We're going to be in chapter
2, verse 2 only today, dealing with a little bit of the nuances
there in that text. Have you ever known someone but
not necessarily knew them? You know, they're sort of an
acquaintance you see often. You may see them in the marketplace.
You may see them in the job. You may know them from your neighborhood
or from your community or from some type of affinity group or
some place that you frequent. And you've never really had a
conversation at length about anything. You truly don't know
them at all. But just their presence is an
encouragement. You ever been around, maybe it's
a waitress, or a waiter, or a doctor, or a nurse, or a receptionist,
or someone at the crosswalk, a crossing guard. You don't see
those around here much, but they were all over the place in California.
And they were always just that type of personality to say, it's
good to see you today. Oh, nice hairdo. All right, I
like that new set of shoes you have. And they notice things
about you because they're just people-focused and people-oriented. It just sort of makes your day
for that moment. You ever been around a person
like that? I'm sure we've got a list of those people. And then
you find years later that, oh, that person has passed away.
And you sort of grieve for a moment, you know, that was the nicest
person, but we can say that about them, but yet we know nothing
about them. They could have been a serial
murderer. They could have been an alien, and a lizard person,
and a meat suit. They could have been a cannibal
on the weekends. They could have been some demonic
devil worshiper. I mean, and the list goes on.
But in reality, we assess that person's entire life and character
based on our small, tiny, short interaction. Now imagine you
as that person. What is it that people see? What is it that they recognize?
What is it that, what is it about you that causes them to say,
you know what, I just, I love that person? And this is not a, suggesting
that you should become that person, I just want us to reflect on
that for a moment. Because we all can identify someone like that.
And maybe if it's not someone that you see on a regular basis,
maybe it's a particular anchorman or woman that you see on your
local news channel. Somebody that just, I don't know,
that you've seen your entire life. I remember being a child
and when Walter Cronkite said it, it was authoritative. It
sounded true. The moon has blown up and then
little bitty pieces of cheese are falling all over the state
of Georgia. And I would have believed it. I mean, Ronald Reagan
was another guy. As a child, you know, he was
the president when I was a child. And he came out with this idea
about Star Wars, where he'd shoot the nuclear bombs into space
and they would just disperse. I remember sleeping so well that
night. And I remember at dinner, us having prayer, thanking God
for just his provision. And it was all a lie, you know,
it was just made up, but it gave us some sense of hope. I didn't
know anything about this guy, but what he said encouraged me. Beloved, we are to be about the
business of encouraging one another. And here's what I'm finding more
and more in these times when we are not allowed to be in a
normal state of intimacy. Is that sometimes we feel like
we're lesser and have lesser importance. Sometimes we feel
like we have hardly no power at all to engage in each other's
life because what gift do I have? What knowledge do I have? What
ability do I have? And honestly, sometimes it only
takes a small, short word like what you posted last night. It's
an extreme encouragement to the point where I begin to write
hymns, not like the one I wrote Wednesday, but a true worshipful
experience through the encouragement of those truths that we've known
for years. These little things are important. And I believe that this is one
of the things that is in view when John wrote this letter.
His, therefore, of his gospel, because we share in the light
of the righteousness of God, let us walk in a manner that
reflects who he is. Let us be an encouragement to
one another. Let us love one another. And
it's not always about writing the big checks and building the
big walls and digging the big ditches. Sometimes it's just
a small, like walking past a flower garden and the aroma that just
catches you as the breeze blows by is a sort of just a small,
minute opportunity for joy. And when we are able to encourage
each other in the smallest way, we build each other up when we
encourage each other in the Lord Jesus Christ. Next week, sermon,
this will make a whole lot more sense and have a whole lot more
application, but we're moving into that. So I've thought it
fitting as God has put it into my heart to share it with you. Be an encourager. Little by little
by little. And let me tell you one of the
best ways in today's climate that we could be a great encourager. When we come to one another and
fuss and complain and moan, just remind us of the gospel. Just
remind me of the gospel. Don't pull my string that I've
already got hanging halfway out. because of my pet peeves or my
fears. Don't say, you know what, me too. Just remind me of the
gospel and I will do the same and we will all be better off
for it. In this gospel reminder, John is doing just that. He's
reminding these elect saints who were sealed from the foundation
of the world in the finished work of Jesus Christ who have
now effectually understood and apprehended and are enjoying
the fellowship and sharing in this grace He is telling them
that the gospel is a secure proclamation of what God has done for His
elect alone so that they may share in the joy of the saints
forever and ever and ever because Christ is alive. Because Christ
satisfied God's wrath. Because Christ purchased them
through His blood. And I don't care how keen we
are in our theological fervor. I don't care how solid we might
be in our understanding of certain principles. Beloved, all of us,
everyone, myself included, we all have weird little small specks
of sand when it comes to theological problems in our minds. There's always going to be a
cultural infection when it comes to how we parse out the truth.
