In the sermon 'How Can We Have Confidence in Prayer?' by Scott Brown, the speaker explores the concept of prayer in the context of 1 John 5:14-17. Scott Brown emphasizes the importance of having confidence in prayer through alignment with God's will. He explains that true fellowship with God results in a love for His will, which should guide our prayers. The sermon outlines two categories of prayer: one for those who are on the path to salvation and another for those who are lost. Brown stresses the importance of praying for one another, particularly when we witness sin, urging believers to pray with humility and compassion. The sermon also discusses the significance of renewing one's mind, praying in Jesus' name, and abiding in His words. Furthermore, Brown underscores the necessity of aligning our desires with God's will, walking in forgiveness, and focusing on community prayers that lead to sanctification and salvation.

1 John 5, 14 through 17. Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, 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 the petitions that we have asked of him. If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask and he will give him life for those commit sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death.

I do not say that he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death. Let's pray. Thanks for today, Heavenly Father. Thank you for the liberty for us to be here, that we can assemble together to worship you as a body.

Thanks for Scott. Thank you for calling him here. Thank you for a study that he's done. I pray you preach in the power of your spirit. I pray we won't just learn, Heavenly Father.

I pray we'd walk out of here changed, the way we feel about you, what we think about you, and the way we treat one another. I ask that in Jesus' name, amen. John's entire argument in his letter is to make it plain what it's like to actually have fellowship with God, to be connected with the vine, to be a branch, to have life flowing through it. And so at the very beginning of his letter he says, he says that our fellowship was with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And so he's extolling the greatness of the fellowship that is in the Father and in the Son.

And it's such a treasure that he would wage war with the soul to penetrate to see if there's anyone who does not have fellowship with him. Because you can look like you have fellowship with him, but actually not have true fellowship with him. And that's the entire argument that John is bringing. He so urgently desires his little children, whom he loves so much, to have fellowship with the Father and with the Son. So he pleads with them over and over again across various categories to help them to understand the answer to the question, do you really believe?

Have you really partaken of the glory of Jesus Christ? Do you know his mercy? Do you have his forgiveness? Do you have his love? Do you love his commandments?

So he's asking all of these different kinds of questions. And now our text brings us to another lesson that's really not different than any of the other appeals that John has been making to his little children. And he's speaking of the matter of prayer. Because what is one of the primary and really most wonderful results of fellowship with God? And that is that you pray.

And he's speaking of a people who pray. But really, in some ways, the focus isn't as much on prayer as it is on the will of God because Because we always have to ask when we're praying whose will Are we praying Are we praying our own will or are we praying the will of our father in heaven? Because when you have Fellowship with your father and when you have fellowship with the son then you begin to love his will and he saturates your mind with his will and you you love to keep his commandments in fact John says this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and and his commandments are not burdensome and and And so your your heart when you're having fellowship with God is filled with the will of God and that really is the basis of all prayer and so here we learn in this passage that the true value of our prayers is that not that they are things that we've concocted, but that because they come from the will of God. They come out of our fellowship with God. This is why the Apostle Paul, when he was praying for the Ephesian Church, he said, I pray that you would be filled up with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

Because prayers that aren't consistent with the will of God really are worthless prayers. And so he's talking about really two kinds of prayers, prayers that are of the will of God and prayers that are not of the will of God, but rather are of the will of man. And so if you have an outline in front of you, you can see how these ideas are developed in verses 14 through 17. And the first element really focuses on our attitude in prayer. What should our attitude in prayer, what can your attitude be when you have fellowship with God?

And secondly, the basis for our confidence in prayer. And he gives us a really very startling thought and that is that the confidence in your prayers really is only as great as your confidence in the will of God. And then finally, he speaks about who we should pray for. And he makes it very clear that God has raised up his church, those who have fellowship with him, to pray in two directions, for the brethren and for the lost. So that's basically the logical flow here.

Now the Lord must want us to become more of a praying church. He must want us to pay attention to something that maybe we've lost track of over time. And I believe that's why we're here in this passage because there's something that the Lord has for us, But it's all wrapped up in the blessing of having fellowship with the Father and with his Son. It's all wrapped up in the blessing of destroying the works of the devil. It's all being wrapped up in the love of God, which is the keeping of his commandments and our prayers are intimately connected to this whole matter that he is dealing with here in prayer.

So the whole the whole issue here is confidence in prayer and And I want you to be thinking about this on all the different levels of your concerns in your life. Think of this in terms of your prayer for your spouse. How are you praying for your spouse? Or How are you praying for your spouse? Or how are you praying for your children?

