Let us turn now to the scripture reading for this evening, the text from 1 John chapter 5. 1 John chapter 5, beginning our reading at the 18th verse and continuing on through verse 21. Let us hear the word of the Lord. We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who has been born of God keeps himself and the wicked one does not touch him. We know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourself from idols. Amen. Well, it seems like we get back to 1 John periodically. It seems like we've been away for a long time, but I have good news. There's tonight's sermon, and then next time we get into 1 John, that will be the last sermon in 1 John, and it'll be on verse 21. But tonight, we'll be looking at verse 20. Now, leading up to this verse tonight, we take note of the fact that each of the verses 18, 19, which we've looked at previously, and also verse 20, all begin with the same few first words, we know. And we have looked at these we knows, as it were, a total of five of them. in these three verses. And we have discovered that John is sharing with us knowledge that he believes believers are to hold dear. After all, this is something that we know about God, about his kingdom, that nobody else knows. Only believers know what God has chosen to reveal to them about himself. By way of review, let me just point out again the things we have already seen that John says we know. We know, first of all, that believers are born of God. They are born of God. They are born again by God. They must be born from above by God. A person who is born again by God is not born again as it were physically. You remember that was Nicodemus's concern when Jesus told him, you must be born again. But a person who's born again by God may not change at all physically, but he changes or she changes in terms of attitude, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of the things that they hold important. So being born again, we know that we are born of God is basically reminding us that we have been born again. God is the agent of our being born again. We've been born again to new life with a new spirit, being new creatures. This is not an ongoing process, being born again. It has a definitive point in time where the transition comes from being dead in transgressions and sins to being born again in God or by God. Because there's no uncertainty about this, because there's not an ongoing process going on, there's no uncertainty about whether or not we've been born again. It's definitive. There won't be another time when God will have to come back and born you again. all over again. It's a one-time deal. And it's done by His grace. It's done by His mercy. It's not something that we merit. It's not something that we, in our nature, we wouldn't even choose it. But God does it. And what God makes alive is alive. And He doesn't have to do it over and over again as if He makes some kind of mistake. He does it right the first time. He does it perfect the first time. So everyone who is a believer, everyone that John is addressing, he says, we know. We know this. We know that we're born of God. And in the act of living out your life, you definitely understand that God has done something in your heart that makes you spiritually different from others. You have a different attitude, different mindset. You have different values. You have the values of God and not the values of the world. Things that you once used to enjoy and love doing things called sin, you no longer go there. You no longer want to go there. This takes the work of God and God is the one who does indeed do it. Now he goes on to say that everyone who is, we also know that the believer who's been born of God does not sin. does not sin. And I hope you remember, I hope you remember that that really means, because of the tense in which it's written, the perfect tense, it means we don't continue to sin. That we don't continue to live in sin. We don't find sin enjoyable. That's why we don't live there. It doesn't have the appeal to us that it once had. Instead, we develop a kind of holy hatred of sin. We develop the mindset of God with regard to sin. We begin to see sin for what it really is, as rebellion against God and affront to God. And by God's grace, we strive not to sin. Because for a number of reasons, but maybe primarily, We don't want to be crucifying the Son of God afresh by our sin. We don't take our sin lightly. We don't take it for granted. We don't say to ourselves, oh, it's all right if I sin because Jesus is going to forgive me anyway. We don't adopt that attitude. No, we don't sin. We don't want to sin. It's the same thing, the question that came to Paul in a rather interesting way in Romans chapter 6. Remember that question? If grace abounds where there's sin, should we continue to sin so that more grace might abound? Sounds kind of logical. If there's more grace wherever sins abound, Paul says, God forbid. God forbid. Do you not know? But this is why Jesus came to die. to end the reign of sin in your life, to put away the desire for sin on your part. Now, I recognize it's a battle. I recognize it's still a struggle. But it's a big difference between admitting that there's a struggle and really enjoying your sin. That's where you once were. Over here is where you are now. You're struggling against it. you developing the mindset of God against sin. You begin to see it as an affront to a holy God. So two things we know. If we're going to be saved people, we're born by God. That's what it takes. If we're going to believe in God, we don't sin. And the third thing, Believers who are born of God keep themselves. Keep themselves. I'm pulling all this out of the text. All of what I've just mentioned comes from verse 18. These three points. These first three points. And by keeping