Sermon Tone Analysis

Today we’ve come to the end of John’s first letter to the church.

If you’ve been tracking with us all through this series, and if I asked you to summarize all that we have traced through this letter, what would you say?

Maybe some would say, John’s letter is all about love.

He is mainly concerned about Christians in the church being united in loving one another.

Maybe you would say it is about John’s response to false teachers who were spreading lies and division among God’s people.

Maybe you wouldn’t have an answer at all.

After all, sometimes in this letter it appears that John is all over the map and it’s hard to track where he is going and what he is talking about.

That’s understandable.

There are points here where it definitely appears as though John is hopping from one subject to another so randomly we might not track where he is going.

We’ve only got eight verses left in 1 John to finish the letter.

And when you look at these remaining verses it might seem confusing at first glance.

But let’s track though it together.

Prayer that moves to the will of God

With the final verses of John’s letter to the church, he returns to the topic of prayer with some very specific comments.

1 John 5:13–15 (NIV)

1 John 5:13–15 (NIV)

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

Lord’s prayer | God’s will be done | we submit unto it

This is John writing these words.

Let’s not forget that John was present with the other disciples when Jesus taught them how to pray.

Jesus taught them to pray this: Father in heaven, hallowed is your name.

May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It is a prayer that begins by declaring God as sovereign over all the universe.

And then immediately the prayer submits a request that God’s will would be done.

Does that seem a little redundant to you?

First you acknowledge that God is sovereign—that his will is supreme above all else.

Then you pray that his will would be done.

Didn’t we just acknowledge that in the first part of the prayer?

Is it that, somehow, if I don’t pray for God’s kingdom to come or his will to be done, that maybe it won’t happen?

What’s going on here?

For those who acknowledge God as creator and Lord of the universe, of course his will is done—whether I pray for it or not.

So maybe the request for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done is not so much a request for it to happen, but a request for me to submit unto it.

It is a way of declaring to God, “I want in on this!

This kingdom thing that you are doing on earth as it is on heaven, I want to be a part of that!”

Condition - pray according to his will | homework to know scripture

This is a prayer of submission.

No longer is life about my will.

No longer is life about my kingdom.

This is a prayer that moves to the will of God.

So, what does John say about that for us today?

14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

The key condition in these verses is, “according to his will.”

That’s a pretty big condition.

It means that our prayers require some homework.

Maybe none of us want to hear that.

Maybe we would prefer that prayer be this effortless and trite activity that requires very little commitment or very little work on our part.

But John says it just isn’t that way.

Affective prayer is prayer that is in line with the will of God.

And that means that those of us who pray have to take the extra step of aligning our hearts with the heart of God.

We have to know his will.

And then we have to earnestly embrace his will in the requests of our prayers.

Prayer does not move God to my desires, but moves me to God’s desires | Duane S

What’s the result of prayer like this?

What makes this kind of prayer so affective?

The affect of this prayer is not that it moves God to act according to my desires.

Rather, it moves me to act according to God’s desires.

In other words, affective prayer is prayer that changes me.

It is prayer that takes the time to search God’s will by spending time in his Word.

Duane Sjaardema was so good at this.

For those of us who remember Duane, whenever he would pray, he would always say things like, “Lord, you have told us in your Word…” or “God, your Word says…” or “We have read in scripture…” Duane always—and I mean ALWAYS—referred to scripture in his prayers.

He showed all of us here an example of how to pray according to the will of God by praying according to the words of the Bible.

And that takes some homework before we get down on our knees and approach God in prayer.

But that’s the kind of prayer that works because it moves to the will of God.

Prayer that moves away from sin

But John is not finished.

And now it gets tricky.

Let’s keep going in verse 16-17.

1 John 5:16-17 (NIV)

1 John 5:16-17 (NIV)

16 If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life.

I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death.

There is a sin that leads to death.

I am not saying that you should pray about that.

17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

rules for sacrifices | intentional disobedience from God

That’s perfectly clear, right?

Maybe not so much.

First of all, a little bit of history from the Old Testament.

These are some rules that come from the book of Leviticus.

The Israelites were instructed to regularly go to the tabernacle—later to become the temple—and offer sacrifices for their sins.

But those sin offerings of the Old Testament were offered by the people for the sins of which they were unaware, or for sins of which they had repented.

They would regularly go to the temple and confess before God that every day—no matter what—they would sin without even knowing it.

Those were the sins for which the offerings at the temple were meant to atone.

Then there is a whole different category of sin.

There is the sin which was intentionally committed.

There is the sin in which the person knows full well that what they are doing is a sin even before doing it.

And, knowing it is a sin to God, still actively does it anyway.

This is sin in which the person is basically saying to God, “I don’t care about your commands, I don’t care about your will, I don’t care about the consequences.”

There is no repentance.

There is no remorse.

There is no turning.

And there were no offerings at the temple for this.

There was no way in the Old Testament to make this right again with God.

The book of Leviticus provides two options here: exile or execution.

That person was either banished from the community or they were put to death.

I know, sounds harsh.

It doesn’t seem to fit with our modern American notion of tolerance.