So that our only hope of being clean and pure and more importantly
precise in our understanding of what is taught in scripture
is to always yield to scripture and to always go back to the
written word with such ferociousness that it actually seems like we're
myopic and blind to anything but the scripture alone. And
when we get that accusation, we ought to praise God for it. Because until we have come to
know the teaching of scripture, we need to really stop trying
to figure out anything else. In John chapter 1, John chapter
2, let's read together the first two verses and talk about these
things. My little children, I am writing
these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does
sin. We have an advocate with the
father. Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our
sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole
world. Period. That's it. Because what John's about to
start doing is giving some commandments that are new, but not new. Giving
some understanding and some clarity on what it means to live in light.
giving some assurance over and over again. And he punches it
in there just when his readers start thinking, I'm just failing
so much. He punches in with propitiation. He does it over in chapter four
again. He talks about it. He gives all hope in Christ alone,
period, without any, any consequence to us looking inwardly for our
hope, for our assurance. Yet we look inwardly and we look
outwardly relationally For our intimacy as we share in the gospel,
we also share in life. Through some brief research last
night, well, actually this morning, I was rolling through many of
you have seen the personal message that I've sent to the church.
Rolling through some of these doctrinal issues that I'm trying
to put on paper concerning Trinitarian theology, and I came across this
17th century cult. And I began to look at their
distinctive teachings, and of course it being late here, it's
still early in California, so I shot Eddie a couple of thoughts.
He goes, oh, these people are crazy. But as they delved into the damnable
idea that Jesus isn't God, Then they moved into the teaching
of the apostles in connection with the love of God. And they
opened up the floodgate of their septic tank and it just spread
all over the lawn. It's going to grow really, really
thick. And their whole premise is that
we need to love like Jesus loved. And they're right. And you see, when we come from
a place of being shackled in the religious circles of evangelicalism
like we know today, like Puritanism that we saw historically, it
is those shackles of legalism that crept into our culture as
the colonies expanded that caused the great pushback and the knee-jerk
debauchery of westward expansion. And if you know anything about
your American history, you'll understand what I'm saying. And the more
the communities and the managers and the mayors and the governors
and all of the different leaders of certain communities, every
community that was established at the founding of our country
was established based on the religious convictions and the
principles of morals that they wanted to impart on the community
in which they governed. And so if you lived in one particular
area, you had to wear collars that covered your hands, covered
your face. You had to wear belt buckles
that covered your curves so that it was a show of piety. And then
later on, as the country grew, when they began to remanufacture
furniture, they realized the lustful urges of humanity, especially
from men, couldn't handle just the abstract idea of a leg on
a chair, so we cover it too. No lie. Because the Lord only
knows how horrible it is to sit here and see all these exposed
chair legs. These poor men here are about
to lose their minds. Let's cover them with a skirt. So when we think of sin, a lot
of times we are looking at a list of do's and don't do's that if
we don't do one, we sin, and if we do do the other, we sin.
And I'm not saying that that's a negative thing to look at,
but when we see John writing this letter, he is not coming
up with a list of things that prove that you are in Christ.
He has already established what causes you to be in Christ, and
it is Christ alone. There is no, yeah, but, what
about, yeah, oh goodness, hey, how about this? There is no room
for that conversation in the context of John's first epistle. Because John settles it in his
first two chapters. He settles it over and over again
that if you aren't resting, you know what resting looks like?
Go to sleep. What are you doing when you're asleep? What voluntary
motion is taking place? What willful volition is moving
when you are in REM sleep? Nothing. Matter of fact, some
of us as we get older can't even breathe on our own. We've got
to have a CPAP machine just to get going. We can't even breathe while we're
asleep if our body's not in good health. Rest. The gospel is peace. The gospel is rest. The gospel
is hope. The gospel is life. What shall
you and I do to continue to pursue life if Christ is not life? And that is settled in John's
mind. That is settled in Paul's mind
as he writes to the Romans. That is settled in Paul's mind
as he condemns the Judaizers of Galatia. It is settled in
the mind of James as he writes to his Jewish brothers. And as
John writes to his Jewish Christian brothers in Ephesus, he continues
to give this hope for their soul and for their joy. But he knows,
he knows that when our flesh gives into itself and we commit
willful sin, that our joy flushes down the proverbial toilet of
our conscience. He knows that. He also knows that if I'm part
of this team, you know, I remember I got my certification in fitness
and weight loss coaching and some other things back in 2008.
And I helped a lot of people lose a lot of weight, a lot of
weight. One particular guy lost over
400 pounds. And the simplicity of what he would see, anyway,
don't wanna get into all that, but the point is this. I remember
being in the gym with this guy one day, and I mean, he was literally
900 pounds. When he flew, he had to buy three
tickets. I'm not kidding. He was chronic. Had to walk in
a wheelchair, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it was one of
those things where he didn't know what he could do. He couldn't
come in there and throw weights around. He couldn't do leg presses. He could
just walk. But the cool thing is, when he
was walking, he was carrying at 900 pounds. That's some severe
workout. So we learned how to reduce what
he ate, how to become a little bit more healthy. But I remember
people seeing him in the gym. He would tell me a few weeks
after he started going to the gym on his own. He emailed me
one time. He said, James, I'm very discouraged
because there's a lot of people that look at me and they see
me in the gym and they think, why is he here? What's he hoping
to prove? And then he began to coach people.
