1 John chapter 3, as we'll continue
there today. I pray you've been reading this
text. I know I'll say that over and over again and all the time,
and it seems like a broken record in that context, but if you are
reading this text, you will learn. You will learn. As some of the
brothers met yesterday on some serious topics, we We find that we can remember
what we read in the newspaper, we can remember the movie lines
that we hear, the fiction books that so easily come to our fingers
once, twice through, and we remember the stories, but yet daily in
the word of God, we find ourselves empty. There is a spiritual aspect to
that that in the natural mind does not find the power of God
in the Scripture. It is only by the new mind. It
is only by the Spirit. It is only by Christ in us that
we find the power of the Scripture so that as our flesh departs
the words of God, we are famished just like we are at the table.
We wake up in the morning ready to eat. We go to our homes in
the afternoon ready to eat. The same thing is true with the
Bible. Some of the most discouraging advice I've ever been given by
elder pastors in my life is that, son, once you've preached
through the Bible once, you can just stand up and preach. Once you've preached a text,
once you've studied a text, you can teach that text forever.
You never have to look at it again. I've had people tell me
that. And for years, I think, well, I must be dumb as a bag
of rocks because I've been studying John's writings for at least
20 years, and yet I learn something new every day. And it's not that
it's the first time I've heard it, it's the first time I've
realized it today, to be reminded of that. And you might think,
well, why is it that way? Well, we see Paul in Ephesians
6 teaching us about the spiritual warfare. We're not fighting against
flesh and blood, but the very principalities of darkness. And
we are more than conquerors, as Paul would say to the Romans.
Yet the discipline, the discipline of coming to the cross, coming
to the gospel, coming to the Lord. We've mistaken it for actions
and attitudes and affections rather than just purely opening
the word of God. And when we are in the word and
then we are together as those who are in the word, we are an
unstoppable force. Because in the weakest part of
our assembly, the strongest will carry us. And we will all be
encouraged, we will all be equipped, we will all be taught by God.
To live our lives alone without the word of God is to like dig
a hole and put our head in it and wonder why we're starving
to death. Yet, we say that and we will
all agree and by tomorrow afternoon we might not have touched the
scripture by the time we get home from work. We need to test what goes into
our mind. We need to learn to discern,
to discriminate, to have a filter. And not just what goes into our
mind, what comes out of our mind. Because what comes out of our
mind is darker than the natural world. What we think in our own
thoughts is absolutely, most of the time, if we were to filter
it through what righteousness looks like, we would realize
that it is absolutely sinful. I made a comment As I was looking
through all the years of Q&A, and I mean, I've got emails and
emails and emails and emails. And I mean, you know, before
I started broadcasting on Sunday nights with Theology on Call,
we would do once a month Q&A. I mean, sometimes in here, I
even went like six weeks on a Wednesday night Q&A. I mean, so we've been
answering questions. And I've always, you know, I
speak in the plural because it's just habitual. But I have been
answering questions for over 20 years. question after question
after question after question. And I began to start, I've started
to try to take some of these questions and put them into small
little snippets instead of the hour or in the beginning it was
hour and a half, two hours. You know, instead of these two
hour segments where people have to go and fast scroll, I've been
trying to cut out some of the questions that I think would
be good to stand on their own so someone can find them quickly.
Not that my answers are correct, but that the word of God be proclaimed
in the context of those answers. And I found it interesting that
over the last month or so of trying to pull some of these
out, there's a lot of questions that I don't answer because I've
answered them over and over again. For example, is it a sin to drink
alcohol? Is it a sin to use tobacco? Is
it a sin to have a sports car? Is it a sin to wear a hat inside? Is it a sin to have a tattoo?
Is it a sin to drink milk? Is it a sin to eat pork? And
the list goes on and on. I'm not kidding. I mean, you
get these questions. And I found that if I had 100 questions that
probably half of them have to do, is this a sin? Is this a
sin? Is this permissible? Is that permissible? And it frustrates
me because it is a commentary. It is a commentary of how people
read and misread and misapply the very text we're in this morning,
1 John 3 or 1 John. It's a commentary that most people
in the religious sphere of life are more concerned about not
doing things wrongly in an attempt to please God rather than resting
the promises of God's righteousness through Jesus Christ that will
then turn things on their head to see what is right and wrong. And then by the mercy of God,
we can grow and mature in those things. But when we put the cart
before the horse, we're no different than the Pharisees. Jesus rebuked
the Pharisees for constantly telling the Jews what they shouldn't
do. He called them blind gods. He called them vipers, dogs,
the sons of Satan, the workers of iniquity, death bringers. Yet they were highly moral. And
sometimes when we hear the idea of practicing righteousness,
which is sort of where we picked up here this morning, we get
all turned up in our stomachs and we get all worried and we
go, okay, you know what I said yesterday wasn't righteous. Well,
what you thought yesterday wasn't righteous. Where you were yesterday
wasn't righteous. Your hands did not do the works of righteousness.
Even in our best of days. I've stood before audiences of
thousands and stand there. And when you look up and you
see all these people, you go, Oh, it's a lot of people won't
hear what I've got to say. Sinful. And when you're in your 20s and
you get that platform, it's very easy just to be sinful in your
preaching. That's correct. You see. So there is always this nagging,
drawing, frustrating, fleshly, Temptation, it's always, there's
never a moment in our lives, I want you to hear this beloved,
there is not one second in our life in any given day that we
are awake or asleep that our flesh is not tempting us. Not
one second. You know when I get up early
and I study my Bible and I pray and I light the candle. You know
how, I'll be honest, I mean listen, I can't study in a junkie office.
