What do you do with your sins and failures after you belong to Christ? Lean too hard on your performance, and you will drift into self-condemnation; shrug off obedience, and you will lean toward license.

Working through 1 John 2:1–6, this message stays inside that tension instead of escaping it. The sermon lingers over Christ as advocate and propitiation, then presses into why that comfort is never permission to sin freely. Along the way, it revisits the difference between justification and sanctification, the place of obedience after conversion, and the danger of putting the weight of your life on something that was never meant to hold it. The aim is pastoral and direct: to help weary believers know where to run when they fail, and what kind of growth they should expect to see in a real Christian life.

00:00 Introduction

05:22 Scripture Reading: 1 John 2:1–2

06:08 Find security in the advocacy and propitiation of Christ

24:20 Scripture Reading: 1 John 2:1–6

25:52 Expect to see increasing conformity to Christ, but not perfection

45:53 Closing Prayer

A man can read his Bible, pray regularly, and show up every Sunday and still lie awake wondering whether he actually belongs to God. John wrote his letter to men in exactly that condition: shaken, stagnating, unsure the faith they profess is real.

John opens with three plain things. Two of them most Christian men are already doing reasonably well. The third is the one almost nobody practices without deliberate effort, and its absence is one of the reasons men stall out, grow disenchanted with the church, or walk away from it entirely. John's argument begins not with you but with God, and where that argument lands is not where a man bracing for bad news expects it to land.

00:00 Introduction

05:51 Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:5-10

15:14 Preserve the Biblical Standard of Righteousness

27:30 Evaluate the Integrity of Your Obedience

41:28 Readily Confess Your Sins

54:37 Closing Prayer

Knowing that you know begins with knowing Who you know.

It's one of the most dangerous assumptions a person can make — especially where church attendance is normal and Christian language is native. John writes his letter to people whose confidence has been shaken by teachers who left, and he doesn't answer their doubt by telling them to look harder at themselves. He points them to what he heard, saw, looked upon, and touched. This first message in Knowing That You Know asks the question underneath every other question about assurance: what is your confidence actually resting on? Because the answer determines whether it holds.

Assurance Beyond Simplistic Faith — 0:00

Avoid Assumption, Pursue True Assurance — 7:16

Why 1 John Matters for the Church — 11:15

Trust the Biblical Christ Alone — 26:03

Faith Produces Fellowship — 38:11

Full Joy Through Christ and Community — 45:03