Good morning everyone. Let's
turn together to 1 John chapter 4 and of course it continues
over into chapter 5 this morning. Those chapter headings mean nothing
according to the organization of the text. Let's begin reading in chapter
4 verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another
for love is from God and whoever loves has been born of God and
knows God. Anyone who does not love does
not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was
made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world
so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that
we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us this
way, we ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If
we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected
in us. By this we know that we abide
in Him and He abides in us because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testified
that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus
is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we
have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God
abides in him. By this, love is perfected with
us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because
as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love,
but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment,
and whoever fears has not been completed in love. We love because
He first loved us. Now if anyone says, I love God
and hates His brother, he, that man, is a liar. For he who does
not love his brother whom he can't see, excuse me, He who
does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom
he has not seen. And this commandment we have
from him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. You see, everyone that believes
that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone
who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this
we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey
His commandments. For this is the love of God,
that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not
burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes
the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world,
our faith. Who is it that overcomes the
world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Okay, there's where we'll stop
today. Remember, as we started our journey
in this letter, there's a lot of undoing, a lot of new teaching,
a lot of unlearning that needed to take place. That when we have
absorbed this letter in our history, we have made equal the idea of
abiding and regeneration or obedience and eternal life and so on and
so forth to a place where we are taught culturally to use
this letter as a test of eternal life. Rather as a test of abiding
and doing that which God has called us to do. As a test of
love. It is a test of love and love
by definition is always about what we do. Not about how we
feel. To love someone is how we treat
them. To love someone is how we care
for them. To love for someone is how we
speak to them. How we give to the needs that
they have. How we're able to be compassionate though we might
not have the time. The actions that we do are the
love that we have. The same is true for God. God
does not sit in the chasm of eternity in the midst of all
things. with this warmness and overflowing
flutteriness in his heart, feeling fondly, writing poems in his
mind about how much he loves. God is love. And he manifests that love in
the giving of his son. And the son was given in the
flesh that he might be the representative of God's adopted, elect children. so that in their place God's
love would be manifest in the destruction of Jesus Christ under
the law of righteousness. That is the love of God. God
loved the world in this way, that He crushed, that He destroyed,
that He killed His only Son, so that those believing in Him
will have eternal life. And we know the truth. We know Him who is the truth.
We know the truth of the Word of God who is Jesus Christ. And
that includes the understanding that the gospel is not this arbitrary
thing or idea. The gospel is God who is love,
who has saved you. When Christ said it is finished,
your salvation was effectually yours. I want you to hear that again.
It is finished. The payment has been made. And faith that God grants by
the Spirit believes and rests and clings to the finished work
of Jesus. Faith is not, I believe that's
true, check, yep, check, yep, any person with a brain can say
they believe the functional propositions of the Bible. There is not this
mysterious block in unconverted people whereby they can't say,
yeah, I believe that. Anybody can say they believe
the gospel. But believing the facts of Christ
is not trusting in the work of Christ. I'll say that again.
Believing the facts of Christ is not trusting in the work of
Christ. Faith is a resolve that is gifted
to us against all environmental imposition, against all fleshly
war. By which we are able to rest
in the smallest sense, even in the most minuscule way, that
Christ's death is my life. That God's purposes for salvation
are finished. I just don't think I'm saved,
some people say. That's okay. Thank God your salvation
is not dependent upon what you think. Thank God our salvation
is not dependent upon what we feel. And thank God our salvation
is not dependent upon what we do. And thank God our salvation
is not dependent upon how strong our faith is. Our salvation is dependent upon
what God did to secure it. Our salvation is dependent upon
what God did to adopt us, what God did to purchase us. Let me
tell you something, beloved. I've never seen this happen,
but I'm sure it has. Imagine going to the grocery store and
spending 300 bucks on your weekly groceries, and when you get to
your house, there's somebody standing there with a bat, and
they rob you of your groceries. Now, I've never seen that in
a courtroom. Burglary of bread, how do you
plead? I mean, you know, I've never seen that. I've never seen
the burglary of bread. I'm sure it's happened. Somebody going, why is he going
to go to prison? Because he stole bread. Because I paid for it. It's mine. It doesn't belong to the burglar. He can get his own bread. Now
why did that stupid little thing come out of your mouth, Tippins,
some of you might ask? Because that's how we look at
the Lord's work in the gospel sometimes. He bought us all But then we rob the work of Christ
with our own conscience. We burglar the confidence that
we have before the Father by our own feelings. We stand there
with the bat of uncertainty, with the bat of internal reflection,
with the bat of introspection. We start to inspect everything
that we are, and we go, you know what, that's probably not true.
And beloved, do you know what? Some of us who cannot rest in
the gospel, We'll struggle. We'll rest today,
won't rest tomorrow. And the reason that we do that
is because we're not holding to the promises that God has
promised. We believe the promise of eternal
life, but we don't believe the small little purposes that God
has established to keep us in our confidence. The Bible in
and of itself is sufficient for everything that you will ever
need in your knowledge of everything that you will ever need to know
about the Lord. Period. Stop wasting your precious
life reading so much junk. Delete YouTube from your mind. Don't Google another scripture
reference in your entire life. It is a waste of time and God
will not, better yet, God cannot use that type of garbage to grow
you in your confidence. Got questions? Open the Bible.
