Let's turn together to the book
of 1 John chapter 3. We will read verses 11 through
the end, verse 24, and then we'll talk about it a little bit. 1 John 3, 11 through 24. For this
is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that
we should love one another. We should not be like Cain who
was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did Cain
murder him? Because his deeds were evil. His own deeds were evil. And
his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised brothers
that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out
of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does
not love abides in death. And everyone who hates his brother
is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life
abiding in him. By this we know love, that He laid down His life
for us, that we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in
need, yet he closes his heart against him, how does God's love
abide in him? Little children, let us not love
in word or talk, but let us love in deed and in truth. By this
we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our heart
before Him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater
than our heart, and He knows everything. Beloved, if our heart
does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever
we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments
and do what pleases Him. And this is the commandment,
that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and that
we love one another, just as He commanded us. Whoever keeps
his commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this we
know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given
us. All right, beloved. There are sometimes apparent
or seemingly contradictory things that John writes in this letter.
And it's because he's talking about two things. He's talking
about eternal life, which is secure. Eternal life, which we
have confidence before the Father because of the blood of Christ.
Eternal life because of the promises of God. And then he's also talking
about living life as those who have eternal life. And they work
together and they go together, but they are not the same thing.
Living the life in the flesh is done by faith in the Son of
God who loved us and gave himself for us because of the eternal
life that he's granted us. So there's a lot of things that
we must learn. There are some things that we know about God,
but we who have eternal life, we know God. We know the gospel. We know the proclamation of what
God's word has revealed to us concerning the eternal life,
who is the Son of God. And so this letter is written
that the joy of the saints may be full in the midst of great
persecution and aggravation, unlovingness that had abounded
How many times in our lives have we heard the story from some
believer about how the church they were a part of was just
mean and nasty? And it's not the body at large.
It's not the whole assembly. It's a few folks. It may even
be the pastors. But there's always, all of us,
either we have a story of our own or we have a story of someone
that we're very close to who has testified to the unlovingness
of the so-called church. And friends, that stuff ought
not be in our record. Paul says that there are things
that the body of Christ ought not do. We ought not talk with
gratuitous language. We ought not be. course in our
joking. We should not gossip. We should
not be busybodies. We should not be, you know, control
freaks. We should not have fits of anger.
If you want a real good overview of everything we ought and ought
not to be, just go look at the qualifications for elders and
deacons, because those are the summary of all that is required
of every believer in the context of the local assembly. It's not
extra things that I must do as an elder, but if I'm going to
be an elder, I must make sure that these things are true by
the mercies of God. And when I find them not true,
we correct them quickly. As I read out of Psalm 141 this
morning, it's a blessing to be punched by a righteous man. I
mean, that's crazy language. But sometimes, I don't know,
when I was growing up and when you acted the fool, whoever the
adult was around just backhanded you one good time. That's criminal
now. A fly flap, if the end didn't
come off, you didn't get a whipping. Until a metal hit your body,
you hadn't been spanked. Switch, it wasn't a switch, it
was a log, it was a limb. You know, 30 feet long and nine
inches wide, it hurt. but it was for our good. I'm
not advocating for abuse, I'm just saying that's the way it
was growing up. And it might not have been that way at all,
but that's the way I remember it. My mother's not here right
now to defend herself, but she'd probably admit, yeah, I tore
it up, son. Didn't hurt me at all. It doesn't
hurt us to be disciplined by the ones that love us. It doesn't
hurt us to have to be rebuked. The problem comes is when the
world at large, who is supposed to be the body of Christ, who
is supposed to act in discipline and rebuke in the context of
love, which is laying one's own life down, and instead of actual
loving biblical correction, we get abusive, overbearing coercion. And that's what the world's made
of. That's what the world's made of. And sadly, many people who
are in the confession of Christ often live their life in that
way. And the reason they do is because they're never confronted
by it. They're never confronted by it. Well, I want us to think. I want us to get a little philosophical
and somewhat existential for a moment. I want to ask the question,
what do you really want out of life? What do you want? I mean, haven't we all answered
that question this week? I just want a new car. I just
want my kids to behave. I just want something better
to eat. I just want my light bill to not be so high. I just
want grass to grow in my yard. I just want my arthritis to stop
hurting. I mean, have I hit it yet? I just won't. I just won't. I just won't. I
just won't. We want everything out of life. That's what we want.
We want everything out of life. And so when somebody poses that
question for a few minutes, we start thinking very deeply. Well,
I don't know. I haven't really thought about
it. And then we give the Jesus answer. I want to honor God with
all my heart and all my life. I want to serve the Lord. And
I'm not mocking that. I hope that's part of our answer. But yet that's what we say we
want, but what do we do? Everything but. We labor harder for the vacation
than we do for worship. And I don't think it's going
to change. Why? Because we're tired and sick and tired of being
sick and tired of working so much with no reward. But see,
therein lies the great problem. We even think in our normal lives,
there's got to be more. There's got to be something else.
There's got to be, at the end of your day, guess where you
are? In the ground! That's where we are. We're in
the ground. Our bodies are in the ground.
But we are with the Lord Jesus. And everybody who misses us is
going to have a very difficult time, if we're loved, with our
absence. But we're not going to miss them.
We're going to be in some, what is Siri trying to say to me?
