Let us turn together to the second
letter of John. Second John, as we like to call
it. And we'll continue in this this
morning and the weeks to come. I want to remind us of what we're
looking at. And for those of you who are
familiar with John's first letter, we know that John's second letter
is more of a personal short postcard that he wrote recapitulating
the very truths that he established clearly in his first letter.
So we see that the command that we had from the beginning is
still there. We see the love of the assembly
is still there, of the children of God, of the elect of God is
still commanded. We see that there are those who
will come to frustrate this unity in truth and in deed. in word,
and in action, and so on and so forth. And so we continue
to read contextually with the heart of John in his apostolic,
and as we saw last week, his pastoral heart, that his desire
was to see these Christians, this church, and these churches,
he wanted to see them live in a fulfilled way according to
the gospel of grace, free and sovereign. And so as we come
and unpack this, it's necessary that we spend several weeks on
the first three verses, on the introduction, on the greeting,
on the salutation. And we're going to do the same
as we close the letter. But it's sort of out of sorts
in the way we like to do things. We would rather just get to the
meat and potatoes, tell me what to do, tell me what button to
push, tell me what things to check off my list, and that's
not the way the Bible's written. The Bible's not written as a
way for us to push the right buttons and check the right box.
It's not written like that at all, even though there is some
clear instruction that we could put into practice without the
understanding of why and through what means, we're just religionists. We're just moralists. And there's
no good news in that, beloved. I promise you, there is no good
news in your life if you are working and living according
to the law of God. There's no good news if you wake
up every day and keep the Ten Commandments. I can promise you
that. There is only good news in the resurrected Jesus Christ.
There is only good news in the gospel of grace that is free
and sovereign. There is only good news knowing
that Jesus himself has satisfied the wrath of God for his people.
And so you can do anything you want to do and you can claim
it as God's working in you, but if you aren't by faith, living
by faith in the person of Jesus Christ and who he is and what
he accomplished for his people, you are still dead in your sins.
You see, this is the conversation, just like I had that we need
to have with most people. We need to have this conversation
with most people. It is called evangelism. It is called to share
the good news in contrast to the bad news of cultural Christianity. And today, like many days, where,
you know, and seasons pass, many of us would probably, I mean,
if I had a show of hands, how many of you worked over six weeks
before for Easter Sunday, in preparation for Easter Sunday?
You ever worked over six weeks in, or how about four weeks?
Okay, you know what I'm talking about, right? You got nine rehearsals
this week, 12 rehearsals last week. You got three or four composers
in several different bands. You've got the cantata singers
and the backup singers and the dancers. Oh, don't forget the
little children. Gotta get the costumes ready and the goats.
You know, there's always gotta be a goat or two or a lamb or
two or something like that makes it feel real. And we think that making much
of an historical season or a festival is actually overly honoring to
the Lord. It feels that way, doesn't it?
It feels that way. See, I could have Sister Julie
or Michaela or somebody playing while I preach and it would feel
different. When I get excited, they get excited. You know, I
calm down, I get to whispering, they tinker on the high keys.
It'll just take you right there, it'll take you right there like
the music in the elevator. You don't even know you've been in
that thing for a while if the music's pleasant. But if it's not, before
the door shuts you're ready to claw your ears off. We have these
experiences when it comes to the Lord's resurrection that
we have culturally identified a day or so or a season or so,
Holy Week and what have you, And nothing wrong with people
who want to do that, nothing wrong with these things. It's
not inherently sinful or wicked or whatever, but I'm saying that
a lot of times we feel like we haven't worshiped until we've
experienced all this stuff. Rather than 70, 80 hours times
100, 800 man hours rehearsing for a show, why not 800 man hours
reading the Bible? What that would do exponentially
for the kingdom of Christ. For each individual who was,
instead of coming to five practices, spend five nights together hearing
the word of God just read aloud. 90 minutes hearing John's gospel. What would happen there would
be completely divine. It would be the most supernatural
experience that most congregations would ever enjoy. But beloved, we have that freedom.
We have that freedom to do it every day. We have that freedom
to be in the word of God. But unfortunately, because of
our flesh and because of our culture and because of the things
that are so readily available for us, whether we are intending
to put time and effort into them or whether or not they just fall
on our faces and fall on our shoulders or trip us up or wash
us away with the floods, there is always something else that
takes precedence over our time in the scripture and it will
always be that way. So we have to create time and
that's why the gathering with the Saints is so important because
you get that exhortation if not admonishment you get you get
that expression you understand the Bible we're coming here to
to learn a little bit and to hear a little bit and to be taught
doctrine and theology and application And that application then is
rested upon our shoulders, not as a burden of death, but as
a light, easy, caring, awesome gift. See, the burden of Christ
is light. His load is easy. He has carried
the heavy weight stuff. He has carried the burden of
wrath upon His shoulders. He has carried redemption in
His soul. He has done the work. It is finished.
