Please turn to the epistle of
1 John. 1 John chapter 3. I want to read those first three
verses. John, writing to these, he calls
little children, little children born of God, says, "...Behold
what manner of love The Father hath bestowed upon us that we
should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth
us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know
that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is. And every man that hath this
hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." I'll call
this message this morning Facts for the faithful. Facts for the
faithful. And I use that word faithful
not so much as in the sense of the dedicated, but as in the
sense that we find it in Ephesians 1, when Paul speaks of the Lord's
people as the faithful in Christ Jesus. This is true believers
He's speaking of. And I thought about it on the
day such as today, on a man-made holiday such as we're come to
today. There are two dangers. The first would be to engulf
ourselves in the idolatry and all that masquerades in the name
of God, in celebrating a day that God says nothing about celebrating
in His Word, We could fall into that error as most in this world
have and will today. But then there is another error,
another extreme, and that is when we might spend all our time
in pointing out the error, spend all our time showing how that
so many things that will be done today are simply things that
are man-made, or rather Satan-made, rather than God-made. You see, we can know a lot of
things that are wrong about religion in our day, and still not know
the truth. still not know the true gospel. So my desire today is to avoid
both of those extreme opposites, and to do so in the knowledge
and recognizing a fact that is stated so often, and that is
that the man Christ Jesus, The man crucified on that cross outside
of Jerusalem, he did rise from the dead. He did rise from the
grave. And he did so according to what
the apostle Paul says, he was raised again because of our justification. The very fact that God raised
him from the dead, was the open evidence that God had accepted
his sacrifice on the behalf of his people, putting their sins
away. Therefore, they are now declared
righteous by God, raised again because of our justification. And the results of his resurrection
By what he accomplished, being raised from the dead, these things
assure some things for his people. And John states some of them
here in our text. You see, the Bible is written
for the people of God. And he says of his people, by
the prophet Isaiah, he says, Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
saith the Lord. And these are the things that
we are to proclaim. These are the things that continue
always to be good news to the Lord's people. glad tidings. And rather than being some kind
of mystical sentimentalism, God blesses and makes good news to
His people of some things that are absolute facts. They are the facts for the faithful. And so John begins in this part
of this epistle calling upon all who believe to once again
behold. That's an often used word in
the New Testament. Behold the Lamb of God. He says here, behold, which means
to look. with great interest, with great
attention. We are to behold. And when the Spirit of God directs
His Apostle to say to us, behold, it's like a sign at a railroad
crossing that says, stop and look and listen. Behold! And that evidently shows us that
our great tendency is to look elsewhere. He's always calling
us again to look again, or to behold, because we tend to look
at ourselves, we tend to look within ourselves, We tend to
look at the standards of man-made religion or to look to the logic
of fallen men. He says, behold, which means
we are to look to Jesus Christ, not as He is portrayed by all
around us, but as He is revealed in His Word. You see, you will
see nothing of the true Jesus, the true Christ, except in and
through and by His Word. I could stand up here and say
that name again and again. I could use it as it's used generically
again and again, in religion in our day. But you'll know nothing
of the true Christ apart from His Word. And if you're His child,
this is like a love letter to you. This is a message designed
to glorify God and to identify, call out, and comfort His sheep. He told those Pharisees, he said,
you believe not because you're not of my sheep. He said to them,
you are of your father the devil. But he said, my sheep hear my
voice and they follow me. When he says in Scripture that
we are to behold, dead people don't behold anything, but those
who are made alive by God the Spirit and given the eye of faith,
they behold the One who is set forth in this book, and they
behold those promises that are said to be yes and amen in Him. And so John, in just a few verses,
states these facts to the Lord's believing people. They are the
things of His truth. They are the consequences, if
you will, of Christ's death and resurrection. Notice what he
says first of all. He says, first of all, and states
this amazing thing here, when he says, Beloved, now are we
the sons of God. Now are we the sons of God. Now are we the children of God. And this has to do with our standing. And if you notice here, he's
not calling upon the Lord's people to look so much at the future,
at what will be, but to look at the present, at their standing
and their relationship with God. He says, now are we the sons
of God. We're not waiting to become them.