Don't go to that stupid website. It's not the way we live. But
we want it all, don't we? We're all the same way. Why do
you think study Bibles are so popular? Why do you think theological
Bibles are so popular? Why do you think leadership Bibles
are so popular? I saw one yesterday in a magazine. I almost ordered
it. The archeological study Bible. Ooh, that's nice. Can you imagine
how my preaching would be in Hebrews? Because I try to ignore
that stuff, y'all. I try to ignore that stuff. But
I'm telling you right now, I got in there and I started seeing
all these drawings. If I got it and I started seeing
all these drawings about the temple and the tabernacle and
the holy of holies and all this interesting stuff and how the
dirt was and what the towels looked like, man, I would talk
for 30 minutes about that stuff because it's so exciting. Oh,
yeah, we're here to preach the Bible. I'm sorry, guys. And that's
what we do. That's what our humanity does.
So until you are mature enough and disciplined enough to dissect
these topics and not try to merge them into your spiritual maturity,
then just stay away from them. Stay away from these sources.
Read the Bible because in reading the word of God, just read it,
God reveals himself to you. God answers your questions. God
explains himself. God settles our hearts. God gives
us a hope. God establishes his people. And
then God teaches us that which we should be doing today and
tomorrow and the next day. That's the promises of God. So even in the sense of, I just
don't, my faith is weak. My faith is broken. My faith
is troubled. Okay. Why are we going to talk
and do everything except that which God has promised to provide
that confidence for us? And that is to study the word
of God and to be about the things that the word of God commands
us. And that's where John is. That's what John is doing. John
is prohibiting the believers from guarding their confidence
by their lifestyle. Any human being can live morally. Any human being can live morally.
All people sans a psychological condition, there are those, that
prohibits them from doing it. Any human being can make moral
choices and live pleasantly in the land. It's why you hear well-meaning
missionaries often and evangelists often beating pulpits up and
sweat spitting out of their face and all this, you know, and they're
like, you know, the cults are more godly than the Christians.
No, they're not. They may be more moral, but they're
not more godly. They're antichrist in their morality.
And in the same way the cults are antichrist in their morality
because they don't believe in the son whom God has sent and
his effectual work for his people, Their good morality is just a
charge against them in the day of judgment. But believe it or not, God has
his elect in cults too. It's like God has his reprobate
in some sovereign grace churches. And we'll see that win in the
end. When the wheat and the chaff, when the wind blows and the chaff
is gone and burned up, we will see it and we will be at peace.
When the goats and the sheep are divided, we will see it and
we will be at peace. And our duty, and I'm going to
say this again, our duty as God's beloved children is to hear his
word and to walk in his word and to live together in his word. And when we try to find confidence
outside of that, we are actually adding to the gospel. Like Peter
added to the gospel. And Paul had to spank him. He
added to the gospel. He rejected grace. Because in
the face of his Jewish brothers, he's like, I'm gonna do like them and sit
with them and eat with them and do like this. And what did he
do as an apostle? He taught the Gentiles the law
as a means for confidence. And Paul got him. You're an apostle
of Christ. Stop. And Peter stopped. That's what we do. It's what
humanity does. It's what our human Flesh does,
we are even in our best of days of trusting and resting in the
sufficiency of the gospel of free and sovereign grace, we
are always at war. And believe it or not, the persecution
that often arises in the body of Christ is not necessarily
something external, it's usually right up in here. The renewing of the mind is the
greatest tool of warfare. And Paul says in Ephesians chapter
6 that it is always found, that success is always found in the
resting, in the standing still. Okay, I'm a fighter. I've been
fighting my entire life. Several different styles of martial
arts and combat sports and different things. I've just loved to fight.
I love not, like, you know, beat people up, but I enjoy the sport
of it all. And there's not anything that I've ever learned in several
decades. Cash, you've done some stuff.
I mean, none of the stuff that we learn teaches us to stand
still and with our hands down and just let people beat us.
There is no defense in that. And as much as people want to
think they can hum up a force field, when the fist hits the
face, the head hits the floor. But yet that's exactly what God
has prescribed for us as his children to do. Stand still. But there's darts flying at my
face. Stand still. Well, there's fiery darts flying
at my face. Stand still. Stand still. Sword of faith, the word of God,
or the sword of the spirit, the word of faith, the power of faith,
the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the blessed plate
of righteousness, gospel preparation. All these things, it's all in
the discipline of the mind. And then when we live together
as the body, we keep each other, I don't even like to use the
word accountable, but that's the correct term. We keep each
other encouraged. in the truth, which is accountability. You realize that, don't you?
We keep each other encouraged in the truth when we help God
and direct and teach each other and we show each other the truth
of the gospel and the antithesis sometimes when it lies waiting
so cleverly at our feet to strike us like a serpent. We are able
to warn and to guide and to help, but it is encouraging. We aren't
the ones guarding anyone. God is. He explains that, Peter
explains that really eloquently in his first epistle. That we
have an inheritance that is imperishable, unfading, undefiled, who are
being guarded by faith for the day of Christ. And how's that happening? Where
is it? Where's your heavenly angels? At the command of God. We are guarded by God's power
in heaven. But that's not here. Yes it is. Yes it is. You think heaven is
a separate place where God is but He's not here? Does God not
own all things? Is all creation not in His hand
and is He not in heaven? I mean, think of it this way
in the picture, especially you kids. God is above all things
and exists by himself and is pleased with his self-love sufficiently. And everything that he's created
in the infinite universe holds in his hands. So where is there a place where
God is not? Nowhere. And yet the Bible promises us
that through the assembly and the word of God together, we
will be encouraged in the faith. And sometimes that encouragement
feels hard. Sometimes that encouragement
is a sting of rebuke. Sometimes that encouragement
is a little bit of conviction of the soul and the mind. Sometimes we thrive on that.
