I invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1 John chapter 3. 1 John chapter 3. Message this morning is again from this letter that I've been attempting to expound on. I haven't met John yet, but I'm I'm looking forward to meeting John. I'm not sure if I really know him that well, but I realize that the scriptures are written by God and through the Holy Spirit, but he used men, didn't he? And I think in that humanity part of the author, there's something that comes through in their writings that reflect who this person was. In other words, I think part of John's character is revealed in how he writes this letter. Maybe even a bit of his personality shines through. What stands out to me in looking at John's letter and thinking about who he may have been and how he may have been, Some of the words that I think of that would describe him in my opinion, and this is kind of a side note, okay, it's not really scripture, but we'll get to the scripture soon. I see John as a warm, loving, sensitive kind of person. He was noted and known to be what? What kind of disciple? Yes, but also, Yes, the beloved disciple. One who loved and I think he expressed that love. I think he was, I picture him as one who had feeling and was able to express that. And part of that comes out in our text this morning. I think this morning our text reflects a warm message. And I'll be honest, when I first started looking at this portion of the letter, this text, I was tempted to skip over it. In fact, I told my wife, I wonder if I shouldn't just skip over it. I don't think you would have known the difference, would you? But I'm glad I didn't. This is a rich text here. I've entitled, I've tried to kind of take it apart and put it back together. And so bear with me. Some of it may seem a bit scattered, but I want to try and bring it together. And I think the title really, really is what the heart of the message is this morning in that it obedience brings clarity. And as we read the text, just try and in your minds, see how obedience connects to bringing clarity and how He alludes to obedience and some clarity here. I'm not usually one to do a lot of review, and I'm not going to do that this morning again either, but before we even read the text, I want you to have in your minds what he had just been writing about. Does someone know quickly what the title of our last message was or what it was about? The Power of Love. Thank you, Neil. That is the backdrop of today's message, and so keep that in your minds as we even read the text, The Power of God's Love, and then how it applies in this part of the letter for today. I invite you to stand as we read. 1 John 3, and I'd like to do responsive reading. I'll read a verse and then I'll have you read the next verse. The text for today is actually, begins in verse 19, but I'm going to read verse 18 first, and then I'll have you read verse 19 and we'll go back and forth. Verse 18, 1 John 3, My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. and he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him, and hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he hath given us. Let's pray. God, thank you for this particular portion of your holy, eternal word, and thank you for John, and thank you for the Holy Spirit who directed this writing, and just pray that this same Holy Spirit who helped write it would be with us today as we look at it and as we make application and as we make exposition on this particular part of Your Word. Bless us with Your wisdom and with Your peace. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Obedience brings clarity. I have four ideas here we'd like to cover this morning. First of all is obedience brings a clear conscience. And then I have a few different kinds of consciences we'd like to discover and look at. And then obedience brings clear communication, verse 22. And then thirdly, the clear commandment that we have in verse 23. And then obedience lastly brings clear confirmation in verse 24. Going back to a clear conscience. Now, you might be scratching your head and saying, well, the word conscience isn't even mentioned in this text. Where do you get that? Well, notice the word heart and the repeated use of the word heart. He uses it in verse 19, hereby we know we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. Verse 20, he has it twice, for if our heart condemn us, God is greater than a heart. Verse 21, beloved, if our heart condemn us not. The word heart. What does the word heart mean? Exactly right. That's right. The Greek word is cordia, and it means the thoughts or feelings, the mind. It also, it means the middle or the center. Like Leroy said, it's the center of our being. Vine's Dictionary says that it's the seat of moral nature and spiritual life. And here is just a partial list of what it is included in this definition in minds. The desires, the affections, the perceptions, the thoughts, the understanding, the reasoning powers, the imagination, the intentions, and it includes conscience. In fact, Vine's dictionary, if you're familiar with that dictionary, sometimes when it gives you a particular definition under word, it connects it to a text. In this particular entry in the dictionary of Vine's, he directly connects conscience with this text. I found it interesting also that the Living Bible uses the word conscience in place of heart. So I think we won't do injustice to the text to read the text replacing the word heart with conscience. It could include more than just the conscience, but I'm going to use it in that way this morning. So the heart is is that core of our being that includes our minds and emotions and our thoughts and feelings and somehow our conscience is intertwined with all of that and sometimes we think of our bodies as being made up marvelously and they are, but this part of how God made us in His image is even more intricate and even more wonderful and marvelous than even our bodies are. What