Well, good morning. You've probably heard the advice, stand up straight with your shoulders back. If you have as bad posture as I have, that's especially important. But it's also just good advice when you're stepping into a situation where you need to Have some confidence. Jordan Peterson, a psychologist, wrote a book, 12 Rules of Life, and that was his number one rule. I think it's wise advice. I think it's helpful to young men and women. Be more confident and assertive before other men. And that's fine. That's not what I'm going to talk about today. Our passage today is quite different. Our passage today speaks of a confidence Being assertive, listen to me, before God. Before God. Standing up straight and pulling your shoulders back before God is not going to do. If there is such a thing as confidence before God, it would seem to be something very precious, which we ought to pay the greatest amount of attention. And so, Reformation Covenant Church, I would invite you to stand and listen to God's word. About this confidence in 1 John chapter 3. And I know in our text it says we're beginning in verse 19. I want to include verse 18 so. Apologize to the people at home. Verse 18 through to the end of the chapter. Hear the word of the Lord. Little children. Let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before Him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and He knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. Whatever we ask, we receive from Him. because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit he has given us. The word of the Lord. You may be seated. King Uzziah was a man who became a king at a young age. It says that Zechariah took this young man and taught him and instructed him. And Uzziah did what was right as long as Zechariah was alive. And after Zechariah died, Uzziah became proud. and his pride showed an overconfidence before the Lord. He attempted to enter the temple and to burn incense like a priest. Because of this, the Lord made him a leper for the rest of his days. He assumed the inner sanctuary ministry of intercession to himself, something that the Lord had not given to him. And consequently, think about this, lost his own place in the sanctuary as a worshiper, as a leper. Now one might think that this means that we should never be confident before God, but that's not true. One must simply not be over-confident. And this is a passage which draws people, its design is to draw people into confidence, to observe the confidence that we have through the atonement that is in Jesus. the anchor that is within the veil. We are accepted and we have a place in the Holy of Holies. We actually have the ministry of intercession that Uzziah longed for and wanted as high priests, as priests before God, a kingdom of priests. But one's confidence must not be an overconfidence. It must be the confidence and the terms and the manner in which Jesus and which God draws us into his presence and invites us. And here is a confidence in this passage that one might find before God. And I would note the reason why I included verse 18, it is directly related to the brotherly love. that we read about last week. I wanna review with you briefly, I'm not going to test you, see if you can remember the points from the sermon. I sat down with my family and did this painstakingly, but the honest truth was I couldn't remember the points either and was quite embarrassed when I was calling on them to try to remember, but you will remember that for one thing, not just any love, not just any love is a mark of being born again, a mark of being a child of God. but it is a certain kind of love. And we could even say that there are certain kinds of love, there's other kinds of loves, a love for God, a special kind of love and attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ who gave his life for us, it certainly is the mark of his people. But there is also a type of brotherly love that is found among the true sons and daughters of God. Now we noted that it was an imperfect love in this life, It's not going to be a perfect love. It is a love that often fails and is confused with other loves and confusion. But it is a persistent love. It is a love that from the time a person genuinely has the Holy Spirit working in their life and they put their faith in Christ, it will be persistent, it will continue. It is, as we noted, a brotherly love. Okay, it marks the church of God as family. These are my people. We all have one father. We all serve one Lord. These are my people. It is objective. It doesn't pick out, like I'm just going to love this side of the church because obviously that side of the church didn't want to be closer to the preacher. It doesn't select a better group within the church that it, loves sacrificially more than the rest of the church. If you are a follower of Jesus, you have my love. You have my service. We're family. It's sacrificial. It takes its cues from the cross. From the one who showed more brotherly love than anybody else. It follows in his pattern. Perhaps not giving of our own lives and flesh and blood. But as the text said, definitely opening our wallets, looking at our possessions and saying, how can I be of service to the church? And today, the thing that I want to. Again, draw your attention to because. John takes it up and explores, this is the sincerity of love. It's a sincere love, he says we ought to love in truth. There ought to be an integrity between our actions and our hearts. Our actions and our hearts. We give, we sacrifice for others, but we don't do it grudgingly. Loving in truth. We will see that there is a direct relationship between the integrity of our actions and our heart toward our brother, and listen to me, our confidence before God. Our confidence before God. So the first place, I want to look at this verse 19 and see how we ought to fight for confidence because brothers and sisters, we are sinners and our hearts are fickle and they wander and they get confused and there are