He began to help people. See, this is a volunteer thing.
I mean, just we help people. If we can help people, help them. And he said the first time he
walked up to somebody in the gym and says, hi, I'm a fitness, I'm
a certified fitness instructor. And they looked at him. Still
very, very out of shape. Still very much not the typical
what? Bounce a quarter off your pec
type guy. He didn't fit the part in the mind of others that he
should be a fitness instructor, that he should be a certified
anything. Who are you? Really? It's like going to the
dentist and the guy's teeth are all rotted out. Open up. Who does your teeth? Or going
to a barber whose hair is hacked up. That's what it looks like
sometimes when we see the church who walk in light. who are swimming
in darkness. But the devil is tricky. And
God has permitted the enemy to deceive the nations and to deceive
the religious and to deceive the self-righteous. by allowing them to understand
what is easily and logically apprehended from the pages of
scripture, but also imparting the idea that when you see yourself
swimming in darkness, when you see darkness in you at all, that
maybe you're not a believer. So that when you see darkness,
if you want to be sure that you're a believer, you better put the
darkness out. You better stop speaking in profane
ways. You better stop watching profane
things. You better stop eating in a profane
manner. You better do something. You
better change something, because if you don't change something,
you can't hope to have eternal life. Where is that found in
the gospel? That's not good news for us,
beloved. John clearly establishes the gospel. And guess what? What
he's doing here in these first two verses before he gets to...
What does verse 3 say of chapter 2? And by this, we know that we
have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Satan exegetes
this this way. If you obey, you know that you've
been saved. And that's a lie. That's not
what John says. If he does, I'm ripping 1 John
out of the Bible and I'm burning the ESV. He's not saying that. We don't know how to read English
anymore. We need to go and learn to read stories, read stories. Stop reading blogs and articles
and things of that nature. Read stories, read prose. Read literature and get you a
Bible that has no numbers, no verses, no footnotes, no nothing,
so that it can be right before your eyes so you can read it
and God, the Spirit, will teach you something. The very fact
that I can say 1 John 2, verse 3 is a problem. That's not saying page three
of the Betty Crocker cookbook in the steak section, ingredient
number six. That's the thing. Paprika. I mean, you know. Who gives a butt about paprika
if you don't know what to do with it? Who cares about the
ingredients of anything if it doesn't make sense in the context
of the recipe? Beloved, we have to just read.
And John's going to make sure with verses 1 and 2 that you
read verse 3 correctly. Guess what? I'll give you a heads
up. The word know and the word share are the same word. They're
synonyms in the context of John's writing. Know is not being redeemed
by the Spirit. Knowing God, according to verse
2 and 3, is not being born again. Remember how I started my sermon
this morning? Have you ever known a person that you really didn't
know that encouraged you? We can be known by God and we
can know God intimately through Jesus Christ salvificly, but
there's a lot of not knowing God that's still left to be done.
Intimately. But before we move to that part,
John wants the gospel to be the foundation. He wants to show
you there is an ironclad seal for you. So here we are. Last week we looked at the idea
that sin is contrary to the light of God's nature. So that when
we sin, we know that we are not doing what is pleasant before
the Lord. If I lose my temper, even on the inside, I am angry. And if I'm angry on the inside,
I am guilty under the righteous law of God of being a murderer.
And I'm a guilty murderer whether I say anything, whether my face
reveals anything, whether I do anything, or whether I kill anybody,
I'm still guilty And the compounding guilt of that can be built upon
even as I begin to let my flesh loose. Or maybe lies. Or whatever it
might be. We know, even people who have
never heard of Jesus, never heard of God, never given any religious
thought to anything, even in a philosophical sense, understand
murder and hatred. Understand deceit and lie. Lying. Understand what it means
to covet and to be jealous and to desire what's not yours and
to hate those who have because you don't have. See James chapter
4. That's why they hated each other
because they were jealous of each other. They couldn't be happy for someone
else because they didn't get it too. So we go on and we begin to look
into ourselves and we realize that in the best of days of obedience,
we're still not righteous because of it. There's no meritorious
reality concerning the fact that when I feel anger in my spirit,
The counter to that is to remember what Christ has done for me and
the fact that He has laid down His life for me and that I am
His righteousness because He has given me His skin. How dare I murder in my heart
toward anyone else for anything, no matter how vile it is. How
dare I be the judge in my heart against another person because
of their fleshly sin, especially because it aggravates me and
my entitled but. Christ is our life. But sin is contrary to the light
of his nature. Sin, as I said last week, is
the reason Jesus died. Sin disrupts our joy, it disrupts
our living, it disrupts our intimacy, it disrupts our loving, it disrupts
everything. If I have hidden sins in my life
that you don't know about, if I have sin that I struggle with
in a manner that I just give up, Your joy is not going to
be complete. If my responsibility to you is
to teach you the joy of Christ, I am not going to be in a place
where I can do so. Effective. Now, I might can fake
it. But beloved, it's only a matter
of time for it to come to a head. So, grace gives life. in Jesus Christ, eternal life. Let's start with that. And then
we understand that this life brings a sharing in the nature
of God. We share the righteousness of
Christ because it's imputed to us. All the benefits, all the
things, all the promises are ours. We are promised to share
in the glorification that Christ has. We are promised to share
in the glory that Christ has. And so love by definition then
is as we live our lives for the sake of others, as Christ lived
his life and gave it for the sake of us, we are indeed loving
one another in that way. And when we are loving each other
who are the body of Christ by the very explicit teaching of
the apostles, that and only that is the way we love God. Love
is not how we feel toward him. Love is what we do. So. As we love in life together
and we're living together, sharing in this, we're also sharing in
the joy, we're also sharing in the love for one another based
on those definitions, the joyful fellowship begins. It's sort of like physical health.
