Veritas are you guys doing this morning? All right. Great. Glad to hear it. All right, here's the deal. If you have a Bible, flip to first John three nineteen. We have a jam packed passage today. Uh, and I want to get us in the Bible as soon as possible. So first John three. Uh, as you flip there though, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever been in an insecure relationship before? Yes. All right. Are any of you in an insecure relationship now? You don't have to say that. That'd be awkward, but, um. All right. Okay, but here's the thing. Could be a friendship, could be a romantic relationship, could be a working relationship, like between you and a boss. But either way, you know what I'm talking about, right? It's the kind of relationship where the ongoing thought on your mind is this, like, are we okay? Are we good? Like, I feel like we kind of swing on this pendulum. Like there's days or weeks where I feel like I get what's going on. Like I know where we stand. And then there's days, weeks, months where I'm not at all sure, like volatile, Unstable roller coaster ish. Up and down. Where are we here. Now? With that question in mind. Let's talk about the most important Roman ship. Do you ever feel like you're in an insecure relationship with God? Yeah, like the kind of relationship where if we're being honest today, you're like, I think I know the right answer, but I really struggle and wonder what you actually think about me deep down. Like, what's my status before you? Like what's, what's, where's my heart actually at before you? And maybe you go through seasons where you feel like, okay, maybe this question is answered. I'm pretty close to you. I feel like I'm doing pretty well. Feel like we're good. Um, but then you make that decision at that party on that Friday night, or you lost your temper again with that child, or you told that person a y you shouldn't have told or you see in your heart some dryness or a lack of spiritual growth, and suddenly you just feel like you're back to square one and you feel your conscience burning. Your heart speaking to you. And what it's saying over and over again in those moments is condemned. Guilty in the wrong. But go hide. You got to do some work again before you're right before God. Um, and to be honest, as someone who personally has a naturally sensitive heart or conscience and a self-critical heart, like I know this experience well, like I'm not just saying it in the abstract, right? There have been seasons of my life where I feel like really deeply troubled, doubting the love of God for me and my status or identity as a son of God. Like, is that really true about me? And maybe you can relate, but here's what's interesting. What if I told you that the Bible actually anticipates this is going to be one of the great struggles of our faith? Uh, it shows up in our text today. Look at the first part of first John three twenty. John says this. He says, whenever our hearts condemn us, we're going to finish that sentence in a little bit. But notice he doesn't say, if our hearts condemn us or on the off chance that our hearts condemn us. It says when when our hearts condemn us, whenever, like John seems to think, okay, our hearts love to condemn us. And so on the one hand, like I want to say to you, if you're a Christian and you're here today, like, welcome to the fight of faith. Uh, you've been awakened to recognize the depth of your sin, to actually see it more clearly. Uh, to realize the, the purity of God and the great call of his holiness on your sinful life. So there's this type of wrestling with self condemnation that actually is kind of native to the Christian life. So on one hand, you can maybe take some comfort that that if that's you this morning, or if you go through those seasons, you're not alone. But here's the other really important reality in our text from First John today that I really have a heart to help you see. John believes it is possible for Christians to move from self-condemnation to really deep assurance in the faith. John seems to think it's possible to have a heart that's at peace before God, like a heart that says, I'm confident actually, like on this I stand that I am loved, accepted, I'm welcomed in. This pops up in a few places in our text this morning. I want to show you two of them. Look at what John says in verse twenty one. He says, beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. Confidence before God. And whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And so in this verse, like John saying, when you come before God in prayer and make requests of him, you can actually have a confidence that's deep and rich. Like this really is for John, like this great test of assurance, like, can you come before God's throne with the assurance and confidence. You're a beloved child and not a condemned criminal. And John saying you you can have such a rich prayer life with God as his child that you can have confidence he listens to you, loves to beckon his ear to you, and he answers you. Now there is so much more we could say. We could preach a whole sermon about John's vision of prayer in these verses. What's this challenge of what it means? Whatever we ask, we receive from him. When you're like, I've been asking for a lot of things and I don't feel like I've received them all. Um, we don't have a ton of time for that today. Um, hopefully you'll tune in to Beyond the Message where we'll hopefully get into a little bit of that. But, but I don't want you to miss the main point. John is saying you can have confidence before the very presence of God and storm into his throne room like a child before a king, and trust he's going to welcome you in. How do you get there? You don't have to shrink from him. How do you get there? That's what John's saying. Now look at verse nineteen, this first verse. And notice actually how this type of assurance and confidence. John says, it's my aim to produce this in you right at the beginning, he says. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. And John's using strong language here again. He doesn't say by this will guess by this will think we're genuine and. And children of God. He says we'll know. Not only that, he says our hearts can be reassured before God. This word reassure. It means to comfort. Calm down, set at ease. That's kind of the force of this word. And remember, throughout this letter, what we've been saying over and over is John's purpose is to make liars in the church feel uncomfortable, and believers in the church more confident. And nowhere is that more clear than our passage today. Like John's, like I'm a pastor and shepherd of you, and I want you to know, to experience real assurance and confidence in what that looks like. I want you to have peace before God, like as hard as beating for this church. Um. interestingly, commentators point out this word for reassure when it says reassure our heart before him. It was often actually used as a synonym for tranquilize, like it has this force of to tranquilize something. See John saying it's possible to tranquilize condemning and harsh hearts with the truth I'm going to give you right. Just like someone would use a tranquilizer dart to calm down a dangerous animal. John's giving true believers almost in this passage, a spiritual tranquilizer dart that can put the ferocity of our self-condemning hearts to rest. But as we dig into the text, here's kind of the challenge and invitation John has for this this morning. John, as a pastor, loves his people too much to give them any counterfeit hopes or false assurances because just like a tranquilizer wouldn't do anyone any good if it was filled with the wrong ingredients or chemicals. John knows. Hey, only true biblical assurance can keep you safe and give you confidence before God. We can't measure our assurance by how we feel on a given day. We can't measure our assurance by what we want to be true. We need to measure our assurance by the words of the God who made us and gets to define our reality. So this morning, here's kind of the question what cultivates a truly tranquil heart before God? Or put another way, where does biblical assurance of God's love come from? Where does biblical assurance come from? We should all crave that. We should all want that. Don't we want to be people that say, I know on the last day when our Savior returns, I will be with him forever. That type of assurance can carry you anywhere. So if that's what you want, I would encourage you to lean in with me today because John's going to safely navigate us through this minefield to a rich biblical assurance that I believe leads to a confident, reassured heart. This passage, like I said, so dense that what we're going to do is we're going to kind of crack into it little by little. But I do want to read the whole thing. So we get John's complete thought before we break it down. So let's hear the word of our God this morning. This is what John says in this passage. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our hearts 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. 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 whom he has given us. Like I said, this text is jam packed with ideas, but just to stay clear and avoid a two hour sermon this morning. Here's where we're going. Okay. I want to give you from this text four biblical ingredients that will tranquilize a condemning heart, that will put a ferocious heart to rest before God. And just like a tranquilizer, it mixes different chemicals to be able to effectively put an animal to sleep. John, what he's doing is saying, hey, I'm going to give you four ingredients that together, when put together, become a potent tranquilizer for your fearful, self-condemning, insecure heart before God. That's where we're going. And if we look again at the beginning of verse nineteen, we're going to see John actually mentions the first ingredient right away. Look at this verse again with me. He says, by this we shall know that we're of the truth and reassure our hearts before him. John says, how do you know we're accepted before God? How do you have a reassured heart? Oh, by this. Okay, so the question is, John, by what? Right? What's the this you're referring to here? Well, I think the context of verse nineteen is going to help us because if we look at the three verses that come before that were preached on a couple of weeks ago, it leads into this passage. This is what John says right before this. He says by this, that should be familiar language to you. Now we know love that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? And