other desires in there and we must fight for that confidence. It is not as though we are simply zapped on the day of our being born again and all the matters of our heart are sorted out. No, but when we see a need arise, there's a war that needs to take place, there's a struggle. We need to do some reckoning, some thinking and considering and direct the purposes of our hearts. Verse 19 says this, by this we shall know, that is by the brotherly love that we show in deed and truth, we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure or rather the word is simply persuade, convince our hearts before him. So you see what the author is doing here is he's directing us to pay attention to the workings of our hearts. In this place, we have confidence before him. We have heart work to do. Now some might read this to mean that the heart is racked with guilt. It might be real guilt or it might be misplaced guilt. And then what it is saying is that we then try to bring our heart into a state of peace. And I don't disagree with that on the surface, but what this appears to be doing is saying that the heart here is something like the conscience. And so what the apostle is really saying is that when our consciences are broken and when we are cut to the quick and we're just feeling the sense of our own guilt and our own shame, then we have this work to do, and we need to comfort our hearts. But that's not the normal meaning of the word there, what is translated reassure, and it's also not the normal meaning of the word heart. The word heart and conscience, they seem to do similar kind of work in the New Testament, but there's actually a different word, and the word heart normally simply refers to your inner man. Despite what happens on the outside, your actions, your heart is where your intentions are, your purposes. values what you really are, what God sees. And over and over again, in the New Testament, as we read in Deuteronomy chapter nine, and as we will read again here, I want to read for you a few chapters later in Deuteronomy in chapter 15, the heart is what God sees despite what you do, despite what you do. So you need to pay attention to your heart. Read with me, I believe that this text is very likely what the apostle had in mind when he wrote these words in 1 John. Deuteronomy chapter 15, and forgive me, it's several verses, verses seven through 11. Listen to the instruction that is here and how similar it is to our own text about the heart and serving brothers and sisters in need. Deuteronomy chapter 15, the context is the year of Jubilee and the release of our debts and those kinds of matters. And what Moses is considering here is ways in which brothers and sisters might possibly take advantage of one another in those kinds of situations. If among you one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart. And you say the seventh year, the year of release is near. And you, you, I look grudgingly on your poor brother and you give him nothing. And he cried to the Lord against you, and you'll be guilty of sin. So there you can see there is, while the person might confess love in word, there's no love in deed in that matter. There's no love in deed, and certainly it's because there's no love in heart. There's no love in deed. But he goes on, you shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him. Now, pause there for a second. I want you to note that there is the action of giving, but not the heart. See, it's not enough to just do the action of love. You must not be grudging in your giving. And he goes on, because for this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore, I command you, shall open wide your hand to your brother. to the needy and to the poor in your land. So there are two sins, just in summary, in this passage. The first sin is not being generous because of a meanness of heart. The second sin, the second sin happens when people give and we all know because there are many people who donate and give. They give for various reasons. They give so that they might look a certain way. They give because they just simply feel guilty about not giving or someone has been making them feel bad or pouring shame on them. They give because they want something. They give because of connections. They give because of appearances. There are all kinds of reasons why people might give, but they do so grudgingly. And we have ways of hiding that with smile and we know the right things to say, to write the nice thing in the card, but our heart is not in it. Brothers and sisters, do you see God, God is the judge of these matters. God is not simply the judge of our actions, he is also the judge of our hearts. He sees our hearts, and that's how I understand the next verse, which I want to admit from the beginning is quite a difficult verse to understand, but it's how I understand it in line with passages like Deuteronomy 15. Verse 20 says, for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. And of course, there we can read, he knows our hearts. He knows our hearts. You can't hide it. You cannot hide your intentions behind a smile, behind a handshake, even if there's a check in your hand. God knows your heart. He knows everything. Now, I wanna step back for a second, and speaking of overconfidence, I want to be upfront that there are several challenges in interpreting this verse. I don't believe any of them completely derail anything that I'm saying, but I do want to note that there are phenomenal Bible interpreters on all sides of this verse. And I tread lightly in declaring my interpretation. Now some see this like this, and I think this is because of the nature of the language, I think it's a fine way to read it. When they see this text saying God is greater than our hearts, They mean God's grace is greater than our sin. So if our heart condemns us, read conscience there, if we feel broken in our conscience, I have overstepped, I have transgressed, whether it's real or unreal, we understand that God is greater than our hearts. And