Yeah. Okay. What is, what is, what's going
to happen is that we're going to be celebrating the life that
we live having seen it face to face. If our life has been lived
for Christ. Let's see, that's tough. Cause
there's some well-meaning folks in the Christian circles of publishing
and they've written some incredibly jarring books. There have been
some books that I've read before that I've thought about setting
myself on fire after I got through because there was no way I was
ever gonna make up the time and redeem it for the sake of the
Lord Jesus in the manner with which this man has written that
we should. And then I thought to myself,
what is this man doing right now? Oh, he's vacationing on
the royalties of the book I just read. Oh. See, it's easy to motivate people
into a place of acting or doing And in that doing, then all of
a sudden there's a pressure to continue to perform, continue
to give, continue to create, continue to be something that
maybe you don't even want to be. The best medicine is honesty. What do you really want out of
life? And if I were to give you my list and you were to give
me your list, we probably would all have about the same thing
in certain circles. We want a life that's fulfilling.
We want a life that's meaningful. We want a life that leaves a
legacy. We want a life with our children, our family, and our
loved ones, and our friends, and our church, and everything
else that has some type of meaning that when we go home at the end
of the day, or we go home at the end of the week, or we lay
down on the bed at night, and we say, oh, thank God, we've had such
a wonderful day. Thank you, God, for allowing
me to serve you in the way that I've done. I mean, that's really
probably a heartbeat underneath all of our souls, right? But are we able to accomplish
it? Yes and no and yes. Yes, we can accomplish that if
we continue to work hard and continue to do everything that
we think we should be doing. And eventually, we will die having
continued to work. But the successful Christian
life is about resting, not working. It's about resting, not working.
So no, we can never love the Lord our God with all of our
heart, soul, strength, and mind, though we strive to that. The
problem is we're not failing so badly, we're trying wrongly. I checked my grammar there. We're
doing the wrong stuff in order to accomplish the desire. John
is talking about what's necessary to fulfill our lives in Christ,
living them out. Right here, I read it this morning
already. Verse 11 through 24 is the point. It's re-evaluated
by the other apostles in the letters of Paul. It's established
in such a way that if you want to have a life that is honoring
to the Lord Jesus Christ, there are two things that must be true
of you. One, you must be born again by
the mercies of God as His elect. And two, you must love the other
elect as yourself. Oh, that's simple enough. Now
we redefine love, don't we? So we redefine purpose, we redefine
passion, we redefine all these things of how we position ourselves
as a life that's honoring to the Lord, and then we do it wrongly,
so our list gets longer and longer and longer, our work gets harder
and harder and harder, when it's really a simplified reality that
God, by His Spirit, allows us to see. But as Paul would say
many times over, don't give place to the flesh. Don't give provision
for the flesh. We have the flesh constantly
trying to provide. And even though we are made wise
by the truth that it's not righteousness in the sense of Before the Father,
we still sometimes add on over and over again to the point that
the only way that we can stand in confidence in our heart, knowing
that our lives are good and honorable, is that we compare ourselves
to those that aren't quite as good and honorable. And then
we're back to murderer. That's what John's saying. So there's the outline for today's
text. Let's pray and go home. But life, what is life? Life
is a series of seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks
and months and years. And I thought about it the other
day, and this is what happens when I'm fatigued, I think too
much. If I'm gonna die when I'm 85, If I'm gonna die when I'm 85,
could be sooner, could be later, God has that number. Let's just
say average, I'm above average, and I'm gonna live to be 85,
which would be above average for a man in the United States.
I have only four seasons, like the one I've just lived, nine
years with Grace Free Church, have only four more seasons left
like that. And that's been like this. Can you believe we've been
nine years, Marianne? Nine years. In fact, it was, yeah, nine years.
This today, I think, constitutes the fourth year in this facility
as a gathering. So think about that. Yeah. It was Reformation Sunday
four years ago. So I got four more seasons like
the one I've just finished. And I'm thinking, I'm just getting
started. I just got the leaves raked into the piles, now I gotta
move them to the street. You see how easy this can be? To
just manipulate my own mind and thinking, okay, now what? Because
that scares me to death. Why? Because I'm not finished. But I'm not finished either.
I mean, that's 38 years from now. Why am I worried about it?
38 years, it's gonna be like this. So when it's all said and done
and I'm dead, I want my teaching to be scrubbed from the internet,
I want my writing to be scrubbed, I don't want anything left of
me. That's what my legacy, that's my dying wish is, I want it down.
I don't want anything remaining, because it's not worth it. Get
your Bibles out, listen to the word of God. Yesterday, Abby, or yeah, day
before yesterday, Abby and I were riding around town in the golf
cart, and it caused a panic. It caused a panic. I won't tell
you about the panic. But we were working out in the
yard, working in the shop. She was just sort of tagging along. She
wanted to take the cat for a stroll on the golf cart. He didn't like
that too much, so he got down and we continued. And she asked
the question, Daddy, why are people so mean? I said, honey,
people are mean because we're just sinners. Well, I'm not as
mean as so-and-so. She named somebody. Not in that,
but you can be. And then she says, well, I think
people need to be taught how to act. I don't want to remind her
of that on Wednesday when she's running full speed around here. But she's right. We need to be
taught how to act. We need to be taught how to live. We need
to be taught how to learn. We need to be taught how to love.