I'll leave the house and study in the driveway if my, you know.
So I understand, collectively. Lord, help us if I ever got put
in prison or, you know, we got ran out of town, had to live
in the woods, I'd be in a bad shape. Y'all have to take care
of my OCD, seriously. So I understand that we have
these disciplines and these habits and these rituals. There's nothing
wrong with that. But listen, let that stuff fall apart. Have
you ever gone to open the word of God for the day or had a discipline?
Like maybe you're going to read through the Bible through the
year, you know, January 1, I'm going to start reading the Bible,
Genesis 1. And Genesis, we can deal with
Genesis. We get to Genesis and you know, it's pretty neat. Then
we get what? Yeah. We get all the way through, you
know, okay, Exodus has got some good stuff. We get to Leviticus. And maybe we're disciplined enough.
We get the numbers. And we just skip over to the
Psalms. And we get into the Prophets. And we piece the Bible into pieces
to the point where we don't even know what the story is. And I
bet you that most of us, no matter what plan we've been doing, one
of two things has happened. We're just so disciplined that
we continue to read and we make it through. Or, February 15th,
Valentine's Day after Valentine's Day, we're like, forget it. I'll
just put the verse. on the mirror of the car. There
we go. Verse of the day. I'll subscribe to an email. Maybe
my pastor will text me a verse sometime this week. We'll get
to it. Because our flesh fights against it. But oh, we can sit
down with our tablets and use the Bible, what's on Amazon Prime,
look at Netflix new show. Holy cow, I gotta go to bed because
I gotta get up in four hours to go to work. It's the flesh. And that's not saying this stuff
to go, shame, shame, shame, no matter what it is. It could be
a research project on hermeneutics. It could be Kung Fu. It could
be jazz music. Eddie and I talked for four hours
the other night, two hours of which was on the Trinity and
two hours was on jazz. Two in the morning, I'm like,
I gotta go to bed. I know it's 11 for you, but I'm sleepy. It's just
the way it is. It's what we do. We're always
driven to lay aside that which is glorious for that which is
fading away. It's the point. And we can become
more disciplined, and then those things will grow to have their
place. Nothing wrong with music. Nothing wrong with movies. You
see how the opposite is so pressed upon us? You've either got the
everything's good, don't worry about what you're doing, to everything's
bad. till you get to where the Puritans
came. Which the product of strict Puritanism was what? Westward
expansion. We gotta get away from these
people. We gotta move west. That's why
it's called the wild, wild west. I'm sick and tired of being told
I'm gonna be down to hell if I don't do like these people.
I'm not wearing collars, belt buckles, and hats. I'm not praying
six times a day. I'm not doing these things. And
the cool thing is that the Bible doesn't require you to do any
of that. You see? So when we think about practicing
righteousness, all of us have some level of what that looks
like. And there are some of us that are absolutely ignorant
of righteousness that may say, well, you know what? I haven't
violated the Ten Commandments. That's a lie. You have today. You have today. You have violated the first commandment
today. Because you cannot keep it. You cannot tell yourself
that you love the Lord with all of your heart while you sit there
with your eyes closed with that sausage and pancakes. Oh, this is great. And that if it burned in the
pan, you'd be furious. Or if the rice burns on the bottom
of the pot, you'd be furious. Or you run over a nail in your
tire that you just bought and you'd be furious. That's not
loving the Lord. Loving the Lord a lot. Praise God for this busted
tire. I didn't need it. I don't even
need the car. I didn't need the money that I just spent on the
tire. I didn't even need food. I'm gonna get up and fast all
day. God is so good. When have you ever done that
when you burn the biscuits? We don't do it. Have no other gods
before me. How much time do we spend in
the mirror this morning? You see? How much time do we worry
about, do our clothes match? Where's that one, where's that
pair of shoes? I want to wear that pair of shoes.
You know, my great-grandparents had like one pair of shoes when
they were younger. One pair of shoes. I'm not saying
they're more holy, but they probably thought they were because they
weren't materialistic. But they all died millionaires. I mean,
something changed between 1912 and 1990. Something changed. Righteousness and practicing
righteousness is not about doing it all correctly. It's about
resting in the one who is righteous. I'm a martial artist. I love
martial art movies. I love, I watch them, the cheesy
ones, the good ones. And there was one particular
scene where a person, it's a historical movie but not quite accurate,
basically said to one of the men he was sparring with, that's
not Wing Chun. And the man responds, says, everything
that comes from my hands is Wing Chun. You think, what kind of
stupid example has this man brought to the church this morning? Everything
that Jesus does is righteousness. I want you to hear that. We've
talked about this already. This is review. This is all review
from the last three weeks, the last three sermons because Trey
spoke last week. I want to just get us up to par.
Everything that comes from the mouth of Jesus is righteousness.
Everything that Jesus did that comes from the hands of Jesus
is righteousness. Everything that is in the heart
of Jesus is righteousness. Every decision is righteousness. His essence is righteousness.