Is it good advice to be told just to suck it up and get over
it? That's not good advice. But sometimes those words do
need to come out. When everything else has been
laid down, some of us can function with those words. I don't function
with those words. So don't say that to me. But how do you know? We don't. So
it's not even in our encouragement. It's not even in our counsel.
It's not about how well we're trained to help each other. It's
about how well God has promised to help us in our time of need.
The Spirit of God testifies to our spirit that we are the sons
of God. The Spirit of God lets me know
when my heart is not right toward one of you or to anybody else.
The Spirit of God tells me loudly when what I want and desire is
not pleasing to Him. I don't need a list of rules
to show me what is good. And I don't need a list of rules
and identifiers to show me that I am in Christ. Except that the
Spirit of God is in me. And the Spirit of God never lies.
And the Spirit of God is preaching through the person of John who
is now being commentated on by this pastor so that we can learn
and glean and grow continually. But God is the teacher and his
word is the absolute power. So we are to love one another.
Now we spent the last two weeks looking in a very quick surface
level about what love is. Because that's the first question.
Okay, how am I supposed to love? I don't feel loving sometimes.
I don't want to be loving sometimes. How am I supposed to love? Well,
we've looked at that. First Corinthians 13, we've seen some of these
things. We understand that when our brother
or sister in Christ tell us something, that the testimony out of their
mouth, we are to believe it. When someone says, I am sorry,
we are to believe it. When someone says, you are forgiven,
we ought to believe it. We don't sit around and go, well,
I don't believe it. That is of the devil. That is
of the Antichrist. We accept the testimony. We accept
the interaction. We accept the intimacy. We accept
the truth. A month or two later, we see
a lie. That's not love. Same old, same
old. Look at that. I knew it. That's
not love. It's a new infraction. Seven times 70. You see? And we're not even getting into
that. But I mean, it's just an attitude. It's an idea. It's the mind of
Christ. The greatest of these is love.
Why? Because God is love. The greatest
of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13. Hope and love remain. At the
end of days, all we're working toward, beloved, is to rest in
our faith in the person of Christ, to hope by faith in the person
of Christ, and to be in the love of God, who is the person of
Christ. And when it's all said and done, hope and faith and
love remain, but the greatest of these is love. Because God
is love and God is everlasting and His decrees are certain and
sure. His promises are yes and amen.
And there is nothing that can separate us from His love in
Christ Jesus. Nothing whatsoever. Nothing. We are secure in Him. Therefore,
as God has loved us, we ought to love one another. It is the
mind of Christ that puts Himself, though He was God, not to come
and start bragging and making much of Himself as God in the
flesh, but to subject Himself to become a slave, to become
obedient, to be passively submitted to the law that God has established
through Israel and through Rome. so that he would die as an innocent
man, which was the will of the Father to crush him, so that
God would be the just and the justifier of all he gave to the
Son in love. So let us love one another. Beloved,
let us love one another. Let us have this mind among us.
Let us understand that everything in the life of the believer should
center around the Gospel. But the problem we have, and
I remember in 1988, I was in New Orleans, and I spent the
summers there with my grandparents, and I remember hearing somebody
say, one time, something of this nature. And just a dialogue or
a teaching, it might have been a comedian, I don't know. But he was talking about how Christianity at the time in the
80s, Remember the evangelical church life of the eighties,
it was high church. Everything was high church. If
you don't know what that means, that means, dude, you went and
bought clothes just for church. You had church shoes, church
socks, church tie, church coat. And if you took those clothes
off the hanger on Thursday, you got your butt whooped. That was your uniform for worship.
You had to set your hair a certain way. You couldn't spike up your
hair on Sundays. That was devilish. So you had to part it like a
goober. You see what I mean? I didn't want the side part.
I did the middle part like alfalfa. I want the middle part. I'm going
to church. I'm going to look cool. And you had your church Bible.
You had your kid Bible with the pictures in it. I drew birds
in all the pictures in my kid Bible, by the way. I still got
it. You know, when I say birds, I mean like the Little loose
ends every outdoor picture in there. There's a bird in it.
I'm like, what was I doing? I did it all of them you got
you, but you can't use that in high church. You got to have
the one with no pictures It had to be King James or the progressives
were new American standard. That was it That was the 80s. That was the 70s and 80s and
everything was high church and the organist got there like four
days ahead of time and just started playing and You drive by on Saturday
night, you hear them playing, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, In this high church, you walk
in and you think, okay, is this guy going to open up and is God
going to come down? Oh, the second best thing, here's the pastor.
And when you talk to him at the door, it was just like this.
But when he got in the pulpit, please open the word of God. I mean, wow, my goodness. Pay no attention to the man behind
the curtain, that kind of stuff. That's how it felt. It's high
church. So you had the rules of how you could show up to church,
rules of what you could do in church. You didn't sleep, you
didn't draw, you didn't color. Kids, there wasn't no kids church,
there wasn't no nursing unless you were still pooping in your
pants. There was no youth ministry,
there was nothing. It was high church. You could
come Wednesday night and hang out with your friends and play
Bible bingo. But you couldn't, there was none of that. It was
high church. It was nonsense. And along with high church rules
came life rules. Well, Christians must be part
of this organization. Christians can't eat out on Sunday. You
know that was a rule when I was a kid? Can't eat out on Sunday. Sinful. The heathens who got up from
the bar on Sunday morning and ate out on Sundays. Christians
don't do that. And the list goes on and on.