Now we often pray things for our children that really aren't so much the will of God necessarily. But here the Lord's going to be teaching us that we should pray what is the will of God necessarily. And you might think of praying for your parents or praying for unbelievers, praying for civil leaders. There's insight into all these different matters in this passage of scripture. And notice also in this passage there are two categories of prayer and there are two goals of prayer that are listed here.

The two categories of prayer are first of all a prayer for the brethren, prayer for those who show every evidence that they're bound for heaven. And then there is something very different that you pray for those who show every evidence that they're bound for the darkness of the torments of hell. And there are two goals for prayer and the first goal for prayer is for sanctification, for turning away from sin progressively, while the second is really a prayer for salvation. And so John is calling for his children to be involved in a confident outpouring of humble and long-suffering prayer for one another when we see sin in one another. It's, you know, it's inevitable that we'll see sin in one another.

It's inevitable. And he assumes that, that among the brethren you're going to see sin. And what do you do? And we'll go into that at some level of depth, because he encourages not to gossip about it, not to go tell your brother about it But to go pray for your brother about it which is completely contrary to our knee-jerk reaction and now this passage gives this picture of a distinction between Christians and non-Christians as John does over and over again. John only knows of two categories of people, and it's not red and yellow, black and white.

It's the saved and the lost. Those are the only two categories of people that exist on the earth. We are all of one blood, but we are not all of one nature. And so He's dealing with the fact that there's remaining sin in Christians. And while the power of sin has been broken and while Jesus Christ and Him crucified has been the only hope of the true Christian.

There still is the matter of personal growth and sanctification. So this passage is also about sanctification. While the power of sin has been broken, sin still remains. And don't you long for the day when that won't be the case. We bear this burden of sin and so we have the opportunity to see our brothers and our sisters in sin from time to time.

And so here John is just calling us to put on a heart of compassion and to pray to pray for one another So I expect that God has us here because he wants us to pray for one another more You know, it's easy to have concerns about one another, but to actually pray is a completely different matter. One is helpful and the other one's not at all. And so, now, There are many ways that God has ordained and it's clearly specified in Scripture for how to deal with sin in the church and we're very well aware of those things. The Bible says go to your brother, the Bible says rebuke your brother, The Bible says be patient with your brother. The Bible says love your brother.

There are various ways that we deal with sin in the church. I'm only going to focus on this one single thing. I'm going to be like a horse with blinders on and I'm just going to focus on this matter of praying for one another when we see sin in one another. I'm just going to focus in on the prayer part. So don't anybody get up and say, well you forgot to say this or you forgot to say that.

I'm intentionally not saying it because I'm only going to deal with this text. We've had enormous amount of instruction on all these other matters. But I want us to get very laser beam focused on this matter of praying for one another. We must need to pray for one another more. There must be sanctification that needs to be brought about as a result of our prayers for one another.

I need your prayers. You need my prayers. We need one another's prayers. And so this really is an appeal that we would pray for one another to be delivered from our sins when we see them and we will see them. Okay so that's that's sort of the overview of this whole thing.

Now he begins in verse 14, I'd like you to direct your attention there, with our attitude in prayer. Verse 14 reads, now this is the confidence that we have in him that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And so God desires his church to be a confident church. Now the mark of a Christian is certainty, and there are irrefutable things that are true that Christians can count on. And this is one thing that he's speaking about here.

And the immediate context of this verse is really all about that confidence. John has just spoken about another category of confidence in verse 13. He says, 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 and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. And he's saying that we can have confidence as to whether we believe. And he was talking about the fact that we have this testimony.

The water testifies, the blood testifies, the Holy Spirit testifies. You can know if you're a Christian because if you've embraced what he has said about the water and the blood and the Spirit and you resonate there, You have confidence. And your confidence doesn't rest on your own emotional makeup. It rests on the conviction of your soul, of the water and the blood and the spirit. And you can have confidence, not in yourself, but in the water and the blood and the Spirit.

And so, he's speaking that we can know. He said that we can know if we have fellowship with the Father and the Son. We can know if we walk in the truth, he speaks of that in chapter 2 verse 21, we can know that we will be like Jesus in chapter 3 verse 2. We can know if we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You can know that.

It's true. He will cleanse you of all unrighteousness. There's so many things that you can know with certainty, And these are infallible proofs. You can know what love is in chapter three, verse 16. You can know that God abides in you in chapter three, verse 24.