When we're feeling good, and we've got a good night's sleep,
and we're on point with everything, and our joints don't hurt, and
our eyes don't hurt, and our head doesn't hurt, and our feet
don't hurt, and then we fall down a flight of stairs, we're
in trouble. Three years ago, when we were
at a theme park, and I was pushing Abigail on the sidewalk, and
my wife was on the moving sidewalk to the left, and we were racing.
And I was full sprint. And Abigail sticks her left foot
out and touches the front tire of that stroller. And I nearly
do an endo. For those of you who aren't bikers,
that's a head over the front. I nearly do an endo on top of
my four-year-old daughter. So to stop that, I do the John
Travolta fully alive type thing and just slide on my knees about
here to the front row. Didn't feel a thing until I stood
up. It ruined my week. I was excited,
I was running. You know what, I barely even
limped out of the bed the next morning. I couldn't move for
seven months. My knee hurt so bad that if I
got down on it, I would fall over and hit my head on the ground.
It would hurt so bad. It was horrifying. No matter how healthy
we are, when something happens that destroys that physical unity,
that health, that perfect energy, it's over. It was just my knee. How come my other body parts
just didn't have a good time? I'm going to just wrap this up
and hobble all around that theme park the next day. No, I sat
on a bench for seven hours in agonizing pain going, oh, what
have I done? And I tore my favorite pair of
pants. Insult to injury. When sin enters our life, it's
like tearing our knees up. And you may not be the knee,
but if you're the knee and you're tearing up the body because of
your sin, you are destroying the joy of the church as a whole,
even when we don't realize it. But never in any of those moments
are you to doubt what Christ has done for you. because the
assurance and the solidity of the gospel of grace is indeed
the cure for your knee problem, for your sin problem. So sin
is natural to man. If you say you have no sin, you're
calling God a liar. The truth of what God says concerning
human nature is you're lying against. This is the first four
weeks, a little review. then in contrast is non-existent
with God except in judgment. God's only relationship with
sin is judgment, is justice, is wrath. It's the only relationship. And God is righteous and good
and just, synonyms there, to bring judgment and wrath against
sin because He's good. Everything He is has determined
everything that is right and even in the greatest caverns
of non-exposed religion or atheism, every person agrees on what is
right and what is not, on the basic sense. So sin, if it is
not paid for, if wrath is not satisfied, then what happens?
Somebody who is a sinner is going to pay with their life. They
are going to pay by sitting under the wrath of God. But if sin
on the other side is paid for, what is the outcome of that?
If sin is paid for and wrath is averted, then life is given. The wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus. So
if that is true, then if sin has been paid for, wrath has
been satisfied, then who can be judged? anyone whose sins
have not been paid for. So anyone who has been given
to Christ has no fear of judgment because Christ did something.
Christ accomplished something. Now, when I say obedient, I could
mean two things. I could mean that we're doing
what is right today. If I say, okay, everybody stand up and
you all stand up, you're being obedient. You're, you're obeying
in that context, this verbal command. And I said, now everybody
turned three circles and happy you do. Cause the other were
like, some of you can't turn cause maybe you're sore or the
others think of what is this? This is, this is out of place
in our worship. We've got to have a meeting about
this. Doing the hokey pokey in church kind of craziness. Some of you would obey, but does that mean that you're an
obedient person? No. What is God's requirement of
obedience? Absolute righteousness. what
man has ever accomplished absolute righteousness, and that is the
one who was absolutely righteous from the foundations of the world,
who took on humanity, thus making his humanity absolutely righteous,
and that is Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God, the
God Most High. So Jesus Christ then is sinless
by nature. He's sinless by essence. He's
sinless by action. He's sinless by desire. He could
not sin. We call that impeccability. Jesus
could not sin. God cannot sin. So when we choose not to sin,
we're not being found obedient before God in any way of getting
credit. Or as we saw a few weeks ago
on our Slack channel, we don't get a star by our name. The same
way I think that Sister Marianne said she grew up thinking sometimes
when she did sin, she got an X by her name. It doesn't work
that way. That's not the economy of grace. That's not the economy of good
news. That's not good news. Well, son,
why do you have an X by your name? Well, I got upset with
my mom. Oh, boy, you know, three strikes.