And so knowing God in a relational way is just that. That's what
John's talking about. I'm trying to every week make it a little
simpler and a little clearer because we got a lot of baggage,
y'all. We got a lot of, it's like a transmission shredding
underneath and you pull the pan out and you see all that garbage
and they go, Oh, it may be changing gears fine, but the stuff in
the pan says otherwise. Our brains are shredding as they
turn and think about what we've been learning in 1 John thus
far. Knowing God in a relational way is just that, knowing how
we ought to act. For the sake of God, answering
the question, what do I want out of life for the glory of
God? How do I do that? How do I accomplish that? And
what does the Bible teach me concerning that? That's what
today's sermon's about. And there's some truths that
we need to really always keep in the front of our mind as we're
reading the Bible. People are all sinners. All of us are sinners, but people
in the same sense are all different. We're unique, sort of. I could
argue philosophically that there's not a whole lot of uniqueness
to the human animal. I mean, I just really can. I
mean, there's not many different types of faces and not many different
hues of eyes or hair. There's not many different, you
know, changes in that context. We're all different in some way,
but we're all really the same when it comes to our state. when
it comes to our sin. The only difference in the human
race is when God has elected His people before the creation
of the world and everybody else. Those are the two absolute divisions
of humanity. It's not on economics, it's not
on good living, it's not on ministry, it's not on land, it's not government,
it's not Prosperity, it's not benevolence, it's not philanthropy. Men and women and children are
separated by one dividing line, and that is we who are the children
of God and we who are not. And I use we in a general sense,
plurally, as humanity. And so with that being the case,
there is, and Trey might not know that, but we had this conversation
like six seconds this morning. There is something different
with the mind of the believer that God has done in transforming
it to see the simple truths that are found in scripture. So that
when we think with the context of scripture, this is what I
was trying to say last week on Facebook, but it didn't turn out too well. When we see in the context of
scripture, we can think and understand and move beyond by never going
beyond the boundaries of what is taught. We need to be critical
thinkers. We need to be logical thinkers. We need to be people who arrest
what we hear, what we read, and then judge it and discriminate
it based on what we know is true, which is also found in the scripture.
That's why 1 John is such a crazy, misinterpreted letter. Because
there are always going to be a group of people who believe
in word, in sovereign grace, who do not live it. Because they
think that their living affords them some special type of righteousness,
or special proof of righteousness imputed. See, some people will
never understand that they shouldn't murder. Some people will never be taught
by God the Holy Spirit that they should not take the life of another
human being. Why did you kill him? Well, he looked at me wrong.
And that might sound funny to you, but I've counseled people
who have murdered others because they looked at them wrong. Why
did you stab him? Well, he looked at me wrong.
Why did you shoot him? Because he looked at my girlfriend. He looked at your girlfriend.
How did he look like this? What did you think? Well, I thought
he thought she was ugly, so I shot him. Why did you shoot this guy? Because
he looked at my wife. It happens every day. Why did
you kill this family? Because I needed $5. I'm justified
in murdering this family because I needed $5. They had $5, I killed
them and took it. Why didn't you just ask for $5?
You had to kill them. Well, I don't
do like that. That's not how I roll. We ain't
rolling nowhere now in the 10 by 10. And some people will never
ever be taught that they shouldn't murder. They'll never understand
why. But yet there's another side
of that coin in the same pocket. There are some people who have
never taken a life who don't realize they're a murderer. And
there are some people in that position who will never be taught
that they are a murderer. Because they will continue to
stand and go, I have never taken a life. I am not a murderer. John says otherwise and Jesus
says otherwise. You see now? Are you getting
the difference? So this is one of the main ideas
that John is trying to reveal to us. The saints in Christ,
we know and understand the essence of His glory, which is His righteousness,
which is His light, and therefore we know just how love ought to
look. We know how our lives ought to
look. We are molded in the context
of our understanding through the transformation of our mind
to grasp and comprehend how we ought to live together. This
is not a precondition or proof of the level of our gospel salvation. This is assumed. The assurance
of the believer in righteousness imputed is assumed by John in
his writing because he already did a wonderful time in the gospel
putting that together. So, verse 11, this is the message
that you have heard from the beginning, and this is the same
theme. John is not changing gears. He's not teaching something new.
This is how he started his introduction, and this is where he is today.
This is a postcard with one message, and the message is this. We should
love one another. We, as the saints of God, should
love one another. Now, why would he say that? Why
do you have to teach? How many of your children have
hated each other at times? I'm gonna give you a little preview,
it's not important. But I had Abigail, nobody knew I had Abigail
day before yesterday. And 15 minutes of looking for
Abigail and James with no phone caused panic. And I drove up
thinking all's well, me and Abigail and everybody's crying, and I
felt horrible. But I didn't do anything wrong
intentionally. I didn't do anything wrong. And
all that hatred between the siblings. I wish you'd never been born.
You know, stuff like that. I wish you'd never come into
my room. Why'd you touch my stuff? He's looking at me. I mean, you
know, we've seen it all. Long trips across country. Mom,
he's looking at me. I mean, you know, you just can't
get over it. It all went away when we thought tragedy had taken
And everybody's upset, everybody's excited to see this child who
we thought was dead is now alive and was missing. I mean, it's
really a shocker. I lost my son when he was four
in a pet co. And I shut that place down like
the boss. Couldn't find him. Three seconds
later, I walked to the front of the store and I stopped. About
20 people, I said, y'all are not leaving this store. And I
taught the biggest preaching voice I could get. I said, I've
lost my son. He's in here. He's about this
tall, blonde hair, and I can't find him. And nobody's leaving
this store until we find him. Within 30 seconds, here he is.
He was in the puppy pen. And I wanted to choke him and
kill him, because you hurt me, but I was glad he wasn't dead,
you see. But all that love begins to show. So there are times in
families where we don't particularly care for one another. So John's
not saying if you haven't perfect love, you're not a Christian. But we know that when we want
to kill our children, we are thinking like the enemy. But
we do not belong to him. Our flesh is exercising itself
in a position of authority that it doesn't have because it has
been crucified with Christ. You see the imagery of how the
doctrines are taught? These are not scientific arguments.