You can know that You belong to God in chapter five, verse 19. You can know him who is true in 520. You can know that you have eternal life in 513. And now he speaks of this other certainty. You can know this.

You can know, you can have confidence in prayer because this is the way God has ordained it and So John John has been teaching about Assurance of salvation and now he's teaching about assurance in prayer How in the world can you have any assurance in your prayers? And he's gonna say, here's how you can have assurance in your prayers. You know, this is so encouraging. You know, we often have doubt and things about our prayers. But here he's saying, no, you can have certainty about your prayers.

And what a marvelous thing. And so John, he's concerned that his little children have confidence in prayer and how it is that they can have confidence. And so he's dealing with this matter of confidence in prayer. And along with the many marks of certainty that John has given, he now gives this next mark of certainty in prayer. And that means that we can operate out of the strength of God's resources.

We can operate out of abundance. We can operate out of things that we know that are absolutely true. We can take steps that are firm. And This is the whole matter of confidence that God has given us. Now, this word confidence, it literally means freedom of speech.

And it's translated elsewhere as boldness. You can have confidence, you can have boldness in your prayer. It's translated that way in Acts chapter 4 verse 31 where the Apostles had boldness. You can have confidence to pray. It's used in Ephesians chapter 3 verses 1 and 2 where he says that you can rest assured that God has heard you.

He uses the same idea in Hebrews 4, 16, where he says that we can draw near with confidence before the throne of grace, that we might have grace to help in time of need. And he says we don't have a high priest that cannot sympathize with our weaknesses. He sympathizes with our weaknesses and because of that we can have boldness in our prayers. So John is dealing with this matter of confidence. God has given the Christian a life of abundance where he is able to live out of the resources of confidence that God gives him.

And you can pray and you can know that your prayers are effectual when you pray in the way that he speaks of here. And then he gives the basis of our confidence in verse 15. Look at that with me. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. And he has already said that this is a confidence that we have when we ask anything according to his will.

According to his will. That's the confidence right there. You can have confidence in your prayers when you ask according to his will. This is the key to the whole matter. And really this is the whole outward, this is the manifestation of having fellowship with God.

When you have fellowship with God, you're dialed into his will and you love his will. You love his commandments. You want to keep them. And so when you pray, you pray the things that you know with certainty that he loves. These are the most powerful prayers you can ever pray.

When you pray the things that you know that he loves, the things that are definitely according to his will. Our confidence in prayer is not in ourselves. It is not in our own faith. Our confidence is not in our faith. Our confidence is in our faith in His will and His will alone.

Any faith in faith is worthless. Faith that has confidence in his will is worthwhile. And so he's concerned that our confidence rests in the right place. And we should have no confidence in our own desires. We should have confidence in what we know is his will in what he desires and that's the key that he's speaking of here.

So he's qualifying the hearing of prayer that that God answers prayers that are according to his desires and in one sense you know some prayers fall on deaf ears and I only mean that figurative I think God does hear all prayers and he does answer them one way or another and there there are various examples of that in scripture that we'll get to in just a minute But our confidence is not in our prayers or in our faith or in our take on life or our sense of what someone needs. Our confidence in prayer is the will of God that is revealed to us. And in such a... When you have fellowship with God you begin to trust yourself less, you trust your intuition less and you trust his word more and more. And so the question for prayer, regarding prayer is is this for us, is our will trained according to his will?

Or are we training our will for our own will? There's a vast difference between the two of those. And our unity with God's will is the most important matter in confident prayer. The unity of our will with His will is the most important matter of confident prayer. And the more our will is like his will, then the more confidence we can have in prayer, the less our will is like his, then the less confident we should have in our prayers.

And that's our greatest challenge in prayer, because we're so caught up in our own will. We want our own glory. And so we pray things that are really pretty much designed for our own glory, because we're just so wrapped up in our own will. And this is why our Lord Jesus Christ's whole life is so helpful to us. He said, not my will, but thine be done.

This is the whole matter of the Christian life and the whole matter of fellowship with God where you begin to love His will more than you love your own will. So getting your will aligned with the will of God is the critical matter. So children, Here's how you can understand this, okay? Are you ready? So if you come up to your mother and you say, Mom, can I have an apple for a snack?

Now, most moms under most conditions will say, sure, you can have an apple for a snack. But if you go up to your mom in the morning and you say, mom, could I have ice cream and a candy cane for breakfast? Well, most moms in most conditions, you know, I mean there might be moms every once in a while who might or there might be grandfathers who might say yes to something like that, but most moms you know would say, you know honey, maybe we should have ice cream, you know, later on in the day or something like that. Because the will of most moms is not to give you ice cream for breakfast. No, she wants you to have eggs or oatmeal or something like that, something that's good for you.