himself, that word has the sense of watching over or guarding yourself. We We watch over something in order to protect us, protect ourselves from what could be danger. And the most dangerous thing that's out there for you as one who has been born of God is for the evil one to try to deceive you. So we're constantly on watch against our enemy. And that means we have to know him, we have to know his methods, and we have to know that he is a powerful force. Martin Luther was not wrong when he called him our ancient foe who seeks to work us well. On earth is not his equal. So that all the more tells us we need to keep constantly watching against the things that would try to harm us, try to upset our spiritual walk, try to take us away from the presence of Almighty God. And that's Satan's agenda. In addition to wanting to destroy Christ and his kingdom, which we know he can't do, but that doesn't prevent him from trying. He's just that arrogant. He knows he's defeated, but he won't give up. Kind of blind hope that he can overcome God. That's the fool. The fool says in his heart, there is no God. Now, when we got together a previous time, we looked at verse 19. In verse 19, we saw that there were two other things that we know. We know that we are of God. We are of God, it says. And that is a very, I think is a very wonderful thing to think about because it implies that our very existence is due to the one who is life himself. We live because He lives. And more than that, we live because He lives in us. And we are in union with our Creator. We're in union with our Redeemer. There's nothing closer that exists in terms of union than between God and His creature, His redeemed creature. He is our Father. We are his children. We exist because he has overcome the very essence of the temptation that Satan brought to Eve and to Adam. Again, if you go back to Genesis 3, 4, and 5, Eve has just said to the serpent, We may eat of all the trees, but the tree that is in the middle, we are not to eat. And the devil responds, the serpent responds to Eve after she says, we shall not eat for the day that we eat of it, we shall die. The serpent comes back at her and he says, you shall surely not die. God is a liar. God is not true. That's what he's saying. For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. See, the desire to be like God when we're just the creature separates us from God. and will not ever let us come back to God on our own. We don't want to go back to the one we know we have offended and violated his will. We run and we hide. We know we are of God because of what God has done for us in Christ to remove that wall, that separation between God and man. And now, according to Romans 6, we're in union with Christ in his death and in his resurrection. So we know that we are of God, but then it also says that the whole world lies in wickedness. We know we are of God, but the whole world lies in wickedness. It continues to lie in wickedness. The world, you see, for a believer, is a spiritually hostile place. It is not morally neutral. It is the place of evil. Now, it doesn't always seem that way. And it doesn't always seem as evil as it can get. And that's only because of the restraining hand of God's goodness that prevents man from being as wicked as he possibly could. But in principle, the world is not your friend. The world is not marching to the drumbeat of God. It's in rebellion against God. And when I say world, I'm talking about the world of sinful men. has values that go all the way back to the fall itself. They see their self manifested in the Tower of Babel, in my opinion, where man wants to get together, marshal all of his creative genius, his intellectual ability, his talents, and build himself a highway to heaven or a stairway to heaven. Why? so he can dwell with God, get there on his own, and take all the credit. That's the world's perspective of life. Be like God. That's really wicked. We know these things. God has revealed them to us. The world will continue, the world in which we live will continue to present its quote-unquote saviors. It will continue to present its solutions to the problems of the world. Those solutions, those saviors will be everything but God, everything but Christ. And the world will go on and on and on, postulating new ways, new ideas, which really are the same ideas wrapped in a different package. There is nothing new under the sun. Vanity of vanity, all is vanity. But the world will hail everything, the newest thing that comes down the pike. and try to entice you into worshiping it or bowing down to it. But we know, because our God has told us, the world lives in wickedness. It is anti-God. You might even say its values are anti-Christ. Now in our verse tonight, we get some more we knows. This time it's only one, but it is a most significant and important one. Now here's the idea. How do we know what God has said to us is true? How do we know that what he has revealed to us is true? Isn't there some question of doubt? Well, you have something the world does not have. You have something the world does not have as a redeemed creature, it's not something you deserve, it's not something you earned, it's something God gave you. In addition to having a mind, which everybody has, you have the Holy Spirit. You have God's presence with you. And God's presence with you is very important because the Holy Spirit affirms or confirms the words of Scripture and makes them authoritative and true to your life and to your meaning. Yeah, I know the world's going to say, well, you say that you've got Spirit and I don't. But it's true. You do. And the Spirit marches to the drumbeat of the Word of God. And it speaks to you or it helps you to say and to believe, yeah, I believe what God's Word is true. Let God be true and every man