These are images so that we can grasp it simply. So we are to love God and we're
to live out our lives working out our salvation by loving God
through loving people in our small circles. And we stretch
this short, small, only four seasons left to live to eternity. And we do that by loving each other. So we're to love God, verse 11,
and love others. We should love one another. And
then I talked about this last week in chapter, in verse 12,
we should not be like Cain. Cain was not loved by God. Abel
was loved by God. Cain's worship was just as good
as Abel's worship. Cain's sacrifice was just as
sufficient as Abel's sacrifice in the context of its work. But God had no regard for Cain. He was non-elect. So when God would always accept
Abel's identical work, but not Cain's, Cain hated God. And the only way Cain could get
back at God was to kill God's man. You see how that looks on
the side? We've got evil over here and
goodness over here. Darkness and light. This is one
of John's favorite comparisons. Nobody can put their finger in
the face of God, but we can hurt God's man. That's why Jesus died.
That's how God orchestrated it. That's in God's perfection and
His perfect will. They hated righteousness, so
they killed Jesus. The righteous people of His day
executed Him. But on the other side, we have
light. We have goodness. We have love.
We have kindness. Now, of course, there's a lot
of people who are in darkness who can emulate that. But it's not real. And we'll talk about what that
looks like in a minute. Loving God and loving others.
I've heard that mantra since I was 17 years old. Matter of
fact, I think that's probably the mission statement of almost
every evangelical church minus 100. We're here to love God and
we're here to love others. And it's actually one and the
same. The greatest commandment is this, Jesus said, to love
the Lord your God, and the second of equal value, of equal importance,
of identical standing. How can it be second and identical
standing? You both get gold medals, that's how that works. It's to
love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus goes on to say that all
the laws of the prophets, all 613 of the laws that were given
in sequence after grave disobedience, by the way, are fulfilled and
summarized in this. So love has action. Love, by
definition, as we'll see here, has action. We don't want to
be like Cain who murdered his brother because he hated his
righteousness. Then in verse 13, John says, don't be surprised,
beloved, when the world hates you. Listen, the world's going
to hate you. All right, and if we were to put our finger, you
know, I love American church history. It's something when
I really want to waste time, I go to. I don't play box much, but
I go to American church. I love to read the founders letters. I love to read the westward expansion. I love to read Roger Williams.
and all of these early American guys who just had all this incredible
theological philosophy about this new land and what it would
entail. And all of them, all of them 100% wanted pluralism. Because they felt like that the
freedom to be an atheist, to worship a dog, or to worship
a false god or a false Christ was part of loving your neighbor. because long enough had they
had somebody else by the sword telling them what they were going
to believe and how they were going to worship. So the United States of America
was founded on religious pluralism, not Christianity. Matter of fact,
the name of Jesus Christ is not found in any of the first hundred
years of any Federalist writings or whatsoever. It's deism. but that's the sermon
for the last message of this letter. Keep yourself from idols.
Anyway, loving God, loving others. The world's gonna hate you. The
world's gonna hate you. So even when there's pluralism,
even when there's freedom, we have this idea, and many of us
have been grouped into the same thing. The world hates Christians,
and there's a reason, because Christians, by and large are
not represented by Christians. You see what I'm saying? I mean
if we were to go around and poll, and large churches and large
ministries have done this since the mid-90s, and you can read
Pew Research, you can read Barna, you can read the Saddleback stuff,
you can read all the large expensive research things that have been
done and it will show you time and time again that when they
poll these 30, 40, 50,000 member churches they can find very few
people who can give an answer to what is the gospel. And when
they start to engage further and say, well, you've been a
member of this church for a year, you've been here five years, you've been
here 10 years, you've been here 20 years, what is it that you wish we had
done for you that we haven't done for you? And almost all
of them, 80 plus percent would say, I wish you'd taught me what
the Bible meant. I wish I could open the Bible
and understand it, but I have to come to church and figure it out,
and listen to the guy up there who has all the books, who told
him, I don't have time to read. That's why we pay you, so you
can read and tell us what to not read. See? And all in all, when you start
to ask people in the context of Christianity in America specifically,
especially down here in the Bible Belt that's tied on so tight
the head pops off, we don't know The gospel. And if we don't know
the gospel, then we don't know the Christ who is our righteousness.
And if we don't know the Christ who is our righteousness, we're
definitely not going to know about Him in a relational way. Thus, we don't understand righteousness.
Thus, it's justifiable when in a deacon's meeting, somebody
gets all upset, gets bent out of shape, starts cussing people
out, and then starts to have a vote to get some people out
of the church, because they don't like the color they picked out,
or they don't like the song book that they bought, or they don't
like this, or they don't like that, or sister so-and-so, or
brother so-and-so. At our last fellowship, nobody
ate my pie. Every pie was eaten but mine.
Y'all think this is funny. I have had to mitigate in these
things. that people were willing to divide
a church over somebody else's pie not being touched. And you
want to say, maybe they just don't like you. Maybe your poisonous attitude
subconsciously relates to the fact that your pie might be poisonous.
That's what I wanted to say. That's not what I said. Love the world? No, love one
another. And in doing so, love God. Love
has always been tied to action, never about feelings, though
there are some feelings that come through the actions. Sometimes
frustration, sometimes joy. Sometimes aggravation, sometimes
fulfillment. Love sometimes stinks. And it always costs. Love has
action tied to it every single time, but more than that, it
has an underlying attribution to the action. What is it? The
love of God. And this is not my interpretation. Beloved, do not test every spirit.
Test the spirit to see if they're from God. Many false prophets
have gone out, etc., etc., etc. We know the spirit of truth.
We know the spirit of error. Here's the examination of that.
Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God. Verse 7
of chapter 4. 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 Love, 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. And this is love, not that
we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us
in this way, we ought to love one another in this way. No one
has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides
in us and His love is perfected in us. See, Jesus is the glory
of God and the fullness of all that God is, exemplified. He
is the essence of all things divine, because he is divine.
