Good morning, everyone. It's kind of a rainy, dreary day, but it's a good day. And we're going to look at some encouraging words from our text at the end of 1 John. We'll be finishing this epistle today. 

Before we begin, I just want to share a story with you and I'd like for you to turn to 2 Corinthians 5 with me. 2 Corinthians 5, this is a Scripture that impressed me yesterday evening. If you look down in verse 14, Paul says, "For the love of Christ compels us because we judge thus, that if one died for all, then all died. And he died for all that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Now look at what Paul says here. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation."

I was at the fair yesterday. We had a barbecue cook-off contest and Ray Brown was the pit master and Doug was there and we provided meat from Whitney Creek Farm. We had a great day, but all day I was worried because it was this rainy, dreary, kind of cool day and I knew I had a pig at home in the woods who was farrowing, was having a litter of babies yesterday. So I was kind of concerned about that and I was thinking about it. When I got home, I looked and stopped. Bobbie had stopped and was overlooking where she had been making a nest in the woods and she'd made this great big nest and there was a round bale there and she took all this hay and she piled this big mound of hay and then she had crawled in there. She's probably 350 pounds and she had crawled in that hay and you couldn't see her at all. You couldn't even tell she was there. 

And I went down later and checked and I looked and there was a little hole and one foot was sticking out and there were all these little babies crawling around her foot and crawling back under and you could hear them nursing in there and she was warm and snug as a bug in a rug and I thought to myself, I know that Jesus lives because His creation, that pig allowed out in the woods to express her pigness, to express who she is, glorified God. How does she know to do that? Her wise Creator put that in her. See, now all things are of God. And I could glorify God in that rain standing in that mud looking at those little piglets who were going to be just fine and there were 10 of them this morning so we had two litters. 

But I just like for you to think about that as we look at everything in our world, as we see the creation, as we interact with people, as we see everything, now all things are of God. We've been made new. And God's in control. And Jesus is in control. And we can trust Him and that's really where we're going with our message this morning. 

You know, it's always sad in a way to end a study of the book of the Bible. I think this is especially true for the epistle of 1 John because this little book has so many rich promises for us. So many assurances for us. The letter's all about what we know. John uses the word "know" 34 times in this short epistle. And he ends strong in his encouragement and instruction in this last chapter using the word "know" eight times in these last several verses.

So I'd like to begin this morning just by asking you, my brother, my sister in Christ, what do you know? What do you know for sure? In this world, in this life, tell me what you know. What do you know for certain? Vance Havner used to say, "I'd rather know a few things for certain than be sure of a lot of things that ain't so." And people in this world are sure of a lot of things that ain't so. And mostly they're unsure about everything. There are no certainties in this world. Nothing is real. Nothing is for sure. And because of this, man is insecure. He's uncertain. He's filled with fear, especially the fear of death.

But for those in Christ, for those who believe Jesus, we have several things which we know for certain because they are promises from the Word of God. These are the things God wants us to know. John wants us to know, and that is why he writes to us so confidently, so assuredly concerning these promises. We saw in verse 13 before of chapter 5 that if we believe Jesus, if we trust Him and His sacrifice alone to have paid the debt for our sins in full, if we believe Him, then we can know that we have eternal life. We saw last week that we have confidence in Him. Our confidence is in God. And because our confidence is in Him and not in ourselves, we pray. And in praying to Him, we know that when we pray according to His will, we have the petitions that we ask of Him. We can be confident in our prayers that He hears us and that He answers us. This we can know. 

And in our text today, John gives us some more sureties, certainties that we can know as believers in Jesus Christ to encourage us to hold fast to Christ, to look to Him. Look at verse 18 in our text with me, please. John says, "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 an 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 yourselves from idols. Amen."

I gave you three points on your outline for our text this morning. First, we're going to see victory over sin. Second, victory over Satan. And third, vitality in Christ. 

First, we see in our text that we know that those who have been born of God have victory over sin. John has already told us in chapter 3 that the believer, the one who is born of God, cannot continue in sin, cannot persist in a willful, continual state of sinfulness as he did before in Adam. This is what John is saying here as well. The believer has been born again. He has been so transformed, so changed on the inside, that an outward expression of this change is certain. This is just what Paul taught us so clearly in Romans 5 and 6. And you know I wouldn't miss an opportunity to go back to Romans 5 and 6, so turn there with me, please, and let's renew our minds to the great truths of our regeneration and our union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.