Maybe you're not a Christian. How about why is there an X by
your name? Well, there shouldn't be an X
by your name. In fact, your name shouldn't be on the board at
all because it's written in the Lamb's Book of Life. What are we doing?
Who put that up there? Heretic, get out of my daughter's
face. Stop sinning because you're messing
up your joy. You're messing up your focus.
You're messing up your assurance. You're messing up these things.
You're ruining that which is promised to you in the context
of your conscience. And we dealt with that some on
Wednesday night. We'll deal with conscience again this coming
Wednesday in our Hebrews reading. But all men know what is right.
We cannot become sinless. And if we did become sinless
in our actions, deeds and thoughts, we would still be sinful. And
the only way we're righteous is that Christ died on our account. So Jesus is sinless. We've been
given to Him. He is the righteousness of God.
He gives us His righteousness. Therefore, believers are righteous
before the Father because they are in Christ Jesus and they
have been given to their credit the nature of His perfection. So then most of all they are
perfect in the eyes of the Father because His wrath has been passed
on to Jesus the Son. So now let's take these two verses and let's deal with the fact
that chapter, I mean, verse two uses something that were not
common to hear in our vernacular, the word propitiation, the word
propitiation. Hellas months would be the Greek
word there. And in chapter four, also the
only two places you see it anywhere. That's the last Greek that I'll
do this year. Verbally. But it is the word that can be
in some sense, and we see in the Septuagint, you know, the
Greek Old Testament, we see that it can be translated as what? Forgiveness. So let's read it with our English
definitions. He, verse 2, is the propitiation
for our sins. Now let's read it with the two
definitions. It can mean forgiveness or it can mean what? The stain
of wrath. The appeasement of wrath. He
is the forgiveness of our sins. That doesn't even make sense.
How is Jesus our forgiveness? No, he is what? He is the appeasement
for our sins. He appeases God. That's why he
says we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the
righteous. Jesus isn't the forgiveness giver. He is the wrath bearer. That's why he was called the
Lamb of God. And it had nothing to do with
the nature of Jesus' personality. He wasn't like a goat boy. Hey,
everybody, I'm Jesus. I mean, this is not to be imposed
upon the teaching of scripture. It's not it's not supposed to
be imposed. I've seen many people try to make, oh, Jesus is a lamb.
And this is how lambs are. No lamb, sheep were just what
they grew. It's the creature that was killed. It's the blood that was spilled over and over and over. And I
hate to say this, but if you want to know more about why,
listen to last week's sermon on Hebrews. So we're going to go out of order
here. We're going to deal with propitiation for our sins. Then we're going
to deal with the advocacy of Christ and his righteousness.
And then we're going to deal with the world. And that's how
we'll close out the rest of the day's message. There's the outline.
Follow it if you think you can. He is the propitiation for our
sins. Listen, look at these verbs.
Is. Not provided, not gave opportunity. He is. And we'll talk about that
in a minute. For what? Our sins. This collective
plural pronoun. Possessive. Our. John has done that a lot. We
testify. We have seen it. We proclaim
that you too may have fellowship with us. And we have fellowship
with his son and with the father. And we are writing these things
to you that our joy together may be complete. And this is
the message we have heard. And we proclaim to you. If we
say, if we do not, if we walk, if we. He includes himself in
every bit of this. And then collectively in the
we is these Jewish brothers and sisters who have come to the
grace of God by His mercy, who have been redeemed by the gift
of faith through the death of Jesus Christ. They are aware
of what God has done for them. These are the elect, beloved
little children. They are secure in Christ. Jesus is the propitiation for
our sins. His audience and His collective
authoritative We, as in the apostles, we who are the witnesses and
the proclaimers of the message who hold in guard and that there
is no other message except that which we have proclaimed to you.
This is the reality. You know that God is righteous
and that we now who are in Christ are righteous. So let's walk
in righteousness. To appease or to placate, that's
what propitiation means in this context. But how is Jesus the appeasement
for our sins? Because God, as we've seen, has
no darkness in Him. He is righteous. So His relationship
with sin, I've already said, is justice, is wrath. God is
not like, the true God of Scripture, is not like the God of mythology.
That if the people come and give Him enough corn, or give Him
a blonde woman, or give Him the firstborn, He'll stave off His
anger for a couple of years. God, in Romans chapter 3, put
forth His Son to be propitiation, to appease His wrath. God put forth Christ as propitiation. The wrath of God is satisfied
because God himself provided the lamb. God is not looking
for you. Or for me. to come up with our own sacrifice.