We're just walking around in the blessings of it all. We're
walking around in the blessings of it all. Sometimes I feel like
that we, as human beings, we get to a couple of years of hard
work, we get in really good shape, our cholesterol is perfect, our
physique is perfect, our mind is perfect, and we just go put
ourselves in a coffin and Velcro the inside. Well, I'm in shape.
I wanted to die healthy. We just sit there and wait to
rot. That's where we are a lot of times in the Christian faith.
We've already been given eternal life. We've already been granted
this great salvation. We've already been, by the mercy
and the grace of God, been brought into the peace of Christ. We
have every spiritual blessing which is ours in Christ Jesus.
There is nothing that we're waiting on God to do for us. There is
nothing that could condemn us before the Father. There is not
one sin that we are presently doing, did yesterday or will
do before the end of the day, that can separate us from the
love of God in Jesus Christ. And yet we live sometimes as
though that stuff is not actually ours. And then we get to the
letters, right? And so we get all this blessing
and then some other people come into the relationship of the
church and they start to revise the person of Jesus. Well, that's
not exactly what he's like. That's not exactly what he did.
Did God surely say, I want to make that parallel? Who said
that to start with? Satan said that in the garden.
So when we have these religionists, they come in and they say, well,
I'm not so sure that that's exactly what the Bible says. Because
if you take this here, that here, put a little pinch of salt, a
little bit of pepper, and you throw it up in the air and catch
it, put it back in the bowl, it might taste a little different.
Well, we don't read the Bible like that. We don't read the
Bible like that. And the letters of John, all
three of them have been contested historically. There are a lot
of people that have put on boxing gloves and pounded one another
in the context of John's epistles. And every season there's always
a higher critic or two, or an archaeologist or three, or a
historian or six that will always come back to the table trying
to disprove not only John's writing but that James wrote or that
Paul wrote Hebrews. And there's always somebody willing
to lead the charge and try to take the sheep right off the
cliff of ridiculousness out of the place of sublime. How sweet and full of all is
the place with Christ within the doors. Beloved, you wanna
be with Christ within the doors. Of course, salvifically, that
is the mercy of God that has granted that to you, and you
have not chosen to enter in. You have been pulled in by his
love. And we wanna remain in that mindset. We wanna have the mind of Christ.
I've got that question tonight. What is the mind of Christ and
how do we live it? That's gonna be tonight. We have the mind of Christ, and
we want to be within the doors, then we need to be within the
Word. We need to be within the page of the Word, not word studies,
but literally reading the letters as God, the Holy Spirit, has
written them through the hearts, the hands, the minds, and the
tongues of mere men who He called and supernaturally gave them
absolute divine knowledge and inerrancy in the penmanship that
they produced. Well, maybe not the penmanship,
but the writing. Who knows if John wrote neatly or not? He
wasn't a high grammatician, I can tell you that. Paul was, Luke
was, John wasn't. It's easy, easy peasy. So we
get to this text and we see what it says. And let's read the first
three verses again together today. The elder, to the elect lady
and her children, whom I love in truth. And it's not I only,
but also all who know the truth because of the truth that abides
in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace will
be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's
Son in truth and love. And we'll stop there. And we've
got one more week, probably one more week in these three verses.
Last week we talked about the author and the audience of this.
Today I want to pick up on the occasion, which I've already
alluded to already. Why did John write this letter
when he already had 1 John? Because just like Paul wrote
to the Corinthians and to the Romans, John had written to specific
churches because he heard some of them doing well, some of them
also being bothered by false teachers. And this text takes
an understanding of John's first letter. This text takes an understanding
of John. You can't just open up the Bible
for the first time and read 2 John and get a whole lot out of it,
because there's a lot of assumption on John's part. Like if Robin
sends me a text, say, hey, pick up milk. I know I'm not driving
to Orlando to do that, to a 7-Eleven on West Main Street or something.
I know that I'm going to the grocery store that we always
frequent, and I know what kind of milk I'm going to get. I'm
not going to get almond milk or, you know, goat milk or, you
know, peanut milk or anything. I'm getting that really thick,
good, juicy, fat-filled, horizon, vitamin D-enriched paint. That's what I'm getting. Because
you add anything else to coffee and you just have You know, like
when you clean out a brush for painting. You know, I want the
paint, not the after wash. All right, so, you know, there's
a context there. There's an assumption, there's
an understanding. I don't have to, she doesn't have to go through
and tell me all the details. She did in the beginning, you
know. Oh, you just want milk? Here's milk. But once you know,
you don't have to go through all of that. Instruction can
be given with an understanding that your audience has an understanding. So when John writes this letter,
he's not having to explain a whole lot because they already had
his first letter. But he's reminding them of these things because
they were being bothered, they were being frustrated by the
same groups of people. The same groups of people who
came into the church and said, okay, we are your brothers and
sisters, and now we're, then after a season, they begin to
change the conditions based on which the Bible taught according
to the Redemption according to the gospel they begin to add
conditions. They begin to change the very
nature of Jesus himself You understand about Gnosticism you understand
what the Gnostics their primary there were three or four things
that were always true of the Gnostic position and it comes
the whole word Like gnosis comes from the idea of knowledge. Okay,
that's the root of the word to begin with so the Gnostics had
an understanding of certain things at a higher level than most people
So they came to infer and conclude and implicate things to a different
degree. And everybody else goes, I just
don't see, I don't see what John's saying. Oh, no, no, no, you gotta,
see, God's given us this understanding. I know in my heart. If you know
something in your heart, you might as well go ahead and take
a pill for indigestion. Because that's about as good
as your heart is in the knowledge of Christ. Well, I feel good
about it, says everybody who dies doing something stupid.