The law, like the Holy of Holies, the temple, the tabernacle and
everything there, like the tempest and everything about it, points
to Jesus alone. Let me say it clearly. Jesus
Christ is the fulfillment of the law because he is the law
fulfilled. The law points to him and we
have gone through Romans. I did the reading of Romans very
quick reading of Romans midweek before we got into what might
have been two before. But we know in Romans three that
John that Paul teaches that. We know that what we've heard
over the last few months in 1 John is that God is righteous. Jesus Christ, that which was
from the beginning, the truth of who He is, and He in and of
Himself is righteous. That there is no darkness in
Him. There is nothing but righteousness. He is all righteousness. That's what makes Him God. And so unless we decide to be
like Lucifer and say, I need to stand next to God and show
my light, we're never going to match the righteousness of Christ.
We're never going to get close. It's like having a picture of
a candle and a blowtorch and saying they are equal in power. It doesn't work. Christ has grabbed
us. He has brought us to Himself.
We have been given to Him by the Father. His death was our
death. His resurrection is our resurrection. His righteousness is our righteousness.
We have died. Christ is now all in all. You see? This is not about governing. This is about righteousness.
Justice. The justice of God prevails.
Beloved, I want you to have freedom and I want you to understand
the severity of sin. That's what John is saying. Let's start reading
together in 1 John 3 to the end. See what kind of love, and now
verse 28 of chapter 2. You can't start in the middle
of a thought. And now, little children, abide in Him so that
when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from
Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous,
you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has
been born of Him. See what kind of love the Father
has given to us, that we should be called the children of God?
And so we are. The reason why the world does
not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's
children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, Christ,
in His righteousness. But we know that when He appears,
we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And
everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as he is pure.
So there is a call to action there about doing something. And then John explains it, and
we went through all this last week, so if you're a little lost in
the preview when I get started, or the review, go back and listen
to week 15. Everyone who makes a practice
of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know
that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there
is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps
on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him
or known Him. Little children. Let no one deceive you. Whoever
practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes
a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been
sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared
was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes
a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot
keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it
is evident who are the children of God and who are the children
of the devil. Whoever doesn't practice righteousness
is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that
you 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 he murder
Abel? Because his own deeds were evil
and his brother's were 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. 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 closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide
in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk,
but 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 whenever we ask,
whatever we ask from him, we receive because we keep his commandments
and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment,
that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and that
we love one another just as he has 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." And this is several more weeks, by the way. We're not
going to get through all this today, but it's important because it's
one thought. It's one teaching. It's one parsing out of this
doctrine. And so we looked At this text
last week, we saw that there is a comparison between the source
of righteousness and the source of lawlessness. The source of
lawlessness, the source of lawlessness is Satan. He is the premier. He is the
first. He is the father of lies. God is not the father of lies.
Satan is the father of lies. God is not the father of sin.
Satan is the father of sin. God has never tempted anyone.
Satan tempts all. So the father of lies, the father
of sin, because he's a father, the imagery there is that he
has children. The majority of humanity are
the children of Satan. The religious and the self-righteous
are the children of Satan. And there is definite things
that we know about lost people. The problem is in our culture
is that we have compared ourselves to really sinful acts, thinking
ourselves better than another, and the Bible forbids that. As
a matter of fact, the one who is the sinner the most is in
better standing of being counted righteous than the one who thinks
he's better than the sinner. You hear that? That's why a testimony
about gospel power that starts like this. Well I used to cuss
and drink and stab and run around and act crazy and speed and all
this other kind of stuff and then I found Jesus. Lie? Lie. What they're saying is that
I used to be a sinful person and then I found Jesus on the
side of the road as I was speeding by one day and I stopped and
I gave my life to him. That's all lies. Those are lies.
Those are satanic lies. Every testimony like that is
of Satan because it's fleshly. It's bragging before God. And
it's actually saying that you're without sin. Well, no, no, no,
no, no. I'm not saying I'm without sin, but I'm not as bad as it
used to be in my flesh. You see the difference? I pray
that we do grow, and by the mercy of God, the scripture does teach
us that we will grow in our maturity. Part of that is to put to death
the flesh. Why? Because Christ died for
sin. You see? It's not a prerequisite for salvation. It's not a guarantee of salvation. Some people say, well, if I'm
antinomian, just turn off the sound. Because you don't have
the ears to hear the truth of Jesus Christ. And I'm tired of
having the conversation. Turn it off. I'm only preaching
to the sheep and I'm only echoing the voice of the shepherd. So
if the shepherd's voice doesn't ring in your heart, you don't
belong to him. Find another thing to do. You see, that's how, beloved,
that's how we have to deal with people in the life that we have
who continually want to argue and debate the points of righteousness
in the flesh rather than in the flesh of Christ. We don't have
time in our souls In the short life that we have, we don't have
time in our souls to play games with unconverted people who want
to assure themselves in their flesh. Let them be. Let them
be. Maturity and discipline and accountability
and encouragement and love and watch care. It'll take care of
the body of Christ. We have no obligation. To give an ear to heresy. Nor
should we ever point anyone to it. So here. Children of sin, they make a
practice of sin because they are the seed of sin and they
are going to be destroyed by God. I said all this last week.
Then the source of righteousness is the father of righteousness.