really is our conscience? Can we trust it? Oxford Dictionary says that it's an inner voice viewed as an act, as a guide, acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of our behavior. And somehow the Holy Spirit works through our conscience, our mind, and our thoughts and directs us. Now the Bible has quite a bit to say about our conscience. It talks about, I think there's approximately 30 verses in the Bible that talk about our conscience. It references a pure conscience, a seared conscience, an evil conscience, a good conscience, a conscience void of offense, a purged conscience. Now we're not gonna look at all of that, but just to give us a little glimpse of, this is an important subject in the Bible. And again I ask the question, can we trust our conscience? Can we trust our feelings? Because that's included in this whole heart, conscience idea. Our feelings. Can we trust our feelings in our relationship to God? Okay, we can harden our hearts. God made us with feelings, so we can't just ignore them. But I also think that there's more to our relationship with God than our feelings. And I want to just explore that just a little bit in this first part of this, this morning, where we're talking about the conscience. Now, I think in our text, I'm going to look at, try and explore just a little bit, three different kinds of consciences. Your handout has these. The first one is a condemned conscience. I kind of see this, well, in verse 20, for our heart condemn us, and verse 21, for our heart condemn us not. So, how many of you have ever felt guilty and condemned? What did that feel like? Terrible. What are some other words that describe that feeling? Depressing. Fearful. Heavy and oppressive. Shameful. No hope. remember David writing in the Psalms is one who he liked to express his feelings and he describes this guilty feeling in Psalm I believe it's 32 yes and part of his some of his work pictures are like he says his bones were waxed old And it's like a heavy hand that doesn't go away. And it's drying him up. And it's constant. It's day and night. You know, how many of you enjoy that feeling? My flesh doesn't. Pretty miserable. You know, at the moment we don't enjoy it, but when we stop and think about it, isn't it the mercy of God that we feel condemned when we sin? So that we can repent. And in a moment, we'll talk about what to do with this condemned conscience. Secondly, then, the confused conscience. Now, I see this in verse 20. If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Now, what do you make of that? Your heart condemns us, but God knows you better. Have you ever felt guilty about something and you weren't sure why? I mean, you didn't necessarily intentionally do wrong or say something wrong, but you still felt condemned and couldn't figure out why. This kind of conscience can be frustrating and confusing. It's an oversensitive or overactive conscience. Now should we just quit trying and ignore those feelings and wish they would go away? I don't think that's the answer God wants. And I'd just like to tell you this morning that if you experience any kind of this conscience to some level, don't squelch or squash that sensitivity. It's God given. Don't just try and ignore or block out those feelings, that kind of sensitivity. I believe the Bible gives us some clear principles, and even I find them in this text, that help us deal with a confused conscience. I have three ideas here that I'd like to just highlight a bit. that are, I think they're helpful. They're kind of like maybe stepping stones we can take if our conscience is confused, if we're condemned and don't know why. The first one is in verse 20. If our heart is condemned, God is greater than the heart. First of all, remember God is greater than your feelings. God is bigger than your feelings. He knows all things. God and God's Word have more authority or more power than our conscience. Does that make sense? God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and so He knows better what's in our hearts than we do. His analysis of our life and who we are is more important than what we're feeling. And listen, it says He knows all things. He knows what's in our hearts. He knows what those intentions are. He knows whether we've simply made a mistake or whether we're intentionally sinning. So first of all, just remember that God is greater than our feelings and our conscience. Secondly, I see here in verse 19, I think it's very important, this one, and that is to focus on the truth, and hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. The truth brings assurance. Our hearts or our conscience, it uses the word assure, but the word is also, it could be satisfied. Our conscience is satisfied by truth. And I don't know if you're gonna agree with this or not, But I believe that much of the confusion of our conscience comes from believing lies. Lies like, I'm not good enough. Lies like, I can't say things perfectly enough, so I'm just not gonna talk. Lies like, I can't do this good enough, so I won't even try. And where do lies come from? They don't come from God. They come from Satan, who is the father of lies. And he's delighted to bring confusion to the conscience of God's people. So quit believing lies. If your conscience is confused, quit believing lies. Focus on the truth. Truth like I'm made in God's image. Truth like God has a purpose for my life. Therefore, I can be who God made me to be and I can live out of that truth. And you know what that truth does? It sets us free. It sets us free to be who God made me to be and so I can say and do out of that and be who God made me to be. Does that make any sense? So first of all, remember God is bigger than your feelings. Secondly, remember to focus on truth. Third, and this one is focus on obedience. And like I had mentioned before, I think this is the heart of this whole text. But you might be asking, what does obedience have to do with a confused