Now, I'm confident in this. Like the old joke back in the
day with Southern boys, hey, watch this, is always the first
three words before somebody's funeral arrangements are done.
This is why we have to stand on what is unchangeable and immovable,
and that is the text in the context and the intention of the original
writers who are God's apostles and there are no more after John
died. There are no more apostles in that office. There may be
people who use that title, but they're not apostles. And we
hold fast to what the teaching of the scripture gives us. And
in that simple way, in that simple way, we cut away all the fat
of our genius, logical inferences. And we rest in the sufficiency
of the simple gospel, of the simple grace of God, and the
simple love of God through Jesus Christ who simply gave himself
for his people that they might be his righteousness. All the
other deep things of God are centered on those truths, plus
a few more. So here John writes this letter
because these Gnostics had come and said, hey, we know some things.
This is what he wrote 1 John about. We know some things that
you don't know. We've experienced some things
that you haven't experienced. We've concluded and studied ourselves
into some understanding of some implications that you aren't
carrying. So there was always a higher
knowledge. There was always a secondary condition or extra conditions.
There was always a deeper understanding that nobody else had. Now listen,
some people are going, yeah, that's how I feel sometimes.
I'm not talking about understanding the truth. just because it may
be difficult in its vocabulary or new to you or you haven't
thought about it, it's not wrong to grow in our knowledge of grace.
It's not wrong to understand, as I'm gonna talk about today,
the whole idea of what grace entails. Because the Bible, in
its holistic work, working together, teaches us about God's mercy,
teaches us about justification, uses the very term propitiation. So we do well to understand what
the Bible's meaning by that. But what do we typically do?
We typically go, oh, let's put my brown dictionary. P, P, P, P, puppy, puppy, propitiation. I know that was reverse alphabetical
order. That's okay. Oh, this is what it means. Oh,
that's good. I'm satisfied. Now, what does it mean in the context?
There's always a teaching. The apostles never defined terms. They never said, and this is
what this means. They weren't writing academics. They were
writing letters to people who needed to be reassured, who needed
to be able to discern between what they were hearing over here
and what the scriptures teach them. That which is good and loving
and pleasing and honorable, that which is wicked and worldly and
fleshless. Oh, we can understand the sinful things of the world
versus the righteous things and the moral things of the world.
But nine times out of ten, that's not what the apostles were talking
about. The apostles were talking about how you can discern that,
spiritually speaking, that these spiritual things are darkness
and these spiritual things are light. So the Gnostics loved to have
extra knowledge. They had extra knowledge to such a degree that
they realized then that the problem with so many people who were
so ignorant of all the implications of what the gospel entailed is
that because they were too focused on the world, they had their
feet planted firmly on the soil. They were still wearing clothes
and buying food, and what they thought then, and their wisdom,
and the great wisdom is that everything that had tangible
reality, everything that was of matter, everything that was
created was sinful. So there we go, we got it now.
So in turn, Paul's body is sinful, Paul's pen is sinful, Paul's
papyrus is sinful, Paul's writing is sinful. That's why Paul says
many times, anybody who says they don't have to listen to
my writing, treat them as an unbeliever. Don't treat them like a brother.