then he gives this command, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. So it's in this context of John's command to earnestly, sacrificially love God's people and display a heart that loves God's family. That John then says, hey, and by this, by the way, you will know and be reassured before God. And I think what John's doing is he's being like a great motivator to this wrestling church. He's saying, hey, not only should you love. Because that's the natural overflow of being so deeply loved by Jesus, but you should love because it will serve as a rich evidence. You have truly become a child of God. Like it'll build up your confidence after giving such a strong, important command. John saying, let me tell you the result of this command. Assurance. Assurance that you're really in God's family. And so here's ingredient number one to biblical assurance, the love that we display, more specifically, the love for God's people that we display when you lay down self-interests to love God's people simply because you love them, it feeds your assurance that you've really been born again. John says, by this we will know. Let us love in word or talk, not in word or talk, but in deed and truth. But what is it like about demonstrating sacrificial, Christ like love for fellow believers that provides such deep assurance. This has kind of already been a theme in First John over the last couple of months, so we don't need to spend lots of time here. But here's why I believe and what John's getting at love for God's people, what it does is it displays a heart that's actually been transformed by God's power, because human hearts don't naturally love God's people like left to themselves, natural, sinful hearts, dead to God, love the world and love its values, not Christ or His values, and certainly not Christ's people and their values if they're Christ's, uh, this reality, if you think about it, it would have been in the front of John's mind because he was there when Jesus said this and he wrote it down in John fifteen, if the world hates you, you know it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you're not of the world. But I chose you out of the world. Therefore the world hates you. So when the the world hates a believer. It's a sign there of the world will just turn that in the reverse. If someone loves God's people because they're God's people, what does that point to? That there has been an actual change in their lives because Veritas hearts captured by sin don't love Christ's people. When Christ's people boldly live in line with what Christ values. And if that's true, here's what this means for your assurance. It means that the presence of real sacrificial love for God's people in your heart. It's evidence of genuine, born again faith in your heart, because only God could place something so unnatural within you. It doesn't come from within you. It must have come from God. Let me give you a goofy illustration to explain what I mean. So about a year ago, uh, pretty much today, about a year ago, all traffic on the Alabama highway stopped because there was an animal on the side of the road that everyone was watching. Why were they watching it? Well, it's because it wasn't a raccoon or a cat or a dog. It was actually a kangaroo that was just bouncing along the side of the road. And so you're like, okay, well, why did all the cars stop and stare and get out their phones? Well, it's because they were witnessing something. They're like, this is completely unnatural. Like kangaroos don't. I haven't been to Alabama in a while. I don't see kangaroos hopping around there very often because they're in exotic or alien species. Here's what that means. They can't live in the Alabama climate, so they can't be found there unless they've been placed there. So either the kangaroo was illegally brought to Alabama and let loose as a prank, or it had escaped from a zoo, which ended up being the case. But either way, here's what everyone knew was true. You didn't get here by yourself. You didn't hop here from Australia, right? Like the kangaroo was placed in that area by a human, because only a human could place an exotic animal in an unnatural environment. Here's what I'm getting at. Genuine sacrificial love for God's people is basically the Alabama kangaroo of the Christian heart. Do you get what I'm saying by that? It's an exotic or alien love. It's not natural or native to us as sinners. So if you find that inside you, it must mean God has placed it there. Only God plants Christian love in true believers. Its presence. It is evidence that God's done a new work in you. So here are a few questions to consider. Do you love Christ likeness in other people even when it convicts or challenges you? Do you have an affection for fellow believers in the family of God that's greater than your affection for non-believers? Do you love fellow believers simply because they're God's children so much that you're willing to love, even when it's costly, and even when you don't get along or naturally fit? Because if so, what that does is it starts to build genuine biblical confidence in your assurance. My heart must have been changed by God. God must have done something in me because that love wasn't there before. And now I love God's people simply because we have the same father. That is what love does. But as we look at the second ingredient that cultivates genuine biblical assurance of our standing before God, we're going to see John widens the circle a little bit. Okay, because there's something else John's going to say. By the way, this isn't natural. The sinful hearts either. And if it's present, it points to genuine born again faith. Look at verses twenty three through twenty four. This is kind of the end of the passage. Now we start at the beginning. We're going to look at the end where we see John repeat this command to love one another, but he includes something else as well. Here's what he says. 