscious need of the human soul. Now he didn't just make that up out of thin air. He got that from studying both the Bible and a couple of thousand years almost, 1800 plus years of theological reflection on the Bible. We must know that God is and that he is our God. We're expounding right now a little book in the New Testament that's devoted to exactly those two things, that God is, and that he is our God. John, more broadly, in his gospel, for instance, what we looked at beginning of this last summer, John 17, and this is eternal life, that they may know that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. And that same language shows up heavily sprinkled from beginning to end in these few verses that we arrive at this morning that we would presently know that we have come to know Him. Those of you who were raised in church, you know that that's a very, very vexing and important question. As you grew up, you hear the testimony over and over again. If you grew up in church, this tends to be the experience. You come and you take Christ as your Savior, and then a couple years later you wonder whether it was real and whether it actually happened. And so, then maybe you sign another card. or go talk to another Sunday school teacher. And then you feel pretty good, but then after a couple years, you wonder whether anything really happened. And so then you yet respond another time at another meeting, and you say, well, what's all that about? Is it simply mere childishness? It is not. It is not. It is the reality that Bavinck got it right. This is a really big question and you can't be too sure. And kids are just, generally speaking, a little bit more honest with themselves and willing to express that uncertainty than we are as we grow older. But that's what John is writing to us about in this text for this morning. I'd state our thesis this way. We are to know that we know God. Or maybe to tie it just a little bit more carefully to the opening line of our text, you'd put it this way. We are to know that we have come. to know God. We are to know that we have come to know God, which is our first point this morning. We are to be sure. We are to know that we have come to know God. The certainty of faith. So Bavick put it, and here's how John puts it. And by this, we know. that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. John is putting it precisely as we experience it, as young people in particular are honest to experience it. We, the same verb is used twice here in this opening line, the verb for to know, but it's used the first time in the present tense and the second time in the perfect tense. And they fit together really neatly and nicely and profoundly and a profoundly clear reflection of our own experience and the question that we ask. Here's how it works. And by this, we are presently knowing, we are presently sure, we are presently confident. And what we are presently confident of, what we're presently sure of, what we presently know, is that at some time in the past, We have come to know. Sort of the essence of the perfect tense in the Greek language is that an event takes place in the past that has consequences that are right up and including the present. Which is precisely what a kid is asking when they, did that really take back there? Was that real when I asked Christ to save me? Did it actually happen? I need to presently know whether I have actually come to know at some time in the past the Lord as my Savior. That's, by this we are presently knowing that we have come to know Him. Now, it's precisely because we are not overly well taught and we don't pay quite as careful attention to what the Bible says as we should that we handle that uncertainty the way that we do. Now the other part of it is we're sinful and so we don't necessarily like John's answer and so we try to find another one and make up another one and ask for another one. And if there's teachers around that'll assure us that there is another one, then we're ready to step on board with that one so that we might escape John's because notice what his answer to the question is, and by this we know that we have come to know him. It's not we remember how completely sincere we were years ago. We go back to our Bible and take a look where we may have signed it. We get out the card that we signed. We go talk to that Sunday school teacher again. No? No, by this we know that we've come to know him. Another present tense verb. If we are presently keeping his commandments. So, well, what? Very, very big time scholars on John point out, John never tells us exactly what those commandments are in John. But honestly, if you've read through the Gospels once in your life, you'll know that the commandments that Jesus would likely be talking about are ones that you can be found in your Bible, and a great summary of them, in fact. Matthew 22, 35 to 40, somebody comes to Jesus. They're testing him, trying to trip him up, make him look bad. What's the great commandment in all the commandments? And here's what Jesus said, Matthew 22, 37. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first commandment. The second is like unto it. you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets, that is, all the other commandments in the Old Testament. They all hang, they all can be summarized nicely here. So it's presently keeping the commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition that Jesus was himself Immersed in present obedience is how you presently know that something has happened in the past. That's John's answer. That's John's answer. Now, my older brother is three and a half years older than I am. But when we were young, he was a little short for his age. And I was a little tall for my age. And so my brother had to undergo this indignity with some regularity as our family would meet new people. And we would be introduced, and then they would say something that mortified him and pleased me a bit. They would say, which one of you is the older? I'm like, yeah. Yeah, my big little brother. You know, we're about the... Now, if I enjoyed it too much, I got punched. And frankly, in those days, there