Put them out that they may be shamed. And until that shame puts them
in a place of wrecking their self-reliance and come back and
ask to be a part of the fellowship again, let them be ashamed. You
don't debate a fool in his own folly who says that they don't
hold to the sufficiency of the context of the written word of
the apostles. That's like cutting the power
line and swearing we're gonna have lights today. Well, I'm
not going to tolerate it. We will have lights. And Georgia
Power's like, OK, go ahead. You can say what you want to
say. It doesn't make it right. So these Gnostics were like,
hey, it's the immaterial world. Let's get to this place. And
you see the mysticism that came from that. See, it's not a dead
religion. It's very much alive. And then there was a third thing,
there were many things, but the third thing that was always true,
especially of John's audience, these Gnostics, they would actually
adhere to the fact that because of that, because they had come
to such great knowledge, that they weren't sinful in their
understanding of anything. And so that they were right,
because God had given them a divine eye to understand and apprehend
some of these things, that if you had not caught that yet,
then you indeed were still in your sins. They even claimed
sinlessness, because they had transcended the flesh itself. That's what John says. Anyone
says he has no sin, he's a liar. And you think, well, who does
it? There's a lot of people that do that. There's a lot of fundamental
congregations that believe that, believe they have transcended
sin through piety and through discipline. It's the same old
stuff. So John, the elder, writes to
the church, the elect lady, and her members, the children. And
I know that's debated, but it's not debated contextually. It's
not debated contextually. John uses plural nouns. He uses
the idea, he says, but he says there, look right here, and I'll
get to this when I get to it. In verse four, I rejoice greatly
to find that some of your children walk in the truth just as we
were commanded by the Father. Listen, if I'm writing a letter
to you and your kids, there's no commandment by the Father
for you to collectively as an assembly in the home love one
another as commanded. This is only given by the apostles
in the context of the assembly of the saints, okay? So we know
the crypticness in which John wrote this letter, and the language
of it is clearly, clearly writing to the church. Otherwise, we
don't need it. We also know it's written to
the church because false teachers were coming into the church,
and it's dealing with false teachers who are troubling the church. He recapitulates the idea of
Antichrist. He recapitulates the idea of
the commandment that you've had from the beginning three different
times. He's talking in plural pronouns. Moreover, he switches
from personal pronouns referring to himself to plural pronouns
referring to the large assembly. And it's indicative of Peter's
writing, and James' writing, and Paul's writing, where they
use the idea of the church being a lady, where they call them
the elect, where they call all the saints the children of God,
the children of the elect, and things of that nature. So, beloved,
if we gotta dig through 1,700 years of historical writings
and grammatical instruction and syntactical expression to figure
out what the Bible's trying to say in 2 John, we should just
tear it out. It is a continuation of his first
letter, plain and simple. Plain and simple. And it's important
to understand that. Because the very thing that we're
gonna talk about today, verse three, we're gonna talk about
all three verses again, but verse three, when we emphasize what
John is emphasizing, we will find ourselves in a mess if we
don't get this right. If we don't get this right. So let's hear it. The Elder,
I, the Elder, to the elect lady and her children, whom I love
in truth, and not only I, but also all
who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and
will be with us forever. Now let's unpack this again for
the sake of reminder quickly and emphasize the idea of truth
here. What is truth? When I ask the believer what
is truth, there should be the Sunday school answer, Jesus. All right? That works. You know,
you've heard the jokes, right? They teach the kids everything,
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Jesus is always the answer. And then,
you know, what time is it? Jesus? I mean, you know the jokes.
But when you hear truth or you have the definite article in
front of the truth, you need to understand that Christ is
the centerpiece of that exposition. That what the writers are showing
is Jesus. Not the stuff about Jesus, not
the teachings about Jesus. Those are true and those are
the truth concerning the testimony of God concerning his son. We're
not talking about precepts. We're not talking about propositions.
We're talking about a person. I am the truth. The spirit of truth. God who is true. Jesus is the
truth. So we're talking about the gospel,
we're talking about the person who is good news for us, beloved.
Not the stuff about him, but him himself. As we learn him,
of course, we all are given languages. We learn through sentences, we
learn through statements. We're not just sitting there
one day and go, and we see something and we can't define it, or there's
some Jesus in my head now. I don't know anything about him,
but he's there, I see him. I mean, that's mysticism. A lot
of people live like that. Well, I felt Jesus today, I felt
the Lord, no, that was pizza. You know? It's not the Lord,
it's not the spirit, it's heartburn. Here's another pill. I'm telling
you, there's been a lot of pills out today, aren't there? Just for
heartburn. Jesus is truth. So John would
say, as Paul would say, I love you in Christ. What does he say
to the Thessalonians? With all the affection of Christ. He tells the Philippians, have
this mind among you. What is the mind? I don't want
to get into all that today, but it's been on my head all morning. the reality
of God, who is Jesus Christ, God the Son, eternally God the
Son, who became and took on human flesh. and did not come to this
earth to exercise His power as the Supreme One, God, that's
what it means, the High One, but yet He came to exercise His
power in humility and brokenness and death, to be a slave, obedient
to the will of the Father, as a criminal, innocent of all charges,
in order to satisfy the wrath of God in righteous justice,
holy justice, perfect justice for the sake of God's elect forever. So when we are in the truth,
we are in Christ, and we love because He loved us first. See,
John has already explained that, right? He loved us first, not
because we first loved Him, but He loved us first. What is the
love of God? That He gave His Son to satisfy
His wrath for us, thus justifying us through the blood of His Son.
And faith rests in Christ. Faith rests in the truths of
Christ. Resting in the truths of Christ
is to rest in Christ so that we love one another as one body
because we are in Christ. Nobody hates their own body. There's exceptions. Healthy people. So not just I, But all who know
Christ, we love each other. And that's how we can tolerate
each other. If Christ, the God of glory, could tolerate the
wickedness of his fallen guilty elect sheep to the point that
he would lay his life down willfully and joyfully, despising the shame,
looking to the glory that laid ahead, then we can love one another. At a cost. Because of Christ. We love each other because we're
in Christ. What else do we use to tell if we love one another?