As a matter of fact, what you find out is that everything Christ
did, all that God does for us, all the demonstrations of His
love toward us, are because we are the children of God. He says in that first verse that
we should be called the sons of God. And what that means is
not simply that we are identified in a name such as this, but that
this is the actual place, the actual standing before God that
He has placed His people in now. He says, we are the sons of God. I know they're not called that
by the world. I know they're not called that
by religion in whatever day they live in. As a matter of fact,
even in Christ's day, by the great religions that were, by
such as the Pharisees and others, they were called anything and
everything but the children of God. They were called blasphemers. They were called idolaters. They
were called false prophets. They were called so many things.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself being called by such awful names
and terms, that didn't change anything. The people of God in
every age No matter how they're viewed by anybody else, no matter
what they're called by anybody else, He has identified them
and sided with them as His people, His children. And this is not
something that we're born to by nature, or something we rise
to by our own efforts and merits, but something that God in grace
and love bestows upon us. Do you get that language? Behold
what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us. He's graced us with this. He didn't enable us to be lovable. He didn't look to us to love
Him first. But in this grace, He conferred
upon a people of His own choice and made them His children by
grace. When you go back and look at
this book, And you see from the divine side, which is so very
clearly stated again and again, that he might have all the glory,
we find something like this. This sonship is because of something
God determined. Listen to him in Ephesians 1
and verse 5. When he's talking about what
the Father did toward His people in Christ, he says, "...having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
Himself according to the good pleasure of His will." Not man's
so-called free will. But these are the children of
God, these are the Lord's people, His sons and His daughters by
grace, because He predetermined or He marked off and charged
and determined that they would be this, and there was nobody
that could stop Him. Nobody that could stop Him. As
a matter of fact, when you read in the book of Romans, listen
to what Paul says in Romans 8 and verse 29. He says, "...for whom
He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed
to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among
many brethren." He says, now, are we the sons of God? He speaks of us being chosen
to be sons. He speaks of the adoption of
sons. He speaks of the redemption of
sons. He speaks of us being born again
to be sons. He says, now are we the sons
of God. And that which we read in Galatians
4, he said, "...when the fullness of the time was come, God sent
forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem
them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption
of sons, and because you are sons, God has sent forth the
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. He enables His people by the
Spirit of God to know this relationship that God has placed them in,
and so to look to Him as their heavenly Father, and from their
hearts cry, Abba, Father. When you read in the Gospel of
John, it says that as many as received Him. Now they are distinguished
from another group of people. He says, he came unto his own,
and his own received him not. That would be the end of story
if everything was left to us. But he follows that with a but.
And he says, but as many as received him. as many as received Christ,
to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on His name, which were born, not of blood, nor
of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
And then in their experience, in our experience of that grace,
in the revelation of that Sonship in our hearts by the Gospel,
in our experience, if you notice, it says, as many as received
Him. That's who receives the Lord
Jesus Christ. The children of God. That's why
the Pharisees did not receive him, but it did not surprise
him, it did not disappoint him. He turned immediately on the
heels of their rejection and said, "'All that the Father giveth
me shall come to me, and him that comes to me I will in no
wise cast out.'" What we find is, as far as our experience
is concerned, the one evidence, the one thing manifests in our
experience here in this world, that we are the children of God,
is that He brings us to believe God. You say, preacher, I had
a man ask me recently, He said, are you saved? That's always
the word you know. Are you saved? I simply said,
yes. He said, how do you know it?
I said, because God said it. God said it. So he didn't have
any other interest in that. That's the only way we ever know.
Number one, he identified me in this book. You say, he did? How did He identify you? He said
that He came into this world to save sinners. It says that
He died for the ungodly. It says He came to seek and to
save that which was lost. He came after the lost sheep. And that's me. That's me. As a matter of fact, I couldn't
convince you that you're a child of God if I were to try and try
and try. And I'll tell you something else,
you couldn't convince yourself either. I see all this bravado
all the time. I'm as sure of heaven as if I'm
already there. I'm this, I'm that and the other.
