First John. Last week I seem
to have preached two sermons in one, so we'll try to do a
half a sermon today and be as it may, the Lord's will be done.
This letter, as we have seen, is one of great controversy.
It is controversial, as a way of reminder, because The natural state of man is blind
to the glorious grace of God. It is controversial because even
in our greatest religious state, we tend to lend and lead and
bend toward legalism. We always find some way, no matter
what, even as believers, even as the elect, we always are easy
to find some way to establish some sense of righteousness in
our own flesh. And because of that, when the
humanity in us reads this flesh, what do I mean by that? Don't
read into what I'm, don't hear what I'm not saying. We in our
humanity, when we read a letter like 1 John, it is instinctive
in our flesh to hear it as a test of righteousness. To see it in
the context that we might do well to know that we are in Christ
if we have a certain standard of living, a certain morality,
a certain essence about us and our goings and comings and all
of these things that we would look in the mirror and say, look
what God has done in me that I might walk worthy of Christ. And in doing so, lay our head
on the proverbial pillow of confidence, all the while snoozing right
to destruction. Why do people hate the light? Because their works are evil. That's what we rushed through
last week at noon. I sort of got to that point and I just
kept going, not realizing the depth in which I should have
spent more time with, not just in one sitting. This is the message,
verse 5 of chapter 1, and we will read down through the first
two verses of chapter 2. This is the message that we have
heard from Him and proclaim to you that God is light and in
Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship
with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice
the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light,
we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son,
cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. My little children,
I'm 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 entire
world. Now let's stop there. Throughout
my life, I have always heard people talk in the context of
sin and regeneration in this manner. Well, once you become
a believer, You have a different relationship with sin. Now that's
a true statement. I'm sure all of us have heard
it. But how we qualify what that looks like is either true or
error. What does it look like to have
a different relationship with sin? First of all, what is sin? Sin, by definition, is to miss
the mark of God's perfection. Sin by definition is to have
fallen from the visible reality of who God is ontologically in
essence. The glory of God is to see Him
for who He is. Jesus Christ reveals the glory
of God perfectly and fully. And so to see God in His righteousness,
as we spoke about last week, is to see that there is in Him
no darkness. That the fullness of all that
God is in every way, in every attribute that we could assign
to Him, every characteristic, every nuance of His being, is
always good, is always right, is always just, is always righteous. In other words, is always holy.
He is so far apart and set far so apart from all things that
he is in a class by himself. And the only way anyone is ever
counted as holy is if they have been brought into the presence
of God by God himself. And we who are the elect know
that it is by the mercy of God alone that we stand redeemed. And that we understand that sin
in and of itself is something that God purposed so that he
could be revealed in all the fullness of himself to be the
redeemer of his people. I want you to think about that
for a second. So when we come to understanding our relationship
with sin, what does it really look like? For the believer,
let me give you the answer so you don't sit here all day and
wonder, what is it supposed to look like? Our relationship with
sin is that we are forgiven of it. That is our relationship with
sin. So that if I sin or when I sin today, either intentionally
or unintentionally, whether I lose my temper or I keep it to myself,
whether I speak my mind or I just be quiet, whether I act out or
I just desire, whether I go there or just struggle with it, my
relationship with sin fully and completely is that I am forgiven.
Beloved, you are forgiven. You are forgiven and there is
no sin that could befall you that could cause you to lose
that forgiveness. There is no level of sin that
you could engage in in this life. There is no depth of debauchery
that you could fall into that could remove you out of the hand
of Christ. And there is nowhere in scripture
that teaches we can qualify a man's salvation by the level of the
lessening of sin in his life. For when one can stand and say,
I have less sin, they indeed make God a liar who says you
are a sinner. Now let me deal with some, I'm
not going to use this. Let me deal with some attacks
that people have on the gospel, some of the things that Unconverted
people charge against the gospel. But they're religious. They love
their Jesus. They love their so-called not
gospel. They love their religion. They
love their established ideas. But they will say, well, you're
just antinomian. You believe that you can live
in a life of sin and still be saved. Yes, I believe that. You
can live in a life of sin and still be saved. But you shouldn't. You shouldn't live in sin because
you are saved. And that's what this letter teaches. This letter doesn't teach because
if it did teach there was a level of sinlessness this much be there,
then what is the standard? Where has it been written? Because
there is only three or four sins that John deals with in this
letter. And specifically, he doesn't
deal with the sin of the saints. Because John's recipients aren't
living in any sin that is causing division or causing the name
of Christ to be blasphemed. He is telling them to continue
in the manner in which they are walking. Much like Paul tells
the Thessalonians, you keep doing what you're doing, but my prayer
is that you would love one another better than you're doing now.