listen, if salvation was simply a matter of your ability to maintain the right posture of your heart before God, we would all be lost. Jesus saves sinners. The Holy Spirit is quite powerful enough to fix the operations of the heart. Quite a few commentators understand and take it this way. Now this is similar to Paul's idea in Romans where he says where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. All the more, so it's definitely a scriptural idea. It's definitely something people need to frequently hear. People who are often with very sensitive consciences, they need to hear that. This is an important part of developing a fruitful and assured and repentant Christian life. You will never live in this life without a single pang of trouble in your soul, but take heart, God has overcome all of these things by the blood of the cross, amen? So I say amen to that, but I want you to know I'm hiding behind the robes of Calvin here, okay? So Calvin understands this in the same way that I do, but a different way. When it says God is greater than our heart, What he understood this to be is that if we find that our motives, if we know that our motives are not showing love to our brethren, whether our actions are or not, God stands over the heart and he knows all things. In other words, he is Lord over the heart. And moreover, he does not share the meanness of spirit, of heart that we share. God is a better person than us. God is one of pure motives, one of who gives graciously, who forgives freely. And this is also something that is true and taught throughout the New Testament. The Lord looks at your heart, looks at your heart. And I believe that the second view here is closer to the meaning of the original, but both are quite difficult. Let me go on, I believe that what John is doing is teaching people to find reasons for assurance before God in the motives of their hearts. And if their motives are not right, to work on them and persuade them and fix them. Say your actions happen to have the form of just generosity, but inwardly you're stingy and mean. Know that God knows everything and is not pleased even by your acts of sacrifice. Of course, what does the apostle say? If I give away all that I have and I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, have not a good heart, I gain nothing. It's no value. in the kingdom of God. It's of no value in the kingdom of God. The action and the motive must be joined to be a work that is pleasing to God. Commentator Colin Cruz summarizes this verse in this way, and I think he just has a good way of kind of pulling it together. He says, so that they may know that they belong to the truth. The readers must persuade their hearts in the presence of God so that they do not succumb to the meanness in their hearts and refuse to offer material assistance. And I would add, offer material assistance even grudgingly. Do not be loving in truth. Brothers and sisters, let us love in truth. And if you cannot love in truth, get your heart right. Speak to your heart. Persuade it. Convince it. of what the motive ought to be, which is really just another kind of repentance. The world is filled with ready-to-go excuses for not being generous. For not being generous. I am a champion of these. Didn't have to look far. These, sadly, poured out of my mind way too quickly. We have a welfare system. I'm too busy, someone else will take care of it. Some people are especially gifted with those kinds of things. I'm not the right person for that. They'll probably misuse the gift. They need to learn to save. It's not helping them. And on and on and on. We can think of many, many reasons when we see people in genuine need. There are many people in genuine need around us. We can think of reasons so quick, so quick in our hearts. But do you need to find a motive to persuade your heart Jesus helps us with his teaching. You are, you are and I am the one who owe the Lord 10,000 talents. Jesus says of that servant of you, of me, since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold with his wife and children and all that he had and payment to be made. Listen, you and I deserve to lose everything. We owe the Lord far more than we could ever repay. The servant pleaded, and we have pled before the Lord, and what did the master do? Because he has a large and generous heart, he forgave it all. And the servant went out and he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. Choked him, said, pay what you owe. The master finds out and you know how it goes. He knows everything, he found it out. He said, you wicked servant. He went on, and here's your motive. Brothers and sisters, the Lord has forgiven you everything. So ought your heart also to be open to your brothers and sisters, generous, forgiving, kind, charitable, reaching out. If you need motive, remember the debt that has been forgiven you. Remember the charity that has been shown to you by Jesus. We might think this is a question of percentages. I'm nice to most people. And here's a wise saying that I like to quote to my children. A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person. I'm gonna read that again. A person who's nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person. Listen to me now. Your religion is never greater than your worst relationship. God has tied all of our relationships together. You cannot, you could be square with all these people out here, but there's just one person here, and you can think that you are right with God, and you're good with all these people, but this one right here, it's all tied together. That is the one that the Lord will call you to account for. In so far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men. happy friendships, happy family life, happy work life, but if you dump on some person with a cruel and ungenerous heart, that's what you are. And 95% of the time doesn't work with God. That 5% reveals what your heart is. All that it does reveal is that just like the world, just like natural men and