Romans 5, beginning at verse 18. "Therefore, as through one man's offense, that would be Adam's sin in the garden, through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation. Even so, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience many will be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more. So that as sin reigned in death, even so, grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

This text, these truths, are the basis of our understanding of salvation and the Christian life. Paul tells us here that men were made sinners in Adam. When Adam sinned, death entered the world. Adam began to die. The Hebrew says, "dying, dying, dying, you will die." It's a process. From that time, every man born in Adam is born a sinner by nature. It is who he is on the inside. He was made a sinner in Adam because of Adam's one unrighteous act. That's Paul's logic here. He's telling us that if everyone was condemned, everyone was made a sinner by one unrighteous act, then the logical conclusion is that everyone can be made righteous by one righteous act, the death of Christ on the cross. 

You see, man is not a sinner because he sins. It is not as religion says, that a man sins, and he sins, and he becomes a sinner. That's why religion gets the solution wrong as well. Religion says that if you do good, and you do good, and you do good, you can become good. You can become righteous by doing righteous things. This is a lie because the problem of man is not that he does bad things. The problem of man is that he is bad. He is a sinner on the inside. He sins because he is a sinner in Adam. Every man born in Adam is born a sinner. And he manifests this inner reality in his life as indwelling sin controls and dominates him in every aspect of his life. 

Paul summarizes this truth in verses 20-21 when he says the man in Adam is under the law, and sin reigns, rules, dominates his life, and this leads to death. So what is the biblical solution? What is God's solution to man's sin problem? His separation from God. Paul says in Romans 5 that God's salvation, God's righteousness is a free gift. Just as man was condemned, made a sinner in Adam's one unrighteous act, so man can only be saved, justified by Christ's one righteous act on the cross. God gave His only begotten Son to take on flesh, to become a man and die in our place for our sins, paying our debt. And the Bible makes it abundantly clear that the way that we can obtain this righteousness, the way that we can become righteous in Christ, is through faith in Jesus alone. 

And verse 21 of Romans 5 leads us into chapter 6 and the amazing truth of the implications of our salvation in Christ. Paul writes in verse 21, "So that... Here's the purpose. Here's God's purpose in saving us. So that as sin reigned in death in Adam under the law, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." God's plan for believers, for those who believe Jesus, is to unite them to Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. To crucify them with Christ and bury them with Christ and raise them to newness of life. So that grace might reign in righteousness through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

And Paul shows us why in Romans 6, 1-10. Let's look at that together. Romans 6, 1-10. "What shall we say then to this? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Verse 2 is the key. Certainly not. May it never be. No, no, no. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. 

Knowing this, look at verse 6. Knowing this, that our old man, that old man that was controlled by indwelling sin in Adam was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin for he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God."

When we believe Jesus, God justified us, imputed His righteousness to us. But He also regenerated us. He made us new creations, gave us a new nature and He put His divine nature in us. God made us new men. We were born again to a new life. And this is what Paul lays out here in Romans 6. We died to sin. Our old man was crucified with Christ. That we should no longer be slaves of sin. Our relationship to sin changed through our death with Christ, our regeneration. And Romans 7 tells us that our relationship to the law changed as well. We died to the law. We no longer live under it. We now live by the Spirit and not by the letter. This is why we can have victory over sin. This is the explanation to our new life in Christ because of what Jesus has done in us. 

And Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 3 tell us that the very power that raised Jesus from the dead works in us to sanctify us and to bring about God's will of holiness in our lives. John tells us in our text that he who has been born of God does not sin. This is a present tense noting a continuous action. What John is saying is that the man in Christ has victory over sin. Indwelling sin no longer enslaves him, dominates him. And for this reason, he cannot continue in sin. In that continual, persistent pattern of sin without victory. This is the same thing that Paul told us in Romans 6 too. We died to sin. Therefore, we can no longer live in it. It is indwelling sin that holds men in bondage. And the power of the sin is the law according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus has released us from the law which held us in bondage and from the power of indwelling sin. And now He produces righteousness through our lives as He lives in us and we abide in Him. 

This is the secret to the Christian life, my friends. Christ in you. The hope of glory. This is what John's talking about in our text when he says, "He who has been born of God does not sin." In Galatians 2:19 Paul said, "For I through the law died to the law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain." Because we are in Christ and Christ lives in us, we, the born one of God, have victory over sin. John says this we know, this we reckon to be true because God says it's true in His word. 

And we also see that because we are in Christ and because Christ lives in us, we have victory over Satan. Look at verse 18 again. "We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who is 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." John says that he who is born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. Well this is an interesting verse because there's a lot of discussion and disagreement here as to who is doing the keeping. The verse could be and maybe should be translated, "He who is begotten of God keeps him." Many Bible scholars believe that the one begotten of God is Christ, the only begotten. And it is Jesus who keeps us from the wicked one. 