I'm a Christian. I've done all these things. But
you cannot believe yourself to be a child of God unless God
gives you faith to believe it. Unless He, by His Spirit, to
that which is revealed in this book, bears witness in your heart,
as Paul said. He said, the Spirit itself bears
witness with our spirit. that we are the children of God. That we are the children of God. That we have not done anything
to merit it. That the only way we could be
the children of God is to be so in His Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. I love the words that were written
by an old hymn writer. He said, sons we are through
God's election who in Jesus Christ believe. And this is where we
begin. This is not what we strive for. This is something we're placed
in and given to us. He says, now are we the sons
of God. I remember a man telling me one
time that he would be glad when everything was over. He'd be
glad when he died. He'd be glad when this took place
and that took place, so that he might find out if he's a child
of God, if he's one of God's elect. That's not faith. That's not what the Bible says
to do. The Lord's people are to believe this, and to rejoice
in it, and to trust in it, and to find comfort in it. Now are
we the sons of God. Then he gives us another fact
here. He says, "...it does not yet appear what we shall be."
You can pick up in about any so-called Christian bookstore
a dozen volumes in each arm of descriptions about how heaven
will be and how we'll be and all these other kinds of foolish,
fleshly nonsense that men and women write about. This is the
fact. It does not yet appear what we
shall be." And what he's mainly saying here is that we do not,
at this time, appear to this world as that which we really
are. None of the Lord's true people.
They do not, at this time, in this world, appear to and before
this world as they really are. I hear foolish statements as,
I can look at a person and tell if they're a Christian. You think
you could have noticed Noah as he lay drunk, called him a Christian,
or David as he lay in the arms of Bathsheba? or any of a multitude
of others we find in Scripture, Abraham as he lying to the king
about his wife Sarah? You see, in this sense, we're
like the Lord Jesus Christ. He didn't appear to this world
as the King of kings and Lord of lords, but He was. He didn't appear to be God in
human flesh, but He was. He didn't appear to be the heir
of all things, but He was. And in His sufferings, in His
trials, in His rejections, in His crucifixion, He did not appear
to be savored by God, but He was. You see, you can't look
at the tragedies that come the Lord's people, you can't look
at what they might find their needs or any of these things,
you can't look at them and determine God's favor to them. What men
call blessings will actually turn out to be in eternity to
have been cursings from God in the great majority. Oh, so-and-so
had lots of money, they had lots of property, the Lord really
blessed them. Are you sure about that? That
rich man that had everything, had a beggar by the name of Lazarus
laying at his door. Lazarus, it looked like he had
nothing, but in truth he had everything. And when he died,
it says the angels carried him to Abraham's bosom. But the rich
man died, the man who had everything, and in hell he lift up his eyes
being in torment. This means it is not yet a revealed
thing. Paul says, "...for I reckon that
the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest
expectation of the creature waits for the manifestation of the
sons of God." One day this people, they mocked and scoffed at. Because
they didn't parade in the things of false religion. They didn't
condone a religion without God. They didn't submit to salvation
by some kind of human works or something like that. And they
mocked all their days in this world, but one day, The Apostle
says, the whole creation waits for the manifestation of the
sons of God. And sometimes it does not yet
appear to them altogether every time as to what they are. They have days, they have maybe
weeks, they have times when they do not even in their own eyes
think that there's any possibility that they could be a child of
God until He quickens their hearts and minds by His Spirit and brings
them back to believe what He says about them. That's right. Oh, John Gill said, though they
are sons, they do not appear now as such, as they will when
they shall be introduced into their father's house, when Christ
shall publicly own them as the children given unto Him, and
when they shall be put into the possession of the inheritance
that they are heirs of. They will appear then not only
to be the king's sons, but kings themselves, and inherit a kingdom
prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Paul cries out
in Romans 7, this is a child of God. And in those moments,
looking to himself, looking at his life, looking at his thoughts,
he said, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death? And then God quickened faith
in his heart. That's how quickly we can be
changed by God. He brought him from looking to
himself and in an instant he immediately says, I thank God
through Jesus Christ the Lord who gives us the victory. And then John says that this
is a fact. He says, but we know that when
He shall appear." This is a fact. He shall appear. He will most definitely come
and He will appear. That doesn't mean that He'll
simply come and be present. He will appear in all that He
is. and as all that he is at the
great ordained and appointed time." He won't be early. He won't be late. He won't be
hidden from some and visible to others. He will not appear
at a time that somebody takes a pencil and mathematics and
this verse and that verse and tries to determine when that
time is. He said, no man knows the time.
But we know this, we know that He shall appear. And He won't be on a cross, I
promise you that. He won't be nailed to a piece
of wood. He won't be in a tomb or a grave. He won't be walking around even
just simply as an ordinary man who's been raised from the dead.