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. And then he says this, whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know he abides in us, by the spirit he has given us. So the start of verse twenty four makes the second ingredient of biblical assurance clear. And it might sound odd to you at first, but I'm going to try to explain it. The second ingredient of biblical assurance is the obedience we practice. What displays Christ is truly in us, and we're truly in him. What does that when we keep his commandments? John saying, genuine love, genuine obedience, they go hand in hand as evidence of genuine new birth. And I want you to notice this because this is important. If you look back at verses twenty three through twenty four again, you'll see John links love and obedience to belief. He says that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus and love one another. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God. He says, you're actually commanded to believe in God and. And that commanded belief results in love and obedience. What should naturally happen when you believe in Jesus in your head, it should result in a change in who your heart loves and a change in what your hands do. again. Remember, this is the same John who heard and wrote down Jesus saying this in John fifteen, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I've kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. And see, for John there is no easy believism here. Do you know what I mean by easy believism? It's it's kind of the idea that says, okay, I prayed a prayer when I was five, uh, and then I could get on with how I actually wanted to live my life and do what I wanted to do, knowing I can go to heaven when I die, no matter how God calls me to live here and now. John saying there's no easy believe in believism here. Real belief in Jesus results in real change. And so when you see genuine obedience to Jesus in your life simply because you know he's the ruler of your life and you desire to do what he says because you love him. Again, that's genuine evidence of a transformed life that couldn't come from within you. Earlier, John talks about when we have an aversion to sin, it's because God's seed has been planted in our hearts. It's the same picture here. Real planting of belief results in real change. Now here's what you might be thinking, which I think at this point is a fair question to ask. Or maybe some aversion you feel to this idea. You say, hang on, slow down, Danny. Is this like just works based salvation? Like, I thought we were saved by faith alone. And to that I say Amen. Like the good news of the gospel is this. And we will always preach this, that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. You can never work hard enough to earn the grace of God. But the truth we can't miss is this it's inevitable that genuine faith produces genuine obedience. And in fact, one of the reformers of the Christian faith who fought hard for the grace of God, said something along these lines we are saved by faith alone, but faith that saves is never alone. See, obedience. It's not the cause of your salvation, but it is a result of salvation, I think, in agricultural metaphors. Helpful. Here is a fruit tree alive because it produces fruit. Or does a fruit tree produce fruit because it's alive? And really, if you think about it, it's more the second, right? It produces fruit because it's alive. The fruit, it's the result of what type of tree it is. When a real fruit tree seed has been planted and it grows, fruit does follow. And what I'm trying to say and what John's trying to say is it's the same with real living faith. You are not saved because you produce fruit, but you produce fruit because you've been saved, transformed, changed. The things you used to desire aren't the same desires you have now. The ways you used to live aren't the ways you live now. There's been a whole rebirth to a new nature, and a new nature results in real change. And just like you can look at apples on a tree and say, oh, that's an apple tree. Like I see the apples. And you can say that with confidence. You can trace Christian fruit in your life down to the root and say, I never would have done that if I didn't follow Jesus. Like that's Christian fruit. So what does that say about my roots? It says, oh, Jesus has actually done something in me. And you can say that with confidence. And here's the comfort in this reality. I think if you are imperfectly but genuinely and truly seeking to obey Christ in your life just because he's Lord, just because you love him, it produces deeper and deeper assurance in you. And that's an incredible gift of obedience. I