women, in our natural fallen state, we all have loves. We all have people that we like. It's not normally that hard to love those people. It's much harder to love Christianly our brothers and sisters in the way in which we ought. And it's this 5% that hinders your prayers, reveals your heart, steals your confidence before God. So I encourage you, persuade your heart, convince your heart, work on your motive, and share in the same motive of the Lord. But let's go on. We have ground to cover here. Verse 21, using confidence in prayer. If your motive is right, look at this great confidence that we have. It says, verse 21, beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. Having confidence before God. Is that possible? That is what this text says. That is the teaching of the scriptures. This is not a confidence, of course, that comes because of sinless perfection. You understand? Of course it's not that. Having an upright heart, having purity of motives towards our brothers and sisters doesn't mean that we are perfect. It means that we are the real deal. There is a substance to us. There is a changed nature in us. If it was a matter of sinless perfection, of course, who could stand? But John has mentioned this confidence a number of times. Listen to this. This is a very important concept in this little epistle. In chapter two, we read earlier, and now little children abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence Do not shrink from him in shame at his coming. Later we're gonna read in chapter four, but this, I'm sorry, by this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as he is, so also are we in the world. chapter five and this is the confidence that we have towards him and this sounds very much like our text that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us this is a confidence that we are truly born again that we are in Jesus that when we look at our lives we see evidence that that the work of the Holy Spirit is there in us, despite our sins, despite our failings, we see a work of grace within us, and it gives us confidence before God. It's really another perspective on assurance. It's assurance of approach to God. Assurance of our place at his table. Assurance of our place as we're going to see in the ministry, in the priestly ministry of intercession. Of interceding, of praying, of giving counsel. We are invited to be counselors like the priests were and offer the incense. And we can have confidence that that is a place that we belong through the blood of Christ. You see Uzziah approached the holy place and offered incense. Nadab and Abihu approached and offered strange incense. God's judgment came down on these men for their misplaced confidence, their overconfidence. But in Christ, we have been granted access to the holy place. We get to serve as priests before God and offer our prayers in his presence. We are granted that, Christ has paid the way for us. But it is pure motives that show that we are such as Christ, we are such people as Christ has saved and belong there. It is not our pure motives that pays the way to get there. We would again, I need to say this every time when we go through John, not to be misunderstood. You got to remember, this is a short epistle and it's meant to be read basically in one sitting. And at the beginning, what does it say? If any of us sins, we have appreciation for our sins. We have an atonement for our sins. It is the only way by which we can deal with our sins and have and have any place before God. but we know that we have truly been joined to Christ. We look at our lives and we see pure motives, pure action in our brotherly love. And as I've already said, this confidence gives us access to God's generosity. Now doesn't that make sense? If you think about it, that the apostle would introduce here, he says in the end of verse 21, we have confidence before God and whatever we ask, we receive from him. As I said before, God has so ordained our relationships that they are all tied together with a holy tether. And if it is found in you that you are of such a person, a born again person, that when people come to you in need, well, that that relationship also works towards God in heaven. Because that's the kind of people that we are in truth. It's a fascinating perspective on prayer. Because, he goes on, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. So he's just simply reiterating the basis for this confidence in prayer. And to continue the thought, what are the things that please him, verse 23, this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, Love one another just as he commanded us and I would just simply remind you that those are the two things That John up to this point has been talking about That we have put our faith in the true son of God We are not like Antichrist to deny some essential teaching about Jesus who he is what he has come to do But we believe in him wholly and also that we love the brothers We are marked by love. We are his commandment. And as he says, this is simply the teaching. This is what Jesus taught. So we have a foundation, an uncondemning heart leads to, and it produces this asking God for aid, which produces receiving God's aid. And then it goes back to the foundation because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. In other words, namely, believing in Jesus and loving our neighbor. We know that we belong there. You can think of those kinds of things when you when you look around and you look at the people who are standing there in the holy place. We're not dressed in robes of priests with the thing in our heads and, you know, the scarlet and the, you know, and all the bells and things like that. What are we dressed in that shows that we belong there, that gives us confidence that this is really where we belong. It is love, it is following Jesus' commandments, that our heart is aligned with all his teaching. We receive it, we follow hard after it, we listen to him with faith, and also when we look at our