conscience? I think it has a lot to do with a confused conscience. Let's look again at verse 19. And it says here in the first part of the verse, and hereby we know. By what do we know? We know, hereby we know. How do we know? That we love indeed and in truth, that we are obedient to God's word and this command to love each other. When we do that, it brings clarity. When Satan comes with his confusing lies, turn your heart in obedience to God. Pour your heart into loving others. And when you do that, You turn your focus away from yourself and pour it into the lives of others. And you know what that does? You know what it does. It brings clarity. Because I believe a lot of this confusion of our heart and conscience can be a selfish focus. So, instead of focusing on your own feelings, obey and focus on loving others. All right, so much for the confused conscience. There would, yeah, we could, we need to move on. But just remember, if you're there, don't despair. Follow God's word. He'll bring you clarity. God is greater than your feelings. Follow truth and be obedient. Thirdly then is a clear conscience. Verse 21, beloved, if our heart condemn us not, we have confidence toward God. Amen? Isn't that amazing? A clear conscience. Nothing between us and God. What does it take to have a clean slate? What does it take to remove all feelings of guilt and condemnation? Isn't the only true answer to a clear conscience is to have all our sin past, present, and I included future. I don't know if that's proper terminology or not. All our sin under the blood of Jesus and to live in obedience to God's command and will. That's what brings us a clear conscience. This idea of obedience brings clarity to our minds and hearts and feelings and conscience. Now, I've been around long enough to know my heart a little bit, and I've seen the hearts of other people a bit. There are other ways that people try to appease their conscience. One of them is simply to justify themselves. I've done that. well this person does it, or it wasn't that bad, or just trying to appease our conscience like that doesn't work. Some people try it with doing good deeds. Now, maybe this doesn't make sense to you, but when you've hurt someone, you try to help someone else to kind of balance the scale, and you can feel good about it. You can feel good about yourself. Did you know there's a term coined for this kind of behavior? This is the extreme, okay? Some Christian Smith from a Harvard doctor in 2005 came up with this label. He called it a moralistic therapeutic deitism. That's a little fancy word. Moralistic is doing good. Well, there's nothing wrong with doing good. We're commanded in this very text to do good. That's not a problem. The therapeutic idea, what does that mean? Therapeutic, it makes us feel good, right? Doing good to feel good. Is that wrong? It may not be wrong. I think there's some satisfaction in doing good to others. But when we make it a God, when we take feeling good about ourselves by doing good to others and making that our way to clear our conscience, we're going to flop. It doesn't work. Again, the only way to clear conscience is to have everything under the blood of Jesus. And look, it tells us here in the text when we have that in verse 21, then we have confidence toward God. That word means confidence, but it also means a boldness or an outspokenness. And wouldn't you agree that when our consciences are clear and it's clean, We're invigorated. It puts that extra just zeal in our life and heart. We're clean. We're clear. We can live for God because we have a clear conscience. We have confidence. Obedience brings confidence. All right. Secondly, obedience brings clear communication. Let's look at verse 22. Whatever we ask, we receive of Him. Hmm. Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him. How many of you ever have ever asked something from God? You've asked. Have you ever not received anything that you asked for? What went wrong? Did something go wrong? I'm not gonna make a big deal of it, but look, I think Way too often we focus on this first part of the verse. Hey, we can ask what we want and He's going to give it. But we need to look at the second one because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. This is contingent on us obeying His commands. And look, it says, His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Are those two different things or are they one and the same? keeping his commandments and doing those things that are pleasing in his sight. I think they're one and the same, but I think he writes it with intention. Keeping his commands, you know, thou shalt not, we're obligated to obey, there's no question asked. You do that, you're good. Doing those things that pleases God, I believe it's another level. It's doing those things because we want to. Have you ever told your children, You have to do something, and they say, do we have to? And then you say, well, if you want to, you don't have to. It's a bit like that, isn't it? When we really want to please God, we want to obey Him and we want to keep His commandments. And guess what? When we do that, what happens? When we pray, when we ask, we ask that His will would be done. We ask that, Lord, whatever Your will is, we want what brings You the most glory and honor. And when we pray like that, He's going to answer. He's going to give us that. Maybe it's not what we ask, but it's what we want because we want what He wants. So it clears up that whole communication thing when we obey Him and keep His commandments. Thirdly, let's look at this clear commandment. Verse 23. And this is the commandment, that you should believe on the name of His Son Jesus and love one another as He gave commandment. How many of you believe on the name of the Son of Jesus Christ? And how many of you love one another? You love one another? All right, good. What's so hard to understand about these commands? They're clear, aren't they? It's not hard to