think sometimes obedience gets a bad rap, and understandably so for saying obedience makes us saved. But here's what I don't want us to forget. Like, do we know there's joy to obedience? Do you know that obedience actually leads to joy in the Christian life? It's not a straight jacket. It isn't restraining obedience to Jesus because He's Jesus. Not only does that provide intimacy and closeness with him, but it starts to stir in you a joyful confidence that God has really changed me. And that's the type of confidence that just spurs you on in life. If you see real obedience to Jesus in your life, you should take heart because it points to real salvation. But for some of us sitting in this room, I think there is a challenge in this as well. If you examine your life and you see no evidence of change at all after placing your faith in Jesus, if you live the exact same way with no change, no conviction, even with active, ongoing disobedience to Jesus's commands, it's worth asking, did I fall for easy believism? Is my is my assurance counterfeit? And as someone responsible for preaching the gospel to you, like, I don't want anyone sitting here to stand before the Lord one day and said, no one warned me. I was blind to what genuine faith looks like. And so it's worth healthy examination, isn't it? It's worth asking. Okay. Do I love the idea of Jesus doing things for me and being my savior, but hate the idea of him being my king and me doing things for him? Do I allow him to make any demands of my life? Do I look the exact same way after professing faith? Is there any way my life has looked different after professing faith in Jesus? And if so, if you can look and see God, you have done a work in my life. Those are evidences of new life in Christ. And so these are the two inward ingredients of assurance in our text today. And they help point us to a truly changed heart, love and obedience. But here's the problem. I know all too well, if you're sitting here and you're like me, if we only had these two ingredients of assurance, what it could do is lead our hearts to a place of what I'd call morbid introspection. Do you guys know what I mean by that? It's a weird phrase, but to be morbid is to have an unhealthy or like gloomy obsession with something. And introspection means deep self-examination. And when you put those two together, it means it's this tendency to have an unhealthy, gloomy obsession with the state of your own heart and faith so much that you're only looking down and down and down and spiraling downward. One person described it as like putting your heart on a platter and just dissecting it over and over. It's the constant fear that comes from only looking inside, seeing failures, and wondering, where's my assurance then? And after all, like, who in this room could claim they have loved God's family sufficiently? Who in this room could proclaim, I've obeyed God sufficiently? And if we were only left with these two ingredients to assurance, leading us to only look in over and over, what it does is it could become crushing if we measure our standing before God only on internal progress, like, okay, the Christian life begins to become really defeating. So how do we keep our assurance from rising and falling each week based on the amount of our love and obedience or lack thereof? Well, if the two edges of our passage of verse nineteen, and then twenty three and twenty four. They give us these two internal or personal ingredients of assurance. By looking in the center of this passage. It strikes us as a bolt of comfort because rather than focusing our eyes inward at ourselves, these verses in the middle, they call us to focus our eyes up onto the nature and character of God. We'll give verse twenty with me. This is what it says. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and he knows everything. Okay, John acknowledges, sometimes our hearts will condemn us justly so because we still sin. But then he gives us two realities about God that he says, I want you to take these. Feed on them. Nourish and nurture. Genuine assurance in your heart. Even when you are currently wrestling with sin and your failure to love and obey. And I want to focus first on this reality about God that joined. John ends the verse with when he says, God knows everything. Because the question you should ask is like, why does John say that? Why is that an assurance to our hearts when our heart condemns us? Honestly, at first that seems like the opposite, right? You're like, oh, if God knows everything, I'm really sunk, right? Because God doesn't just see the external attempts you have at continuing on in the faith, he sees the hidden things that no one else sees. And there is this reality where that should wake us up to have a healthy fear of God. But I don't think that's John's point here, because he's talking about how we reassure our hearts before him right before this. So what is it about God's knowledge or his omniscience or all knowingness? What does that have to do with assurance? Why would John say this. Here's what I believe is going on for genuine but self-condemning insecure believers. The truth that God sees everything about you, it actually turns into an immense comfort. And here's why. If God knows everything, he knows the deepest aspects of your heart even