brothers and sisters, we see family. We see people that we deeply love and we're willing to sacrifice for. And that says you belong in that room and you belong doing that work, praying. This is not the only place in scripture where God has tied relationships vertically with relationships horizontally. Just to show you a couple of verses, Matthew chapter six. Think about it in this context. Think about it in the same context, right? That you're standing there in that place and you turn to your brother and you refuse to forgive this person. Matthew chapter six, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. You see, we're not saved by forgiving others. We simply reveal what we actually are. It's like wearing, you know, some kind of like, you know, like T-shirt in the holy place when everyone else is wearing priestly robes. You look around like, do you belong here? I don't think you belong here. You're not wearing the right clothing. You're not showing that this is the place where you belong. Second Corinthians chapter nine, verse eight. It's a context of ministry, of giving to the saints in Judea. I reference this in the... I'm gone. Am I gone? Is this still on? Oh, okay. I reference this in the last sermon that Paul is going around to a number of different churches and is gathering a collection to minister to the needs of the saints in Judea. is calling on them to show generosity. And the basis upon which he calls them to show generosity is the same generosity that God has given to them. But notice what he says, and God, this is in chapter nine, verse eight, God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. It's not a prosperity gospel. It is not Corvettes for your pleasure. It is all that you need from God so that you can be overabundant and generous to other people. God is very much interested in keeping, in pouring out his blessings upon you so that you can pour them out in service to others, whether that be financially or gifts of, spiritual gifts and strength or time or resources. or whatever it is. Or just very simply, Proverbs 11, verse 25. The proverb sums it up. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched. The one who waters will himself be watered. Grace works that way. A generous heart is one that God loves to bless. The purposes are aligned. It's not a prosperity gospel, but an alignment in the gospel. One who has a generous eye will be given what they need for that generosity. James 4-3 looks at this from the negative perspective. You ask, and remember, the people that he's speaking to in James, he doesn't have as much of a confidence in them as John does in the people whom he's ministering to. Both are speaking of prayer and both are speaking of confidence in their prayer, but these people over here are much more rascally. the people that James is ministering to in James chapter four, verse three, you ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. See, they have an overconfidence. And if they do ask, if they do go to God in prayer, well, their hearts are not right. They don't love the right things. They're not seeking the right things. And so God doesn't answer their prayers. Such is the confidence that we have for God. We keep his commandments. If our heart does not condemn us. Now listen, I just want to say a word about prayer. Prayer. Answered prayer. Is not the cherry on the top of your salvation Sunday? As theologians and pastors for millennia have observed, it is the breathing activity of Faith. It strengthens faith. It is faith at work. Where faith is present, prayer is active. Where faith is absent, prayer is not to be found or becomes merely mechanical. Jesus' parable of the unjust judge, you will remember in Luke chapter 18, a parable about prayer, about being persistent in prayer. How does he end it? He says this, it's a striking statement. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? That's a very interesting way for him to end a parable about prayer. Because what it means is that when Jesus looks around and he looks for faith, he's interested in faith, what he's looking for is prayer. So if there are any of you out there who are saying to yourselves, well, this is a nice word for my, you know, my compartment. Devotional life. OK, I'm just you know, this this is a nice word that makes that moment of my day a little more encouraged. I want to remind you that what the apostle is referring to here when he says you can have confidence before God in prayer, he's talking about the substance of your faith. Not just a little side benefit. When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith in this place? And of course, it's all wrapped up with will he find brotherly love in this place? Will he find the other marks that give us confidence before God? Use your privilege. Brothers and sisters, we live in a time of great need. I had this interesting thought this week. I don't know if any of you share this thought. I look at my phone a lot and was looking for rain. When is the rain coming? And you know what, I actually, for a while, I started to believe that somehow, whoever the person is that's typing the computer programming on the other side of this phone is the one who is bringing the rain. And there were a couple of times where they didn't bring the rain, even though they had said that the rain is coming. And I got in this kind of weird relationship with my phone about rain. Rain doesn't come from phones. And even though some meteorologist is able to look out into the ocean and say, definitely the rain is coming on Wednesday, Brothers and sisters, it is the Lord who gives rain. And even if this says, Friday we're getting rain, we need to pray for rain. If we need rain, we need to pray for rain. I think we do well to remember that it is something like daily bread. Our needs, we are intended to bring before God every day. What do we need? Don't let the meteorologist convince you away from your prayers because of science. Science hasn't removed the need for us to pray for