And in his humanity, he took on humanity. He was fully and
truly man in all ways. And in his humanity, we have
seen the fullness of all that there is to see and know and
understand about the righteousness of God the Father. And that is
in the giving of himself for his people, who were his enemies
and who were sinners. So in that mind, and that's Philippians
2, this is everywhere. So the world hates, but we love. The world lies, but we tell the
truth. The world says they love, but
they don't. So how does the world love? And the world loves, it's
actually hate. Now see, I do this every time we have to make
this comparison. I do it every time. We all know what the wicked
stuff is, right? We know what wicked and grievous
sin is. We know what it looks like. We know what murder is.
We know what lying and deceit and armed robbery and rape and
incest and all this other kind of stuff. We know what wicked
stuff is. Okay. This is just a small piece,
a small piece of a very large pie, which is true for all humanity,
which is sometimes true for us before God brought us to life
through regeneration. And so we know what murderers
are. We know what rapists are. We know what kidnappers are.
We know what thieves are. We know what liars are. We know
what they are. We know what they do. This is how they function. This
is how they live. And a lot of them have put on airs and come
to find a way of making the answer to the question, what do I want
out of life? Oh, you know what? I don't want to be a murderer.
I don't want to be a liar. I don't want to be a thief. I'm getting in church. I'm getting
my life straight. Honorable. But they do all those
things and they make this practice permanent. They become disciplined
in these ways of walking in a manner of righteousness that has been
depicted by the Bible, been illustrated by the biblical example. Yet,
having never had the gospel, having never had the Spirit,
having never had been given to Christ, they are not His. They
are reprobate, yet they look just like the genuine believer.
I mean, Jesus talks about this a lot in His parables, doesn't
He? About the kingdom of heaven and about the Wheat and the tares
being together. About the weeds. You don't just yank the weeds
up because you might yank up the little saplings of whatever harvest
you have. Just let them all grow up and sort them out in the end.
And part of that is to sort it out in the context of the local
assembly through, you know, correction, training, and righteousness,
and teaching, and church discipline, and rebuke, and admonishment,
and exhortation, and encouragement. All these things go together.
They're all one thing. Discipleship, which means discipline. the ship of discipline. We are
all on it together and we're sailing to heaven. There you
go. There's a flannel graph for you. It's time to bring those
things back. But the world doesn't believe
this way. The world believes that love looks different and
actually it's hate and the world hates. So the world includes
a lot of people who claim to be in Christ. The world includes
false gospels. The world includes false pastors. The world includes false converts.
The world includes almost right gospel theology. Almost right. And then all that
other stuff that's obvious. The world makes judgments of
people's hearts. This is how the world hates, based on cultural
lines and dictations, rather than the clarity of the Spirit
of Christ. You ever been a part of that
circle? You ever been a part of that body? You ever been a
part of that church? You know, sister so-and-so, brother
so-and-so, they must not be saved, they're still struggling with
that sin. That's a busy body. That's what we're taught. So
Paul tells the church, don't be busybodies. Paul tells the
church, don't look down on each other. John tells the church,
love one another. James tells the church, don't
show favoritism. It's all the same thing. Stop showing favoritism. The lowest and the least are
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Not the one that stands, that
looks the part. He or she may live the part.
It may be true, but they're not great in the kingdom of heaven. The world makes judgments on
people's heart based on what the culture has dictated versus
what the scripture is teaching and commanding. The world hates
because the world regulates justice based on how I define a sliding
scale. Well this is just like the person
who is homeless and hungry has justified his murder to get five
dollars to eat. Justified his burglary to feed
his children. Yes, I know a man who's been
sent to prison for 20 years for burglary, stealing food because
he couldn't feed his children, but he committed burglary. It's
a sliding scale. It's a sliding scale injustice.
Well, you know what, don't give that man 20 years. He was trying to help. Yet the
other guy across the street breaks into one house for food so he
can sell it. Throw him away. Justice is justice. Righteousness
is righteousness. Light is light. Truth is truth. But the world hates by having
this sliding scale of justice. Not understanding mercy doesn't
come at the cost of justice. Mercy comes because justice is
satisfied. We don't let people get off the
hook because we feel sorry for them. That's what we do in our
worldly courts. God will never do that. God has
never forgiven anyone because He felt sorry for them. God forgives
because He crushed Christ in the place of them. The world hates. While the world
talks of love, but really being murderers at heart, showing,
how's that look? Showing favoritism, looking down
on other people. Well, why would people, why would
Christians look? Well, these aren't Christians. You see, this is
the world I'm talking about. The world looks down on other
people who have made poor choices. Well, you've made poor choices.
Should have made a better choice. That's murder. The world looks down on people
who don't model their lives after their standard. Who don't live
in the same manner. The world looks down on people
and hates them, murders them, when they don't share the same
worldview. When they don't have the same
economic conformity, political conformity. And we're trying
to make all these things gospel issues. I promise you, you don't
want to hear what the Bible has to say about these things, because
we will all be shocked. But it's part of love. Some people
hate others because they're ignorant, whether it be in spiritual things
or earthly things. That man can't balance a checkbook. I mean, I've had that conversation
in an elders meeting before. Why are we going to help this
man? He can't even balance a checkbook. All the more reason to help him. Who cares? He's got $350 in NSF
fees. He obviously can't do math. He
doesn't want to go to jail. Let's give him help. I don't
think we can help a man can't balance checkbook. Should have been in a position
to be sort of a judge then. Then I would have been hateful.
You see? It's always right. It's always
right. It's always right here. First, it's always right there.
And I say things sort of benignly with a little bit of jest. I
said, you know, this guy's as dumb as a bag of grits. Bag of potatoes, bag of rocks.