better than you do. And here's what that means. He doesn't just see your heart, sin and failures, though he does see those. He also sees your desire for him, your hunger for him, your love for his character, and your genuine grief over sin that's hidden among the weeds of your heart. He sees your sinful actions and thoughts and deeds, but also your holy desires. I love how one pastor puts it. He says this God sees more than your recent fall. He also sees new life. He sees what you did last night and he sees repentance in the morning. He saw the last week of apathy, lust, anger, resistance to his presence. But he can also see this year, last year of growth in purity, service to the church, self-control, prayer, and knowledge of Christ. He's saying God knows everything and that includes your sin, but also your newfound desires for him and your wrestling over sin and the hidden ways you have grown and changed that you sometimes forget when you're so self-condemning. When we fail and when our hearts condemn us. If you're anything like me, our natural tendency is to hyper fixate on that. We can't stop thinking about it. I can't believe I did that, but John is telling us, as you examine your hearts, don't forget to lift your eyes up and remember that God knows and sees all the evidence of your heart. He knows your weaknesses. He knows you're struggling, but he sees that you want to want him. He sees that you love him. He sees that you're crying. I believe, help my unbelief. And he sees the spiritual changes in you that you sometimes forget or fail to see or notice. This is the third ingredient of our assurance, the hidden fruit that God sees, the hidden fruit that God sees. God sees the hidden, quiet fruit of faith in your heart that you often pass over, forget, or fail to see. He's like a farmer that's planted seeds and before harvest doesn't see anything but knows what's under the surface and what's truly been planted there. And even in your wrestling against sin, if you can look and say, I am wrestling, I'm struggling. But I have genuine affection and love and desire for God and I want him to change me. And I hate my sin. God sees that and God is pleased with that. I think we see this most powerfully in the story of Peter's restoration. You know Peter's story. You know, Peter denies Jesus three times after saying he'd never fall away to his great shame. You. Some of you know that after Jesus rose from the dead, he asks Peter three times, Peter, do you love me? One for each denial. But each time Peter responds, I want you to notice with new eyes here what Peter actually appeals to in this passage. It's not to him, it's to something about Jesus. Look at Peter's first response when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Here's the second response. Verse sixteen Jesus said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. And the final time, verse seventeen, he said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said this to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. And Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Do you see what Peter appeals to over and over? Lord, you know. You know I love you like I know I sinned deeply. I know you see that. I know I don't deserve to be an apostle. I know that if it was just up to my own heart. I would be a failure. I know I let you down, but I also know this like I know my heart genuinely beats with love for you. I know that I want you. I know that I can't go anywhere else because your words are the words of eternal life. Like you know Jesus, I know that you see my sin, but you also look and know that I love you in. Jesus restores him. Peter's appeal was not to the perfection of his heart, it was to Jesus knowledge of his heart. And can you say the same thing to Jesus as Peter? Something I find myself saying pretty often, Lord, you know all things. You know my heart condemns me. You know I fall short of your glory. You see my words and actions and thoughts that grieve you. But you know I love you, God. I want to want you more. And if there's even the seed of genuine love and desire for Jesus in your heart, you can look up, know that God sees that, and start to experience real biblical assurance. Because Jesus doesn't just look at your sin and failure like you do. He looks at and loves your transformed heart that he created a heart that's still in progress. A heart that's slowly being shaped to look more like him. So John is saying, don't just look inward at your love and obedience. That's important. But then look up and remember your Savior knows everything, even when you feel like you're a complete, broken hearted mess before him. But there's one more truth about God that stirs our assurance as we look up. And it's the other part of verse twenty. Look at this verse again with me. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. John seems to think that the greatness of God, the fact that he's greater than our hearts, that should lead to assurance when we feel condemned by our sin. And again, on the face of it, it's a little confusing. You're like, why would that be the case? Like, what are you getting at here? How does your greatness lead to assurance? Like, after all, doesn't that mean there's a much bigger gap between you and me than I thought? Why doesn't that actually terrify us more when we're sinking under the weight of our sin? God, if you're great and holy and just and powerful, you're the God that I've offended. How does your greatness bring me assurance? Well, here's what's interesting about scripture. It often shows us God's greatness. It's not just seen in his power and judgment, though it is. His greatness is also seen in his compassion and ability to forgive, rescue, and save. Look at Psalm one thirty that gets at this exact dynamic. David says, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? That's the self-condemning heart, and it's a righteously self-condemning heart. If it's just up to me, I can't do it. Who can stand before you? But then David says, but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. It's an interesting link between forgiveness and fear, isn't it? Here's the dynamic at play. When you see the glorious God, forgive his people of their sins when they don't deserve it. Like the natural response is like, what kind of great God is this? Who is holy and just and perfect and doesn't for any sense compromise his holiness and yet can forgive us and be perfectly merciful and compassionate. That must be a great God. And my only response is to bow at his feet. You know, there's a phrase we say here at Veritas often, and I think it finds its biblical grounding in this letter of First John. And in this passage we're going through, which is this God is a greater Savior than you are a sinner. God is a greater Savior than you are a sinner. It's saying this exact thing. God is greater than our hearts. How can a condemning heart stand before God when it sees it's sin? Just committed? By remembering the greatness of a forgiving, saving God is greater. Okay, John is saying, as powerful as your condemning heart might feel right now, it's not the ultimate judge of your assurance. It's not the one who ultimately has power here. Your feelings don't get the deciding vote. Your heart isn't greater than God, and the one who holds the gavel is not your self-condemning heart. It's the judgment of God who looks at you and proclaims not condemned. If you are in him, God is greater than us. Yes, in respect to his holiness, justice, purity. Which is why without an advocate we'd stand condemned. But God's also greater than us in terms of his grace, mercy, and ability to save. Which is why he's provided the perfect advocate in Christ. And this is the last ingredient of our assurance. The most important of all. John says, don't forget to look up at the God that we hope in. This is the fourth ingredient, the God, the character of the God we hope in and have run to for refuge. And it's at this point we need to put John's letter in context and remember what he's already said earlier. At the beginning of chapter two, he says, my little children, I'm writing these things to you, so you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ. The righteous. See, both the words condemned and advocate are legal language. See before God our hearts stand condemned. We. We sin not just in theory, but in practice. And before the divine courtroom, our heart cries guilty. And the thing is, it's right. Right. That's the deepest reason we wrestle with assurance. Our heart is constantly reminding us you should stand condemned right now. Like, I can't believe you did that, said that behaved that way. And our heart overwhelms any hope of assurance we could have. And John is saying greater still than a condemning heart is Christ our advocate, just like a legal advocate, like passionately rises up and and pleads on a client's behalf John saying Christ is standing at the right hand of God the Father representing you, proclaiming your sin is covered the very moment you sin. Our greatest assurance for God's children. It's not the greatness of our behavior. It's the greatness of our advocate. And I think sometimes the reason our hearts stay in this perpetual state of condemnation is we slip into thinking Jesus is a poor advocate, if he's even our advocate at all. There's a famous case in nineteen eighty four where Calvin Burden's advocate and lawyer Joe Cannon, made headlines when he actually slept through his defendant's case in trial periodically, and it resulted in his defendant getting charged with the death penalty. Sometimes I think we treat Jesus like he's that kind of advocate. Are you asleep on the job? Are you. Are you actually are you taking a break? What are you actually doing right now at the right hand of the father? Like I think I feel like I'm on my own here, but he's the exact opposite type of advocate. He perfectly advocates, perfectly represents, perfectly conquers the condemnation of our hearts. Think about this for a second. If you heard Jesus at the right hand of God advocating for you right now, after the moment of your sin, what do you think you'd hear? One pastor imagines this moment and he pictures Christ saying something like this, father, your love is freely chosen, this son. And we've accomplished that daughter's redemption before she was ever born. So pour out your mercy afresh. Have we not dealt completely with their sin already? Have you not laid it all upon me? And did I fail to separate condemnation from them? As far as the east is from the west, father. Give heaven another occasion to sing of our