And so by the time you're 10 years old in that kind of culture,
man, you think the whole idea of following Christ is okay here's
the Bible now where's the addendum because there's got to be an
addendum because I've got more rules in my head now what I can and
can't do than anything I've ever heard in my life if you're really
a Christian then you'll if you're really a Christian then you'll
and this is the joke I heard how much makeup should a sister
wear if she really loves the Lord and that's funny But recently,
I mean, sister, you shared, I mean, there are some people who really
make a much to do about that. And the man's answer was, I don't
know, depends on her face. And then he said this, and I
don't know, I can't remember what he said, I mean, so it's probably a heretic, probably
didn't even know the gospel, but I thought it was very clever,
and it's a good thing to think about. If God is not bigger than
a tube of lipstick, then we need to be looking for a different
God. Now, In some sense, too, we don't
need to be so coy to think, ah, let's just forget about convictions
and things that maybe the Lord has put upon our heart individually
about certain things that are idols in our life. Because, Lord
help us, there's gonna be a little mini-series between 1 John and
2 John with the parting shot that John leaves here. Little
children, keep yourselves from idols. And I started writing
a list a couple of weeks ago, and I'm up to about 26 things
that I could preach against. considering idols. But then I
would be guilty of doing the very same thing that John is
trying to avoid. Quit looking at yourself and
just love one another. Look at the cross of Christ.
You are safe. You are saved. You are born again. You are redeemed. Little children,
my beloved, my brothers and sisters, Christ is your propitiation.
The wrath of God is satisfied for you. Therefore, the love
of God is effectual for you. Now, listen, love one another
in the same way. So we're learning how to love. Because the love of God has been
clearly visible. In verse 12, and this is review,
verse 12, John makes it clear that the unseen God is visible
in a sense when the people of God live under subjection to
the word of God together in love. Let me say that a little simpler.
That God is visibly understood. It didn't say anything about
gospel evangelism. You can't live people into preaching.
You can't preach the gospel by the way you live unto salvation. You have to tell them the story
of Christ. You have to teach with words
the work of Christ. There's not this osmosis. You
know that God loves people so much? I think, holy cow, Jesus
died for my sins. I mean, it just doesn't work
like that. It doesn't work like that. But as we live, we are
doing and displaying that which God is. Have you ever had somebody come
up to you and you've been through a circumstance and maybe somebody's
treated you badly and God has resolved your heart to be forgiving
and loving and pray for that person? Instead of being vindictive and
upset and frustrated and that person, that friend, that neighbor,
that co-worker, or that church member, they go, how can you
be so, how can you get over this like that? Doesn't it blow their
minds? It blows their minds. But anybody
can find that within them. The answer is for us is not that
I've just learned to get over it or, you know, I'm a kind person.
The answer for the church is God has loved me this way. And you explain the gospel of
grace. So it's really my greatest desire is to give glory to him.
And he helps me. How does God help us? By teaching
us again and again and again the gospel of grace. That's why
it is extremely troubling when the letters of the New Testament
are written the way they are and they're constantly deeply
Christocentric, that means centered on Christ, and they're deeply
theological, that means they teach something about Christ
as God, and they're They're always talking about God's grace and
God's love and God's, the efficacy, that means the fact that God's
love does something, it produces something, it just doesn't provide
something, it does something. God's love in Christ actually
saves his people. It doesn't provide salvation
as an option or opportunity, it saves them completely at that
moment. And then God grants faith to
believe in that proclamation that he has saved his people
on the cross. And we see this love of God manifest over and
over again so that when now we say God loved us, that's what
we're talking about. We're confessing what the scripture
testifies concerning Christ that the spirit has now testified
to us in our hearts and minds that we now can say God is our
dad. How does God adopt us when we're,
number one, not Jewish descent, and number two, sinners, because
Christ has given us his righteousness and died for our sinfulness.
He has substituted himself in our place. That's the good news.
So we tell them that. God's love for me compels me
and then teaches me and then empowers me to be able to do
that. Beloved, I'd love to say, you
know, as we grow in our faith, we'll get better and better at
that. Some of us won't. Some of us won't. Some of us
get better in our politics. And I'm talking about national
politics. For the Lord, I shouldn't even use that term. Some of us
get better in, you know, playing the role of brother and sister,
of saint. And we have these undeniable
internal thoughts and feelings toward circumstances and individuals
and other things but we've learned to put on a happy face and just
speak love and peace and that's better than the alternative I
guess but then what happens when the silence of our soul lays
down at night and we begin to think about the truth of what
we really know that we really are in the internals of our mind
we are struck with guilt So even when we get the command
of love, we can't come back to the table and say, okay, I'll
just love so I can make up for all the unlove. Not gonna happen. And we may mature, we may mature
to be quicker to resolve to the gospel, to be quicker to have
a strengthening of our faith, to be quicker, but it's never
going to be a moment in our lives when the flesh is not always
whispering sweet seductions. And that's what it does. It tries
to help us find another way of being pleased and content and
finding that resolution, finding that resolve, that cognitive
resolve of saying, I got to put my mind around this. I got to
get to the bottom of this. I got to settle this in my head.
