Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

1 John 5:13-15

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.

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

Can you finish this sentence: “Jesus love me, this I ____.”

Jesus Loves Me is one of the most popular Christian songs of the last 160 years. It was written all the way back in 1860 by Anna Bartlett Warner and has been sung in Christian homes, by Christian children, ever since. It’s Hymn 584 in our hymnal, in case you were wondering.

I think the thing that makes Jesus Loves Me so powerful and popular is that it expresses such a simple and yet still very strong confidence in the love of Jesus. Miss Warner didn’t write, “Jesus loves me, this I think.” She didn’t write, “Jesus loves me, this I hope/wish.” She wrote, “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

Would you rather hope that you’ll have chicken wings for dinner tonight, or know that you will? I know that I’m going to have chicken wings tonight, and that makes me so much happier than if I just hoped we would. Would you rather wish that your mother would get better and come home from the hospital, or know that she will? Of course, you’d rather know!

There is certainty with knowledge. Knowledge can give you conviction and courage and confidence. Knowledge can empower and embolden you. But it all depends on what you know. Today, I want to look at the three verses of our second reading from 1 John 5. Three times in those three verses the Apostle John uses the word “know,” and each time he tells us a truth that empowers, a truth that gives us confidence and courage and conviction. First, John says:

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.[1]

If you are a Christian, chances are that this statement seems pretty basic to you. But, even if you are a Christian, the thing you have to remember is how rare this kind of faith is and how profound its promise is.

John was writing this letter at a time when Jesus was not universally regarded as the Son of God, even in Christian circles. In fact, there was a group of Christians in John’s day who were very enthusiastically suggesting that Jesus was just a man. He was inspired by God. He was blessed by God. He was God’s chosen spokesman. But he was just another man.

What would that do to your faith, if you didn’t know for a fact that Jesus was the Son of God? If Jesus was just human like you and me, then he would be sinful like you and me. He would be capable of error and mistake. We couldn’t trust him when he says, “I tell you the truth…” We would have to corroborate his claims with what other people said, and maybe correct him if other people seemed to contradict him.

Worst of all, though, if Jesus were just a sinful, error-prone human like you and me, then what would that mean about his death on the cross? If Jesus were just a human, his death might have been symbolic; it might have been a martyrdom that inspired other people to do something, but Jesus’ death itself wouldn’t have accomplished anything.

But if Jesus really is the Son of God – as he claims and as you believe – then that changes everything. Then we can trust him and believe what he tells us, but even more than that, it would mean that his death on the cross is far more than symbolic; it did actually accomplish something. John tells us what that “something” is:

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.[2]

This is God’s promise to you. This is what God wants you to know – not to think or wish or hope. He wants you to know that you have eternal life. And notice the way John puts it, “…that you have eternal life,” not that you will have eternal life – not that you could have eternal life if you live this life right, not even that you have to wait for Judgment Day to receive it – but that it is yours right now.

Your eternal life has already begun! The moment you believed in Jesus you received a life that will never end. Because of his sacrifice on a cross 2,000 years ago, you will live with him forever in heaven. Your life will never truly end even though you may die. That is a certainty and a confidence that God wants you to know in your heart.

It is also a truth that the devil wants you to doubt. There are events in our lives and voices in our minds that make us question even a fundamental Christian truth like this.

You attend the funeral of a family member and see their lifeless body in the casket or a box of ash on a stand and you wonder, “What happened? Where did they go? What happens after death?” You go to school or you listen to most of the voices in society and you’ll hear a lot of people believe that this life is it; when you die, it just fades to black. You might even hear some of your friends scoff and make fun of you for believing in life after death – as if you are a child believing in fairy tales. They want you to believe that it’s a waste of time to think about the afterlife. You should be focusing your attention on this one.

And that’s true, to a degree. We don’t want to be so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good. But the promise of having eternal life even now drastically effects the way we live this life. If I know that I have eternal life, then that makes me just a little less afraid of the things that threaten my life.

A pastor in Milwaukee just a few years older than me died this week on his morning commute into the office. Life can be cut short in a second. We are not guaranteed anything. And yet, because I know that I have eternal life in Jesus, I won’t be disappointed if my race ends early or if a family member’s does, because they’ll be in heaven where someday we will not only be reunited, but we will live with our God in safety and peace forever.

If I know that I have eternal life, then that makes me just a little less afraid of the things that threaten to make my life less enjoyable. Sickness and disease are temporary – a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of our eternal timeline. Discomfort and depression are too, and so are poverty and pain and problems, socially, physically, emotionally. Because I know that I have eternal life in Jesus, there’s light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it may be today.