Circumstances? Nope. Other knowledge? Nope. Other conditions? Absolutely not. Christ. Period. Who do you say that I
am? Who is Christ? Who is your Christ? If it agrees with the testimony
of God, then it agrees with me. And if my testimony of Christ
agrees with the testimony of God, then it agrees with you.
And if we are in Christ and we are one body and we are to love
one another because of Christ. And now, verse two, He makes it very clear that he's
talking about the person of Jesus Christ, not a set of propositions,
not doctrine, but Jesus himself. Because how is it that I love
all of you because of in Jesus? And how is it that everybody
else who is in Jesus loves you as well? All the churches love
you, little church, elect lady. You see how that's plural? She's
not talking to a person about her kids. Literary meaning is not literal
meaning. The cause of the truth that abides
in us and will be with us forever. Now think about that for a second.
Because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. Well, we can go to John's gospel. We can see Jesus talking about
the vine and the branches in chapter 15. We can go to 1 John
and we can see John already talking about abiding in Christ. How
do we abide in Christ? We hold fast to the knowledge
of who he is And why did John emphasize Christ as righteousness? Because there were people there
who were wicked in their hearts, but said that they weren't. And
their wickedness was not that they were living a debauched
life, but that they were revising the conditions through which
Christ saved his people. The truth abides. He abides with
us. He will never forsake us. We
cannot be snatched away from him. He will never cast us out. You know these texts. The sheep
hear my voice. I will be with them. I've laid
down my life for them. The wrath of God is satisfied
on their behalf. They are mine. No one shall take
them from me. Because we abide in Christ. And
he will be with us forever. And in turn, the truth of the
doctrine of Christ will be with us forever until revisionists
come along and start to scatter everybody. Start to cause people
to doubt. Well, is this truly the gospel?
Or is there something else to the gospel? And then the word
of God and the elders and the brothers and the sisters together
go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey man, come on back over here. But those
who walk away were not ever in Christ at all. That's what John
says. But they were just heady in the
stuff concerning Christ. And we don't make that judgment
quickly, do we? Because we give time for people
to be restored. How long does it take? I don't
know. Depends on the Lord. Depends on the Lord. And so we're
just patient. We're always looking for our
brothers and sisters who have fled to be restored to us. And when they are, it's as if
nothing happened. Praise God, that son of mine
who was lost, who was dead, is now alive. You see that? Luke
15, the prodigal son. That's the nature of God's love
and the finished work of Jesus Christ, the son, that he brings
the sons of God to him. That's the whole point of the
idea of atonement in a simplistic way. What we love, I love, all love,
because we are in Christ and he will be with us forever. We
will be with him forever. This is a guarantee. Now why
does John establish this so hard? Because just like with his first
letter, he wants to remind this church, remember what I've written
to you, you are safe and secure in the anchor of your hope, who
is Jesus Christ the righteous. You cannot be lost. See, this
is not once saved, always saved. That phrase means so much to
many different circles, just like all certain words and phrases
have a wide semantic use and a wide semantic meaning depending
on the ears on who hears it. And this isn't even preservation
of the saints. which we believe that is true
according to the scripture, but what it means is that for whom
Christ died are secure in his death forever. Even the ones
who have yet to believe. Did you hear that? Now see that's,
what? Yes. All for whom Christ died
will know he died for them before they leave this earth. they will be made aware of the
finished work of redemption. Nothing, nothing. You yourself
cannot, no that's redundant and grammatically incorrect, but
you yourself cannot separate yourself from the love of God.
If Christ gave his life for you, no matter how upset you get and
how nasty you become, you cannot dance, pitch a fit, or run fast
out of his finished love. And isn't that what restores
us? We're slinging a fit in the floor of the grocery store because
we really want the popsicles. And the whole store, the management
is up there going, whose kid is this? This is your kid. And
everybody's ashamed. We broke two fly flaps on that
child's head, and he's still pitching a fit. And then at the
end of the fit, not only do we get a popsicle, we get a case
of popsicles. See, that's what grace looks
like, isn't it? We cannot escape. And even in that sense, in a
real silly way, we don't get in the car and take our kids
to the little place in the woods where we used to drop off stray
dogs and say, get out. We may want to, and be warned,
children, it could happen. We don't do that. They're still
our children. Even if they say, I'm leaving
the house, and got their bag, and they tear out, they'll be
back. And when the cops pick him up, what are they gonna say
to that child? Who's your daddy? And where do you live? I don't
live there anymore and he's not my daddy anymore. Okay, son,
whatever. We will have lights, all right? You're going right
back home. And if you leave house again,
we're gonna put you in juvie. I mean, you can't separate yourself
from even familial bonds legally. without due process. There is
no due process through which you can be devoid of life if
you belong to Christ. None. And then when we're reminded
of this, all that wailing and fit-pitching and everything else
and all the stuff that we're just like trying to get straight.
