you'll return in your Bibles
to 1 John chapter four. Now God was pleased in his eternal
purpose to confront the church with two major heresies during
the time of the apostles. And as the apostles dealt with
these heresies, They, in essence, dealt with every heresy that
would ever arise in the church. Every bit of false doctrine that
has ever arisen among those that profess to believe the Lord Jesus
Christ, every one of them can find an answer in the way the
apostles dealt with these two heresies. Now the first heresy
to show up was Jewish legalism. And one thing that you'll discover
is that actually every heresy is some form of legalism. And the reason why that is so,
every heresy is an attempt by men to become the masters of
their own fate and will always involve some kind of rules to
follow or ceremonies to observe, somehow or another, that by the
performance of these things, they ensure themselves a favorable
entrance into the presence of God, always. And it doesn't matter what point
of doctrine in the scriptures is being attacked. The goal,
or actually what motivates it, is man's belief that he has the
right to determine his destiny. Secondly, that he has the power
to do it, or the righteousness to do it. It always comes back
to man somehow or another and what he thinks of himself. But
this Jewish legalism, of course, tried to take us back to the
covenant that God made with Israel on Mount Sinai. And while it's
mentioned in probably all the apostolic letters, probably the most prominent one
is the book of Galatians. Paul dealt with it head on. But
what was the essence of that legal heresy? Christ is not enough. Because these people in Galatia,
as the Jewish legalist infiltrated their church, and they were saying,
you must be circumcised in order to be saved. What they were saying was, yes,
we believe in Christ, but he's not enough. Something more has
to be added to what he has done to make what he has done effective
for us. They weren't denying that Christ
was necessary. They were denying that he was
sufficient. And Paul's argument turned that whole thing on its
head. He says in Galatians 5, if you add to Christ, Christ
becomes nothing to you. He's of no use to you. Now, strictly
what he said, if you be circumcised, Christ profits you nothing. But
that's because circumcision was the issue being dealt with in
the Church of Galatia. But you could put in there anything
that professed Christians have set forward as necessary to be
added to Christ in order that Christ's work be made effective. Anything, your baptism, your
church attendance, your Bible reading, your morality, your
love, anything. And he says if you, and of course
when he said if you be circumcised, he wasn't just talking about
the outward reality of it. His meaning was obvious. If you
be circumcised, thinking that your circumcision adds anything
to Christ, then Christ is nothing to you. And that settles the
case, doesn't it? You try to add to Christ, you
lose Christ. And then the second of these
apostolic age heresies was what later became known as Gnosticism. And like all little denominations,
there's various branches of that. But they didn't perceive Christ be
God in the absolute sense of the word. They thought he was
a demigod, a half-god, half-man. Some thought he was, that Jesus
was just a man, and then at his baptism, the Christ Spirit entered
him, and just before he died, the Christ Spirit left him. And so they had a deficient view
of Christ himself, as to who he is. And that meant that they
could not believe that Christ himself was sufficient. And while
there was some minor differences among them in what they believed,
but this was true of all of them. They thought there was a whole
ladder, as it were, of intermediaries between them and God. And Jesus just happened to be
the top one. And so they talked about visions
of angels, you know, because they were seeking angels to be
mediators. between them and the next guy
up or whatever, you know. And this same kind of thing goes
on sometimes. Well, I remember this when I
went to India to preach. Everywhere we go in these village
churches, you know, afterwards people be coming up and they'd
want me to put my hands on them and pray for them. And they didn't
speak English and I didn't speak their language. And I didn't
know what to say to them. I mean, I don't mind praying
for people, but I felt that they acted like my prayers had some
kind of special power with God that their prayers wouldn't have. As though coming to me as an
intermediary between them and God somehow gained them a little
access to God they wouldn't have had without me. Paul was very bold in dealing
with this idea, and he says there is one God and one mediator between
God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Now we must have a mediator between
us and God, but we don't need a mediator between us and Christ.
We go directly to Him. And that's why in the book of
Colossians, Paul said, in him dwells all the fullness of the
Godhead in a bodily form, because that word fullness was a technical
term that the Gnostics used to describe that whole chain of
mediators they try to go through to get to God. They called it
the fullness. And Paul says, all the fullness
is Christ. It's all you need. And John was
dealing with these same Gnostics here. Now, one thing about any
legalist, no matter what form his legalism takes, whether it's
a legalistic, you know, where they're trying to go to the law,
or a moralistic, or, you know, a ceremonial-based legal, whatever
it is, eventually leads those who hold it to despise those
who don't follow along with their heresy. They may not say, well,
they're not Christians, but they think they're lower class Christians.