God is not looking for us to change our ways to such a place
where His wrath is satisfied. God has never in the scripture
given any indication in the context of eternal life and the redemption
of His elect where any person ever born of parents could ever
offer anything but sin to God in the context of appeasing His
wrath. So propitiation has everything
to do with God's divine anger and God's divine wrath. And we
could say it this way, God's holy justice and propitiation
means that the judgment is satisfied, that God is no longer looking
for wrath, that God is no longer angry. That God is no longer
looking for justice. And so His wrath is satisfied.
He has turned away because there is nothing to do. There is nothing
for God to pursue concerning His people. Because He pursued
it all in Christ. You know, I think we should translate
propitiation in 1 John, atoning sacrifice. I think then people
would get the idea, wow, something happened when Jesus died. He
became the effectual object of God's wrath and God's wrath then
was satisfied. That's the whole idea of atonement. Forgiveness is surely in order
because payment has been completed. How do we know payment is complete? Because of propitiation. Because the wrath is satisfied.
Wrath, the payment of holiness and righteousness, is what? Judgment. If it's paid, there's
nothing to put on it. The mortgage is paid and the
bank takes your money anyway. They're criminal. I'm not saying
it wouldn't happen, but the banks aren't God. So wrath shows that God deals
justly with sin and evil. Grace shows that God deals mercifully
with His elect, with His children. But now the question is, how
can He do that if God always deals with sin, with justice? Well, now we go back up. If anyone
does sin, and your conscience bears witness to sin, and you
have rebelled against what is clearly taught in Scripture,
and you know it, there is no condemnation for you because
you are in Christ. And the idea of Christ and His
high priestly role is that He satisfied the wrath of God, He
poured the blood of His own body, He sacrificed His flesh once
and for all, and He tore away all judgment because He bore
it upon Himself. So He advocates before the Father
of justice on behalf of those for whom He died. That's the
gospel. How is a man right with God?
Through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ who gave Himself
for them. So God propitiated Himself. by giving His Son. Now, let's go back to the we
have of verse one. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. We, us, the apostles, and you,
my Jewish brothers and sisters in the faith, you and I together,
we have an advocate. If any of us sin, if any one
of us sin, We have an advocate with the father. We do not have
to fear God, our father. We do not have to hide from our
father. We do not have to worry about
the wrath of our father for Christ is our advocate and he is propitiating
the father as we speak because his blood was shed for us. And if the wrath of God is not
satisfied, if propitiation just means forgiveness, then why in
the world is He advocating for us to the Father? Why is the
Father even involved here? But He's with the Father. He's
the Advocate. We have an Advocate with the
Father. Jesus Christ the Righteous. The Father, the One to whom justice
is due. The one to whom payment is due.
He is no longer seeking justice against his elect because justice
is satisfied in Jesus Christ. And these are his children. Jesus took the penalty. And here's a beautiful thing.
God is at peace concerning His elect because Christ is His Passover
Lamb. And if that's not enough for
you, just keep reading. Jesus Christ the Righteous. We have
an advocate for the Father. Jesus Christ the Righteous. Who
is this advocate? He is Jesus. That is His name, Christ. That
is the Holy, Anointed One of God. The English translation of the
Jewish word would be Messiah. This is the English translation
of the Greek word for Messiah, Christos. And He is the Righteous One.
As a matter of fact, He is the righteousness of God. According
to Romans chapter 3, starting in verse 21, as I've already
alluded to four times this morning, we know that all that God has
established to display His righteousness before the birth of Jesus were
shadows of Him. So Jesus is the righteousness
of God. He is the fullness of all majesty
and holiness and purity. God is light. Jesus is the epitome
of all that God is. We see all that Christ is and
we know all that God is. And we can learn more and more
of that as we grow together in grace. I'll keep emphasizing
that because verse 3 is important to this context. It's not a new
thought. It is the details of this argument. It is why he's
arguing this good gospel. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment
of the shadows of old. Every law that has ever been
written, every command that has ever been given, every promise
that has ever been made is Jesus Christ, the righteousness of
God. Because that is true, there's
some so's I want to go through. Therefore, so, because of this,
We have eternal life. And nothing can change that,
not even our rebellious flesh. Nothing can change your status
before the Father if Christ is your advocate, because he died
in your place. And I'm going to prove that to
you in a minute. So when we hear these words,
so that you may not sin, We are to understand the character
and the nature of whose we are, who we belong to. And we should
out of love and genuine thanksgiving and love for the brethren, we
should do what we can by His mercy, by His grace, by His power,
just like the cults do perfectly in the eyes of men. Walk in a
manner that's indicative of who we are. If I'm your fitness instructor
and I show up smoking crack, you're gonna have some reservations.
I believe in health. I mean, you know. I don't think I wanna go to that
fitness instructor. No wonder he's got so much energy.