You know the roughest day as a believer is when we wake up
confident that we're not going to sin against the Lord. I've just had a really bad week
and a really bad edit, but today I'm gonna praise God. I need
to like turn on some praise music. You might even get some some
heavy metal praise music. You're really excited about the
foundation of Jesus. I mean, you know, you're ready
to go and you're just excited. You pray. You print out some
verses for the night before. Stick them on your rearview mirror
till you drive. You get on the freeway and all that crap goes
out the window. Thank God it's not our consistency
and our obedience and our humility and our hope and our worship
and our faithfulness and even the strength of our own faith
that saves us and keeps us. It is Christ who keeps us. He
will be with us forever and nothing will separate us from Him. And when we doubt, we have the
Word of God to show us that our doubt is misplaced. It's ridiculous. It's silly. And when we doubt some more,
we have the word of God that teaches us of the resurrection
of Christ that proved he was powerful enough to take his own
life, lay it down, and take it up again for the sake of his
people. And when he promises that which he did for himself,
we can trust it. There's your Easter sermon. Now verse three. That's where
we are, verse three. John does something a little
bit different than the other apostles in this text. He brings
something into this that's just different. He brings the word
mercy into this little grace and peace. And like Paul would
say sometimes, grace and peace to you, grace and peace be with
you, The grace of the Lord to you, the grace of the Lord be
with you. You know, it's an introduction and it's a close. It's an expression
in Paul's writing especially where he says the grace of God
is about to be given to you through the writing that I'm writing
and now that I've written it and you've read it, the grace
of God stay with you. It's more of a prayer than anything. That's not what John's saying.
John's not praying anything. He's not giving the possibility. He's
not talking about his letter. He is saying grace, mercy and
peace And this is pretty good grammatically right here, has
a verb there, will be with us. See what he just said? Because
of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. And then we start to think about,
well, this Jesus, this truth, what is it made of? What is this
supposed to be for me? What is this supposed to do for
me? How is this supposed to empower me? Then he says, grace, mercy,
and peace will be with us. See, a lot of times we can have
words that, you know, grace, the word charis, the word charity,
that's where the Greek word, you know, that's a real translation
of the Greek charity. God's charity. God's charity. God's kindness. God's loving
kindness. There's a lot of ways in which
we could talk about grace. And there's a lot of ways philosophically
we could talk about grace. And there is a wide semantic
range of its usages. But there is only one true biblical
sense in which grace needs to be understood. And we've gone
through this, actually the first Sunday of December of last year,
I preached on this very thing related to God's love. Contextually,
grace is indeed and only what? something given to those who
are undeserving. I want you to understand the difference.
Here John is differentiating. Now is grace mercy? Yes. But he wants to empower the church.
He wants to empower this congregation to remember how they will forever
be found in truth. How do I know that I'm gonna
remain in Christ because of grace, mercy, and peace. And it's not
just a one-off, it's not cliche. See, we say God bless, and Lord
bless, and Christ bless, and bless you, and oh, praise the
Lord, and God is good all the time, and all this kind of stuff
constantly. It's just vernacular, it's just like, you know, go
Braves. I mean, go Braves and God bless,
same thing in our world. We just use it just flippantly.
Matter of fact, we probably do it in the same thing if we're
at the Braves game. Go Braves, God bless. I mean, we just use
it. It's not something that's empowering. Everybody says it. And when I
drive off from a restaurant or a bank teller or whatever, I
always say, have a blessed day, and it's just exciting. You too,
God bless. It's just what we say. Grace and peace is now a phrase
that a lot of, you know, I don't even know how to put
an adjective to this, just say a lot of folks like to use right
now. Grace and peace. Grace and peace. Grace and peace,
good. Are you saying rice and peas,
what? What does that mean, grace? What
does it mean, grace? What does it mean to have peace?
What does it mean to have mercy? Where do we get this stuff? Well,
grace is this unmerited favor, is this unmerited, let me just
go ahead and explain it to you, love. Grace is tied equally to
God's love because grace, what's the opposite of grace? Justice. A lot of folks think, well, you
know, I have great grandparents and all, well, it goes around,
comes around, that's true, but not ultimately. Not ultimately. And sometimes
it does. People get away with all sorts
of stuff. People treat people like animals. Terrible. Sometimes they never get their
due. But they will. So what goes around comes around
in the righteous vengeance of God. But what goes around comes
around for the saints. Has already come around. And
it landed on Jesus. For the wages of sin is death.
And Christ took the wages of sin upon himself for his people.
The wages of sin has been paid for some. But the wages of sin is waiting
for others. And so grace, in the context in which the apostles
use it, is always related to the justice of God stayed and
put on Christ. So why would you do that, Father?
Why would you punish someone else for my guilt? Because he had to. He was bound to that. Why? Because
of his justice and righteousness. Somebody was like, wait a minute.