Beloved, the only thing that you need to be settled in your
mind on is that God has saved you by his love through Jesus
Christ and you are redeemed. And because of that, he promised
that if you abide in his word and remember what he teaches
and hold fast to that love that he's given you with those who
confess to be your siblings in this same grace, that you will
have a better confidence every day of your life. You will have
a better fruitfulness every day of your life. And I've said this
a thousand times probably. But we would rather, as God's
people, fall back into the high church mentality, and I'm just
using that as one of thousands and millions of examples. I mean,
there's always a way for people to drag a burden back on the
hearts and the shoulders of the body of Christ. It's so easy,
it's just almost too easy. But we would rather say, okay,
I gotta stop. Doing this I got to stop saying
this I got to stop eating this I got to stop thinking this well
I want you to write the book When you get it figured out of
how you're gonna stop thinking this Just as redemption is found in
a substitute I should hear this Christ for us So is the Christian life able
to overcome the world by faith in the substitute Christ for
us? So that when we see the sin in
our flesh and things that we wish we could move past, the
dumbest thing that I do is to pray that God would make me stronger
to overcome. when I should just pray that
God's will be done. And quit thinking that I'm ever
gonna have the power to overcome. And substitute that time laboring
over the don't do's in my life with the, what I should do, I
almost said the do do's, but what I should do. And then I don't have any time
to labor over myself. You see, we love, and when we're
loving one another, we don't have a whole lot of time for
selfish love. And selfish love looks like this. Worshipping
that which isn't God. Having hope in that which isn't
Christ. Adding things to our list of how we ought to worship
other than what God has prescribed. Lusting after something that's
not our spouse. Lusting after something that
we don't have. Thinking, oh, if I could just get here, then
I'd be happy. Seeing something that we want
and taking it without paying for it. Telling our neighbor
something that's not true because we want them to like us. Or we
don't want to be in trouble. Or we don't want to be ashamed.
Telling our mom and dad to just take a hike because it's none
of their business. And so on and so forth. That's what we do when we selfishly
love. When we love ourselves to the point that we please ourselves
at the cost of the glory in the name of Christ and at the cost
of the love of God's people, we just violate everything. That's
the point, right? James says in James chapter four,
why do you have fights and quarrels? Because you covet. and you see
somebody else get something you didn't get and you hate them
and you murder. How do they murder? How do they
murder James' audience? With knives? No, with tongues. We know that we abide in Him
and He in us because He's given us of His Spirit. We've seen
and we testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior
of the world. So whoever confesses that Jesus
is the Son of God, and this isn't a magic word, yep, that's the
Son of God, no. Whoever confesses the Spirit's
testimony concerning the Son of God, okay, God abides in him. The Word of
God abides in our testimony when we continually testify to the
goodness of Christ. That's why it's very troubling, beloved,
when believers and church members and attenders come up to me and
they want to get away from John's writing. They want to go to Deuteronomy
and let me preach a 10-week series in Deuteronomy. They want to get away. See, John's
writing does it well. Here's the gospel, now here's
some things you need to do. Here's some commands to give. We've
got enough commands. We don't need to go hunt them
down, do we? Or everybody wants to go to the book of James and
talk about gossip and preach about gossip so when we get out
of church we can gossip about those gossipers and how they
should have been in church. You know, that's what we do. Lord bless their soul. Let's
pray for them. Before we eat, let's pray for them. You know,
that's what we do. Let's just be honest. It's not
even funny. Why am I laughing? Because you
all have little smiles on your face and you're nudging each
other. That's what you did last week. I told James about you. So we testify, we know that we're
continually speaking the truth of Christ and we're encouraging
each other in the truth of Christ and we're confessing the truth
of the Son of God and that that is the Word of God in us. See,
when we're speaking lies, it's not the Word of God. When we're
saying we love God and we hate our brothers, we're not speaking
truth. We're lying. When we're not loving one another,
we're lying when we say we love God because the only way to love
God is to love one another. And the only way to love one
another is to meet those needs. And to be available for those
needs and to be prayerful of those needs. You might say, well,
what do I do? The best you can do is to pray. Pray. There's not that many of
us in here today. Before the day's out, get a list
of everybody's name and go home and pray for them. Or you can
just know that God is sovereign and say, you know what? My brothers
and sisters in the Lord, Lord, I pray for them. Bring those
to mind. I mean, you ever have somebody just pop in your head?
I wonder how so-and-so's doing. I wonder that person that sits
on the front row with the, you know, the yellow shorts. I wonder
how they're doing. Don't even know their name, you
know? I was looking around the room. Nobody's got yellow shorts
on, okay. I wonder how they're doing. Just pray for them. There's
a service there. There's a love there. Your mind, by the Spirit
of God, is being brought to the attention of another person,
not yourself. And at the same moment, somebody else, God could
be causing them to pray for you. Some of the greatest encouragement
that I get throughout the week is when I get some random text
praying for you. It's encouragement. I'm gonna
get a thousand texts today, watch. But it is an encouragement, and
I say that we should do that. So don't feel guilty because
you can't love the way you want to love. None of us are going
to love the way we want to love. None of us are going to be perfect.
But we are walking, we are being perfected. The work of Christ
is being finished in us when we love one another. That's what
he's saying. By this love, verse 17, Love is perfected with us
so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. I've
already preached this, I just wanna get it in the right tone because if I go
on and we don't get this tone, we're gonna be lost. See, we don't have anything to
fear in the day of judgment. But there is a lack of confidence
when we know we're not doing that which we know we ought to
be doing, right? We hear the scripture talks about coming
bold before the throne of grace. To busting into the throne room
of God, say, hey dad. Interrupt the meeting, interrupt
the session, interrupt everything. Hey dad, and the father doesn't
say, silence child. No, he's like, come on up here.
Everybody else can wait. It's my child. This is the reception
we have, the intimacy we have with God the Father, who can
cast both body and soul into hell. And that's the only reverent
fear that we have of God. To know who He is and what He
could do, but we have intimate affection with Him as Pop because
of what He did do for us. So when we're serving and we're
loving, we're not anxious. We're not anxious about the fact
that I'm not doing enough for the Lord. I'm not doing enough
for the ministry. I'm not sharing the faith enough.