And I'm sorry, rocks. I don't mean to make you look
bad. But it's really murder. There's
justifiable hatred in all of our flesh. That's why we have
to be taught these things. And I say justifiable in our
own minds. Some people hate others who are blind to truth. Some
people hate others who are rough around the edges. They'd rather
reform their appearance than to see God transform their hearts. Some people hate others because
they aren't as fancy as they ought to be. And some people
hate others because they're too fancy. Some people hate others
because they're not as rich as they ought to be. And some people
hate others because they're too rich. Some people hate others because
they're not as intelligent or as wise and vice versa. You're just a smarty pants. The world hates righteousness
imputed because it thinks itself good. The world follows the law
and thinks everybody else is lawless. The world hates it when others
are free in Jesus Christ when their quote Jesus had put them
in bondage. And the bondage that their Christ
puts them in supposedly gives them rest. Yet, as we started
out our message this morning, they're working harder than anybody
for nothing and making no progress. The world hates, and as I've
said before, they think that they're not murderers, but they
think that all the saints are murderers. But that's what the world does.
And that's what John's done. I mean, this is not new. He's talked about
this. There's no darkness. There's
no, there's only light. There's no sin. If we say we
don't have sin, do not love the world. I love you. Christ loves you. Brothers, children,
fathers, beloved, you are safe. You are propitiated. You are
redeemed. You are righteous. You are not
murderers. Even when you murder, But don't
lie and say you didn't murder. Put it away, that has no place
in righteousness. You know Christ, you know light,
you know the righteous standard of God, you know his essence,
you know his nature, so walk that way. Let's teach each other
to do that. That's what he's doing. Antichrists like to revise
the truth, like to change the truth, like to massage the truth,
like to take the truth and just sort of take a skim off the top
and sort of shave it, like they used to do in the coins back
in antiquity. They take that gold coin, they just shave a
little bit, put it in their pocket. You might think, who wants a
gold shaving? Well, do that a thousand times a week. You got a gold
coin. $61 and some cents per gram. That's
the weight of a paperclip, small paperclip. $61. You ever thrown
away a box of paperclip because it was corroded? You wouldn't
if it was gold. We don't love. I mean, we don't
hate. We love. See what kind of love
the Father has given to us, that we are children because we are.
He calls us children because we are. The world hates us because
it doesn't know Him. It thinks it knows Him. It thinks
it knows righteousness, but it doesn't know righteousness. We
know righteousness and we're going to learn. They do sin. We don't. Even when we sin, we're
not practicing lawlessness. Because in the eyes of God, we're
not lawless. Because if we equate relationship,
and we equate intimacy, and we equate adoption as salvation,
as the pictures of the scripture teaches us, then we must also
put it in a real way of this. When my children hate each other,
they're no longer siblings. When my children disobey, they're
no longer children. I'm no longer their father. That's silly. The same is true for Christians.
My father has told me since I was old enough to remember, boy,
your name is more important than your desires. Don't you mess
it up because it's mine first. That kind of stuff. You've only
got your name and your integrity. You screw either one of them
up, it's going to cost you. This has been ingrained in me.
So when we have the name of Christ, We have the banner of our Father.
We ought to walk in a manner that gives glory to Him. We're
not murderers, so don't murder. We're not haters, so don't hate.
We're not liars, so don't lie. When we do lie, God doesn't say,
look at that little liar. He says, look at that child of
mine who's absolutely righteous through the perfection of my
Son Jesus Christ. Why is he lying? Why are you doing that? Don't
do that. Discipline comes. Correction
is made. And what happens to our hearts?
We feel better. We're secure and confident before
the Father because of the promises of God through Jesus Christ,
because of His finished work, the declaration of what God the
Father has done through God the Son to save His people only through
His work. We are safe. But beloved, let
me tell you this, when we stop striving to love and act in love,
we feel condemned every moment until we understand the gospel
again. We feel condemned when there's... I mean, don't believe
it? Why in the world is there so much strife? What does James say in chapter
4 of his letter? He said, you murder because you
covet. You can't be happy for somebody
else because you want it. And you don't get what you pray
for because you're hating your brother. You're asking wrongly.
Now John says the same thing similarly here in a positive
sense. But he goes on to say, we know
we've passed out of death from life, verse 14, because we love the
brothers. We love the brothers. I mean,
there's something supernatural about love from a Christian point
of view. We know that we love the brothers
in a way that the world can't comprehend. I mean, isn't that strange? Now
some of you may feel convicted and condemned. Don't be condemned.
John deals with that because he knows his audience is going
to feel condemned. Some of them. He deals with that. He's just
reminded we can see life when we love. We can live life. We can experience the now of
Christian living. You may have life and have it
more abundantly now. And let's be honest, we love
selfishness. We love to do things for ourselves.
We love to put things in our plate and eat it and ice it and
eat it. But it's never fulfilling. And
when we go and realize, you know, I'm tired of gorging myself with
what I have. Just give it to the people that
I love. Here, split this with me. Just take the whole plate. I've
had plenty. This is a simple act. It's one
of the things that Paul has to rebuke the Corinthians for doing
because the guys who had food came along and ate all the more
food. And the people who had no food were starving to death.
That's what the Lord's table was for them. They had to feed
each other. And he said, don't come over
here and do this. God's going to kill you if you keep doing
this because you're unloving. But I'm hungry. No, you're not.
You're glutton. Stop acting the fool and let
your weaker brothers and sisters, poorer brothers and sisters eat
first. Then you can have the cracker and the little bit of
wine at the end. You can have what's left over,
see. So when you're not loving, I
mean, the people who abide in death, they don't love. You're
not like that. You're abiding in life. Everyone
who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer
has eternal life abiding in him. He's not talking about the Christians.