He forgave Adam and Eve, Jesus had to die. Because to forgive
sin is an act of grace, but wrath still must be satisfied. Justice
must be served. So Jesus had to die if God were
to forgive anybody. And he had forgiven his people,
so Jesus had to die. That's grace. It's also mercy. What's the difference in mercy
and grace? Grace is the effectual means
through which you have been saved. Paul says it very clearly in
Ephesians 2, by grace you have been saved. He says the same
thing in Romans as well, just in a little bit different order. Grace, you have been saved by
God's unmerited love and favor, His eternal foreknowledge for
you." That's love, by the way. We talked about that in our teaching
in Romans some years ago. The foreknowledge of God is His
intimate, eternal love for His people that effectuates grace
and its understanding, according to the scripture. So grace saves
you. I thought Jesus saves me. Yes,
but we understand. That's grace. Jesus died for
us. That's grace. He didn't have
to die for us. He wasn't guilty. He didn't have
to die because we deserved it. It isn't like justice said, oh,
well, man, Tippins is a pretty good guy. I better die for him.
No, it's grace. It's grace. It cannot be earned. It is not deserved and it is
given, listen to this, grace is only given to the guilty. Jesus when he talks to and about
the Pharisees in the Gospels and specifically in John's Gospel,
he talks about their blindness and they say, well we can see.
And he says, well then if you say you can see, your guilt remains.
If you know what you're talking about, if you understand righteousness,
if you understand righteousness and you're saying that you're
good and you're not guilty, then you are guilty. If you say you
can see, and that brings us to the next thing in this list,
doesn't it? If you say you can see, then your guilt remains.
I always think about this. at being a teenager, and I apply
it to my children as well, because I think every generation of children
have always said this, I know, I know, I know, right? You tell
them something, it's cold outside, I know, no, you didn't. You don't
know. It's just such ingrained in our
psychological makeup as rebellious beings that we can't stand learning
new information that we didn't come up with on our own sometimes. I know. Mercy implies this. This is what differentiates it
from grace. It is grace, but here's what makes mercy so emphatic
is that mercy implies that the person that receives the grace
unmerited can do nothing to obtain it. Not only do they not deserve
it, but they can do nothing to get it. That's why when we talk
about grace being free, we're talking about mercy. See, mercy
is given to those in need. Mercy is given to those who are
helpless. Mercy is given to those who are unable. Mercy is given
to those who are depraved, weak, and powerless. See how that changes our view
of what the gospel, why is it good news? It's not good news
because where there's a will, there's a way. It's not good
news because if you stand up and just become disciplined,
things will work out for you. It's not good news because of something
that you can be or something that you can desire or something
that you can accomplish. It's good news because of who
Christ is, of what he did and what he accomplished. Mercy. Jesus says it like this
in the Gospels, I didn't come for the well, I came for the
sick. For the well person doesn't go
to the hospital. Help me, I'm well. You're probably not, then
you're in the mental health state, right? The mental health division.
I'm well, I need a doctor. No, the sick. I didn't come to
find the ones who were found. I didn't come to find the ones
who aren't lost. I came to seek and find the lost. And Jesus says, I came to seek
and save them. So mercy implies that someone is in need of saving
and doesn't even know it. See where evangelism has turned?
Crooked. Well, people gotta know they
need a Savior before they can come to the Savior. That's not mercy. That's man-centered action. We've
got to convince them. Now, is it true that a regenerate
person knows they need a Savior? Absolutely! But they've been
born again and that's been revealed to them through that regeneration. There's not a magic set of words
or a magic set of thoughts that God's standing there going, oh,
he was one word off. Man, so close. We'll try again
next week. I'll send that evangelist down
there. Maybe he'll get the phrase right. No, it's not what we say or what
we think in our minds that calls us to be born again. It's what
God does in our minds that causes us to be born again. And then
our little old weak, helpless minds, by the mercy of Christ,
comes to the knowledge of the truth. and we rest in it. And
his name is Jesus. Mercy, mercy, mercy, unable. It is given to those who do not
deserve it and is given to those, salvation is given to those who
cannot obtain it and do not know that they need it. And then he
puts peace in there, peace. And beloved, I think peace is
tied ultimately to the shadow of the Sabbath rest, who is Jesus
Christ, who is our peace, who is our Pascha, who is our Passover. We can sit in our homes and know
that death is all around us, but the blood of Christ keeps
us free. We can play Uno at peace. I know that sounds funny to say
in a sense of worship and saving faith, but beloved, that's really
what it is. like several times we thought
the plane was going down in our trips across the country and
you know just without even say anything Robin and I would just
go just make it fun. I mean you know this is so fun. Rise and shine. I mean we're
just gonna whatever go down in a ball of fire we gonna pretend
like we're having a good time on the way home. This is Not
even close. Saving faith. We're in the house. Death is all around us. It's
almost like we're unaware. Because it doesn't pertain to
us. Death does not pertain to the body of Christ. Wrath has
nothing to do with us. Justice is satisfied. The law fulfilled. Men, sit down
and just be quiet and relax. And that's a weak way of expressing
what saving faith really does for us. But that's peace. We're not scared of wrath. We're not scared of justice.
We're not scared of death. We're not scared of our Father.
We're not scared that we might not be in Christ. We're not scared.