great salvation. That is what Christ is constantly doing and saying before the father for you. Christian John is reminding us our hearts can see our sin and accuse us of our sin, but they can't pardon our sin and excuse it. That's its weakness. We need something stronger than our condemning hearts, and the greatness of our God is. He didn't excuse our sin, but he forgives it, subdues it, and renders it powerless through the advocacy of Jesus. So when your heart condemns you, you need to remember that our great God has given you a great advocate. And it's only because of that great advocate that you can have assurance even when your heart condemns you. Putting all these ingredients together, you could say it like this. Biblical assurance comes from loving who our God loves, obeying what our God says, trusting what our God sees, and remembering who our God is. And all four are necessary. Remove our pursuit of love and obedience and we forget. The gospel produces real change in our lives. And you might fall into the trap of self-deception. But if you remove the hope in God's knowledge of your heart and greatness to forgive, you'll forget that the gospel is based on God's work and not ours, and fall into continual self-condemnation. But when all four are working together and woven together perfectly, John is saying they can tranquilize even the most self-condemning heart. So how do we actually begin to cultivate this kind of personal biblical assurance in our lives? I've already used this language this morning, but I think healthy assurance grows as we begin to practice looking in and then looking up. I want us to start with looking in, because the life of a healthy Christian should include healthy self-examination, not obsessively, but periodically. We should look and ask, is there evidence? Christ has changed my heart. Do I love his people because they're his people? Do I submit my desires to God? Is there unrepentant sin in my life I'm unwilling to let go of? And the goal as we look in is to say this with David in Psalm one thirty nine, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. We take a moment and we look in and say, God, if you see anything in me, take it out, because I want to follow you. I want to love you. I want to obey you. You look in, but far more than we look in. We need to practice looking up. Because if looking in is the art of self examination, looking up is the art of preaching the gospel to ourselves over and over again every day, our hearts are really prone to drift from the good news that God is greater than our hearts. They drift into meriting God's favor by our performance and thinking I'm more loved on my good days and less assured on my bad days. And you need to look up over and over again and see the God who's greater than your heart and say heart. You have an advocate, and the only true God has said no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So who are you to say otherwise? When Christ says it is finished, he meant it. God holds the gavel, not you. So I'm going to trust his declaration and let the joy of my salvation spur me on to a new life. Just like our legs pop up when a hammer hits our knee, our hearts need to reflexively look up when the hammer of self condemnation hits us every day and say, I'm going to look up again and again and again and see who's standing at the right hand of God, and let that propel me to love and obedience. Here's why this is so important and what I want to leave you understanding. Like we should crave genuine biblical assurance so much more than we do. Because if you look at the history of God's people, you're going to see that the people who have most deeply treasured God, experienced God, the people who have been the most passionate about God's kingdom and have done great things for God. They have one thing in common. It's that they experience the joy of true assurance so strongly it created an explosion of spiritual strength inside of them. It's a story of a Augustine, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, J. C Ryle, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Tim Keller, and on and on. Assurance was the dynamite in their hearts that exploded with joy in God. And so church, don't settle for false assurance or a lack of assurance. Assurance is an anchor that will keep you from being tossed to and fro by life's storms. It will give you courage to do great things from God for God, and ultimately the joy of knowing you are safely his and hidden in his hand. So look in, but then look up and start to experience the sweetness of biblical assurance and see how it transforms your life with God. Pray with me. Lord, we thank you that at your right hand right now is Christ the Advocate. Um, Lord, we have already sinned today. And not only that, there is enough sin and even our good deeds to separate us from you Lord. And that is why we need Christ pleading on our behalf. Lord, I pray that we would cultivate a rhythm of looking in Lord to to have healthy self-examination. But ten times more we would look up and see the joy of Christ, our advocate, and the joy of the God who knows our hearts except the worship of your people. Now, as people who desire you, who want you, and desire and assurance to know that we're yours. We love you and ask this in your name. Amen.