rain. I think we start to kind of view the universe mechanically in that way. We could multiply that times a number of things. I often think, my heart is troubled by the riots that are taking place in downtown. I want that to end. I want peace for the city that I live in. But to be honest, I look at the politics of the situation and I find no hope. And I often say, I look at the words of my officials, I look at the words of our mayor, I look at the words of our governor, and I find no hope in those things. I find no hope because I'm looking at the politics of the situation. Brothers and sisters, the hearts of kings and governors and mayors and rioters are turned by the hand of the Lord. He turns them whatever way he chooses. If we seek peace for our city, we ought to pray for peace for our city. And not just sit in front of the Oregonians. Well, it's not today. Oh, well, maybe tomorrow. Pray. You are priests and kings in this place. How many blessings We go without in this place because we do not pray. Because we do not pray. Now I have to admit, I've kind of front loaded this sermon, so I'm gonna wrap this up, and there's a lot here at the end, but I'm gonna kind of do it this way. I wanna read for you just this last verse. Verse 24, and I'm just gonna kind of pass it on to Bo for next week to develop this more. He says, whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given to us. I want you to just consider with me, this is one of John's ways of kind of reasoning thinking, it's almost like he's playing one of those games where it's just like, roll the dice, and then whatever the two things that come up on the dice, you need to write a little story about those things, right? You need to like, how are these two things connected? And you tell a little story. You guys know the game that I'm talking about? My children are looking at me like that. I was an English teacher for a little while. We had these little dice and these little things where you would roll together and You could come up with a story about anything. Well, what are all that? It's like John is just taking these ideas and he puts them together and says, how are they connected? What do these things have to do with the people of God in the New Covenant? He has looked at brotherly love. He's looked at upright hearts, being in the truth, prayer, confidence before God, believing in Jesus, keeping commandments, abiding in God. God's abiding in us. The gift of the spirit. And what I believe he is doing is, he's, step away from that dice metaphor, because clearly that's not helpful. Let's use a tree metaphor. John is looking at a tree, and he loves to point to all the different aspects of a living tree. A living tree. And he looks at the leaves of the tree, he looks at the roots of the tree, the fruit of the tree, the things that make the tree grow, the water that is in the soil, the nutrients in the soil, the roots in the soil, the firmness of the trunk, And he likes to compare these things and see how they are related. Notice how the leaves are fed ultimately somehow by the water that is down here and they draw the oxygen, not the oxygen, they draw the carbon dioxide and they produce oxygen. They produce the sugars that give life and bring the fruits. It ultimately comes, where does the fruit come from? It comes from the leaves and the trunk is what holds it all up. and allows it to exist and allows it to reach up into the air and find the sunlight. And the trunk is connected to the roots which goes down here. And so in the same way, John likes to take these seemingly disparate ideas of commandments and love and show how they are one. And take our relationship to the Father and take our relationship to the Son and show how they are one and are inseparable. inseparable. If you do not have the son, you do not have the father. If you do not have the father, you do not have the son. And take prayer and take commandments and take, and that's what he does. And he shows how it is all wrapped together in one glorious new covenant tether. And we can take any of these elements, but what this shows, brothers and sisters, if you are this day, if you have that confidence before God, if you look at your heart and you see a willingness and a desire to love your brothers and sisters, I mean, rejoice, you are a new creation. And you see a devotion to God, following hard after Jesus and obeying his commandments. you can know that you are a living, breathing, truly glorious new work of God. And as what he says, we know that God is in us and we are in God. The life of God is present in souls of men. Which also leads us then to the manifestation of the spirit. Look at how God works through his spirit in your life. and Pastor Bo will pick that up because there are other spirits in the world and we must be able to discern the work of the spirit from the work of other spirits. In summary, because we've covered a lot of ground here, one key test of our true status as sons and daughters of God is our generous love manifested in practical care from an earnest heart. We prove that we are of the truth we convince our hearts to love truly. If we have upright hearts in the matter of generosity, we will also find that we have confidence before God that He is open to us to answer our prayer. In summary, keeping with John's way of arguing, all of these things reveal further evidence that God is at work in us, is present in us, his life is working out through us, and we, we are safely in him. Amen? Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, our gracious, kind God, Lord, I pray with confidence, confidence in myself, also confidence in the character I know that these people, the love that they show to one another, But Lord, I pray that you would continue to work in our hearts to purify our motives, to rid out any meanness of spirit, any selfishness, that we can truly be open and sacrificial toward one another and so glorify and honor you and have confidence before you. I pray these things in Christ's name.