We have moments of doubt and frustration when things come
after us. but the gospel is given to us
that we may have peace. My peace I give to you and it's
not like the world knows peace, it's my peace. What does the
peace of Christ look like? Though he was God, he gave himself
to be a servant, obedient unto death. Though he, in his flesh,
did not want to experience God's wrath and the death of his flesh
and the persecution and the hatred, of the very things that He created
that deserve to give Him all glory and honor and praise and
wealth. And they spat on Him, pulled His beard out, stripped
Him of His clothes, beat Him, and shoved Him out in public
for shame. And He prays in the garden, Father, if it be Your
will, let this cup pass. but not my will but yours be
done." And he gets up and he walks out and he says, behold,
my hour has come. There's my accuser. That's peace. That's peace. Because I know
every one of us, had we been endowed with the powers of divine
wrath, justice, and creation, and we were wrongly accused,
we wouldn't get out the courtroom. There'd be a bunch of ashes in
there. Or pigs. We'd turn them into something
funny. The irony of turning the Sanhedrin into pigs. You see? Christ had peace because
the Father promised. We have peace because the Father
promised. We have peace because the Son
has accomplished the work. And that's the very next thing
that John says. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us. He's declaring that it is. He's
not praying that it would be. He's not offering it to them
as a way of suggestion. He's saying it will be with us.
You need to get this very solid in your hearts because when we
get to the next part of this tiny little sentence, if this
is not the glue that holds it all together, you're going to
misunderstand what John is writing. You're going to misunderstand.
He's writing to a people who have eternal life forever, and
he's instructing them in a way that they would understand good
fellowship, good wisdom, and the love of God in a way that
benefits the church and rejects false teachers. Because it's
hard when you hear love, and we love our enemies, but there
is a sense in which we don't need to offer love to our enemies
who are enemies of the cross. Okay? And that's the point that
he's going to get to, that we'll get to in two weeks. But right
now, we know that this grace and mercy and peace has found
us and it is from God the Father. I've already preached this, I
just didn't read it. And from Jesus Christ, and look at this
distinction, the Father's Son. And next week we'll unpack a
little bit about the divinity of Christ and the humanity of
Christ and the incarnation. I want to talk about this, but
look what he says, in truth and love. Now see, John, in the first,
excuse me, the first chapter of John, the first 18 verses
specifically, we see a lot of incredible Christological, Christ-centered
teaching. And we see the fact that Jesus
Christ is God who created the world. He was with God in the
beginning. He was God. And he became flesh
and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory. Glory
as the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. So this
is always the emphasis that Jesus gave. I am the eternal son of
God who has now come into the flesh to do the will and the
work of God, proclaiming the word of God myself. as light
and life to his people. And it's established the same
way John says it, and from Moses we receive the law, but from
Jesus we receive grace and truth. And we receive grace, what does
he say? Upon grace, upon grace, upon grace. And so now John,
because of his first letter already giving the clear instruction
of the love of God as the instrumental power and purpose behind the
cross and redemption. He says that the Father's Son
in truth and love. And we'll look at that a little
more clearly next week as we talk about why it's important
that Jesus Christ be the human God-man. And why he is the Father's Son
eternally. and why he is distinct from the
Father in person, yet he is God. He's important. And we'll show,
based on this very little short introduction, that when someone
comes with a different teaching relating to the person of Christ
in this way, it is indeed a gospel issue. It is indeed a gospel
issue. because Jesus Christ came in
the flesh to satisfy the wrath of God for his people in their
flesh and he rose and he was glorified in his flesh and he's
promised that same life in our flesh one day. So we have peace. We have peace by the body and
the blood of Jesus Christ. And it is merciful because we
could do nothing to save ourselves. And it is gracious because we
don't deserve it in the beginning. And it is sovereign because God
has provided all the necessary conditions of all of this just
and holy transaction. And he's provided everything
that needed to be done. And he's continuing to perpetuate
the call of his elect people to the knowledge of this true
and blessed redemption in the gospel. And that's why we gather
together today and every time we can. And it's why we love
each other, even through hard times and through frustrating
times and through sickness and through health and all these
other things, because God has established us for his own glory
and his own love, through his own grace, through his own son,
Jesus. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the
truth of the gospel. Lord, I pray that the things
that I've said today, Lord, have been most honoring to you. Lord, that they have been purposeful
to teach us and to encourage us and to grow us, that we would
not be weary or faint, faint hearted. Father, that we would
not fear and that we would truly begin to find a divine intimacy
amongst ourselves. And Lord, as we take of the elements
of your table to be reminded of the body and the blood of
your son, Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to remember just
what a gracious, merciful and loving. Peaceful reality that
we have. That it has all come from you
and you alone sovereignly. And it has come to us free. There
is nothing we must do. And Father, even the faith that
rests in the work that you have already done is a gift. The fact
that we can see and hope in Christ is something of divine work.
And so to the praise of your glorious grace, we love you and
we worship you in Christ's name. Amen.