The father of righteousness has children of righteousness. We
are the children of righteousness. Okay. Therefore, what we do in
our lives is the practice of righteousness as we live by faith
in the One who gave Himself for us. Trusting that His righteousness
is my righteousness is what living by righteousness is about. Abiding
in Christ is knowing that His promise to me that if I have
been given to Him, He will raise me up on the last day. And I
am certain of that. I am so certain of that that
I could, if I desired in my flesh, go do any sin I wanted to do
and never ever in any way change the status before the Father
that I have right now in Christ. Grace should cause us in our
logical minds to come to that conclusion. But what does the
Bible say about that type of thinking? It cannot be. Don't
ever go there. That's what Paul says. Absolutely
not. Grace is, that is true of grace,
but that's a mockery of grace, you see. So we don't just jump
into sin because we can. when we look at the true picture
of grace. That's why we have to eat the Word, beloved. That's
why we have to be in assembly, beloved. That's why we have to
care and pray for one another, beloved. That's why we have to
have somebody to be able to say, listen, I'm struggling here,
beloved, without condemnation, so that we can encourage each
other in the gospel of free and sovereign grace, so we're not
condemned in our own spirit. So we're not hiding from the
Lord when He comes walking through the garden. So we're not trying
to cover our own nakedness. There is no nakedness for the
Christian in the soul of resting, in the place of resting, because
we have been covered by the righteousness of God, who is Jesus Christ,
our Savior. The practice of sinning, the
practice of lawlessness, is not what the children of Christ,
of God should be doing. We have a practice that we're
called to that's higher than the world, higher than the law,
higher than everything that the world could ever muster. And
that is to walk by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and to love
one another. That's it. That is the only command
given to us by the apostles that is related to our eternal hope. Every other command given to
us in the New Testament relates to consequences and joy. I want
you to hear that. Consequences and joy. Why does
my hand hurt so bad? Well, it's burned. I know, I
just love the feeling of fire. I just keep putting it in the
fire. Why are you doing that, stupid? It's just so awesome. I love the way it looks, but
you don't like the way it feels afterward. Stop doing that. See,
joy and consequences. Everything has a consequence,
even for the even for the body of Christ. But we're alive. We're alive
and our love, as we'll see in the next few weeks, our love
for one another is a testimony of Christ's love for us. And so we, as the children of
God, are the true sons and daughters We are seen as obedient even
when we're not. We are counted as righteous even
when we sin. It doesn't count against us. When you sin as a Christian,
there's not a jar of sinfulness going against you. There's no
record of that on your account. Why? Because it's already been
put on the account of Jesus and He's been crushed for it. Beloved,
this is the good news. This is what good news is all
about. The settling of the dead of justice. Justice prevails. So the one who is born again
cannot sin before God in a judicial way. Though we do have sin, God
is not holding that sin against us. So then our mind, as we mature
and as we grow and as we realize that our lives have consequences
and that the greatest command is to love one another, that
when I do things contrary to my intimacy with you, then I'm
not doing well in my life. It's common sense. It's not science.
It's not hard. I was gonna say it's not science,
not rocket science. It's not nerve science. It's
not that difficult. It's just we make it difficult.
We are alive. Faith in Jesus Christ is abiding
in the word of God, the obedience of faith. It is the practicing
of righteousness. So that the doer of righteousness,
I think I said this last week, the doer of righteousness says
and tells the truth concerning Christ. The doer of righteousness tells
the truth concerning sin. The doer of righteousness lives by faith. But there are
many morally righteous people. There's a difference in spiritual
and moral righteousness. And what does Jesus say about
them? That they're workers of iniquity. What did Jesus say
to Nicodemus in John chapter three, who was the, definite
article, teacher of all Israel? That his teaching was darkness. Because he'd not been made alive.
So that even any good work, even any obedience to the Bible in
any form without being in Christ is wicked. Isn't that crazy? So you do well, and you do right,
and you obey, and you follow the rules, and you follow the
laws, and you live a perfect life according to the law, like
Paul says, blameless, and it doesn't count for righteousness,
and so you're evil, and all the works you do were evil, yet they
were in obedience to the very thing that God commands? The
point of God's command, though, is to show you that the Christ,
His Son, whom He put forward as the satisfaction of His own
justice, is the only way in which we live righteous before Him.
So much so that this exchange that all the good deeds of a
lost person are evil and yet all the sins of a righteous person,
they're still counted righteous. That's crazy. Yep, it's crazy. And no wonder people called the
apostles insane. And that's why people call gospel
believers insane today. And they don't say insane anymore
because that's a little bit too cheap of a shot. You're just
ignorant. You're just lost. You're an antinomian. No, I'm a right top nomian. I
know where it sits. It sits in the middle of the Ark of the
Covenant in destruction, hidden from the world so we don't gold
plate it and worship it on Sundays. I said last week, anyone who
tells you anything different than what I'm speaking to you today
does not know the point of life. But where do we start? That's
where we left off last week. There's the introduction. Where do we start? In verse 10, it says, By this it is evident who
are the children of God and who are the children of the devil, who
it is not practiced righteousness is not of God. Two things. Okay. Two things. And these two things
are necessary in the context of Christian living together.