He's saying these murderers. You're not a murderer, beloved,
even though you have murderous thoughts and murderous sin. Can
you see it? And so now everybody's like,
what do I do? How do I love? We see how the world hates. So
how do we love? Well, John explains it by this
verse 16, 17, 18. By this, we know love that he
laid down his life for us. Oh, okay. And we ought to lay
down our laws for the brothers. Now, I had a conversation with
a person overseas about a month and a half ago with this specific
idea. And the only thing that they
could bring from it, an unconverted person, the only thing that they could
think from this is how in what context am I supposed to be able
to die for somebody else? Do I need to go into firefighting?
Seriously, do I need to be a police officer, a soldier? Do I need
to be on the front lines as a nurse or a doctor? This person is 20
years old and wanting to do what is biblical, not understanding
that the call there is not to die in the place of someone,
though that's okay too. But the call there is to what?
Lay down one's life in this manner, verse 17, but if anyone has the
world's goods and sees his brother in need. OK, so here I have the
goods. I got the bread and my brother
over there with no bread. And I go and I say, what do you
need? I need some bread. Well, I don't
have bread. John's saying that's not loving. Closes his heart against him.
At the minimum, yeah, that might be the only bread you've got,
and you might have to feed your family in there. So instead of breaking it up
into sevens, break it up into eights. See, there should never
be anybody in the body of Christ starving unless we're all starving.
Nobody in the body of Christ should ever be homeless unless
we're all homeless. And God help us, nobody in the body of Christ
should be naked unless we're all naked. You see? That's sort of
the idea. We can all do, but here lies
a problem sometimes in the context of administrating the body's
needs. Some people just don't say enough. We don't know enough. But anyone who has the world's
good sees his brother's need, yet closes his heart against him. And there's
a question, it's rhetorical. How does the love of God abide
in him? How does the love of God abide?
See this? The love of God abides in us
because God's love is that He gave His Son for us. And it's
verse 19 through 24. That's what the description is.
I'm just going to get to it. We know God's love because He gave
His Son. He gave us what we needed when
we didn't want it even. When we didn't know we needed
it. He effectually gave us life when we were dead. We needed
life. He gave us His life so we could
have life. He says, little children, let
us not love in word or in talk. What's that look like? It's okay
to say, I love you. It's okay to say, I care for
you. It's okay to say that I'm praying
for you. It's okay to say that we should say these things, but
we should do them also. See, we shouldn't say, I love
you, and then go back and gobble up our bread. Hope you get some. I mean, even Jesus uses this
analogy. He says, even the pagans don't give their children a rock
or a snake when they ask for bread. Are you hungry? Here,
watch him bite his teeth out. That's how YouTube got started.
First century rock. First social media. No, even
the wicked people of the world don't do that to their children.
Now, I know all the historians are going, I have an account.
Okay, there are exceptions. But we do it in deed and in truth. The truth. Christ gave his life. We give our lives for the sake
of each other. We give our lives. So how do
we love? We need to realize that in order for us to love Christ,
we must then first and last love Christ's people. That is how
we love Christ. The Lord is not looking at our
longing and emotional attachment to him and going, oh, just look
how much James loves me and he's just wanting me to come down
there and rescue him from this horrible culture. Like granny. My grandparents, grandparents
love grandchildren. Isn't that crazy? And grandchildren love grandparents.
And I think they could get into a fist fight and sword each other
and they would still love each other. There's just something
really amazing about that relationship. But God isn't a grandfather. He's not looking down and saying,
you know, little James just loves to spend time with me. He loves
me so much. He says, James serves my people
and that is his love for me. It's the only way to love the
Lord. There is no other example given
in scripture. None whatsoever. You might say,
well I can't love like that. No, but you can love like you
can love. You can pray. You can be available. You can
counsel. You can take food. You can buy things. You can help
financially. There are a lot of things. You
can be there. Whatever God has gifted you with,
whatever you have, it's not just material needs. Sometimes it's
emotional needs. Sometimes it's other things. There is always some way to serve
and to love the Lord through the love of His people. Don't compare yourself to everything
else that's extraordinary and think everybody's got to be like
that. The mind of Christ in Philippians
2 is that He was God but He did not take His divine status He did not come to this earth
to bust out of his man suit and go, boom, I'm God. And then start
burning everything and making judgment like a Marvel movie.
That would have been cool. There'd be a lot more converts
in the context of psychological adhesion. But that's not what
the gospel is. The gospel is that God became
man and died in his place. We also need to know that John
is calling love righteousness here. He's saying that when we
practice righteousness we do love. To walk in righteousness in a
real sense of action is to love each other, which is in turn
loving the Lord. Jesus proves this in his commentary,
well in his teaching, in the Synoptics where he says, where
they ask, when did we do these things to you? When did we feed
you or clothe you or visit you or pray for you or give you water
to drink, food to eat? And Jesus says, when you did
these things unto the least of these, my brethren, you did it
to me. You see. And the Pharisees hated him for
that. Because Jesus is saying this is righteousness. And these
men don't love you. These men have all the right
answers. They have all the doctrinal treatise. They have all this
teaching and all this experience and all this knowledge and all
this so-called wisdom. And yet they put burdens on you
that you can't even carry and they don't do anything. See,
what was their sin? They don't even do anything to
help you lift it. Nothing. If there's a burden
that the Bible puts on us as a body, guess what? If it's on
your shoulders, it's on my shoulders, and vice versa. It's on our shoulders. And God help the ones who are
the shoulders, because they're rubbed raw sometimes. It's all of our burden. When you did it unto the least
of these, you did it unto me. Love is of God. Hate is of the
devil. When we hate, we are doing devilish
things, not righteous things. We also need to understand that
we should examine all of our thoughts, all of our attitudes,
desires, actions, words, affections, etc. through the filter of loving
Christ, also known as loving each other. This way we understand
what's a better way to understand than to do. We understand the
righteousness of God. We understand the light who is
God. We understand it as we do it
more. We begin to realize just what
it was like in a very small and insignificant way. We understand
what it's like for Christ to love. We understand what Paul
meant when he says, I pray that I am filling up what is lacking
in the suffering of Christ. For you, his body and Colossae. We understand the light of Christ
more and more, His glorious light, His glorious grace. He laid down
His life for sinners, His enemies, the elect of God. Finally, in
the time we have left, let me just say this, that we need to
see that simple test will line up
clearly in the example of Christ. I've already said this, Christians
are not murderers, even if they murder. They are righteous. So
let us not murder. 16-24, 19-24, closing with this
in mind, and we'll go back through these verses again next week.