was a lot of punching between the two of us. We fought a lot. I don't know why I was willing to fight so much because I lost every single time, but through some combination of stubbornness and stupidity, I was ready to roll into it again and again and again and hit him from a distance before the inevitable things took place. But as I've mentioned many, many times from this pulpit, The summer after his sophomore year, my brother went away to Camp Forest Springs and he came back. It's just utterly changed. He came back desiring to love God and to love his neighbor, including relatively annoying younger brothers, and we quite literally never fought again. I was particularly exalted one time in 1972, and he hit me in the arm for the last time and apologized in less than 20 minutes. That's my experience with my brother the last 50 years. So if you were to ask me, you see, do you think your brother Doug, I know he does. I know he does. For the very reasons that John mentions here. He has been striving to keep the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ for the last 50 years. I've watched it. I see it. It happens over and over and over and over again. And that's the same thing you want to be able to say of yourself. By this we know that I have come to know him. I love the Lord God. I love my neighbor. I don't have to defend myself. I'm not so easily bothered as I used to be by all manner of things. That's the sort of thing that the Spirit of God means to work out in your life by the commandments. And as it's worked out, you know, you can know that you've come to know him, John says. It's never perfect, but it's real. It's real. Secondly, We are to beware of assuming that we know God when we clearly don't. This is always the majority position in the world among professing Christian people, religious people more broadly speaking. Whoever says, I know him, but doesn't keep his commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word in him truly. The love of God is perfected. Now, we have to pass over these things far, far too quickly, but let me just warn you that we live in a society that's just largely controlled in its thinking, in its forms of what's normal. according to Paul, by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that's now working in the sons of disobedience. And so when you see what customs are just normal and every day in our society, and especially in our religious society at times, as the average American has no idea that spiritual things are all that important. The prince of the power of the air is completely well aware that they're the most important thing going on in the world and he never forgets it. And so he places a great deal of concentration on managing it in a deadly manner. And so in our society, here's the one thing that really is a master stroke on his behalf. Whoever says that I know him but doesn't keep his commandments? This is a person that you should be sure not to judge. This is a person that you just say, well, who am I to judge? They're probably fine. They're probably good to go. Bless you and keep you and go in peace. No problem. That's what you ought to say to such people. So you have politicians, and in this case, this coming Tuesday, our two politicians for president both fall into the same category. They both will announce themselves to be Christian people, and neither one of them lives a life even remotely approaching anything like John would be talking about over the past 30 years for either one. But you're not supposed to say that, and you're not supposed to think that. You're supposed to say, no, no, nobody should ever question a person's profession of faith. If they say, I'm a person of faith, you're just supposed to say, amen, thanks for sharing. Now, John is telling us, raising his hand, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, John, yeah, I won't play that. I'm not going to play that game. I'm telling you, John would say to either one of our presidential candidates when they say, I know, God, you're lying. You do not. You do not. Well, you can't say that. He said, I certainly can. I just did. I just did. Well, how do you know that? You pay no attention to the commandments. Just a cursory view of your lives, you can see you care nothing for the love of God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and haven't. You're not particularly concerned about loving your neighbor as yourself. And we're to apply this to ourselves, primarily, not the presidential candidates. But they set the stage, you see, for how this works. So nobody's supposed to say anything to you, and you're never supposed to say, and so you're just supposed to say, well, somebody claims that they know God, they probably do. And John is just here to tell us, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Beware of assuming that you know God when you clearly don't. Whoever says I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar. The truth isn't in him. Now, again, we have to just very quickly touch on this. The truth isn't in him. He's not telling the truth, but in John's writings, 1 John 5, 6, as we noted last week, the Spirit is the truth. The Spirit of God isn't in him. There's no evidence that such a person is born from above, born again, which is what this present obedience is pointing toward. It's not that you gain or earn salvation by obedience. You evidence the fact that the spirit of truth is in you. that you have come to know him, that you've been born again, and that the spirit of truth is now pressing the word of God on your life such a way that you tend to love the Lord your God, and you feel the weight of loving your neighbor as yourself. And so when you ask, do you know him? It's very close to asking, do I love him? And do I love my neighbor? Thirdly, and this makes what he's been talking about very concrete. Now he's just going to boil it into a really, really helpful and I hope sort of motivating picture of how you can go about building this into your own life. So the last part of verse 5 into verse 6, by this we know that we are in him. Some of the ESV has no there and some put sure. The no