Are you loving the brothers and the sisters? Then you're fine.
stand bold before the Father and come in and say, look, Dad,
I did all my homework. Not, why is there an F on this test? Because
I didn't take it. I mean, this is what we do in
our humanity. We're fearful of approaching
the Father. We're fearful of approaching
authority because we know we're not living up to the standard.
But we are living up to the standard because the standard is Jesus
Christ and our hope is Him. And when God the Father sees
us, we are as Christ is. and even more so in a real way
at glorification at the Day of Judgment. We will be absolutely,
immutably righteous. Think about that for a second. I read Isaiah 56 this morning.
The eunuchs, who have no children, have no progeny, have no name,
they die and that's the end of it. The line is over. And God
says there to the prophet Isaiah, I will give the eunuchs Greater
inheritance than any sons and daughters they could ever have
I will give them a name that will last forever Wow That's that's amazing and guess
what we're all going to share it We're going to be of the same
name. We're going to be of the same
household. We're going to be of the same court. We're going
to be of the same kingdom. And we're not going to be peasants.
We're going to share in the glory of the very one who rules as
king. Who served us. Who disrobed and
covered his nakedness and washed the feet that even a Jewish slave
was not legally allowed to do. Who stretched out his arms and
died for his people. who entered into the creation
as one of them. That's nuts. So in this love, there is no
fear. The love of God produces no fear, for fear has to do with
punishment. And when we're fearing, that
means we have not been perfected in love. In other words, we have
not understood yet the finished product of the gospel on this
earth for our lives together. That God has brought to fruition
When we love one another and are serving one another, that
is the end. That's it. That's all that we are required to do.
That is the end of the game. And we continue to play the same
end over and over again until the end, and then we celebrate
that intimacy and that love and that service for the rest of
our lives together as we continue to serve and be served by our
Lord. When we love, we do because he
first loved us. So the testimony of verse 20,
if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he lies. What
does he lie about? I love God. Well, how do you
know he's lying? Because love God is love brother. Remember what I said at the start
of my sermon this morning? Love is not how we feel. Love is not
our disposition in the context of our emotion. Love is always
in our action. We love God only only ever only
when we serve when we love each other we have affection for each
other in the doing of the ministry together that's why we gather
you realize that you know otherwise otherwise internet services are
just sufficient if sermons are supposed to be theological treatise
then I could just do a whole bunch of them today and take
the next month off see But it's to be encouraging that when we're
together, not only are we learning the truth and being reminded
of the truth, but we're also being mindful that while we might be
looking at the back of each other's heads, there's a soul there. There's a soul there. And that
soul has been saved by the blood of Christ. And the same blood
that gave you life gave him and her life. And so we are of the
same body. And there's a responsibility
there. And it takes time. Guys, we're
an infantile church. And generations after generations
after generations will come. and we will grow, and the young
men of our church will be the old men of our church, and the
saints that are here now who are well in age, we will be gone,
and y'all will be glad, and then there'll be something else happening
in the world and around us, but the one thing that will never
change is the love of God and the love of God's people, and
so that is our job as we continually and redundantly teach over and
over again to mature the saints to do the work of the ministry.
That is why we do not segregate ages in our gatherings on what
we call the Lord's Day, the first day of the week. Because everyone
in every age and every bracket of our households needs to hear
the truth of the scripture, even if it's just by discipline and
all they hear is the peanut, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, doesn't
matter. They are listening more than you think they are. So we don't say I love God if
we're not loving our brother because that's a lie. The question now is who is our
brother? John makes it easy. In John's
gospel, I dare not turn back to this
gospel because I'll start over. In John's gospel, The writer says, now Jesus did
many other signs in the presence of the disciples, John 20, 30,
which are not written in this book. But these that are written in
this book are written so that you may believe that Jesus is
the one come from God, holy and anointed above all. That's what
the word Christos, that's the word Messiah means. He is the
promised one who gives life to his people. the Son of God, and
that in that believing you will have life in His name. These
things are written that you may believe. John makes no qualms
about recording the difficult doctrine of the substitutionary
atonement of Christ, about limited atonement He makes no problems recording
Jesus' teaching about reprobation and election as he explains it
to the masses, as he rebukes the Jews and the Pharisees, as
he elaborates on his kindness toward the elect of Samaria,
and it makes them angry. He has no problem recording these
things, but he guarantees something very simply in the context of
the gospel is that those who are believing in the work of
Christ and the doctrine of Christ are your brothers and sisters. And he says the same thing here
in verse 1 of chapter 5, everyone who believes, that Jesus is the Christ. Let
me explain it. Let me define it this way. Everyone
who is believing and resting in the redemptive work of Christ. Everyone who knows and is satisfied
in the person of Christ. Everyone who is believing in
Jesus as the Christ has been born of God. It's simple, but we don't over-simplify. We don't ignore what's there,
right? Because this letter is not evangelistic. The gospel
of John's letter is evangelistic and it teaches that the gospel
to believe that Jesus is the Christ and his work and the object
of his affection is all entailed in that. So we know that when
we come to this letter, those who believe everything written
in John's gospel about Jesus are those who are our brothers. Doesn't mean we have to have
the knowledge of every single thing, but we understand the basics
of this substitute redemption. Of this imputation of righteousness.
Of this, I am the bread that gives you life. The law will
kill you. I am the water that gives you
life. I am the one come down from heaven to give you life.