And these Gnostics, they held non-Gnostic Christians in contempt,
because they thought they were better. After all, they'd have
been in touch with angels. They felt they had a special
knowledge, an insight into the things of God that other believers
didn't have. In fact, that's where their name
comes from. It's based on the Greek word for, to know. And
actually, our English word know, K-N-O-W, is just over the years,
in Greek it's G-N-O, and the G got turned into a K. And we
end up with the word know. And so you might call these gnostics.
We're the knowers, they said. We're the ones who perceive the
secret things of God. and you all were just the riffraff
of the church. And John, in a way that's typical
of him, you know, you can't read all scripture the same way. Now,
we're most likely, at least in my experience, but we can easily
identify with what Paul writes, because Paul was sent to people
like you and me, and specially prepared to present the gospel
to the Gentile nations, and we are the descendants of those
nations. Primarily, Paul is traveling,
was in what nowadays is called Western Europe, or maybe just
a tiny bit east of that area, but still it was moving It was
the Roman Empire of that day. And he was trained in Judaism and yet was born in a Gentile city and
raised among Gentiles, understood their way of approach. And so
Paul has this carefully reasoned way of presenting the gospel
in terms of Roman the Roman system of justice. And that's how he
presented it, and we can identify with that, because our culture
is descended from the culture that Paul spoke to. John primarily
wrote to Jews. And I know that it's common for
people to say, well, someone who's a new believer in Christ,
you should give him the Gospel of John. And I'm thinking, that's
the most difficult of the Gospels for me to grasp. Now, when I do understand John's
writings, I find them to be wonderful. But I more understand what Matthew,
Mark, and Luke wrote, because they wrote more like we would
write a biography of something. But John was dealing in abstracts
quite often. And though he told stories, all
of them were told just to back up an abstract concept. And that's
why he speaks so much of love. And he speaks very methodically,
as a teacher of the very young would teach. If you try to analyze
what he said, you know, he'll start at one point, and da-da-da-da-da-da-da,
and then he'll back up, almost back to the beginning, and go
just a little bit farther, and then back up again, you know?
And if you're trying to find, you know, this verse logically
goes to this verse, and then to the next verse, you're going
to get confused, because he'll go back and all that, at any
rate. Here he is, and he's speaking to a particular church. I'm sure that this was written
at first to a particular church, but of course it was accepted
as scriptures and spread around through the church. And in dealing
with these Gnostics, and giving some comfort to those who were
being abused by them, he says this. Dear friends, verse 7,
let us love one another, for love comes from God. Now he could have, and it would
have been a legitimate way to handle this, but it wasn't John's
way, he could have said, now these Gnostics, here's what they
believe, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and if we look at these scriptures in
the book from the prophet Jeremiah and the prophet Isaiah and just
make a open and shut case against the doctrines they believe. But
that's not where he goes. Because again, he acts as though
he's dealing with children. He calls them little children
and my children. What does he do? He goes to something
that we know intuitively. Love. Now, it's almost impossible
to define love. Partly because we use the word
love to describe many different kinds of relationships. And for some, love is an emotion
or a feeling. For others, it's actions, and
then this and that and the other, you know. Romantic love, oh,
I fell in love, you know. Well, any love you can fall into,
you can fall out of. But he said, let us love one
another. And whether or not we can give
a good definition of what this love is, we all intuitively know
what he's talking about. Because we know what it is to
be loved, and we know what it is to be not loved. I had, as I've told you many
times before, what I consider to be wonderful parents. I never ever wondered whether or not I was
loved. And I hear stories of those who
were raised in abusive households, and it's foreign to me. I don't understand that. First
of all, I can't understand why parents would treat their children
that way. And I can't imagine what it would be like to grow
up in a household where I was not assured of the love and affection
of my parents. And I kind of went out into the
world somewhat naive, not understanding how many people
in this world grow up. But here's the funny thing. Even
those who did not experience love in their home growing up,
they still know what it is to be loved. and they understand
that they weren't loved. We know what love is. And so
John, in addressing this thing, he goes right to an issue that
we all understand on an intuitive level, love. And he said, let
us love one another, for love comes from God. Now, the Bible describes God, His
attributes, as they told me in Bible school, and that's a fine
word, but I mean, you know, His attributes. He's omniscient,
omnipotent, omnipresent. He's righteous, holy, just, all
these things. And it's absolutely true. But
the only description of God that I'm aware of that's given to
us as a noun rather than an adjective is God is love. Not God is loving. God is love. In other words, God's love is
so much a part of his being that you don't act as though it's
an adjective that you tag on to him after you've spoken of
him. You can't even rightly understand
the God of scriptures apart from an understanding of this love. It's an essential part, and I
realize all of God's attributes are essential to Him, but as
I said, here is, and that's what John later says, you know, in
this passage we read earlier, God is love. Therefore, I mean,
love being so much a part of the nature of God, he says that should move us to
love one another. Not only this, when the church
is in the midst of a theological war, as it was at this time with these
Gnostics troubling the churches, we can distinguish who is of
the truth And who is of the error by this? Everyone who loves has
been born of God and knows God. Now that's not just a blanket
statement we can take out there. There's people in the world,
they have love for their children, their spouse, their parents,
you know, for friends and all this. So it's not like everyone
in the world who loves has been born of God. What he means is,
you know, all of this has to be taken within context. As the
church is facing this warfare, look for the ones who are demonstrating
love. They're the ones who are from
God. Those who are being divisive.