She wants you to have what's good for you, something that will give you energy and strength and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, God is a little bit like a mom in that way. God only wants the very best things for you at the right time. And so, a child of God must learn what God loves. This is the whole matter of prayer.

Do you know what God loves? And, but the most important question is this, do you love what God loves? That is the key to prayer. We often find our prayers so far off course because it's really about us and our glory and our family and our whatever because we really are in our fallen state more interested in our self-glorification than we are of glorifying God. And so we pray things that aren't really necessarily the will of God.

Now I want to sort of drill down on this matter of being aligned with the will of God and I want to give you seven ways to get your will aligned with the will of God. First of all to renew your mind, renew your mind. The most important thing, or the most important prerequisite for prayer is a renewed mind. And so, like Romans 12 makes it very clear that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. So, you know, when you're a younger Christian, your prayers often are more immature.

And hopefully your prayers mature over time because your mind is being renewed over time. And In order to get our hearts and our minds aligned with the will of God, we have to dial into the things that are reflective of our renewed mind. One of my favorite passages in the New Testament that helps in so many situations is Philippians 4, 8. Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. In other words, to have a mind that loves the purity and the loveliness and the nobility of the things of God.

To love what is truly good. And then when you pray, when you pray for your brothers or your sisters, you're praying things that are true and lovely and good and you know they are because they come from God. It comes from a renewed mind. Secondly, pray in Jesus' name. You know, how do you get your will aligned with the will of God?

Pray in Jesus' name. John chapter 16 verses 23 and 24 speaks of this matter. And in that day you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. And so he's speaking of this matter of praying in Jesus name now praying in Jesus name isn't Saying in Jesus name at the end of a prayer.

That's not praying in Jesus name praying in Jesus name is praying things that are consistent with his name. What does the name of Jesus Christ represent? Well, he is wonderful. He's counselor. He's mighty God.

He's eternal Father. He's Prince of Peace. What is he? What is his name? Well, his name represents hundreds and hundreds of beautiful things.

Praying in Jesus' name is praying in a way that's consistent with his name. You're praying things that are right parallel with everything that he is and does. His purity, his love, his wisdom, his might, you're praying things that are consistent with his name. That's praying in Jesus' name. You know, it's interesting to me how many people really don't understand what it means to pray in Jesus' name.

I've had people who've been Christians for many, many years say, hey, how come you didn't say in Jesus' name after your prayer? Well, because praying in Jesus' name isn't a mantra that you say at the end of your prayer, it is praying in a way that's consistent with His name. The third way to get your will aligned, not just to pray in Jesus' name, but to abide in His words. Abide in His words. In John 15 verse 7, Jesus says, If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you.

By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit so that you will be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love." So how do you get your will aligned with the will of God? Well, you abide in his words. You abide in his words.

You fill your mind with his words and you pray his words. Literally pray his words. Notice he says that abiding in his word is the exact same thing as abiding in his love. Because every word of God is a word of love. And so we pray his words.

And you know there are many prayers in the Bible and you should pray them. Go find them. It's easy to find them. Go pray the prayers in the Bible. You know when I pray for this congregation I'll almost always have a prayer in front of me, a prayer in Scripture, and I'll pray that prayer in different ways for different people.

That same prayer over and over again, going through the list of our church. You know, one of the great joys of life in our church is in January we have prayer week where we concentrate the whole time on prayer. Mike makes up this great syllabus where every day We pray for different people in the congregation and there's a passage of scripture Connected with that prayer. That's the whole spirit of it. You're praying scripture.

You're praying his words and Praying his were abiding in his words Filling your mind with his words so that there's an abiding in those words that so when you pray, what pops out? His words, and you're praying for the things that are consistent with his words. There's a pattern for this in the New Testament and in the Old Testament. If you go to Genesis chapter 32, you'll find that there's a prayer that is uttered there that quotes Scripture. Nehemiah does the very same thing.

Nehemiah chapter 9 in his prayer, he quotes Genesis 32. And in his prayer, when the Lord Jesus Christ is on the cross, in his prayer, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, He's quoting the first line of Psalm 22. Jesus Christ prayed the words of Scripture. And when you pray the words of Scripture, you know you're praying the things that directly please God. You're praying according to his will.