I don't know if it gives you energy or not. So we hear the words you may
not send, but if we do, we have hope. We have assurance. We have Jesus who is Messiah,
who is the righteousness of God. Why would God do that? Because
it is the love of God for His elect. What is this love all
about? Well, you automatically think
about John 3. And John 3 certainly tells us that God loved in this
way that He gave the only son that He had. In order that His
beloved people of the world, His elect, will have eternal
life. Not could possibly get or may
have the opportunity. They have eternal life. The believing ones. What is this love? Love is not
what God feels. Love is what God has done. God
has done the work of redemption. This is how he loves. God loves
his people of the world and he guarantees them eternal life. John 3. God is the one giving
Jesus for himself so that he will have his wrath and justice
and righteousness vindicated by letting us live. John 10. Jesus goes and talks
in conjunction with the Pharisees. He talks. He says in John 10,
truly, truly, I say to you, one does not enter the sheepfold
by the door, but climbs, excuse me, he who does not enter the
sheepfold by the door, but climbs in another way, that man is a
thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door
is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens,
the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name,
and he leads them out. And when he has brought out all
of his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follows him, for
they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow,
but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice
of strangers. This figure of speech Jesus used
with them, but they did not understand what he was saying. So he again
said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the
sheep. All who come before me are thieves
and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the
door. If anyone enters by me, he will
be saved and he will go in and out and find pasture. The thief
comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they,
my sheep, may have life and have it abundantly." So John is now
teaching what that abundant life looks like as we wait for glorification. I am the good shepherd. And the
good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. There you go.
He was a hired hand and not a shepherd. He does not own the sheep. He
sees a wolf and he leaves. And the wolf snatches and scatters
the sheep. He flees because he's a hired hand and cares nothing
for the sheep. I, on the other hand, Jesus says,
am the good shepherd. I know my own and they know me
just as the father knows me and I know the father. And I, verse
15b, lay down my life for the sheep. And then he goes and says, I've
got other sheep that are not of this fold, but they will come
into my door, into my presence. I will lay my life down. So that
I can bring my one flock to him. For this reason, the father loves
me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again and
no one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own accord
and I have the authority to lay it down and I have the authority
to take it up again. And this charge I have received.
from my father, and then John talks about the division that
was caused amongst the religious. They couldn't bear the words.
If we look at the grammar, especially in the Greek construction of
John 10, in that that I just read, when we see verse 15, just
as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my
life for the sheep. We could translate that, I lay
down my life on behalf of my sheep. It's not just I'll die to save
them or to keep them safe. I am laying the life that I have
down for them. They will not go to the slaughter.
They can't enter into the temple. They can't enter into the Holy
of Holy. Their blood is ill effect. I will give my blood instead
and they will live. This giving of the life of Christ,
his willful giving of his life in substitution for theirs, propitiates
the father. Satisfies the father, appeases
the father's righteousness. It is the truth of God's gracious
and effectual love. This on behalf reveals that Christ
put Himself in the place of His sheep. He atoned for them truly
in real time when He died. They're not just forgiven, but
God's wrath is satisfied in His death for them. And we see that
in many other places. We see it in Ephesians 5. Christ
also loved the church. He gave Himself up for her. Literally, he gave himself up
as a sacrifice on behalf of his assembled ones in their place.
Galatians 1.4, who gave himself for our sins. In Romans 8.32,
speaking there of God the Father delivered up for sacrifice. He delivered him over for us
all. That's what it says there. And so just in the syntax of
here in John and other places, we see that Christ substituted
himself for his sheep. And now we get to the latter
part of this verse. And why so much emphasis on this?
Because this is the gospel. And why so much emphasis on the
reality of the effectual atoning work of Jesus? Because it paid
for people, and those people will never die. They will always
have eternal life. They will always be in the hand
of God, even when they sin, no matter how vile. So that our hope comes back to
what Christ has done, what God has done through Christ for His
people. This cannot be missed, beloved. Because when we see now this
collective, we, us, ours, he's talking about he and the disciples
and the apostles and his audience, the Jewish people of Ephesus
who are in the faith of Christ. And he says he is the propitiation
for our sins. He has satisfied the wrath of
God for our sins and not just for our sins, but for the sins
of the whole world. We need to understand in that
context that because of the effectual nature of the teaching of this
doctrine, which is gospel, He does not mean every single person
in the entire world. Because if He did, then every
single person in the entire world, or elect, and every single person
in the entire world has no fear of judgment. So that when we
see that the majority of people die in their sin, then it makes
God a liar. And what hope do you have? You
know what hope you have? You better get it done. We don't have time to be sitting
here if we've got to affect our own justification. Better get
busy. Better sell all that we have
and give it to the poor. We better serve, serve, serve, love, love,
love, only to walk into the judgment of God and have nothing but sin. but because of Christ. If Jesus
paid for the sins of every person in the world, they are done. They are paid. They are forgiven.