Those who are looking with contempt on their other brethren. Don't pay any attention to them. Whoever does not love does not
know God because God is love. Now sometimes we are brought
into doubts about whether we belong to God. whether any work
of grace has been done in our hearts. In fact, just about any
time we look at our hearts, that question's gonna come up in our
minds. Good grief, how can I look at my inmost being or, you know,
whatever you wanna call it, you know, my thoughts and desires
and all that, how can I look, I look at that and I think, how
can I be born of God? As John Newton wrote, It is a
point I long to know, and often it gives me anxious thought.
Do I love the Lord or no? Am I His or am I not? And I can
understand that. I understand it by experience.
I understand it because whether or not I know God, whether or
not I love God, these are crucial matters. These are matters of
eternity. Paul said, cursed is everyone
who does not believe or who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ. That's pretty strong words. And
the Lord also says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments,
and I don't have time to do a total exposition of what that means,
but I look at myself and I think so much, then I must not love
Christ, because I'm not very good at doing what he said to
do. You see, legalism is our natural
state, and it's never going to be gone until we lay down this
flesh. And so we're always gonna wrestle
with these legalistic thoughts. But here it is. Everyone who loves has been born
of God. John Newton, that was just the
first stanza to that hymn he wrote, but he didn't leave the
question there. When he gets to the end, he says,
despite all I have mentioned before about how difficult prayer
is and all this other stuff that I think would accompany love
for God, yet I must confess I do love him. And I do love his son,
the Lord Jesus Christ. And I do love those who, like
me, not who like me, but who, in a way that, like me, they
also love the Lord Jesus Christ. I was talking to Brother Tanner
here this past week. He was in for Christmas break.
And we were talking about, you know, there's a limit to a person's
life and a limit to how long they can keep doing the work
that they've done, and the time's going to come when I'll leave
this place, either by dying or by just, I'm too old to do it
anymore. And I said to him, but I don't
know how I'm going to do that. I said, yes, my children are
far away and I want to be near them. Yes, that's a draw in that
direction. I said, but these people. I've been with them for
over 35 years. They are my heart and soul. How
do I leave?" Believers love one another. It doesn't mean they don't get
angry at each other. It doesn't mean they don't fall out with each
other. Anybody that's had kids knows you can love someone dearly
and want to smack them halfway across the room. knows you can love someone and
sends them to their room simply so you can get away from them
for a while. You see, love is not this sweet,
sentimental thing. Love is that which persists even
as anger rises. We love one another. We disagree
with one another, but we love one another. We may not be pals or buddies
in the matters of normal life, because that's based on your
common interests in life and things like that, but we love
one another. And when we're among others who
don't believe what we believe and who we believe, I'm not saying
we despise them or anything, but we don't enjoy among them
the kind of love and affection we enjoy among one another. If you don't love God's people,
you don't love God. If a man doesn't love God, I
mean, excuse me, doesn't love his brothers whom he can see,
how can he love God whom he can't see? But now John's going to go on
and say something about this love that lays low all the sentimental
kind of love that people are so fond of. This is how God showed his love
among us. That's verse 9. God is love. OK. What kind of love is this? Well, here's how he showed it.
He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might
live through Him. This is love. Not that we love
God. We do, but that's not the issue
here. That is, we don't find out what love is by looking at
our love for God. We find out what love is by looking
at His love for us, it's that He loved us and sent His Son
as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Now if you want a definition
of love that does not necessarily consist in words, in finely honed
points of doctrine or some fancy Webster's dictionary definition
of it, if you want to know what love is, if you go to Mount Calvary
and behold the Lord Jesus Christ, bearing our sins in His body
on the tree, appearing in the presence of a just God, bearing
our sins, our guilt, our curse, as it were, as it were, becoming
us in the presence of God and receiving within Himself all
the wrath and punishment that a just God can do against sin.