And it's so it's it's important that we that we pray scripture, you know, most of us have a hard time praying a long time. But if you have this in front of you, you can pray a long time. You could pray for days, praying the words of Scripture. And praying the words of Scripture, you know you are praying things that are consistent with the will of God. And you know when you when you abide in his words there there are several things that you do when you pray.

You're praying his language, secondly you're praying his commands, thirdly you're praying his promises, and fourthly you're praying his intentions. And so we should be praying Scripture. You know, when we gather together and pray, I'm always thankful when people pray the words of Scripture. It happened this morning. We've had whole prayer times dedicated on Wednesday night where we've just said, let's pray the Word of God as much as we can.

Not that it's wrong to not pray things that aren't specifically in the Word of God, but we pray things that are consistent with the will of God. So the third way to get your will aligned with his is to pray his words by abiding in his words as John 15.7 indicates. The fourth way is to pursue his glory. Praying words, praying prayers not for your own glory, but for God's glory. In James chapter 4, he speaks of this problem of praying for your own glory.

He says, you ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. That's a real problem in prayer. Everybody has that problem to one degree or another. He says, adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity of God? So he's talking about the root problem.

The root problem is friendship with the world. You're trying to please the world and so as a result you're praying prayers that you just want, if they're answered, you just want to spend them on your pleasures. And then he says, whoever wants to be a friend of God, friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So he's talking about prayers that are for your own pleasure, praying out of your friendship with the world so that you would be glorified, so that you would have the praise of man. You know in John chapter 14 Jesus told his disciples that they would do greater works.

But he said, he told them why they would do greater works, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. So praying for the glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Having that in your mind, how will we pray in ways that are for the glory of God? You know, in the Word of Faith movement, there's this very distorted idea about praying in Jesus' name and praying all these things, that you're making a positive confession, that the words that you use secure the confession and they they answer the prayer and they give the example of you know, Jesus in the fig tree and They they say you know you that having faith in your words is having faith in your faith. I'm quoting Kenneth Hagan. Faith in faith.

Have faith in your faith. That's the whole corrupt vision of prayer of the Word of Faith movement. You speak a word and it's yours, but the faith isn't in the faith. The faith is in the glory of God. The desire is for the glory of God.

Kenneth Hagen says this, one of the great proclaimers of this false doctrine Did you ever stop to think about having faith in your own faith? Well, that's that's that's completely opposite of What Jesus speaks of and what the apostles speak of. You don't have faith in your words. You have faith in the will of God, in the integrity of the will and the word of God. So that's the fourth way.

The fifth way to get your will aligned with God is to walk in forgiveness. Walk in forgiveness. In Mark 11-24, you see this interdependent role of faith and forgiveness in prayer. And the Lord Jesus Christ says in Mark 11 22, have faith in God, he starts with that, for assuredly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be removed and be cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them and you will have them.

And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him. That your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." So this matter of prayer is dependent upon forgiveness and we often underestimate the importance of forgiveness. We keep holding people accountable for things we ought to forgive them for and let them off the hook up. And then the sixth way to get your will aligned with the will of God is to keep his commandments and to do what is pleasing in his sight.

In John chapter, in 1 John 3 22, we see that very same principle where John says, beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God. And he's talking about understanding whether you're keeping or breaking the will of God. Your heart will tell you. The heart that it has fellowship with God will reveal the sin in God's time. We know that God doesn't reveal all the sin to us in our time or in our brother's time, but he does reveal it in his own time.

If you're a true Christian, God will be faithful. He'll reveal it to you one way or another. He'll use your brother, he'll use preaching, he'll use something, he'll use a billboard, he'll use anything. And then Number seven, the seventh way to get your will aligned with the will of God is to confess your sin. Psalm 66 verse 18, where we learn that the Lord will not hear prayers when there is open sin.

If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear." But then David speaks of his certainty. He said, but God certainly has heard me. He has attended to the voice of my prayer. Blessed be God who has not turned away my prayer nor his mercy from me." So all of this to say is that the key to prayer is to having your will align with the will of God. Pray the will in the word of God.

That is how you can have certainty in prayer. There are lots of things you don't know really might or might not be the will of God. Hold those things in an open hand. But those things that you know are revealed According to his will, those things are solid. And I would just say, bet your prayer life on those things.

Often our prayer life is so heavily weighted with all kinds of internal desires and affections that we have. But there should be a greater weight of the glory of God in our prayers rather than the glory of our own. And so that's what he's speaking of. Now, you know, there are there are some examples where God did not answer the prayers of godly men. Jesus did not answer the prayers of James and John.