And all these conversations that John records in his gospel are
against the grain of self-righteousness and self-ability and self-desire. All of them. Time after time. And the synoptics, Matthew, Mark,
and Luke are the synoptic gospels. That's what we call them. They
track together. John's an anomaly, if you will,
in the way he presents it. And even in the synoptics, the
same thing takes place. Jesus talks and speaks of himself
as the way to the Father, as the only one who is the righteousness
of God, and that if we are to be perfect, or be in the presence
of the Father, we must be perfect. We aren't perfect, and until
we see that he alone is the one who makes us perfect, we can't
see God. How do we see? We must be born
again. It's not about your intellect
that will carry you to the gates of heaven. It is about the Spirit
causing you to be born of God. And then you will believe everything
that the Bible teaches you through trial and trouble. You will not
reject the truth of Christ. You understand? So when everyone
who believes that Jesus is the Christ and born of God, this
is it. If someone confesses the gospel, you judge them by that
confession. You judge them by that truth
that they say is their hope. Period. That's the end of it.
Then we are obligated by command, by divine command, to love God
by loving those who confess the truth. What does it mean? about those who don't confess
the truth. We're under no obligation to love them in the same way
we love the brothers and sisters. We should love our enemies. I
don't know if it's tonight or next week I've got this question,
but what does it mean to pray for and love our enemies? How
do we love our enemies? Do we call them brothers? No,
that's not love, that's hateful. I mean, they might be brother
in arms, might be brother at the police department, might
be brother in whatever, but I mean, there's an intimacy about the
idea of being a sibling in the Lord Jesus. And in the South,
I mean, we're of the same race. Hey, brother. You know, we're
of the same gender. Hey, brother. It's just, it's
a normal term. Terms have wide semantic meanings
in their particular context. But we have an obligation How
do we get to Romans and we get to the therefores of chapter
12? Through the end. How do we get to the therefores?
Who do we apply that to? To the beloved. To our brothers
and sisters in the faith. We get to Hebrews 13. How do
we apply that to the brothers and sisters in the faith? We
get to Ephesians chapter 3, 4, and 5, 6. How do we apply that? We apply that to the brothers
and sisters in the faith. We don't go to the unconverted world,
to the unchurched world, to the unregenerate world, to the lost
world, to the cults and to the wide view of gospel-like mindsets
of the world and just say, hey, we all have to love each other.
No, there is a context in the local assembly through which
we are obligated and with whom which we are obligated to serve. And so if we love the Father
because we know the Christ, We know the righteousness of God.
We know that we are sinners, because if we say we have no
sin, we're a liar. We're lying. And so we know that our hope
is that Christ is our propitiation for our sins. We know this. We
believe in this. This is our hope. He is our life. So we are then very much in an
adoration way, in a way of gratitude, we have love for the Father,
right? Thank you, Father. Thank you, Father. We praise you for what you've
done. We praise you for your mercy. We praise you for your
grace. We praise you for your love. Thank you for saving us.
Thank you for teaching us. Thank you for assembling us.
Thank you for providing for us. Thank you for the blessing. Thank
you for the brokenness. Thank you for this. Thank you
for that. We thank him for everything. Why? Because we do love him.
Why? Because he loves us. How does he love us? In Christ
Jesus. So all spiritual blessings are ours in the heavenly realms.
Everything that God has to give us is ours in Christ Jesus. But it doesn't belong to every
single human being. It belongs to the church. It
belongs to the believers. It belongs to the elect. So when
we say we love the Father, everyone who loves the Father loves everyone
who has been born of Him. I mean, is the Father five? For
25 years, my wife and I have always had these conversations.
If we could do only one thing right, let's teach our children
the gospel, and let's teach them to be kind and love one another.
If nothing else, even if they're not elect, I want them to be
kind people. I want them to understand compassion
and empathy. I want them to love one another,
you know? There's nothing worse than seeing
families fight and squirrel, and I grew up in that kind of
stuff. I don't want my own household to be like that. And by the mercy
of the Lord, all of that has just resolved through the years.
God has been gracious to me and my family, and to many of you
as well, and relationships that have been broken have been healed.
Not all of them because of the gospel, but all of them because
of God's kindness. So we want to teach our children
to love each other. It hurts a parent when children
fight. Okay? It grieves the Spirit of
God when we don't love our brothers and sisters. We have the same
father. And I used to always make jokes.
I'm good at making jokes, and they're always untimely, typically,
if they come off the top. But I used to like to tell people
that the person in the church that you least desire to be around
is gonna have the permanent place next to you in heaven. It's gonna be glorious. Isn't
that the truth though? See, if I were God, that's what
I'd do. You stand in heaven, here's your spot, Tippins. Who's
that? I thought this was alphabetical,
man, what's up? No, it's glorious. The one you least loved on earth
will be the one you will love forever, next to you. I mean,
and I know, I'm just, that's all just silliness. It's not
how heaven is, but if it were, that'd be an interesting thing
to think about. But see, it troubles our spirit, oh no. Is there a
option B? Is there a waiting room? By this we know. that we love the children of
God. This is verse two, and this is next week's sermon. All we
did was verse one today as a recap through all that. By this we know, and you might
say, okay, how else can I love one? And I understand service,
I understand the mindset, we've gone through that, pastor, I
get that, okay, I'm focusing on that, but how else do I know
if I'm loving the Lord's people? By this we know that we love
the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments.
And he's repeating himself. And here in the text, he actually
uses the word commandments in the plural. What are the commandments? There's a bunch of them. What
are the ones that he's burdened the church with? And I don't
want to use the word burden, but that's what John uses. He
uses the word burden in a minute. He burdens the church with the
commandments of God that when we do that which God has called
us to do, We are actually loving one another. And if you didn't
catch it a minute ago, I actually rolled through the Decalogue
in a way of self-love. Did you catch it? I rolled through
eight of them. Actually went nine. No specific order. And that's
just an illustration. That's what the Ten Commandments
are. It's just an illustration. It's a small little teensy little
note card, an illustration about God's righteousness. It's very deep. It's very broad. And Jesus Christ is that righteousness.
