We're in 1st John chapter 3. We are reading verses 19 through 22. So 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, and whatever we ask, we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him. Amen, dear saints. You may be seated on this Lord's Day. As we're continuing our trek through the great third chapter of 1 John, Lord willing, we'll finish it next week. And two weeks from today, start on chapter 4, and continue that right on through till the end of chapter 5, Lord willing. But every chapter of our life is framed by our love for and the person of Jesus. So let's pray right now. Father, life is nothing. it is in Christ. Give us Jesus in the fullness of your spirit. Grant to each saint here great encouragement upon hearing this sermon that they would be built up in their faith, their love for you, knowing that you love them as they are your church, the bride of Christ. We thank you. We commit our way to you. In Jesus' name, amen. So there's a certain sense in which there's nothing worse for an individual human being than to have a heart that condemns itself. Now, on the other hand, if the Holy Spirit is working in someone, a work of conviction, and a heart tends to condemn itself, that can be a good thing because that shows that there's some life. And so long as that person runs immediately to Jesus for remission of sins, especially in the context of the covenant, the church, that's a beautiful thing. And yet, on the other hand, another hand, if you had three hands, and we have two, let's say we have three. Another hand would be, we are very complicated, complex creatures made in the image of God. And for any myriad of a number of reasons, we may have genuine saving faith in Jesus. We may even be perfect in the covenant in that we're keeping our vows by God's grace. We're in church every Sunday when we're able to be without being sick or something. And yet, nonetheless, we still struggle with a heart that condemns itself, at times at least. And I suspect that every truly born-again Christian churchman has struggled with the issue of a heart that tends to condemn itself. Ironically, those who are outside of Christ are usually exempt from this. They are dead in trespasses and sins, and dead people don't feel anything. So if there is a sense in which we struggle with a heart that condemns itself, that's not all bad. And if you are one who ever struggles with that in any way, shape, or form, then this text today and the sermon today is for you. It's especially designed for you by a loving, tender father who cares for his children and wants them to know of his absolute love for them in Jesus. He wants you to have true and real assurance of his care and affection. his smiles, his kisses, and his hugs of you, the children of God." Now, that situation, however, that we just mentioned, the third one, is particularly suited only for those who are covenanted in the church. It doesn't deny that there could be legitimate born-again Christians who aren't, yet they can't have the assurance. They can't have that objective certitude that their sins are forgiven, that they are in a right standing with God. But those in the church faithfully can. It's one of the great privileges of being a faithful member of a real, concrete, physical church made up of sinner saints who love God and grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord, who take our vows and our confessions and our creeds, like the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, and the rest, very seriously, and yet recognize that we're sinners. We fall short of the glory of God. We recognize that in ourselves we can't do anything right. In fact, there's nothing in us good at all. All of our righteousness is of Christ. Therefore, if you are in the body of Christ, the Church of the Living God today, then you ought to make it your goal today to bless God in Jesus that He is greater than our hearts. We're looking at 1 John 3, 19 through 22 today, and the title is God Greater Than Our Hearts, the doctrine The fact that God is greater than our hearts is a wonderful blessing. You know, if our hearts were actually greater than God, which of course is impossible because nothing is greater than God, if that was true, if our hearts were so great, so able to condemn us, we would have a major problem. But that isn't the case. In truth, though, we are all tempted to think that our hearts really are greater than God. And this usually happens when we're under tremendous stress, or pressure, or trial, or hardship in life, and we're just really being crushed in our souls, our spirits. We tend to think the heart is greater than God. The heart is condemning. It must be the right decision, the right judgment, the right verdict. But it's not. God is greater than our heart. When this does happen, it's usually because we are not thinking about the truth as it is found in Christ Jesus, as we hear of it every Sunday, but that's why we have to come back. One of the great privileges, the reasons we want to come back to church, Lord's Day to Lord's Day, to hear of that great news. Now, let us thoughtfully consider why the fact that God is greater than our hearts is a wonderful blessing. First, because even a regenerated heart tends towards self-condemnation. I