To be honest with you, considering the whole of the scripture and the truth of salvation and sanctification and glorification by the grace and power of God, I feel a little more comfortable with the idea of God keeping me than me keeping myself. I've always said I don't really care for any of Calvinism, but I don't even like the perseverance of the saints because what I really think the Bible teaches is the preservation of the saints. I believe it is God who keeps us by His power. And of course there are a multitude of scriptures that teach us the great truth that God keeps us by His power. And it is He who is able to keep us and present us faultless. 

However, as is so often the case in verses like this where we are torn between the two understandings, I believe the tension is perhaps purposeful here and actually both doctrines are true. Certainly it is God who keeps us by His grace and power. It is our high priest and forever Savior who keeps us and guards us and even as with Peter prays for us concerning our sanctification and the sifting work of Satan. But we too have an obligation to keep ourselves from the evils of this world, from the temptations of Satan, and in the truth and security of God's Word with our eyes fixed on Jesus our Lord. 

Even in the very last verse of this epistle in our text today, John encourages us saying, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." Here the exhortation is to avoid the false teachers, to avoid those and reject those who teach that you need something more than Jesus. We must keep our eyes on the truth, our eyes on Jesus in order to keep ourselves from the wicked one. But all the while it is God who is keeping us by His power and we can trust Him to do that. 

And John says we know that the whole world lies in the sway of the wicked one. What do we know? We know that the believer in Christ cannot continue in sin but has victory over sin. We know that the wicked one cannot touch us and we know that we are of God and we know my friends that the whole world lies in the sway of the wicked one. 

My brothers and sisters, as I look around this world, at the people of this world, at the events that are now the new normal of this world, it's so abundantly clear that everything about this world system is controlled and dominated by Satan. And Satan has designed it all to entice, to stimulate that indwelling sin in the man and Adam and foster the desire of sin to rule over man. It seems to me that this is becoming ever more prevalent in our world and it's becoming absolutely crazy. From the tearing down of the monuments in our cities such as that of Christopher Columbus a couple of weeks ago in Baltimore, to the riots and divisions among the people in our nation, right down to the people we live among in our towns and neighborhoods, the world's going crazy. The whole world lies in the sway of the wicked one and the sin that indwells men is working to control them and produce these crazy acts of sin and unrighteousness. 

I was thinking about the tearing down of history. That's what the Nazis did. That's what ISIS does today. They go into a community and they burn all the art, they burn all the books, they tear down the statues and destroy them and there is no history. We are history. We are the only reality. And we're doing that here in the United States, in a free country. 

I saw a stark example of this just yesterday at the county fair. We were in this cooking contest and we got up early, 5 in the morning, and Ray and I were up there and set up about 7 o'clock and started cooking the brisket and cooked all day long, sitting there in the rain under our tent, huddled around the Weber grills to keep warm. And at 4 o'clock we were done and we had to turn in our meat to the judges. There were four teams there. And when we got done and turned in our meat, the people started kind of coming around the tents. And there was this one guy and he's walking around the tents and he'd just reach in and grab meat off the table and eat it. A couple other people come and they were grabbing meat. And then when we went over to the judges to get a decision, there was this older couple and I knew them from the community. And they walked right into our tent and they were just grabbing the meat and they were going like this and eating it and eating it. And Bobby and I were looking and we're just like, what in the world is going on? And the two tents next to us, they ate all their food. And they would have eaten all of our food if Bobby hadn't gone over there and said, 'Hey, I need to save a little bit for Debbie or she's going to be upset.' 

It's amazing to see people and what they do and what they think. The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. When I was young, it seems to me that people had manners. People had respect and people had shame. But today it seems to me that among the masses of our world, Paul's words ring more true than ever. There is no fear of God before their eyes. And we see the world system of Satan working in conjunction with the indwelling sin of man to manifest all sorts of sin and unrighteousness. 

But this is not so for the one born of God, because the wicked one cannot touch us. This is so encouraging, my friends. We don't need to concern ourselves with Satan and his demons. We don't need to go chasing after them and casting them out. We don't have to defeat Satan because Jesus already conquered him at the cross. We need to abide in the Lord. We need to keep our eyes on him and put on the Lord Jesus Christ and stand in him because we are in Christ and Christ is in us and the wicked one does not touch us. 

F.B. Meyer comments on this passage saying, "The only begotten keeps the begotten. Evil can no more touch them than blight could reach the bush in the wilderness that was bathed in the celestial fire." Who would go back to the world? Enumerate and press to heart these four items of positive knowledge. F.B. Meyer saying, what do we know? Enumerate these four items of positive knowledge, love, knowledge, abiding and conquering. These are the keynotes of this wonderful epistle. 

My friends, we know that we have victory over sin. We know that we have victory over Satan. And now our last point in verse 20 is we see that we have vitality. We have abundant life in Christ. Look at verse 20. "And we know that the son of God has come and has given us an 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." 