It's such a simple sentence and one that we could gloss over in a second, but it’s also a truth that we will know and we will enjoy forever:

I write these things… so that you may know that you have eternal life.[3]

John’s next two “know” statements are related:

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us – whatever we ask – we know that we have what we asked of him.[4]

If it wasn’t enough to know that you have eternal life, Jesus also gives you the confidence to know that God hears you when you pray now and to know that he gives you whatever you ask according to his will.

Does this mean that we should stop our service right here and all pray to become billionaires and that God promises to make it happen? Does this mean that all we have to do is to name what we want and claim it in prayer and God will be compelled to give it to us?

At first glance it might feel that way, but that’s not quite the promise God gives you here. He says, “if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”[5] In other words, if we ask for something that God wants, then he will give it to us. The trick is knowing what God wants.

Christians can spend their whole lives searching out God’s will for specific situations in their lives. Whom should I date/marry? What career path should I choose? Which house should I buy? What medical decision do I make? The problem is that God never answers those questions specifically.

You can flip through every page of the Bible, but you will never find a passage that tells you specifically who to marry. You can analyze every sentence, but you will never find a hidden message that tells you the secret to financial success.

What you will find, though, if you read every page of the Bible, is the kind of person you should marry and the kind of person you should be in your marriage. What you will learn, if you analyze ever sentence, is the secret to contentment regardless of the balance of your bank account.

God may never give us specific answer for the specific circumstances of our lives, but he does give us guidelines and parameters; he does give us direction and tells us what not to do. And he promises here that he will not withhold any good thing we ask for according to his will. To put it another way, God will always give you everything you pray for that he knows is for your good.

So, when I’m worried about the kinds of things that could threaten my life or threaten to make my life less enjoyable, not only do I have the promise of eternal life, I have the promise that God is listening and that he cares about what I’m going through right now and that I can turn to him in prayer and know that he will give me exactly what is best for me in that moment.

There are so many things in this life that we do not know. There are so many reasons to be afraid or anxious or apprehensive. John gives you three reasons to be courageous, convicted and confident: you know that you have eternal life, you know that God hears you when you pray, you know that God gives you whatever you ask according to his will.

So seek out God’s will in his Word. Accept his invitation and pray, about anything and everything. But above all, believe in the name of the Son of God and know – don’t wish, don’t hope, know – that Jesus loves you and he always will. Amen.

[1] 1 John 5:13

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid

[4] 1 John 5:14,15

[5] 1 John 5:14

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God's Grace Inspires Our Gratitude

Genesis 8:15-22

15 Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

God’s Grace Inspires Our Gratitude

It had been exactly a year and 17 days since Noah last heard God speak. We know it was exactly a year and 17 days because Noah took meticulous notes. To be honest, you probably would have taken meticulous notes too had you been through what Noah and his family had.

For the first 480 years of his life, Noah lived in a world that God himself described as corrupt and full of violence.[1] This was God’s honest assessment of Noah’s neighbours:

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.[2]

And yet, miraculously, Noah was somehow able to remain “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time,” and someone who “walked with God.”[3]

And then God spoke to Noah the first time:

So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood… Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you.”[4]

It was a harsh reality and a stern judgment, but a gracious promise – that God would not only spare Noah and his family, but a representative mating pair from every species of animal on earth. And for the next 120 years Noah dedicated himself to doing exactly what God told him to do.

Then, in the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month[5]  the rain started to fall, and it didn’t stop for 40 days and 40 nights. Even after the rain stopped, it took another 10 months for the water to recede before Noah and his family and all those animals could safely leave the ark.

Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you…” So Noah came out.[6]

Imagine what it must have felt like to set foot on dry ground after a year and 17 days and to walk into a brand new world. There must have been this overwhelming sense of relief. They didn’t have to be afraid of their neighbours anymore. They didn’t have be concerned about negative influences on their children or grandchildren. They didn’t have to lock their doors at night. The flood gave them – and the world – a clean slate.

Imagine how the flood made Noah and his family feel about God – that he chose them to live; that he kept them safe through it all; that he even kept every animal on board alive; that after all was said and done, God not only remembered them but promised them a fruitful and prosperous future.

We don’t have to imagine how Noah and his family felt about God. We can see how they felt in the first thing they did after disembarking.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.[7]

The first thing Noah does is build an altar. Not a house. Not an outhouse. Not a barn. An altar. It would have taken time. It would have taken effort finding the right stones and stacking them. It would have been the first permanent structure on the face of the entire planet after the flood.

The first thing that Noah did was to build an altar, i.e. a place to offer sacrifices, a place to show his appreciation and gratitude for everything that God had done for him. Imagine how difficult it must have been to sacrifice one of the only 7 sheep in the entire world! This was no small thing! Proportionately speaking, this is easily the largest, most generous sacrifice in the history of the world – one seventh of an entire species!