mentioned this earlier, but I don't think there are any truly born-again souls who've never felt, at one time or another, that one's heart was condemning oneself. And again, that's not all bad. There can be a gentle, humbling effect that comes through that, a fatherly chastisement, a loving discipline. God can even use our sins to remind us that we're really no better than anybody else. That we would be, and were, lost and dead in trespasses and sins, enmity with God and hating Him, just like everybody else, before God applied His electing love in just by us in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit. And again, ironically, it's the redeemed, not usually the currently damned, who do this self-reflection and are subject to this serious spiritual miscalculation. So again, if this is something you've ever struggled with, you're not alone. And the Apostle John seems particularly sensitive to this issue by bringing it up here in chapter 3, and then he'll do it again in a slightly different form in chapter 5 at verses 13 to 15. He may have done this because he himself was a more tender, sensitive, philosophical, cerebral type of a disciple of Jesus. Whereas some of the others, your Peters of the world, were pretty rough and tumble. We all have our different ways. And perhaps John really could relate to and feel for the believers who struggled with the issue of a heart that condemns itself in some form or another. Therefore, if you are ever tempted to do that, even for real sins, not just imaginary ones that you really do commit, then this sermon is for you because there really is remission. Now of course we want to make progress over our sins. We don't want to spin our wheels. We hate our sins because we love God. We know our sins hurt us and others. There's nothing good in sin at all except for what we can learn from it and be humbled by. But it brings God glory when we acknowledge it and continue to come back to him. and find our all in all in him." Now what makes you unique here, and what gives you special protection, is your covenantal standing as members of a faithful church. Again, that is a huge blessing that not all true Christians have, because we don't deny that there probably are regenerate people outside of the visible church, and yet they can't have any of these assurances. So, let's now consider this, that the fact that God is greater than our hearts is a wonderful blessing, because even a regenerated heart tends towards self-condemnation, and because our hearts left to themselves would agree with the world and not with Christ. Now, dears, we live in a fallen world. Everybody's pretending, everybody's lying, everybody's prevaricating, everybody's living a shadow, a world that doesn't exist, a mirage. And one of the ways that sinners living in a world like that, where they are under condemnation... Remember we read in Romans 8, 1, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? Well, the flip side of that is there's nothing but condemnation on all those who are not in Christ Jesus. And so, sinners living in that kind of a difficult environment create an artificial world. and seek to assuage their guilt by being told and telling each other they're fine. There's nothing wrong. Everything's fine. God's fine. We're fine. You're okay. I'm okay. Everybody's okay. True guilt is covered over with a false sense of security. But it's a very thin veneer. I mean, just a little touch on it, on a heart, and it just disappears. There's nothing to it. But we would do the same thing if it was left up to us. We would do the exact same thing, except for the fact that we are tied to or tethered to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, who has bound us to him in this great covenantal life that we enjoy as the Church of Jesus. We would do it as well. So what I'm saying is that people in the world that we deal with act the way they do, think the way they do, and believe the way they do for a reason. They do it to protect themselves from themselves, ironically, from God, because they know He exists. You can't think God away, or hope God away, or believe God away. He just exists. and from the truth itself, which they inherently know is true. But we all would be in that boat, but for the sake of the grace and glory of God. We would do the exact same thing. Except that the love of God, known in the person of Jesus Christ, has delivered us from that sort of miserable life and false life. A life of lies and deceit. A life of Delusion and death. This is why we live the way we do and we have the perspectives the way we do. This is why we view the church as the great city of God. The great fortress out of which, out of the gates of which we march every day as ambassadors and conquerors, bringing the gospel to people that need it. Romans 8, 37. Going forth from the gates of the new Jerusalem, the new covenant city of God, the church of Jesus, reaching the world the way it must be reached, not with bridges, but inviting people through gates as we go out. It's not a fortress we're locked into, hoping to survive until the last coming of Jesus or something, or to survive the world's assaults. No. We're on the offensive. We're taking the initiative. We're conquering the world. We are sharing the good news of