John ends where he started off with the truth of who Jesus is, the truth of the incarnation, that Jesus fully God became a man and took on flesh in order that he might taste death for every man. And in this, Jesus gave us an understanding. He has given us knowledge of God, who God is. Jesus said, "If you have seen me, you have seen the father." John said in chapter one of his gospel that Jesus is God and that he became flesh. He took on flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. Jesus has given us knowledge. 

In John 1:18, he says, "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom of the father, he has declared him." Jesus has given to us an understanding of God, who God is and what his nature is, what he's done for us in Christ, as well as all the plans and promises he has for those who believe his son. We can only know the father through the son, Jesus Christ. And this was a direct hit on the false Gnostic teaching that was permeating the churches in that time, who denied the deity of Christ. So we see that it's only in Jesus that we can have understanding, true knowledge of the father. 

And John continues that the purpose of his coming and giving us an understanding is that we might know him who is true, the true God, that we might know him. It's not just that we know about him through Jesus, my friends. Through Jesus, we know God. We have an intimate, personal relationship with the father. We are his children. He is our Abba, our Papa. And we are in him who is true in Jesus Christ. And John says he is in us. He abides in us. 

John says this is the true God, Jesus Christ, and he is eternal life. My brothers and sisters, it is only through Jesus Christ that we can have vitality, that we can have life. We come to life through him. And we also live by him through faith. This is really the heart of the message of John. Listen to these scriptures. John 5:39, Jesus said, "You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me." And John 10:27, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand." John 17:3, "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." In Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord." 

We have the hope of eternal life. In 1 John 2:25, "And this is the promise that he has promised us, eternal life." 1 John 5:11, "And this is the testimony that God has given us, eternal life, and this life is in his Son." And the theme verse for our epistle, 1 John 5:13, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life." John wants us to know that we have eternal life, and God wants us to know and believe and remember that this life comes only through his Son. 

John's message is about assurance. Assurance in Jesus Christ. And my friends, this is the message that John wants to leave us with and wants us to really get a hold on. That Jesus is the way to life, and Jesus is the way of life, by faith. John was concerned about false teachers when he wrote this letter. And the essence of the false message was a need for something more than Jesus. A departing from the simplicity that is in Christ, as Paul put it. 

Do you see, my brothers and sisters, that this is the same lie that is ensnaring Christians today? Whether it be in the churches or in the world, the false message is always a need for something more than Jesus. But the truth is, Jesus is all we need, and the assurance is that we have Him. That I am His, and He is mine. How do I keep a hold on this? When the world comes crashing in on us, when we are deep in despair and don't know what to do, we don't know where to turn, how do I keep a hold on this? 

How do I keep my mind and heart fixed on the simplicity that is in Christ? How can we not be taken captive by false teaching, the need for something more? There are many scriptures that address this issue, but I just want you to listen to Romans 12, 1 and 2. I love this passage. "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And stop being conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and precious thing that is in you, that is in by the perfect will of God." 

Paul says, "I beg you, I beseech you, my brothers, by the mercies of God. That's all those doctrines that he wrote in Romans 1-11, especially the ones we looked at in Romans 5 and 6 and up through chapter 8. By the mercies of God, by these truths, reckoning these truths, present yourselves, yield yourselves to God as His instrument, His weapons of righteousness. He says, stop being conformed to this world. Stop letting the world outwardly press you into its mold, its ways of thinking. He says it's reasonable that you would present your body a holy sacrifice. It's logical in light of what God has done in you. 

And he says the way that we do this, the way that we are transformed, that word means to have the inward reality of who we are be consistent outwardly in our lives. It's the word used of the transfiguration in Matthew 17, where Jesus pulled back His flesh, as it were, and showed the inner reality of who He is. Paul says, stop being conformed by the world and be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind. We have to continually renew our minds to God's truth. What He says to be true. And we have to reckon it so, believe it, and yield to Him, trust Him, rely on Him. 

And He will produce fruit in our lives. Stop being conformed to the world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is the simplicity that we can never move beyond. And this is a life of faith, simple trust, believing Jesus, looking to Him, and only Him for our every need. My friends, get the message of John loud and clear. Jesus is all you need. And take great assurance, believer, because you have Him. You abide in Him. And He abides. He remains in you. He will never leave you or forsake you. This is our assurance. The truth concerning Jesus. Hold fast to Him, my friends, and rest in the assurance that you have eternal life. 

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we thank You for this letter that John wrote and You've preserved for us and that we have it and we can read it. Thank You for the Holy Spirit who works through Your Word to teach us, to encourage us, to transform us. Father, help us to have a passion for Your truth, to be continually renewing our mind to Your Word, and help us to believe You and reject the lies of the world. And help us to share that truth with all men, to be witnesses, to boldly, clearly speak the Gospel so that men might be born again and know life through Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.