And there is no warrant for justice left to execute. Now, beloved
historical theologians, without the ability to read the context
of John's gospel and John's letters in the heart of the meat of the
gospel that he wrote, they have tried to make it work without
dealing with the text. And some people say, well, it's
sufficient for the world. No, it's not. It's not. It's sufficient for what God
intended it for it to do. And it did only that and will
ever only do that. The hypothetical philosophical
expansion of what Jesus blood could have done is stupid. And
I'm going to say that it is a dumb errand to run down the rabbit
hole of what God could have done. When the gospel is what God did
do. Does that make sense? Coffee
talk, enjoying times, sitting around with the brothers. Man,
we can talk about anything. We can talk about anything, but
don't teach this to the sheep of Christ. Teach them the gospel
as a secure and finished work of God so that when they sin,
they're not shaken. So if Jesus paid for all the
sins of all the people throughout all time, there's a problem telling
anyone that there's going to be judgment. There's a problem
telling anyone that faith is a necessary condition for justification. When the whole idea of justification
is that you can say, I am not going to die for my sins. And
they say, how do you justify such a comment? Because Christ
did it. It's just that simple. It's not
a hard, you don't have to have a law degree to understand this. If I say I own all of you, you're
going to want me to justify that statement. And I either got to
show you the bill of sale or have enough arms to keep you
here. If I'm forgiven, how am I justified? Because I have been given the
faith to believe that God's finished work of propitiating himself
in the body of Christ is mine. And I can, remember we talked
about sleep, I can rest in that. And when I work and when I obey
and when I labor, I don't labor out of fear. I don't labor unto
eternal life. I labor because it's an act of
worship for my love for you. And when I'm not with you, you
encourage me to be with you so that we together are mindful
of one another. Distance doesn't necessarily
make the heart grow fonder. I don't know who said that. But
it's not always true. Sometimes we can become so intrinsic,
we can become so self-absorbed with what we want out of life
and where we want to go and what we want to do, it just gets easy
to just not deal with other people, doesn't it? But the drive from
the gospel, from the truth of what God did in His love for
us, purposes us to come together and to encourage each other in
this life. So common sense. on top of this
superb contextual construction reveals that John is not saying
that all men have had their sins forgiven and that God's rather
satisfied for every human being. Yet he is saying that his audience,
we, the Jewish saints, including the apostles, are surely safe
and so are all the saints of the world who are not Israel. Same context of John. Three,
same context of Peter, same context of other places where we see
this construction. Timothy, Paul's writing to Timothy. So the world then, and the saints
of the world, the elect of the world, is the scope of His redemptive
work. And beloved, you're part of that. So John, I'm going to do something
that I used to make fun of. He is the propitiation. He is the
satisfaction. He's the atoning sacrifice for
our sins, my Jewish brothers and sisters, and not for ours
alone, but for the sins of the Georgia saints. for the sins
of the saints of my elect children in the United States and North
America and this continent and that continent of the world.
For my children in the world, Christ has paid for them. And
if they sin, they have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ,
the righteous. Glory, hallelujah. That is the
only joy that we will ever have worth having. And that is the motivating influence.
That is the motivating power. That when we sin, we are not
condemned. So why sin anyway? Let's strive
to love each other because an idle mind and idle hands, as
my grandmother used to say, are the devil's workshop. Beloved,
if I'm serving you, I don't have much time to serve my flesh.
And there leads now to verse 3. The knowledge of the gospel
of grace is the knowledge of God and we have got a lot to
learn about His righteousness and how to live it out and how
to rest in it and how to walk in it and how to love in it.
And so John's about to open the rest of his letter up to just
that teaching. It is not a test of salvation. It is not a test at all. It is an encouragement and admonition,
but actually not even that. It is an exaltation of the work
of Christ and an encouragement to love and good deeds. Beloved,
you are safe in the hands of your Savior. Let's pray. We thank
you, Father, for this word. And Lord, I know that the way
I think and the way I define terms are often, it's just, it's my thinking.
And so Father, I pray that my thinking would not invade Your
Word, but Lord, that we also would not take any other man's
thinking from Your Word, but that we would learn from it,
that we would learn from You and that You would teach us through
it by Your Spirit so that we would know truly that you are satisfied with us,
that you are pleased with us. We are not sinners in the hands
of an angry God. We are saints and beloved children
called into the life of Christ, into the light of the knowledge
of your grace and then being those for whom you have sent
your son to satisfy your wrath. We are yours forever. Teach us how to live. at peace,
to love in unity, grow us in the knowledge of grace, teach
us that our time should be spent engaging one another in the truth,
not debating one another in the details. Father, help us to pray for the
sheep scattered across this world, Lord, who are starving, who are
lonely, who are isolated. Lord, we pray that your will
be done. It is what we want, whatever it may be. Father, we
look forward to it. We do hope to see a great awakening
of many of your elect coming to the truth during the season
that we're in. Father, more so that we would
learn to love each other more and more every single day because
of Christ, who is your love to us and who is your love for us. In his blessed name, we pray.
Amen.