I realize how loud I am when that air goes off. Nor is the one who does not love
his brother. Now we talked about practicing righteousness last
week. We reiterated it this week. And when we love, and when we
practice righteousness in the context of love, we understand
that love is patient, Love is kind. Love keeps no record of
wrongs, is generous, is selfless, is focused affection through
service. It's about being quiet and letting
God be the one who grows, who does his work. We are God's
children, not God's soldiers. We are God's children. We are
not God's police officers. We are God's children. We are
not God's little spirits. We're children and we're learning
and we're growing to maturity. Imagine that. Jesus, the eternal
Son, before the foundations of the world, created with the Father
and the Spirit all that we know that was created. He created. They created all of it. And then Jesus created Mary.
And in her womb he created a body for himself and he became man. He took and put himself in this
body. Conceived the Holy Spirit. And
he had to have his diapers changed or whatever they wore back then.
He had to be fed. He had to be burped. He had to be cleaned. He had
to learn to speak words. He had to learn to sit up, he
had to learn to feed himself, to walk, to crawl, to obey. He had to learn the scriptures,
he had to learn the Word of God, he had to learn to be submissive
to the world's authorities, for they represented God. And we
can't understand how this one eternal God took on a second
nature and was still always God. And it's not for us to understand
how, but we can understand what we're supposed to understand
and what the Bible reveals to us. And the Bible reveals to
us is that the second person of the Trinity, the eternal son,
became a man and that in his humanity, he gave us the fullness
of God's absolute essence in bodily form. And it is witnessed
by what he taught and it's witnessed by what he did. So that as Paul would say in
Philippians 2, have this mind among you, which is yours in
Christ Jesus. When Paul says, though he was
equal with God, he did not take equality with God, something
to be grasped, but made himself a nothing, obedient slave, even
unto death on a cross. Therefore God the Father exalted
him. So this graciousness, this love
that God has for His elect and the giving of the Son and the
Son's life on earth is the epitome of what love looks like. And
we'll get into that next week. But this is the point. You are not a child of God. If
you do not believe in the son of God, as he has testified concerning
himself, as the father has testified of him, as the scripture has
testified of him, and as the spirit has testified. If you
deny any part of the testimony of Christ in the scripture, you
have not been born of God. Period. End note. End of discussion. And that includes what the scripture
teaches about the effectual work of Jesus for the elect. We can't
come to salvation by our own means and by our own terms and
by our own understanding. We have to be given understanding
by the Holy Spirit. And then when we come to know
who we are in Christ, we recognize what Christ has done for us,
this is what faith is. It is a gift given to us by God
Himself. It is something planted inside
of us. It's not something we come to.
It's not something we choose. Faith has nothing to do with
making a choice about anything. Faith has everything to do with
seeing everything God has done for His people. And Christ Jesus,
that's what it is. And then when we see Christ,
that which was from the beginning, the righteousness of Christ,
the fullness of mercy and grace and sovereign and free grace,
we see all of that. The only true response of worship. Is to love each other. So this is what the Bible wants.
This is what Christ wants from us. What does God want? What's
the will of the Lord for me? To love each other. You see,
it sounds so easy. Folks, loving folks is hard.
I mean, you might find two or three that you just adore and
you'd do anything for, but there's always the fourth one. There's
always the fourth one that's going to be a problem. There's
always going to be one with a personality difference. Differentiated worship
is stressful. Therefore, the body of Christ
has only one unifier. Selfless, patient, serving love. Because we are all one in Christ. We're all one in Christ. The
basis on which we live out the gospel is love. Don't believe
me? Look at the latter part of verse
10. Nor is the one who does not love his brother. He explains
it, verse 11, here we go. For, goodness, this is the message
that you have heard from the beginning, beloved little children,
elect, saints. You have heard, brothers and
sisters, from the beginning that we should love one another. John
doesn't leave it up for our interpretation or our imagination or for someone
else to come along and lay burdens on top of us. The burden was
Christ to bear. And now the beauty of that burden
can produce the understanding of true love. And then it is
the war and the battle to do it. And you might think, well,
I don't really struggle with not loving. I struggle with sexual
sin. Well, that's not loving. I struggle with addiction, well
that's not loving. I struggle with anger, well that's not loving.
If I get mad at my dog and lose my temper and disqualify my heart
and mind and my conscience to not be able to come here, I'm
not loving you at all. I am not loving you if I lose my temper
anywhere, even in my car or in the middle of the woods in a
hammock. Because it affects my joy and it affects my service
and it affects my study and it affects my prayer and there's
nothing I can do about it. and then you get to reap the
consequences as a teacher. You get to reap the consequences
of my sin, and you may not even know the difference. And the
same thing is true for each one of us. It's all about loving. Do I want what I want when I
want it the way I want it, or do I'm willing to lay down everything
that I think I want, or even what I might need for the sake
of the joy of my brothers and sisters in Christ? Because that
is the mind of Christ, see. How does that work? By continual
intimacy together. The Christian life and the body
of Christ is not the three-minute dating cycle. Cool shoes, cool hair, cool car,
sister, brother. I mean, you know, that's not
the way it works. Oh, I like that Bible. Let's
go, Jesus. I mean, it takes time and the more time, guess what
happens? The more time we're together, the more we realize
who we really are. And we practice this Cinderella
image of how it's going to be and who's going to be what and
how our relationships are going to be and all the cool things
we're going to do. And then when God goes, nope, nope, nope, he
just keeps thumping those players off the little vibrating football
field like we had as a kid, you know, before video games. By
chance, if you made a touchdown. No, I'm not letting you do that
because what is good for you is for you to suffer in the context
of the fellowship so that you can understand what the trueness
of the cross really did and how that your suffering fills up
what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of the
elect who God has placed you as a part of in a family. This
is what it means. And then the explanation as he
says that we should love one another because we know that
this is righteousness. This is true living righteousness.