Jesus. We go out of the gates of the New Jerusalem to do that. Let's look at these exciting verses, 19 through 22, 1 John 3. and observe the way God comforts and caresses the hearts of his children. Now keep in mind that God, our Heavenly Father, knows what we're all prone to do. He fully understands that we are, because of the memory of our fallen Adam, always given to self-condemnation. And we succumb to it every time we take our eyes off of Christ. It's inevitable. If we aren't looking at Jesus, we're going to know we're condemned. And as true believers, we're the only ones that can really feel that. And we will. But that's not a good feeling. Hence, we should take tremendous joy in the way God comforts and caresses the hearts of His children. First, His love working through us confirms us. Verse 19. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him." That's God. Now verse 19 is hearkening back to verse 18, which taught us that love is supposed to be in word, yes, but in deed and in truth. So it's okay to love in word, obviously we do that. It's to coordinate with our deeds. So that's one of the important things about the Christian life, is that we're honest, we're honorable, we're integrity-laden. What we are is what we are. What you see is what you get. Obviously we fall short, but that's our heart. That's the passion of who we are. That's the real self living out the life of Christ in a fallen world. But verse 19 is also a hinge to what follows concerning the heart's standings before God. So when God's love courses through the lives of us to other people, first in the church, we have this blessed sense of assurance that we are in the truth who is Christ Jesus himself, who is the way, the truth, and the life. John 14, 6. We know we're in Christ as we live out the Christian life, ministering first to each other and then out of here to other Christians and the world around us. Now this would not be the case, of course, for anyone who hates a brother or sister in the church, as verse 15 had taught us earlier. But for us who do love each other in the church, encouraging fellow saints on this Lord's Day and throughout the week, our sense of assurance in Christ only expands and is enhanced. So the way God comforts and caresses the hearts of his children, his kind working through us confirms us, I mean his love working through us confirms us, and his kind omniscience consoles us. Verse 20, this is the great verse. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything. Now verse 20 is a really beautiful example of where the omniscience, which is a big word that means all-knowingness of God, God knows everything, He can't hide anything from Him, He knows every thought that we have. We read Psalm 39 earlier in our Old Testament readings, all about David marveling that God knows everything. about us, and it's a beautiful example where the omniscience of God, rather than terrifying and scaring us, which it normally would do, I mean, when you think of the omniscience of God, and he knows every single little thing, there's nothing we can hide from, and that's a pretty terrifying fact, isn't it? I mean, except for the covering of Jesus Christ and his blood atonement. But here, instead of it being terrifying, it is a heartening thing for us who belong to God in Christ Jesus. Because he says our heart condemns us, but God knows everything. And he's greater than our heart. Now what's tender about this verse 20 is that God takes it as a given that even his dear, beloved, churched children whom He dearly loves. We're just regular people. In fact, in ourselves there's nothing about us different from anybody else. But we're not regular. We're children of the King. He knows, takes it as a given, that we will find our hearts condemning us from time to time. God knows this because He knows everything. And He knows the wiles of the devil, the world, and our own hearts. And we're very complex creatures. There's all kinds of factors that can work into these things. From illnesses, to backgrounds, to just any number of things. I mean, extraordinary creations we are of God. And all these things contribute to this dynamic. He knows everything. So in verse 20 says, God is greater than our heart and knows everything. This is beautiful, because in the full context of 1 John, the referent really is the glorious truth of this blessed fact that all our sins really are forgiven in the person, and the blood, and the righteousness, and the justification, and the resurrection of the Son of God from the dead for us, the church. He died for our sins. He rose for our justification. We really are forgiven. And this is true even though our heart, quote, condemns us. We just celebrated Thanksgiving. This is a good cause for Thanksgiving right here. What a gracious and loving God. But even though our heart condemns us, as we are in Christ Jesus, and the assurance comes through covenant faithfulness done in love with a true heart. We know our sins are forgiven, despite our struggles with them. The way God comforts and caresses the hearts of his children. His love working through us confirms us, his kind omniscience consoles us, and finally, his sweet assurance emboldens us. Verses 21 and 22. Beloved, 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." Now, these