You look at that and know that that was being done for miserable,
wretched, useless, worthless sinners. Then you begin to understand
the love of God. I like to sing that song, Oh
How I Love Jesus, but sometimes I'm embarrassed to sing it. Because
if I say, I love Jesus, what word are we going to use to describe
his love for us? The story is told that when that
song first came out, you know, it of course became very popular.
And this was in the latter 1800s. And there was a Bible conference
of some kind going on. And that song had been introduced
at that conference. And everybody was singing it.
And everybody just thought it was the most wonderful thing. And they
were singing it over and over and over again. And in the meeting, I don't know what was the purpose
of this smaller gathering, but maybe it was just a gathering
of people who would come early and pray for the upcoming service,
I don't know, but they were asking about what songs to sing, and
someone put up their hands and said, let's sing that Oh, How
I Love Jesus again, and an old man. And I tell you, don't despise
age. It's always good to see what
old believers have to say. People that have spent some years
walking as believers in this world. Old man raised his hand
and he said, you know, I think I've heard enough about
our love for Christ. He said, I would rather sing
about his love for us. I am so glad that Jesus loves
me. Brethren, when it comes time,
and you think it's near the time you're going to depart this world,
your heart will not find comfort in your professed love for God. It will come to you in His, the
comfort will come to you in His love for you revealed to you. Poor old Peter, he had denied
the Lord three times. Have you ever betrayed the love
of a friend? That's tough on your conscience,
isn't it? It'll break your heart when you
realize what you've done. And you'll probably think that
there's no way to fix that betrayal. And I'm sure that's how Peter
felt, but he couldn't stay away from Christ anyway. And finally,
the Lord took Peter aside from the other disciples, and he said, Peter, you ever
gonna deny me again? Didn't ask him that. I know what you did, Peter. I'm
gonna let it slide this time. Peter, do you understand the
hypostatic union? You say, I don't even know what
that is. Good. It's a name they give to try
to understand that Christ is both God and man. And I don't
think even after they've used that fancy word, they understand
what it means. He said, Peter, do you love me? Yes. Feed my sheep. They walk a little
farther. Do you love me? And you can imagine
Peter's thinking, we got a little dementia going on here. We just
talked about this. That's not recording scripture,
but you kind of got to wonder, because the Lord had just asked
me that. Peter says, yes. Feed my lambs. They walk a little
farther. And the third time, the Lord
Jesus answers him, or asks him, Peter, do you love me? And that third time, that killed
Peter. Because he understood why the
Lord asked it three times. Peter had denied him three times. So three times the Lord says,
Peter, do you love me? And Peter, grieved that the Lord
had asked him three times, says, Lord, you know all things, and you
know that I love you. Do you love the Lord Jesus? Now,
you can tell me you do, and it not be so. You can even think
you do, and it not be so. But if the Lord in the quiet
times of your heart asks you, do you love me? You know. And your answer is going to be
probably something like Peter's. First couple of times, he just
bolded, yes. But that third time made him
understand the context in which the question was being asked.
Peter, three times you denied me. When things got tough, you ran. When my enemies sought my life,
you became more afraid of them than your courage could handle. Do you really love me? Now why
was the Lord asking Peter this? Was he asking Peter this because
he didn't know? That is, that the Lord Jesus
didn't know if Peter loved him? No, Peter's answer proves it. Lord, you know all things and
you know that I love you. Why did he ask him like that?
The one that didn't know was Peter. The stricken conscience in his
heart, was saying, it must be I don't love the Lord. Look what
I did. In his hour of greatest need,
I left him. Maybe he remembered Solomon's
words in Proverbs, a friend loves at all time, and a brother was
born for the hard times, and he's thinking to himself, oh,
in the Lord's difficult times, I ran. And Peter, from his stricken
conscience, gives the only answer that that afflicted love can
come up with. Lord, you know all things. And you know, despite what I
did, I love you. This is love. Not that we love
God. Don't trust your love. Because there'll be good reason
to bring your love for Christ into question. And if your love
for Him becomes the foundation of your hope, your confidence,
and your sense of assurance, then you will lose all of that
at some point. You'll say, I must not love the
Lord. Because somebody who loved him wouldn't act like this, wouldn't
feel this, wouldn't do that. We don't look at our love for
him to give us confidence that we are among his people. We look at his love for us. We
dwell on that. And though it's unbelievable
that he would love people like us, yet such as the power of
the gospel of God, such as the irresistible force of the spirit
of God, he convinces us of his love for us. And the only way we can express
that is we love him. And the conviction that God loves
us comes from the God-given ability
to behold the work of Christ on the cross and to be able to say, with Holy
Spirit-given confidence, that was done for me. We here believe a doctrine that
is humanly named, though I don't like the name, but we believe
in what is called limited atonement. But believing in limited atonement doesn't mean that you understand
what the gospel is on the level that the merest bathing Christ
understands it. Because the issue in faith is
not whether Christ died for this person or that person, it's,
did Christ die for me? Because that's where the, I mean,
that's where it lays. That's what our hope is in, isn't
it? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's Christ that died. The hope is not that I've believed
in Him, because quite frankly, yes, I do believe that I believe
in Him, and yet there's some times it seems I don't believe
anything at all. I've never found anything about
me that's consistent enough for me to have any confidence from
what I do, or what I feel, or what I've experienced. But this
I can have confidence in. what God has done. And when I
see what he's done in Christ, and I see from that the love
of God revealed, you know what that does? Quite frankly, for
as long as I'm in that state of mind that I can see that,
doubt is gone. And love flows freely. There is no fear of anything.