By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure
a heart before him, for whenever a heart condemns us, Now what's he talking about?
What's the point here? Let us not love in word or deed,
but let us love, excuse me, word or talk, but let us love in deed
and in truth. Let us, through example and through
sacrifice, let us give our lives for the sake of our beloved who
are the body of Christ. And in loving the body, we're
loving the head. My arm is broken. I don't sever
it, send it to the hospital and bring it back. I go and they
fix it. And sometimes when we find ourselves
not loving, we're never going to feel sufficiently loving. And that's why this writing is
so important. And so it would be terrible for me to stop right
now. Let me let you hear this. We know that we are of the truth. And we reassure our heart before
him when we love. That's not assurance of salvation,
that's assurance of doing righteousness. It's a big difference. We know
that we are doing and practicing in our lives the righteousness
that is asked of us in the manner that Christ has shown us and
given Himself for us. We are secure in that. Now we
are confident in that we're doing what is required. What do I want
out of life? I want to do what God wants me
to do. I'm doing what God wants me to do. I'm loving you. I'm
loving you. And anything else can be set
aside. It's just that simple. So the
reassuring our hearts is about knowing that we're doing the
right thing, not that we're born again. That's of the devil. That's a revisionist error who
cannot read English or whatever language that their Bible might
be in. But it's so common and it's what I was taught. It's what I was taught. As a
fifth grader, you can know you're a Christian,
boy, if you're living right. And be like, I learned to pray
as a fifth grader because of that kind of teaching. And I
prayed constantly. They thought I was ADD. I was
praying. God help me. I can't live this
way. His word would say, Christ is
your life. And I'd go back to these folks
and what about this? Well, yeah, that's true now,
but you see how people do it. So
whenever our hearts condemn us, what's the answer? Well, of course,
if we're loving, but even when we're loving, we're going to
be condemning our hearts because we're not going to feel like we're
doing it enough. So our hope, the peace comes. It says God
is greater than our heart. And he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not
condemn us, we've got confidence before God. For what? for asking
Him things. This is next week's sermon. For
asking Him. Whatever we ask, we receive.
Confidence to ask God. Now what is a prayer? We're going
to talk about prayer next week, but what is a prayer of love? It's a prayer of petition for
someone else. Supplication. And I'll tell you, that does
not include imprecatory prayers. We don't pray against people.
We love them. We pray for God to bless our
enemies. We pray for God to bless wicked people. We pray for God
to bring to salvation His elect. And we pray for God's justice.
His will on earth is done just like His will in heaven. Nothing
happening in this earth is out of His will. pray for one another. And when
we ask and we're loving and we ask, we ask His will to be done,
we know that we can be confident that it is taking place. My life
is an offering for God because it is an offering for each other. Then he says in verse 22, and
whatever we ask we receive from Him because we keep His commandments
and do what pleases Him. This is the point And just in
case we're not paying attention, just in case we've got the little
devil over here on the left shoulder going, hey, you're not worthy.
Psst, hey, you're lost. You're not keeping the commandments
like you ought to. Psst, how's the covetousness going? Psst,
how that work? Psst, psst. And this is the commandment.
that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ. Notice
he says, this is the commandment. We believe in the name of his
son, Jesus Christ, and love one another as he commanded us. We
have faith to believe in his love for us, and in turn, we should love each other. And when we do these things,
we are walking in the steps of God. We are walking in the light
of God. We are walking in the righteousness
of God. We are walking, living out our
lives to the very end, loving one another. Thus, we are loving
God. And how do you know that what
I'm telling you is true? He says it right there in the very last
sentence. By this we know that he abides
in us, by the spirit whom he has given us. And that's two weeks. Beloved,
just rest. Rest. And pray that God will
work out all things according to his plan for you as you love
each other for him. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for your love. Well, there's just too much in
here that I want to say, but God, your word is sufficient.
I thank you for the peace to know that you will teach us.
For the assurance to know that you have kept us, that you've
given us to Jesus. That we don't have to war amongst
ourselves to figure this out, but Lord, that we just slowly
and carefully just walk and read and commit to the discipline
of knowing the truth and living the truth. Father, help us, please,
to get to a place in our world where we can assemble together
and be in each other's lives in a greater way. But Lord, in
this meantime, in this time of disassembly, Lord, I pray that
you would cause us to serve and to love each other in a way that
is often so hard that we might pray more diligently calls us
to pray for one another more than anything, to write down
our names and to pray, to be in the Word of God and to be
ready to share the gospel of free and sovereign grace with
one another as our everlasting hope, as our confidence, as proof
of our adoption, to know that we are your children and that
nothing can separate us from your love in Christ. And so as
we continue to worship today, Lord, let us praise you for this
glorious grace. In Jesus' name, amen.