last two verses are not teaching a negation of what we just learned in verse 20. It's not saying, oh, by the way, if your heart condemns you, then none of this is true. You can't please God, you can't keep his commandments, and you can't receive from him. Not true. He's not saying that. He's saying that in those blessed instances where we know and feel and experience the security that we really do have in Christ Jesus, that is important and we ought to foster and desire and pray for, we have a more smooth, easy path toward that receiving and pleasing and obeying. It doesn't mean that that's the only time we do it. It just means that that is a more facile time of doing it, a more easy time of doing it. And when we do that, we enjoy a gracious boldness with our Father. And because of this, we receive from him, we keep his commandments, and we please him all by his grace. But again, none of this is meant to imply that the poor, humbled, and perhaps perplexed soul of verse 20, whose heart is condemning him, doesn't also receive from God, obey God, and keep his commandments. In fact, that's done just in repentance, contrition, and faithfulness in the life of the church. The difference is one of subjective condition of the heart, not one of objective standing of the heart with God through Christ. So yes, it's true that sometimes we feel one way and sometimes another, but that doesn't mean that the actual fact has changed at all. If we are justified in Jesus, and that is to be known and experienced in assurance coming from that covenant faithfulness, which is not a work, it's just an evidence, then we are in good standing with God, no matter whether our heart condemns us or not. Nonetheless, all of us who are in Christ want to be in this latter category of verses 21 and 22 clearly. So really, as we grow, this is really what we want. Now the Puritans, who had a very tender view of God, like to describe heaven on earth as the church saint having such as firm, solid, secure embrace of God in the heart, that we feel and experience the affection of God, His smiles, His grace, that's heaven on earth, is to be assured of God's love for you. As a pastor, I must tell you, you might say, well, pastor, I don't feel that. That's not condemning you. That's part of the sanctifying walk. But you want to get to that point where, by God's grace, you experience it. And of course, it's the more we... Why don't we sin? We don't sin because we love God more. What happens when we love God more? We sin less. What happens when we sin less and love God more? Our assurance goes up. So there's a lot of value in walking with Christ. Lord's stay to Lord's stay. All these things go together. We don't quit sinning because God tells us not to sin. Nobody does. That ended at the Garden of Eden with Adam's fall. We only quit sinning because we love God more, through Christ. Only reason. We can put up barriers, walls, firewalls, whatever. None of them work. Plus, the heart is always deceitful. Who can know it? But the true heart may know assurance in Jesus. And it's a beautiful and wonderful thing. And this condition is true of all you Redeemerites who are in this church today with a contrite, broken spirit, knowing that you sinned and your heart wants to condemn you, or knowing that by God's grace you had a lot of gracious success in Christ and you give him the glory, in either case you have the assurance of God's love. And all of this is because of Jesus alone plus nothing. Let's do some more important application this morning and consider how God and the regenerated heart communicate. What good would it be for us if God was greater than our heart, but he had no living or vital union or connection with us? The genuine Christian life is one of fellowship, and that fellowship is first and foremost with the three persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And included in that fellowship of highest and important place is communication or commerce of heart and thought and concepts and prayer between us, or at least our prayers to God. Let us now investigate how this gracious dynamic occurs. How God and the regenerated heart communicate. First, Christ speaks his perfect peace to our souls. And just as you would expect, Especially if you know your Bible and our theology is glorious in this. God takes the initiative, not us. If it was up to us, we'd never communicate with God. What did Adam do after he fell in the garden? He and Eve were looking for a bush to hide behind and get away from God who was walking around in the cool of the morning. The idea that we would want to take any initiative to God is just a farce and a blasphemous joke. We're so lost, dead, trespasses and sins. It's God himself who reestablishes the communication with sinners like us. And he does it through the gospel preached from his pulpits. He communicates with you through the Holy Spirit working in you, taking the words you hear, especially the word of God, Jesus Christ himself, the divine logos, and communicating him to you. the Word of God. The Son of God, Christ, the second person, has always been the Word of God. John 1, 1-3, and verse 14. So now Jesus Christ, the incarnated, divine, human, God-man, Word of God, is seated at the Father's right