Had Noah been more practical he might have persuaded himself to save that sheep. One more sheep on earth could have sped up the repopulation of the planet so much more quickly. But in that moment, Noah wasn’t being practical. He was being thankful. His thankfulness for God’s grace not only made him generous, but it also demonstrated his ongoing trust in God. Noah trusted that God could still replenish the sheep population with only 6 of the 7 that had been on the ark.

God’s grace and generosity toward Noah inspired Noah’s gratitude and trust in God. And the sacrifice that Noah made was so pleasing to God that God made a promise:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”[8]

The sacrifice that Noah made may have been the largest in history, but the promise that God made was even greater. It was a promise that didn’t just apply to Noah and his family, or the animals that were with them on the ark. It was a promise that applied to the entire planet for the rest of history, and is a promise that we are still enjoying today.

Do you like autumn? Do you like when the seasons change, and even though you have to put away your shorts and t-shirts, now you get to drink pumpkin spice lattes in cozy sweaters? You have this passage to thank for that.

Do you ever go to bed at night afraid that the sun won’t come up in the morning? Of course not! The sun will always come up tomorrow. You have this promise to thank for that.

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”[9]

The cycle of the seasons and the rising of the sun are not inevitable. They are a daily miracle of God’s faithfulness and love, and they are a promise of God’s providence that still applies today.

The grace and mercy and generosity that God showed to Noah and his family still applies today too.

What was the world like before the flood? Corrupt and violent. What is the world like today?

What were people like before the flood? Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil all the time. What are people like today? What are we like today?

I promise you, the world we live in – and those of us who live in it – are not better than it was before the flood. If this was the world of Noah’s day, God surely would have sent a flood to wash all our wickedness away. Why doesn’t he do it again? Two reasons.

First, because of this promise. God keeps his promises. If he says he will never curse the ground because of man again, he won’t. But even more, it’s because of another promise he kept, this time not to cleanse the world, but to save it.

God doesn’t have to send a flood to reset the world in an attempt to fix the problem of sin. He already sent his Son. And even though every inclination of our hearts is still only evil all the time even from childhood, we are forgiven, not because of any sacrifice we make – even if we were to sacrifice a seventh of an entire species. We’re forgiven because of a sacrifice God made. And if you thought Noah was generous in his gratitude to God, God is even more generous in his grace to us. He was even willing to sacrifice his one and only Son for you.

That’s the thing that stands out to me more than anything else in this passage:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.”[10]

God did not make this promise because Noah and his family were so good. Read the next chapter! You’ll see that Noah and his sons were sinners too. God did not make this promise in the hope that humans would be better now than they were then. We are most definitely not!

God did not make this promise because of anything we are or do. God made this promise because of who he is and because of what he has done for us. He shows us love that we don’t deserve. He sacrificed more than we could ever offer. And he continues to bless us, e.g. with the rising of the sun every morning, with a harvest every Fall, with pumpkin spice lattes and cozy sweaters, but most of all, with the everlasting promise of his faithful love demonstrated by the sacrifice of his Son on a cross for you.

In a way, every Sunday is a re-enactment of Genesis 8. In a way, every time you walk out those doors after worship it is as if God is opening the door of the ark for you on a brand new clean slate. The wickedness of the world isn’t washed away, but the sin of your heart is. What are you going to do to show your gratitude?

Please don’t build an altar in our parking lot before you go home. Please don’t kill 14% of an entire species to show your thankfulness to God. Don’t copy Noah, but you can learn from him:

1. Don’t wait. The instant you become aware of God’s generosity and grace in your life – the instant you recognize some blessing, whether it’s a green light on your way to work or a healthy baby home from the hospital – stop and thank God right away. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. Pray like my less-than-two-year-old: “Thank you Jesus. Amen.”

2. At the same time, don’t skimp. Don’t make that simple prayer a throwaway thought or a castoff comment. It doesn’t have to be elaborate – I’m sure Noah’s altar was no Sistine Chapel – but it should be sincere.

3. Be generous. Sometimes it is better to be thankful than practical. When we sacrifice to God something that is important to us, whether that is our time, money, energy or effort, it demonstrates true trust that God will still provide for us despite the impracticality of our sacrifice to him. And that’s his promise. He will always provide for you. That is what this holiday is all about.

God is generous and faithful in his grace to you. Be generous and faithful in your gratitude to him. Amen.

[1] Genesis 6:11

[2] Genesis 6:5

[3] Genesis 6:9

[4] Genesis 6:13,14,17,18

[5] Genesis 7:11

[6] Genesis 8:15,16,18

[7] Genesis 8:20

[8] Genesis 8:21,22

[9] Genesis 8:22

[10] Genesis 8:21

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