version is the good one. By this we know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same manner as he walked. This is in Jesus. By this we know that we are in him. Whoever abides in him, that is in God, ought to walk in the same manner as Jesus walked. Your whole way of life. Your whole way of life. This is what is often referred to, right, as the imitation of Christ. So this is the massive advantage that your Bible gives you. As I've said, I semi-recommend this, but there's no Bible plan that does it. I made my own years ago, and I divided up my anew. I'm always in the Gospels. I'm in the Gospels every single day of the year. which means you read just a little bit in the Gospels, because I only, this next year I'll just read through the New Testament twice, and so the read through the Gospels twice, but I stay, I mean, in the Gospels every single day of the year, never leave the Gospels, and then I'm in the rest of the New Testament every single day of the year too, and I just balance them so that they finish at the same time. Now, the reason I do that is that this is, What does loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, what does that look like? It looks exactly like Jesus. So as you study the attitudes, the life, the actions, the words, the ways of Jesus, You are studying the perfect reflection of commandment keeping that ever lived, that ever was. To walk in the same manner as he walked is to be more like the Jesus you meet on the pages of the Gospels, and in the rest of the New Testament too. But on the pages of the Gospels, you just see Jesus lifted up before your eyes, and my life needs to look more like that. Pray like Jesus, respond to enemies like Jesus, respond to friends like Jesus. And it's assurance based. By this we know that we are in Him. How? By walking in the same manner as Jesus walked. I quote that Kevin Van Hooser lying to you over and over again, we gotta just quickly run to the end because of the time and we're headed for the communion table, but here it is. People of God are called together by God to embody God's word and worship witness and wisdom for the sake of the world. Now if you take that, the goal of that, and insert it into John 1 or John 2 verse 6, it might sound something like this. The Lord Jesus was sent into the world to embody God's word and worship witness and wisdom for the sake of the world. And he did it. Perfectly. And therefore you have you want to embody God's word. Look at the one who embodied it perfectly. Perfectly. Now, of course, our salvation is certainly based on more than imitating Jesus. Not less, but more. And in fact, when Paul summarizes the obedience of Jesus, He just sort of paves a road for us to where we're headed this morning, to the Lord's table. Remember how he puts it in Philippians 2.8. Being found in human form, that is Jesus, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Without that piece of Jesus' obedience, his example of obedience could only destroy us because we come up short of it. I've been trying to imitate Jesus for many, many years and I'm still relatively lousy at it, disappointing at it. Sometimes I feel completely worthless at it. And so, if all's you had was that, you'd be destroyed. You say, well, doesn't John know about that? No, John's assuming this. Well, in fact, he didn't assume it. He just said this in our previous text, right? He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world. That's the stuff of the table. Forgiveness, the ground of forgiveness in the death of Jesus Christ. Without that, you're completely lost. The question John is raising, how do you know you have that? How do you know that he is the propitiation for your sins and how you know that? is by stumbling along to walk in the same manner as he walked. It's present commandment keeping, it's present commitment, it's loving God and loving your neighbor now. That's how you know that something has happened to you that tied you to the death of Christ, to the atonement, to the ground of your forgiveness. That's your whole question. Is this table really mine? Does that blood of Jesus actually count for me? That's what you have to know. And you know that by present obedience. So just two things. Well, if that's what it takes, I'm just not interested. then the table is not for you either, so just let it go by. But on the other hand, if you say, oh wow, I should never come to the Lord's table because although I say month by month, oh, Lord, I'm not ready, but by next month, maybe. No, if that's you, the table is for you. It's for those who are struggling along, striving after the Lord Jesus, striving after this life that he's called us to. Of course, you are not going to be a champion at it. We're sinners. and we remain sinners. So if you just hope with all your heart that the blood of Christ dwells with you, you're disappointed in your own performance, you come to the table. But if you say, well, if that, no, I'm fine, I think everything you've said is just overblown, well, then I just don't think the table's for you and would ask you not to come to the table. So if the men would come who will serve communion this morning, would come, let me read those familiar words from 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Beginning in verse 23, for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you. For the Lord Jesus in the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And he was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So that our imperfect obedience, as real and spirit-driven as it may be, that our imperfect obedience would not ruin us and damn us and destroy us, but that on the basis of his shed blood and broken body, we would be saved, confident, even as we stumble along, following the Lord Jesus Christ. Men would stand. We'll ask the Lord's blessing. upon the bread, and then we'll ask a second blessing later on the cup. Father in heaven, we do thank you that you did not spare your own son, but delivered him up for us all. And how will you not also with him freely give us all things? We praise you and thank you for the broken body of the Son. In Jesus' name, amen.