They wanted to have fire come down from heaven. That wasn't the will of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul asked for relief from his thorn in the flesh. He, Paul was asking something that was not the will of God. He wanted it terribly bad.

But God, God wanted that thorn in the flesh to keep him from exalting himself This had a very specific purpose. It was the will of God that Paul had a thorn in the flesh to keep him from exalting himself That was the will of God. It was the will of God to bring a spirit of humility in the Apostle Paul. That was the will of God. Humility was the will of God, not the removal of the pain in that sense.

And so that prayer, it was answered, but it was answered in the negative because God's will was for a greater thing than the Apostle Paul was willing. And so it says here in Verse 16, and if we know he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him. And that means that you can make a petition that you know is consistent with the will of God, and you can leave it with him. He will accomplish it. He will accomplish his own will.

James makes it very clear that the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. So This is a great encouragement to pray, but to pray in a very specific way. Pray in a way that is consistent with the will of God. And then he speaks of who we should pray for and what we should pray in verses 16 and 17. And so he says this, if anyone sees his brother sinning a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask and he will give him life for those who he will give him life for those who commit sin, not leading to death.

So after speaking of the fact that prayer should be according to the will of God, he goes to one of the sweetest wills of God, and that is that we be delivered from sin. That there's a brother who's sinning and you see it and you pray that he'll have victory over that sin. This is one of the greatest blessings in life is to have victory over sin. And God has made us a community for such a purpose Notice it says this if anyone sees his brother, it's this picture of community. It's the church gathered together They they know one another They are kind of living life with one another, and they're around one another enough to see them sin.

Now, you can be in a church where you, you can be in a church in such a way where you won't people see people sin. Like if you show up and leave instantaneously You won't have that much chance you might have you might see be able to see the pastor sin You know and it's preaching or someone leading singing or something like that. You might be able to see that and you should pray for them but But you won't have that much opportunity to pray for your brethren because you won't see them. This is the tragedy of the impersonal churches that exist today where people don't know each other. God wants you to be in a church where you see people sin.

Okay? That's what he wants. It's his will. And so that when you see it, you pray. You intercede in love and compassion and mercy for that person who's been caught in sin.

The church was made for sinners. It's not the well who need a physician. And the church is full of people who need to be well, to become well like they never have before. So the word sin, by the way, appears seven times in verses 16 and 17 alone. So that's what the subject of verse 16 and 17 is, sin.

Sin and your brother. Those are the two connections there. And he's referring to various manifestations of sin. It could be someone who's drifting into worldliness. It could be someone who's drifting into discouragement, and they're sinning by drifting into discouragement because they're refusing the promises of God for them.

It might be someone who's lost their joy, someone who has slipped into inactivity, they've stopped serving one another, they've stopped being a true member of the body of Christ, they're just take, take, take, take, they split, but they're not giving, they're not part of being a blessing in the community. So there are various ways that people shift into sin, but they're not lost. And what do we do? Well, we don't go yapping to one another about it. We pray.

We go into the secret place and we cry out to God for them, not in pride, but in humility, crying out that the fellowship of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, would be sweeter and sweeter in that brother or sister's life. So we talk to God about it. You know, it's a lot easier to talk to others, And it's actually a lot easier to go talk to that person. Well, the Bible gives conditions where you should talk to the other person, but we often jump. We often jump to the thing that's the least passive resistance.

Like if we're really aggressive people, we're going to be in that guy's face right away and not even pray about it at all. You know I don't know how many times my wife has said to me, we would be talking about one of the sins of our children. And she would say to me, and oh I hate it when she says this to me, she would say, well Scott have you been praying about this? No, I've just been upset about it. You know, I've just not been happy about it.

I don't like it's a bad direction. You know, I can see where that goes and it's not good. So, but no, I actually, no, I actually haven't been praying about it, which is condemning, right? I'm completely out of kilter with this whole thing because it's just easier to complain about it to somebody than it is to pray Do you think it's possible That this church needs to do a lot less talking and a lot more praying is it possible? Is it possible again?

We're not setting aside all the other responsibilities and commands, relational ones that exist in the church. But is it just flat out possible that we think we jump the gun and we don't pray for one another, we just get really concerned about one another. And we spend our mental energy thinking about just how bad this is and where it's all going. But you don't fall on your knees and cry out to God. It's possible.

It's possible. It's possible that we're a church that talks too much about sin and doesn't pray enough about it. It's possible. I know that just depends on individuals. But now this is a sin not leading to death.