He will appear and arrive from the throne of heaven. It won't
be a secret. When He comes, it won't be a
secret. It says, every eye shall see
Him. It'll be with a great, triumphant
entourage. It says He'll appear in His glory
with all the holy angels. He'll not appear as He did the
first time, but He'll appear in all His glory as the Son of
God. And He'll appear from heaven,
appearing from that place that He brought the perfect sacrifice
of Himself to. He'll appear like that priest
coming out from the Holy of Holies. Hebrews says, "...for Christ
is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which
are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to
appear in the presence of God for us." So Christ was once offered
to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for Him,
He shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation."
The fact that He came the first time is what guarantees that
He'll come again the second time. The fact that he's faithful in
all that he's promised means that he'll fulfill this promise
to come again and receive his children unto himself. That where
he is, they may be also. And this is to be our comfort
in our trials and in our sufferings. Peter is saying, the trial of
your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth,
though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and
honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. This is the
part of the good hope of grace. Paul writing to Titus says, looking
for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great
God and our Savior Jesus Christ. And nothing on this earth that
has ever been will in any way compare to that hour. We know
that He shall appear. And then here's something else.
Here's another fact. John says, and we know that when
He shall appear, we shall be like Him. We shall be like Him. Did you realize that for God's
people, there are a number of ways in which we're already like
Christ? We're loved like Christ by the
Father. We're chosen like Christ by the
Father. We're accepted already in Christ. As a matter of fact, we're already
risen in Christ. You just go read Ephesians 2. If we haven't already been a
partaker in a resurrection, we won't be happily a participant
in the next resurrection. Because all of Christ's people,
They're so put by God Himself in union with Christ, and made
one by His grace to be one with Christ, so that when He went
to that cross, they, everyone, went to that cross in Him. When
He died, they, everyone, died in Him. And when He was raised,
they were, everyone, raised in Him. And Paul says they are seated
in the heavenlies. in Christ Jesus. He's the head,
they're the body. And if the head is already there,
then the body shall surely be with Him in that place and hour,
and be like Him. Oh, He has a uniqueness as God
the Son that no other possess. And yet at the same time, John
says, as He is, so are we in this world. And we'll be like
Him, that we might enjoy Him forever. We're like Him in that
God has justified us by imputing to us His very righteousness. There is a sense in which we
have to be just like Christ already to be accepted by God, and for
us to be justified or declared righteous by God. It's because
God has made us to be the righteousness of God in Him. In Him. It's all about Christ. But in that hour we shall be
like Him in the sense of glorified sinlessness, holy in body, without
pain, spiritual, yet very real and true." You say, can you explain
that to me a little bit? Not really. All I know is this,
it says of our Lord, that when He was raised from the dead,
He appeared to those disciples. Is this not right? And He appeared
through a door. He came through a door that was
not opened. But then He also sat down and
ate broiled fish and honeycomb. You say, well, I don't understand
that. Join the club, but we know this. we shall be like Him."
Like the angels who do not marry, but yet the bride of Christ,
able in a holy body to worship God and to serve Him perfectly
forever, always doing the Father's will. You see, heaven is to be
with Him. Glory is to be like Him and enjoy
Him forever. When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Paul says he'll change our vile
body, that it might be fashioned like unto his glorious body,
according to the working whereby he's able even to subdue all
things unto himself. We'll be like him. And then it
says, this is another fact, it says that we'll see Him as He
is. You know all that man's portrayal
of Jesus in all His religious activities is used of the devil
to keep us from seeing and knowing how He is. I was down in one
of the religious centers in a little
pueblo or town in Mexico one time. Here are all these candles. Right here is, in the midst of
it all, the star attraction, the idol that was honored, the...
I can't think of what they called her. The something of a... Oh,
never mind. But it was a statue of Mary.