He is that perfection. He is the God Almighty who created
the world and everything in it. He says that we love Him when
we do what He asks of us. That's how we love Him. And He
asks us, He asks us to what? To love one another. And so that
anything that I do that would that would destroy my confident
intimates with the Lord. I'm not saying we lose our salvation.
Understand this is about relationships. This is about intimacy. This
is about walking in fellowship in a good conscience with the
Lord. Not about redemption. Redemption is done. We're growing
a little bit now. When I sin in my life, I actually
hurt you. Even in the prophecy of my brain. When I'm selfish in my spirit,
when I get angry, and sin and my anger. I'm actually hurting
all of you because it affects my ability to come to the Word
of God with confidence and it affects my ability to even pray.
Have you ever been where you know you need to pray but you
just won't? Because you feel like, how can I pray when I felt the
way I have today? See, I don't know about you,
I'm not an isolated person. I've never been an isolated person.
Everybody in this community knows who I am. I'm never isolated. And I get calls on any given
day about any particular topic. Anything. You know how to fix
a lawnmower? Somebody came by the house the
other day and asked. Maybe. What's wrong with it? It just
starts popping and exploding when I crank it. No, you need
to carry that somewhere. I'm not into that but they think
I am so they come over there and ask that I was under the
hood of my truck last year and somebody started screaming from
the highway Do you replace engine heads no, I don't even know what
an engine head is I Just saw yeah, I mean, it's just the weirdest
stuff. So we have all these You know, I'm not an isolated person.
So there's a lot of opportunity. This is what I was saying for
me to be aggravated a Lot of opportunity for me to back away
There's a lot of opportunity for us to be aggravated in our
own homes. Because we've been together so lot, you know. From
a counseling perspective, everybody's like, why are the holidays, why
are we fighting? Because you're home. You're together, that's
why you fight, that's what we do. We hate one another, we like
the two day visit, the 10 day visit, a little too much. It's
time for you to go. That's what happens. So we have
opportunity. Sometimes we can't even pray,
we don't have it in our spirit. So when I sin, and when you sin,
and when we fall guilty in our conscience, and we feel bad about
ourselves, and we're like, well, how can I even come to church?
You know, because there's this weird cultural expectation I
have to be prepared for church. I got that high church clothes,
I got that high church attitude. I got that high church holiness,
you see? It goes deep, y'all, and we're all victims to it.
I don't care how long you have or haven't been in the context
of church in America. You've all got those ideals,
to some degree. So the world is constantly coming
and tearing us apart in our minds and we feel like, man, I can't do
this, I can't obey. Of course we can't, we can never
fulfill the law. Christ is the fulfillment of
the law for us. He is the righteousness of God on our behalf. The law
killed him out of its purpose because he made himself subject
as a guilty party against the law, so he died according to
the law, though he was innocent. Satisfying the wrath of God for
us. This is the justification. This is what legal justification
is all about. The imputation of guilt and righteousness.
This double transference of guilt to innocence and righteousness
to guilt. And so we get to the place, we
go, wow, obeying the commandments of God. This is next week's sermon,
but I can't leave you hanging here. It says there in the second
part of verse three, and His commandments are not burdensome.
So if you feel like the instruction of scripture is just a heavy
weight on your shoulders, you're not understanding it correctly.
You hear me? All right, so relax, put the
weight aside, and next week we'll just put it in the closet. When
you put everything else, you don't want people to see when
they come over. That's what we do. and the world and everything
in it, and all the aspects of our flesh that we've talked about.
I mean, I've talked about a lot of different ways in which our
flesh comes against the peace of Christ. And it's not gonna
stop, but we can learn through discipline and through the promises
of God to overcome it through the obedience that God has given
us in the context of loving one another so that we are busy about
service rather than busy about selfishness. And then we feel
like, oh no, all the commandments, then we got a heavy weight again
on our shoulders. But what it says is that the
world has been overcome by all those who have been born of God.
And now what happens? We feel like, I'm a hero. Give
me my sword, my gun, and my shield, I'm going to war. No, we stand
still. Back to there. We stand still
by faith. Who is it that overcomes the
world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
See how counterintuitive that is? That's completely counterintuitive
for me. Remember, I'm a fighter. I'm
a planner, and I've got a rule book thicker than this building.
I got rules for everything. Rules, rules, rules. Where you
put your shoes, how you fold your socks, which way the towels
go in the cabinet. I have rules for everything. Everything. But the Lord says, stand. He
is my defender. Christ is our Savior. His love
for us carries us all the way home. His grace today is His
grace forever. So be at peace, be at ease, and
let's learn to love and live the way we're called together.
Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, for this
truth, for the word that you've given us. Father, for overcoming
my inability to teach it and understand it myself sometimes.
Father, that through your power, that you would just teach us,
that we would be at peace, even sometimes when we can't really
explain all the ins and outs of why, we feel the peace that
surpasses understanding. So we praise you for that. Lord,
do teach us how to love. Teach us how to love without
guilt. Teach us how to love without fear. Teach us how to love out
of a thankfulness. Not the way the world teaches.
Not the way the revisionists teach. Not the way the universal
church would teach, Father. The unconverted religion of the
world. But, Father, the way that you
teach us to live. The way that you teach us to
love. Where the burden is light and joyful. So Father, as we
prepare to worship through song, I pray that we would truly sing
without fear, that we would truly pray without fear, that we would
truly serve without fear, and that our whole lives would be
centered on giving glory to you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you, Church.