It's remaining sin that needs to be sanctified So this is this is a passage about sanctification How does sanctification take place in a church prayer the people of God pray for each other? That's what they do and You know, it's interesting, you know with the way that this works in Christians. You know, if you have a new Christian, they have great victories at the beginning with dealing with their outward sins. You know, maybe they've been thieves and adulterers. They stop doing that.

And you know, maybe they had habits like with drugs and you know, their whole lives were just ridden with these things. And hey, they're not doing drugs anymore. They're not committing adultery anymore. It's awesome. They're starting to feel the joy of setting aside the deeds of the flesh.

But then, you know, after these victories, after they get rid of the outward ones, then they find out, oh guess what? Sin is more than just outward. It's like in my heart. It's everywhere in my heart. You know, there's pride, there's love, there's all kinds of stuff that nobody can see.

Secret sins, thoughts, ways of acting, ways of things I've always done my whole life. I didn't even realize that was sinful. Now the Lord's telling me that's sinful. Well that's part of sanctification. And so your prayers might actually progress even as you pray for your brethren, they might be for more outward pernicious sins, you know, in the early days that they would have victory.

But then there are other victories that you know about that need to be secured. You know, sinful thoughts, sinful habits, you know, thoughts, sinful habits, you know, and sinful philosophies, stuff like that. And but here's the heart of the matter. The power of the cross of Jesus Christ is effectual for all of these things. And God engages his people to assist him in the work of sanctification.

Isn't that amazing? He's assisting his church to help with sanctification. That's why we're here by the way. So that you would see one another's sin and God would pour out his Spirit. You would have fellowship with him and out of that fellowship of love you would pray for your brother who is who is committed a sin not leading to death and this is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That God does save people who turn to him and he does deliver them from their sins over time. This is the work of progressive sanctification. And God has created a world of love, and He's defined what love is and how all this works out in church. How we live together in love. There's a great preacher of the English revival in the 18th century who said something that I read that I'm so struck with.

He says, he can be no true friend who is a friend to your sins. But then he said, reproof should not be with passion but with compassion. Now prayers should be with compassion too. Compassionate prayers being cried out before the throne of God for the progressive sanctification of his people. This is one purpose for Jesus Christ Church.

It's why we're sitting here today And he's put us in a perfect context, a bunch of sinners gathered together who want to escape their sins and who want one another to escape their sins as well. And there's so many commands about love in the Bible and how we deal with one another by being tenderhearted and forgiving one another and being long-suffering. But remember, this is about praying for people who fall into sin. Remember how Job prayed for his children? Job, every day, prayed for his children.

Why? Because he was afraid that they had fallen into sin. That's what parents pray. They pray that their children won't fall into sin. As long as your children are alive, you can be like Job and pray, because sin is the greatest threat.

And there's this promise, and He will give him life for those who commit sin, not leading to death. You pray and what happens? Life breaks out in that person's life. You can have a part in a breaking out of life in your brother or your sister by praying for them. How much life gets produced by you complaining about your brother or sister.

Like if I just go to my wife and say, hey, I can't, you know, this is a problem. You know, what, how much value of there is there in that? Well, that's why she says, have you prayed about it? Because there's value in that. And so one of the great values that we have is that we pray according to His will, that we're filled up with the knowledge of His will.

And it works out so many blessings in a church. And so you have this life that breaks out. He will give him life. And then there's the sin leading to death, verses 16 and 17. There is sin leading to death.

I do not say he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death now of course all sins are worthy of the punishment of death we know that all unrighteousness is sin all sin is going to be punished by death and we know that whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles in one point is guilty of them all so in one way everybody is under a sentence of death and there because the wages of sin is death and there'll always be punishment for sin And punishment only always falls in two places. It either falls on a substitute, on Jesus Christ himself, or it falls on the person who sinned. And that is the essence of the power of the gospel, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. But this prayer or this situation of a person who is involved in a sin leading to death, you know, hardly anybody knows what that means.

And so I'm going to give you six possibilities really quickly, okay? And then I'll give you my sense of it. First of all, the Roman church used this to create two categories of sin, venial and mortal sins, sins unto death and then the sins that aren't all that bad. That's how they dealt with this principle. Secondly, there are sins that are punishable by capital punishment.

There are sins that are punishable by capital punishment. There are sins unto death. Thirdly, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which is spoken of in Matthew 12, verse 31, and in Mark chapter 328. This is a conscious denial and rejection of Jesus Christ that prevails until the time of death. Number four, it could be a true Christian who is entrapped in sin in such a way that God will take him in death.