And you know what she was doing? She's holding a lifeless, dead
Jesus. How many crosses do you think
will be put up today? How many things will be done? How many actors? There's a series
on TV now, I noticed, the Bible. Let me tell you this, if you
want to find out about the Bible, the last place you want to go
is to a man-made TV or movie production of it. I just guarantee
you that. Somebody's going to portray perfect
sinlessness. They're going to portray God
manifest in the flesh. You think that person or anybody
doing that's got any regard for the living God? And we'll see
Him as He is, not by faith, but by perfect sight. And we'll see
Him as He is in the purposes of God. Can't help but believe
that we'll see the reasoning of God to a certain extent, the
workings of God, the glory of God. We'll see Him as our Lord
and King and Friend and Redeemer and Savior and Covenant Head. And when John got a little foreglimpse
of Him in the Revelation, John said, and I fell down before
Him as a dead man. We haven't seen anything yet,
but we will. We'll see Him as He is. Then John says this, all who
have this hope, this hope in Christ, this hope of His appearing,
this hope of being like Him, and by the way, Hope in the Bible
is not simply a wish. Hope is expectancy that is bounded
on the promise of one who cannot fail. Hope thou in God, the psalmist
says. Not a wish, it's an expectancy. Everybody who is living in this
expectancy of the coming Christ, if he had that hope, John says,
he purifies himself even as he is pure. Now, I realize that
there is a sense in which there may be, in some measure,
A slight emphasis here on moral purification. We know we'll never
in this life be like Christ. I mean, men can tell all their
little sayings, let others see Jesus in you. They didn't see
Jesus in Jesus. They say, what would Jesus do?
No, that's not the issue. What did He do? And moreover,
what did He say? We are to seek. Everyone who
has this hope, the good hope of grace, says he purifies himself. He seeks to adorn the gospel.
But that is not any part of his hope. His hope is in this. He is already pure in Christ.
But this purifying, I think, has a reference to that water
of purification that you find in the Old Testament, where it
shows that They took the ashes of a heifer, of a sacrifice offered. They saved the ashes. And when
somebody went out later on and came in contact with a dead body
and became ceremonially unclean, they'd take the ashes of that
heifer and sprinkle it in running pure water and take a piece of
a shrub and they would sprinkle it on that person. They didn't
kill another sacrifice. They just sprinkled that water
of purification. And that was just simply a picture
of Christ, who was offered once, offered one sacrifice for sins
forever. And trusting Him, He does not
die again for us. But that finished work and sacrifice
avails not only to stand us pure before God, but to purify our
consciences, purge our consciences from every dead work that we
might serve the living God. Because all into our minds and
our hearts comes back creeping, being the sinners that we are,
that we've done something that's going to please God, or a fear
that we've not done something that's going to please God. When
the truth of the matter is, Christ's one sacrifice for sins forever
is the only thing that ever has or ever will please and satisfy
God. that we come back as believers.
And when he brings the precious promises of God in Christ to
us, reminds us of the only way we could ever come before God
and be accepted, and that by the works of one outside of ourselves,
all those foolish notions are washed away, and we come before
God again, afresh and anew, in Christ crucified alone. Alone. John states these as facts. But the great multitude cannot
enter into them. Do not believe them. They're
going to parade through this life, trusting the traditions
of men. trusting in the works of their
own selves, blinded by the God of this world to the facts as
they are in Christ. But the Lord's people, He's going
to bring them to hear this gospel, to believe it, and thereby to
believe on Jesus Christ only. Now, I can gather a big crowd,
if I offer something other than Christ alone. But I preach, and
I dare not preach anything else. As Paul said, save Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. It's not got anything to do with
fun. Not got anything to do with the
traditions of men. It has to do with the truth.
Can we hear it? Can we believe it? Is He talking
to us? I can see every reason in myself
to say, no, He's not talking to me. But when we look to Christ,
when we rely totally and solely upon Him, that's where we find
every reason to confess ourselves to be the children of God. And His Spirit bears witness
with our spirit. that we are the children of God. My prayer is this morning that
His Spirit will take His Word and press that upon your heart
and make that known to you. You be His child. Paul went off
and preached so many places and one of the times he was preaching,
he states it so clearly for us to see, it says that he preached
Some, most, rejected what he had to say about Christ. They
didn't look at him as an apostle of God. They didn't look at these
ragtag fishermen as apostles of God. But it says, but as many. as were ordained unto eternal
life, believed." Believe. You're God's child. He'll bring
you to believe. You will believe. The commandment
of the Gospel is for you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And
I pray He'll give you grace to do so. Our Father, this day we
give glory to Your Name as the God of all grace. Honor yourself,
honor your Son, honor your Spirit in calling out your children,
your heirs, heirs of God, heirs of all things in Him who is the
heir of all things. Enable us to bow our hearts and
pray, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven. We thank you and pray that you
would bless the words of your word to the hearts of these people.
For we pray in Christ's name. Amen.