understand. Now, trying to figure out how much to cut out here. Are the two separate commandments or are they one command? Faith and love. That's what it is. Faith and love. I notice that the word commandment, is it plural or is it in the singular? It's in the singular. Can you separate faith and love? Can you really love one another without having faith in Jesus Christ? Well, you can have a certain level of love, but you can't have the agape love without having faith in Jesus Christ. And then can you really truly believe in Jesus and not love others? I don't think so. I think John is just bringing this back to full circle. If you don't love your brother, you're not really following Jesus. Now, I realize that human relationships can get messy. They can test our character. They can try us to the core. But I think the test of our faith is our love. And when we follow this commandment of faith and love, it brings us to clarity. And this brings us to our last point. Number five, a clear confirmation, verse 24. He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us by the spirit which he hath given us. Did you notice the many pronouns, personal pronouns in this verse? I, we, us, him, he, I count a 10. Now, unfortunately in the King James, They do not capitalize a personal pronoun for God. And so this verse can almost be a bit confusing. And we're talking about clarity this morning, so I'm gonna try and make this clearer by reading it again. And instead of using personal pronouns, I'm gonna use the word, the name Johnny for him and us, and use the name God for where it talks about him, okay? So it will read a bit something like this. Now, if Johnny, keeps God's commandments, abides in God, and God abides in Johnny, and by this we know that God abides in Johnny by the spirit whom God has given Johnny. Does that make sense? The hymn in us and It's not confusing and yet it could be just a bit with all these personal pronouns. Our obedience is a confirmation that we are dwelling in God and God dwells in us. That's what this verse is telling us. And did you notice the word dwelleth? and dwelleth in him, and hereby we know that he abideth in us." Those two words are actually the same Greek word. He could have used one or interchangeably with the other. And this word, the Greek word, I didn't write it down, I don't think, I'm not sure how to pronounce it or I don't even have it here, but this Greek word is a verb. It's an action word, all right? It's an action word, and it means to stay in a given place, state, relation, or expectancy. How many of you believe in eternal security? Yeah, I do. But it's a conditional eternal security. We don't believe in an unconditional eternal security, but we do believe in an eternal security, and we have it right here. But the condition is also right here. The condition is, the first part of the verse, he that keepeth his commandments. When this condition is met, the confirmation is clear and it's secure. It's complete. It's not going anywhere. We can rest assured. When we are in obedience, God dwells in us. By His Holy Spirit, He tells us. That word spirit is capital S. It's through His Holy Spirit that He dwells in us. And that indwelling, that action of indwelling us, and it confirms that we are a child of God. In conclusion, How many of you have a lot going on around you? Some are honest. There's a lot going on around us. There's a lot of voices and a lot of spirits. Our next text here in John is about those other spirits. We have, in our world today, and I think even in, I'm not talking about the world at large, but in our worlds, okay, in our worlds, I think we even, we face a lot of, a lot of confusion and turmoil and maybe frustration. We deal with ourselves first. I have things to deal with in my life. And we also deal with other people and relationships. We're facing times when I think we can become discouraged and even become maybe even just a bit disoriented. With everything that's going on around us, where are we really going? How do we navigate where we're going? If any of that relates to you, I simply want this morning to call us to a willingness to please God and to obey God. focusing on truth and focusing on loving God and focusing on loving others in this world of confusion that is around us. Remember, obedience brings clarity. It clears our conscience or our hearts. It clears the communication with God. And we better understand what His clear command is, to have faith and love. And then we have that clear confirmation in our hearts and peace in our hearts that He's dwelling in us because we have the Holy Spirit in us. As we face life this week, I want to encourage us to live out of the reality of these truths and to find ways to express them in practical ways. Let's kneel to pray. Our Father, it is with gratefulness we come before you to close this service. Thank you for your faithfulness. Thank you for your word to us, your eternal, unchanging, ever-abiding word, the word that is truth, the word that gives life and hope and peace and joy. Thank you for the Holy Spirit to indwell us and to give us confirmation that we are children of yours. Lord, thank you for these lessons and these truths that have been written through the Holy Spirit by John. Lord, teach us how to apply these to our hearts. And Lord, as we've looked at our conscience, just pray, Lord, that if there's anyone here this morning that has a condemned conscience and does not have a clear conscience, Just pray that they could find someone to pray with and just find that clarity and just find that peace and that joy and that confidence that comes from having everything under the blood and being right with you and just having a clean slate before you. And Father, also teach us what it looks like when we come to you in prayer and when we ask And we ask, according to you, Will, because we know that you want what is best for us, and we don't always understand what that is, but we trust that