hand, and He is communicating His perfect peace to us, because He has entered the temple in heaven, not made with hands, and presented His blood on our behalf, that made peace with God. And now He is the Prince of Peace, Isaiah 9.6, which we're going to sing about, I'm sure, during the Advent season. He makes perfect peace. Do you know in this world you may have perfect peace? Isaiah, I think it's 30.18 says, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he or she trusts in you. Perfect peace. Peace has nothing to do with circumstances, life issues. We struggle with these, of course we do. But that deep abiding peace is the result of Jesus Christ embedding himself in the deepest recesses of our hearts and planting that peace there. And that peace we may have. especially when our hearts rise up against us and want to condemn us again and again and again and again. And by the way, the world and sinners and religious people pile on and the devil of course is happy to do it. People want to be miserable, and they want you to be miserable with them. And God says, no, you, the church, may have perfect peace. Christ communicates it. Will we have tribulation in this world? John 16, 33, Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. In this world you will have tribulation. Yeah, you'll have it. That doesn't sound like peace, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. in you. He has placed himself, the very reality of peace. And the world, this is what they want, but they'll only find it in Jesus. And we are the ambassadors leaving the gates, new city of God, new covenant church, bring that peace to them. How God and the regenerated heart communicate, Christ speaks his perfect peace to our souls, and we respond with joyful love. That's the pattern and circle of gospel life. Christ gives his very self to us, not just all his truth and body of doctrine and all the good things, but his very being to us. Next Sunday we're going to eat his flesh and drink his blood, Lord willing, many of us here. He gives us Himself, His soul, His body, and includes every good and perfect gift in Him. And we, in response, in love, give Him everything we have. Not in some kind of ascetic, monastic way that denies the good things of God, but one that includes the good things of God. For every creation of God is good, not to be despised. 1 Timothy 4.4, and we use it all for the glory of God. The regenerated saints of the church do that. We muster that love to the best of our ability at that point in our Christian sanctifying development into Christ's likeness from Lord's Day to Lord's Day. Wherever we are on the process, the spectrum, the continuum, wherever it is, doesn't matter. As long as we're in Christ, He is the way. We have that peace. No one wishes to please God who doesn't love him, though. And no one loves God devoid of joy in Christ. And it's our joy that propels this obedience, this love, this heartfelt desire to please a Father who is a doting, loving Father, who gives us every good and perfect gift. If we have no love, no joy, we're no different from anyone in the world, despite how much religion we might have thrown on top of it. But all living saints, all living and vital saints love, and we respond to God as children of a loving Father. If we're in Christ today, then as His faithful church, let's take full advantage of all the benefits we have in Christ, every one of them. This sermon means of grace, prayer throughout the week, Lord's Supper as we look forward to it, evangelism, discipleship, everything that we do, service of each other, the church, and the world. Love God heartily in Christ your Lord. If this isn't the case, someone doesn't love God, then the invitation is out. Invitation. Come to the Messiah. Lay down your burden of your sin. Lay your burden down. Take up the cross of Jesus, which is a lot lighter than the burden of sin and condemnation, and walk in love with Him. the gracious and good God who is greater than our heart. The blood of Jesus cleanses away all the sins of all of us who are in him by grace through saving faith that he gives us, which is a gift of God, comes after regeneration, and Christ's resurrection, rising from the dead, stepping on the earth as the risen body of the God-man, secures forever now our justification. Beloved, God greater than our hearts is a wonderful thing to hear. It's even a greater thing to enjoy and to live. Let's be thankful in this season that God is greater than our hearts. Let's pray. Father, thank you for that. You're greater than our hearts. We think our hearts are so great. that we have to believe them every time they rise up against us and passionately scream something out at us, some condemnation, some curse, some damnation, whatever it might be, and yet you're greater than our hearts, you know everything. We thank you that you love your children so much that you'd put texts like these in the book so that in those cases where some of your children of your church are tempted to be self-condemning, they recognize that you're greater than their heart and that you know everything. We thank you that you are the great and good God, the only God, and we thank you provided us everything we need in Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.