If the fullness of the glory of God is revealed in the righteousness
of Jesus Christ and the righteousness of Jesus Christ is revealed in
the willingness for him to lay down his life for sinners, then
we in the acting and the living and the practicing of righteousness
by faith in the one who died for us, we mimic We practice,
we do what He did in the context of our own lives by loving one
another. That's the call. And it's the only burden that's
laid upon us right now as Christians. No other burden. Because it's
hard enough. And when we don't love like we
should, those who love us should forgive us and carry us through
until we're able and vice versa. When someone doesn't love us
the way they should, we should be patient and long-suffering
until they can. And it's just like a machine
that works, but it's alive. It's a body. Because we don't
want to be a son of, we're not sons and daughters of lawlessness. We're not. So when we do those
things, we're acting like that which we're not. And the example
given is Cain. And crazy enough, I don't plan
out how these sermons are going to go. I mean, I just preach
until it's time to stop and then we pick it up next week. But
on Wednesday night, two weeks ago, I preached about Cain, or
three weeks ago. And Cain and Abel is very clear
in the narrative of the scripture. Keep in mind that the Bible is
a lot of different stories that make one story. 1,500 years,
40 plus authors over 1,500 years that have all different stories
and narratives and things that are told about them, but they
all tell one story. And the one story is God's kingdom,
who is Christ and his people. And it has nothing to do with
the creative world in the context of kingdom. It is not of this
world. It's very clear. God is not going to restore peace
and prosperity in the world. He lets the devil do that to
deceive the nations. Okay? So then we get to Cain. Look at verse 12. We should not
be like Cain. Now what is he saying here? We
shouldn't act like Cain, live like Cain, think like Cain, or
love like Cain. He's not saying we shouldn't
be like Cain and be reprobate and be unbelievers. He said we
shouldn't live like Cain who was an unbeliever. Live like
Cain who was of the evil one. Remember I say all the time,
and I've been saying this for two decades. Apostolic authority
trumps Old Testament theology. It defines it. Do you want to
know if Cain was lost? John just told you. Lost? Well, nothing. The Bible says he's lost. Be
done. Don't dig where there's no dirt
to dig because you'll fall through. You see? Cain, who was of the
evil one, and murdered his brother. Don't be like that. Now see,
the issue there that a lot of us rest on, and this is where
legalists rest, and this is where self-righteous people rest, well,
I've never murdered anybody. They forget what Jesus taught
in front of the Pharisees. And He's saying, you know, unless
your righteousness is greater than these, you cannot inherit the
kingdom of heaven. And everybody shuddered in their
boots. And these guys were like, yep, look at there, I haven't
murdered anybody. And Jesus says, if you've ever been angry with
your brother, you're a murderer. If you've ever said a coarse word
to your spouse, you're a murderer. If you've ever yelled at your
dog, you're a murderer. If you've ever shaken the steering
wheel in traffic, you're a murderer. If you've ever been angry, you're
a murderer. You are a murderer and according to God's righteousness
and justice, you are guilty of the same murder that someone
who would kill a million people with their own hands. So quit saying, I'm just not
like them. Yes, you are. And don't even get me lying and
covetousness and disobedient to parents, because we're all
in trouble. Everybody in this room has not listened to their
mom and dad. This doesn't happen. And I think
every teenager in the world has said in their heart something
snarky about their parents. Whether they said it in public
or not, or to anybody else, they've said something snarky that is
not honoring. We are murderers. Love. Cain, it's not saying don't
go out and kill somebody. That's not the problem here.
The problem is Cain thought he was God's man. Cain went and
took all the harvest of his, remember I said that he's the
greatest gardener that ever lived, greatest farmer that ever lived.
Some people say, no, that's Noah. No, I think it's Cain. The earth
was a little bad shape by the time Noah was planting. He gave exactly what his father
had told him to do to the Lord. And Abel gave exactly what he
was supposed to do to the Lord. And they gave the same gifts,
in the same way, with the same prayers, in the same time, in
the same place. And from the outside looking
in, it's like, look at this worship. Look at this righteousness. Look
at all this good work. Look at these Christians. They
looked identical. But in the heart of Cain, He
hated that God would not accept his offering. And he hated God, but he couldn't
do anything with that, so instead he hated his brother who was
elect. Why did he murder Abel? Because
his own deeds, his own obedience to the commands of God in a perfect
way were evil. I want you to hear that. See
how context just takes away the chains? Context just tells us,
I mean, it really is just freshen up on your reading skills. That's
all you gotta do. Just freshen up, read the newspaper, use full
sentences when you type. I mean, just freshen up on your
reading skills. You'll get better as time goes on, and you'll begin
to understand how words work together, and it's called language.
And when it's on paper, you can even Understand it more. The worship, the identical righteous
deeds of Cain were evil. Now see, some people say, well,
no, no, no, no, no, that can't be right. Because see, God requires
a blood sacrifice to lambs. No, he doesn't. Who told you
all that? That is so silly. What Sunday school did you go
to to say that only, only offering you could bring was a live animal?