As John later says, perfect love casts out fear. I live in an almost constant
state of anxiety, the physical thing. Very little can be done to change
that except this. when I can see Him clearly as
the atoning sacrifice for my sins, nothing else matters anymore. Nothing about me is of any significance. Nothing I've done or felt or
professed. The only thing that matters is
Him. And when I'm able to see that,
then without shame, and then without a sense of pride in what
I'm singing, I can sing, oh, how I love Jesus. Because I'm not saying it to
impress everyone else with how much I love him. I'm saying it
because I love him. And because I love Him, I want
the world to know it. I want others to know what a
wonderful and glorious Savior He is. It's an old popular song
to give you an idea of how old I am. And all I remember is the
hook and the chorus. To know, know, know Him is to
love, love, love Him. And while they were talking about
that sentimental teenage smitten with love kind of thing, yet
that statement is exactly right. If you know the Lord Jesus Christ,
you will love Him. He can't help it. That's why we don't make a habit
of begging people to make a profession of faith, as though somehow they're
doing God a favor, doing Christ a favor. The religion I was raised
in kind of did that. I certainly want people to believe
the Lord Jesus Christ, but I'm not going to act like it, you
know, that Jesus Christ isn't lovable, as though he's some
kind of burden we must bear in order to get to heaven. Loving
him's the price we gotta pay to get into heaven. My friend,
if God ever gives you an understanding of who Jesus is and what he has
done, you won't be able to help yourself but to love him. Verse 16, and so we know and rely on the love God has
for us. This is one time, I mean, the
translation we use, I believe it's a good translation, but
just like all translations, it has its weak spots, but boy,
here, I think it got it exactly right, what John meant. Technically,
that word rely is the word believe, but the Greek word for believe
covers a lot more territory than normally our English word believe
covers. And this word rely, I think it
captures what John meant. It carries much the same meaning
as the word trust. And we rely on the love of God. We don't rely on our love for
Him. We rely on His love for us. When I feel the guilt of my sin,
and I've got to wrap this up. I came up here determined that
I was going bring the plane in for a landing at an appropriate
time, and I'm just about overshot the runway already, so let me
wrap this up. I love Christ, but I would never
try to cross a bridge made out of my love for Him. But the love
of God, now there's a bridge I can walk on. There's a bridge
I can stumble on, it still won't fall. That's a bridge that can
take me and all my hangups and all my insecurities and all my
failures and all my weaknesses, and it can bear it. We rely on the love that God
has for us. Isn't that amazing that we can
rely on it? It's amazing that people will
rely on the love that others have for us, and yet they're
humans. I definitely rely on the love
my wife has for me. I've seen it stand up, you know,
under a lot of abuses. But how much more the love of
God? Again, I want to remind us of
what I think is one of the best poems ever written about the
love of God. because it's able to give us
some kind of understanding of the wonder of it. If we with ink the ocean filled,
and were the sky of parchment made, were every stalk on earth
a quill, and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above
would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the
whole, though stretched from sky to sky. In any child of God, in those
times when he is enabled by the Spirit of God to fully enter
into the truth of what the sacrifice of Christ means, Any child of
God could say, just his love for me would drain the ocean
dry and fill up the sky. How much more the love of God
for that innumerable host, those 10,000 times 10,000 and
thousands and thousands who surround the throne, And say, worthy art thou, for
thou hast redeemed us by thy blood out of every kindred, tribe,
tongue, and nation, and made us a kingdom and priests unto
our God. And knowing his love for us,
how can we withhold our love from anybody?