a liar. And so we read all of these we knows, and we read the one tonight. And if you're a believer, the Word of God is using what I'm excuse me, the Spirit of God is taking what I'm saying and is confirming these things in your life. Telling you these things are indeed true. You know, what's true and what's false, in many, in our world today, what's true and what's false is thought of as a relative term. And you see, it's relative for the simple reason that the people of the world have no other objective criteria by which to measure whether something is true or not. You do have an objective criteria. You have the Spirit. You have the Word of God. And as I was saying this morning in our Sunday school class, not in the Sunday school, but in the membership class, we have saving faith, faith that God has given us. It's a gift. Faith in Jesus Christ, contrary to what you'll hear in the world, if they even talk about it, but even contrary to what you'll hear about it in most churches, Faith in Jesus Christ is not a leap in the dark. You're not leaping into the dark. The truth is you're leaping to the truth. You're leaping into the light. If you're leaping at all, if God is moving you to leap, you're leaping into truth. You're leaping into revealed truth. This is not, first of all, the Word of men. It is the Word of God. And this is our standard. And to throw aspersions at this to be just the work of men does not understand the Bible at all. It does not understand what the Bible says about itself. It doesn't understand human nature. Because no human could write this. No group of humans over a period of centuries, millennia, could write this. with any degree of consistency or could even get at the heart of what the gospel is. Because the heart of the gospel is that God saves, not us. And that is completely offensive to our sinful minds. And we only love it because God has changed our sinful minds. We know that the Son of God is come. We know that Jesus Christ is come. Believing in Jesus Christ, as I said before, is not a leap of faith. The Bible is based on fact. It's based on historical truth, historical facts. Regardless of what you want to attribute to him, there is there was a Jesus Christ who walked the face of the earth. Who did what the Bible says he did, who died and was risen again. We know that Jesus has come. Because God said he would. as well, because Jesus fulfilled that promise. And not only do we know that he has come, but we know that he's coming again. Just as sure as he came the first time. We may not live to see it with our eyes. But we know he's coming. We know he's coming back. We know when he comes back, he'll come as judge. Until that time, it's time to be busy and sharing the gospel with others who don't know him. But when he comes back, there won't be any time left. When he appears, the doors of heaven are shut. Nobody else will be saved. No matter how bad the weeping and gnashing of teeth is. No matter it be like in the days of Noah, when the floods came and all the people who laughed and scorned at Noah perished. Only it will be far more destructive. We know that the Son of God is come. If you believe that, if you believe that, if God has enabled you to believe that, John in his epistle in the first If you believe that, that's proof that you're a believer. Hereby know, hereby you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. Every that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Isn't it amazing this concept of the incarnation of Jesus Christ? That's what it means. Christ comes in the flesh. The incarnation or connected with that the virgin birth of Christ. Everybody who believes in the virgin birth of Christ confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh, that Almighty God, which is who Jesus is, the Emmanuel of God, God with us, has come in the flesh. Every spirit that says that is indeed witnessing to the fact that God has come and that he or she is a believer. We know this because God has revealed this to us. God has given us understanding to know him. And something about the one we know, something about his attributes, something about his character is at the heart of why we believe this is true. And that's simply that God is true. In him there is no falsehood at all. Let God be true and every man a liar. God, we know that the Son of God is come. God has given us an understanding. An understanding. That we might know him who is true. Who is true? Who is false? God, the evil one, and all aligned with him, the evil one. God is infinite in his truth, as he is in all of his attributes. It is essential to know that God is truth. First Corinthians chapter one, verse 30, reminds us, but of him are ye in Christ Jesus who is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Now, it doesn't say true, but clearly there's no such thing as false wisdom in God's book. There's no truth outside of Christ. There's no truth outside of God's word. You and I, As we come to the Bible, there's essentially a two step approach to knowing. We first know God. And then we know his word. And when we know his word, we know his truth. Truth. Truth, true truth. How do you say that? True truth. True truth does not exist outside of God. God is not one of many truths. As Jesus reminded us in John 14, verse 6, I am the way. the truth and the life and no one gets to the Father but through me. Only Christian truth or only Bible truth is true truth. Everything else is false. And true truth, I hate having to say that, but true truth is in Christ. Listen to how Paul puts it in Colossians 2 verse 2 as he's praying for the Colossian Christians. He says, this is his prayer, that their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love and unto all riches of the full assurance of the understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." Again, it doesn't say truth, but it's hard to drive a wedge between truth, wisdom, and knowledge. Such singleness of truth, such insistence on there being only one truth, only one way, immediately sets up conflict with the world. Because the world in its wisdom does not know God. And the world in its wisdom postulates many truths. You've heard it all the time. There are many different ways to God. Why do you Christians want to insist that yours is the only way? Well, the way we do it is because where there may be, excuse me, I can't even say that, where there might be people who think there are many truths or many ways unto God, there is only one Jesus. There isn't a Jesus in all the other religions. Where is he? There's no Messiah. and all the other false religions of the world. They're not truth because they're false. They're based on false God. There's no true understanding of salvation. Salvation in all false religions is what you do. It boils down to that. It's just that simple. What do you do? What must you do? to find your way to God. And if you stand up and you say, no, there's only one truth. And it's the truth that Jesus has come to save sinners. He's the only way to salvation. You know what you're going to hear next, most likely. You're narrow minded. Maybe even you're a bigot. Jesus said about this conflict in John 17 verse 14. He said, I have given them the word. He's talking about his disciples. He's praying to his father. He says, I've given them thy word and the world has hated them. Because they are not of the world. Even I, even as I am not of the world. Isn't that something? You're not of the world. I bet you thought you were a citizen of this world. I bet it's hard for you to think of the fact that you're not really a citizen of the world. You're an alien to this world. Amen, brother. You're an alien to this world. Your citizenship is not here. Where's your citizenship? It's in heaven with God. your strangers and your pilgrims in this world. This is not your home. Your ultimate home is glory. I have given them thy word and the world has hated them. Isn't that something? If you appreciate that a little bit, if you understand that, is he not saying that simply because Christ has given the word to his disciples, they have his word, they have his truth, much of the same truth that you have here, that that's enough for the world to hate them. Truth comes with knowing Christ. Truth comes with knowing God. My goodness, Jesus even says, with God's blessing, God has given to us to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God. Matthew chapter 13, verse 11, where Jesus talks about why He speaks in parables. Remember? Questioned by his own disciples, Jesus says, because it is given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But it is not given to them. To know God's truth cannot start with man. It cannot start with me. It has to start outside me. I'm the creature. I'm not the creator. I'm finite. I'm not infinite. I did nothing to create this world. I don't know how it all works. I know that when I cut my finger, it bleeds. I don't know where blood comes from. It's just there. I don't know how. I mean, I can read about some of the things that go in the blood, but I don't know how wonderfully it courses through my veins, through the miles and miles and miles of my veins and arteries. I mean, just look at your human body, you know, and all the different ways of, what about the brain? You know, we're still working on trying to understand how all that works. We don't even understand how cold works, at least not enough to cure one. Truth can't start with you. Knowing what is true and truly knowing comes from God. Without knowing Jesus, we will not be able to know the Father. As John 17.25 writes, O righteous Father, the world has not known Thee, but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent me." We who are in Christ know that He is true. We know that God is true, and we know that His Son is true. And we know that what His Son says is true. With belonging to Christ is the true God and eternal life. Having God's truth means you cannot be separated from Christ, you cannot be separated from God, you cannot be separated from eternal life. As John 17.3 writes again, and this is life eternal. And this is life eternal. You want to know what life eternal is? This is it. That they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. These are the things we know. These are the things God has revealed to John's listeners, and to all of God's people. These are not things that you have to go waiting for a voice from heaven to say it to you. It's here. God has said it right here. God has given you truth right here. I'm sure that this is a the tack against the Gnostics view of knowledge and truth. But that aside, what we need to know about our life, about our God, about Jesus Christ has been revealed to us. May God help you to know these things and have eternal life in Christ Jesus. Amen. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, tonight, as we have gathered together and as you have spoken to us, Lord, from your Word, you've spoken to us your Word. I pray, O Heavenly Father, that you will encourage your people with the things that they have heard I pray, O Lord, that you will help your people to sort them through and to trust the scriptures to see if these things be true that have been said. I pray, Lord, that you will give truth to your people in such an overwhelming and compelling way, Lord, that they too will affirm that your word is truth for their life, their only truth. And I pray, Father, that you will also overrule those things which are said, which are not in keeping or maybe in conflict with what you have taught in your word. These things we ask in Jesus name. Amen.