That's ridiculous. If you didn't have a live animal as a Jew,
when you went to the temple, you brought flour and they would
pour the flour. It's not about that. It's about
the fact that Cain was evil. He was not righteous because
he did not belong to Christ. Abel was righteous because he
belonged to Christ. And Abel by faith, knowing that
his acceptance before God was mercy. Grace! Redemption! Not sacrifice. Cain thinking, I'm doing better
than my brother. I bet you Cain's worship was
better. I bet you Cain's offering was bigger. If he's all able
giving one lamb, he'd probably put like 45 pumpkins on his altar. Little brother going to pray.
I'm going to pray all day. I'm going to show that I'm as
righteous as he is. He hated his brother because
his brother was righteous and he wasn't. But there's a sermon
right there, just an application. This is the world in which we
live. There's a church on every corner. There's hundreds of churches
just in this county by name. That means there's hundreds of
pastors and thousands of Christians. Yet tell them That their good
deeds don't stack up for them, don't
measure up to God. That their only hope is the finished
work of Jesus Christ for His sheep. And they will hate you. Apologetics and evangelism is
clearly one thing. It is teaching people the truth
of scripture. Apologetics is going back to
the Bible when people say, yeah, but go back to the Bible, say,
but the Lord says this. Well, this, that, and the Lord
says this. Discipleship and evangelism.
Oh, you're a believer? Then let's learn together. Let's
learn together. Let's learn the gospel. You'll
hear this in the coming weeks when I publish our most recent
Theology Answers podcast. And I say that until you are
so versed in John's gospel that you can give a full overview
of it, you should probably not read anything else in the Bible. Until the gospel of John is It
sort of just flows out of you like your birth date and your
social security number. Unless you're like me and I'm like,
what? I can't, because I got so many in my head now. You just
need to study it. So that when the world out there
begins to say, hey, you're my brother. Cool Bible. Look at that Jesus sticker on
the back of my car. And then you ask for the reason for the
hope that is in them. and they give you nonsense, expect one of two things. If
these are the sheep of Christ, they will hear the voice of their
shepherd and they will agree with what you teach them. If
they're not, they will hate you. And they won't even know they're
hating you. They'll think they're loving you. So this next exhortation, verse
13, do not be surprised. Do not be surprised. Brothers,
and that word is always plural and always gender neutral. Can you say that term? It means
siblings. Do not be surprised, brothers
and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out
of life unto death because we love the brothers. And whoever
does not love abides in death. See, those that don't love, they
are abiding in death, so don't live like them. You see this? This is why the whole chapter,
all three chapters have to be read in one sitting because you
won't get it. If you take that phrase that I just said, it'll
make you scared. We can't undo what we just heard
about Cain and Abel. We know that John is teaching
specifically about faith and about love because of faith.
Believing in the love of God for His people. And we know that we've passed
out of life. I'm out of death into life. We know because we
know what Christ has done. And we also are confident because
we're loving the brothers. Now this is troubling for me
and I'm going to work through it over the next few weeks to help you
understand that this isn't a test of your salvation. This is an
attestation of your salvation. It's a big difference. Because what does church discipline
do? Church discipline starts right now. for all of us. Discipleship is the root. We're
learning and growing and we're being confronted. Some of us
are going to go home today and say, well, I spent too much time
in the mirror and that was just a passing joke to show us that we can't
obey the first commandment. But that's what you're going
to take home from it. You know, not the depths of the glory of
God and all, all this credible stuff that I'm thinking, Oh,
my heart's about to pound out of my chest. Are you going to
like, I don't need to, I don't need to groom myself so much.
That's okay. Some of you are going to take some other things
out of the text or out of the sermon, etc. But ultimately,
we're going to come to the place where we know that we are in
Christ. We are in Christ. And when we stop looking at all
these peripheral things and all these specific things and all
these issues that we're trying to fix and we lay them aside,
that's what putting to death sin is, we lay them aside and
we stop trying to function in our flesh to become better and
we rest. It was evening, morning and evening
on the sixth day, and then the seventh day God rested and there
was no evening. It doesn't end. You see. There's no end to the rest of
God. Start today, start this moment. So we're resting. And as we're resting, we're only
in Christ. We're only seeing Christ. We're
only focused on him. And when the little gnawing man
in the back of our head says, yeah, but you're just a wicked
evil. Shh, I'm resting. Would you please shut up? Don't
do that in public because you will get in trouble. Just rest
for a moment and know that in your heart, The love of God is
yours. So what do you want from me,
God? Oh, Jesus told us, I want you
to love one another as I have loved you. OK, then what am I
doing in my life that's prohibiting me from love? I don't have enough pen and paper
to write all that down. So now I'm in trouble again,
right? No. We've passed out of death. And you want to be confident? Just do the practice, the discipline
of service, the discipline of love, the discipline of being
in the Word of God so that out of it comes love. We bog down in the details wherein
the devil lies rather than sitting in the promises of Christ where
there is life. He says, I am the resurrection
and the life. not I have it or I'm going to
offer it to you or I will provide a way for you to see it or I'm
going to put it on display. He says, I am the resurrection
and the life. So we just got to sit with him.