Fifth, he's speaking of the antichrists and their hopeless state. They deny that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. They deny that He came in the flesh. And there's absolutely zero visible possibility for recovery until unless they repent. Number six.

He's speaking of praying for those who are clearly lost. Now that's the view that I prefer. He's talking about praying for those who are lost. He's been talking about those who are saved, brothers. What do you do?

Pray for them and pray that they would turn from their sin. But like for example one writer suggested that the sin leading to death is what John's already described, you know, in his letter that you're lost. You know you're lost because you hate your brethren. You know you're lost because you walk in darkness. You know you're lost because you disobey the commandments.

You know you're lost because Jesus, you don't believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and you deny him. And so, you know, there, there, I, I, it seems like he's talking about that category of person in this text. And now whether we understand perfectly what this sin leading to death is, here's what we know for certain. Our prayers are needed for our brethren, but there is something different that we think about or pray about regarding those who are lost. You don't pray for the unbeliever the same way you pray for a believer.

I think that's probably what he's saying. I could be wrong about that. But Believe me, read 15 commentators and you won't find one single answer. So for the unbeliever, you don't pray, oh Lord, please help him to redeem the time. You don't pray for the unbeliever.

Please help him to stop smoking. That's not his big problem. Okay He might be he might be he might be a thief and an adulterer It might be a homosexual but those aren't his big problems His big problem is he's in rebellion against God and he hasn't turned to Jesus Christ for salvation. He's not repented of his sins and he hasn't looked to Christ to deal with his problem of inborn sin. That's his big problem.

So you pray differently. We do this all the time. We pray differently for the unbeliever than we do for the believer. It's totally different. You know, whether he quits smoking or not is almost irrelevant, you know, compared to his real problem.

And Often Christians get obsessed with all these outward things when that's not the problem at all. But you pray for what is the problem. There's tangible evidence that this sin is going to cause this person to experience eternal damnation. There is a sin leading to death. Now, You know, in our Bible study on Tuesday, Mike said, we do this in practice.

Our prayers change for different kinds of people. And there is a different way that you pray for your brother than you do other people. You pray that they will be saved. And that's the difference. We pray that they will be born again.

So there it is, there are Two kinds of people, two kinds of relationships that we have with the brethren. We pray for one another that we would be sanctified for the lost. We pray that they would not be destroyed in an eternity of condemnation and wrath. And I think that's what he's speaking of here. But you know, this whole passage is about how we're really interconnected as a church and how we see each other and how we sin.

Sometimes we sin against each other. Sometimes one person sins against another person and we see it. And we are obligated in that sense. And our very first obligation is to pray. And may it be so that we are such a prayerful people that instead of shooting our mouths off and complaining, that we pray first.

And we may need to go through all the other steps that God has established for dealing with sin in the church But all these things should begin with self-examination You know when you see your brother sin, you should always begin with your yourself. It should be a reflection where Jesus said, you know, and why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye and look a plank is in your eye. Hypocrite first remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck in your brother's eye. Now be careful to see what Jesus is saying.

Jesus isn't saying, just forget about the speck in your brother's eye. He's saying you need to deal with the plank in your own eye and then, then you can go talk to your brother after you've humbled yourself. So you have humble prayer rather than self-righteous prayer for your brother. And so humility in the whole matter is so critical. Humble prayer, crying out for one another.

I think this is part of the whole scheme that the Apostle Paul spoke of when he said, brethren, if a man is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Bear the burden. Bear the burden in prayer. Take it to the Lord.

Pray for one another. Let's be a people like that. This is one of the beautiful manifestations of having fellowship with God. That you're made into a community and you're put into a life where you see people sin. All these fellow sinners are together in a church And what do they do?

They pray for one another. And what do they pray? They pray the will of God. They pray through the scriptures for one another. Because they have fellowship with God, because they're connected to a vine, they're connected to something that's real, they're connected to Jesus Christ, and his life flows through them, and they pray for one another, And they love one another.

And so this is the whole matter. How can we have confidence in prayer? By praying the will of God. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, it's so obvious from these words here that we need to know you more.

We need to understand your will. We need to be saturated with your words. We need to forgive. We need, oh Lord, to render the service that is due to our brethren to pray. Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us here in this church all of these things that John has appealed for so that we might manifest the love of God that is in Jesus Christ toward one another, and that you would also use us to cry out for the souls who are perishing, that we would understand their greatest peril and we would seek their rescue.

Amen.