That's why in the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus,
which is where that comes from. When Mary stopped and sat, he
wasn't condemning Martha for her service. But he was showing that the better
of the two is first at the feet of himself. Because even when we're loving,
if we're not careful, we'll put love before what? Faith, before hope, before Christ. And we'll get to the point where
like, you know what? I know I'm in the Lord now, look how much I'm loving,
which is nothing more than another act of self-righteousness. Rather
than just saying, I am so beat and disturbed and frustrated
and just downtrodden, and I have nothing to look forward in my
inner soul, but the glory of Christ and his salvation that
is mine. It's mine. I am his and he is
mine. And that's all I have. Let me
labor through hard times to love somebody else. Because if he
can love me that way, I can love them this way. And that really
is how it is. If love and labor is so simple
that it's just like a checkmark or, yeah, look at there. I mean,
that's not it. So we rest in Christ as we war
in the flesh by resting in Christ, and then the disciplines come. And that's what this letter is
all about. And then John reminds everybody
who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that there is no
murderer that has eternal life abiding in him. So then you'll
say, oh, I'm a murderer because I've hated my brother or I might
hate him right now. I'm a murderer. That's not what
John's trying to say. You're not a murderer. You may
be committing the sin of murder in your flesh, but you're not
a murderer. If there was such a thing as some type of judgment
where all the hundreds of billions of people who have lived through
the year would stand in front of the Lord and He would go,
Next. Okay, here John, I see you. John is a murderer and he's
an adulterer and he stole some candy, so he's a thief and all
of that, but you know what? We're going to let that go, John.
This is my grace for you. Get on in there. It's not going
to happen. Because if there ever were a
book of wrongs and sins and they opened to John's page, his name's
just going to be there in a whole list of other names with no sins
beside them. Where the book of justice is going to have all
the murderers and all their murder and all the thieves and all their
thieving. And all the liars and all their lies, and though we
may have done some of those things, we are not in that list. We are
not murderers and thieves and liars. We are children. No murderer has the life abiding in Him.
But we're not murderers. So let's stop acting like them.
See how easy that is? Don't be like Cain, who's a murderer.
Cain has no place in the kingdom of heaven, not because he's a
murderer, but because God doesn't love him. You might think that's a harsh
thing to say, but you know that's what John has told us. That's
what Jesus has told us. We're going to get over there
in chapter four when we begin to test and discriminate against
the things we hear, the spirits that we hear, the truth or the
lies that we hear, and discriminate against the confession of one
man versus the approach of that same man in the context of love.
So back to the point that I was trying to make about 10 minutes
ago is this. We get to a place where we find
sin in our life and it interrupts our ability to love. Why is that
so loud? Because I was doing judgment there. Discipline in the church, maturity,
growing, admonishment, encouragement to love and to good deeds. That's
what love is, good deeds for the sake of the saints. So in
all of these things, now when someone refuses to lay down the
flesh for the sake of the love of the brothers, the Spirit of
God has not brought them to that mind. So in that sense, the scripture
says that the mind has been what? The conscious has been seared. So they're excommunicated. They're not part of the family
until we see that they are willing to hear the gospel. And they may be a brother or
sister, but until the time they come back, we consider them,
we look at them in the context of our relationship as an unbeliever. We still love them, you know,
in our feelings, we still pray for them, but we're not obligated
to serve them anymore until they come back to the place to test
the spirit of their own affection, to know that it is Christ who
loved them first. Because if you have faith in
Christ, the Holy Spirit of God has sealed you. And though you
may be like David, and be an incredibly sinful and wicked
man, though you may be like Abraham who raped his own slave to fulfill
the promise of God and lied about it over and over again and lied
about his wife to save his own backside coward. He's not all those things. David
was not a murderer. David was not an adulterer. And
everybody said that about him, and God had something else to
say. He said, this man is a man after my heart. That's why I
read Isaiah 51 this morning. Now what in the world are we
to do with that? That's what grace does, isn't it? Grace is
not just this kindness and long-suffering, because God is long-suffering
with the reprobate, but there's coming a day where the piper's going
to be paid. There's coming a day when Lady Justice is going to
take the blindfolds off and she's going to take that sword out.
There's going to come a day when Christ and His justice is going
to set the record straight and the murderers will be gone. We're not counted as murderers.
So let's quit acting like one. In verse 16, I'll read this and
we'll pick it up next week. By this we know love. So the next
question, then how do I love? What is it by this we know love
that He laid down His life for us? And we ought to lay down
our lives for the brothers. So he'll explain what that looks
like next week. And it's not that hard. It's
not like you've got to take out a notebook and take notes. It's
really just one or two points. One or two points. But we know
that the commandment he gives us, verse 23, this is the commandment,
that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and we
love one another because of it. That's it. There's Christian
living. That's what the church is all about. That's why we gather
together on these days. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for your steadfast love, Lord, for the fact that you are more
than just patient. Father, you are forgiving. You
have taken our sin and you have thrown it away by putting it
on Jesus and crushing him in our place. Father, we rejoice
in this great love. We rejoice in this great mercy. We rejoice
in this incredible justice. For you are righteous. And because
we are in Christ, we are righteous. So guide us to live in a manner
of righteousness, including all the sins that were instructed
to put away. To not be haughty, to not lie,
to speak the truth in love. Father, all these things. Why? Because that is how we love you. By loving each other. And the
ultimate end of your glorious grace, to the praise of your
glory, is that we will be loving you as we love one another. So teach us that as we continue
in this text over the weeks to come. Help us to rest in Jesus. In his name we pray, amen. Thank
you, church.