But you're doing well, but don't get haughty, because you should
do better. Isn't that opposite of what the
world teaches? Isn't that opposite of what modern
day evangelicalism teaches? Isn't that just the opposite? And some people say, well, you're
giving people a license to sin. Well, John's already dealt with
that. No. If you are in the fellowship of God who is light, then walk
as God is. Walk in a manner worthy. Do not
sin, verse 1 of chapter 2. I am writing these things to
you so that you may not sin. Now we already know and we've
already seen that that's not possible to be sinless. And that if we don't sin in a
certain way for 30 years and then sin again, we're guilty
already of the sin, but we're not guilty before God of any
sin because Christ has taken all the guilt of his people on
himself. We are forgiven. Because when
we begin to pit the lifestyle that we live against the assurance
of the grace and love of God, then we are qualifying and putting
conditions on God's love based on the performance of God doing
the work in His people to make them the way that they should
be in the minds and the eyes of men. And in doing so, we blaspheme
grace. We blaspheme the cross. We might
as well be universalist like everybody else. We might as well
be atheist to say that the cross is just as good example for us
to follow. The cross is not an example for anyone. It is the
finished, effectual work of redemption for the people of God. And there
is no other way by which we will stand righteous before the Father
except through the blood of Jesus Christ. You've heard me say this in the
last three weeks, that there are a sect of Christians, quote,
quote, Christians, who love to be told how to live. They're fearful. They're fearful
of not doing everything correctly. They're scared that when they're
around other people who aren't doing things as correctly as
they are, that they're going to get some smudge on them, get
some shade on them, get some stank on them that they can't
wash off. And when they stand before the Lord, the Lord's going
to go, you know what? You were walking well, but then you got too close
to these people. So COVID-19 you're done. It's not the way it works. and
one surefire way that someone has not come to fully grasp the
reality of sovereign grace, which is the only gospel. Don't say you believe in God's
sovereign grace and then add conditions to humanity. It is
demonic. It is the words of the enemy
that speak those things. Don't say that. Therefore, because
we are resting in Christ, therefore, because we are saved, therefore,
because we have an eternal hope in the finished work of Christ,
therefore, I want to walk in a manner worthy, oh God, for
you. I love you because, and this
is John's argument, you first loved us. But why do people hate this message? Because their works are evil. In chapter 3, this is the message
that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love
one another. We should not be like Cain who
was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder
him? Because his own deeds were evil
and his brother's deeds 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. And everyone who hates his brother
is a murderer. And you know that no murderer
has eternal life abiding in him. You have eternal life abiding
in you, beloved. Don't hate your brother. See,
that's what John's saying. Not, oh, you got hate in your
heart, then you're lost. He doesn't say that. Read English. Start back in the first grade
and learn to read basic grammar. Learn to read the letters. Learn
to move the numbers and all of the silly pretext that you've
been taught in Sunday schools or Satan schools for so many
years. This is what you know. Here's
this verse and here's that verse and here's the other verse. Beloved,
learn Christ by the power of God the Spirit Himself, not from
me. If Christ does not teach you,
if the Spirit of God does not teach you, if the Father does
not teach you, you will not know. No matter how hard I preach,
no matter how loud I get, no matter how many times I come
through the microphone, it doesn't matter because you will not know
if God does not teach you. And you will not be taught if
you do not read it. There is no such thing as a verse
out of the Bible that has any meaning without the verses around
it. Without the verses from the introduction
to the close. I want you to see that, beloved. People hate the light. They hate
God's righteousness. And some of us would say, well,
I don't understand that because they want to walk righteous.
They want to do good things. They want to live well. They
want to have a high standard of morality. Great. Praise the
Lord. So do Mormons. So do Jehovah's
Witnesses. So do Islam. So does Islam. So do the atheists that I know.
Believe it or not, the people who don't believe in any type
of deity at all live a pretty good, moral, righteous life.
As a matter of fact, we could take our cues from them. We could
mimic them. We can do what mechanics do and
we can just walk like a mechanic, but we don't know what diagonal
thing we're doing. We just practice the stuff. I've wired a house. Don't have
a clue how electricity works. Look at there. I've walked around with people
who did it. I know enough to be dangerous. I swear most people are in theology.
I know enough. I'm a believer. I know enough
about God. I know enough about this. It's my story in the testimony
of the vitamin box theology. I've got this big vitamin box
and I've got my Monday pills, my Tuesday pills, I've got my
happy pills, my joy pills, my gospel pills, my sin pills. My counseling
pills. I've got the open verses here.
You know, in youth, when I was in high school, I carried the
Thompson Chain Reference Bible. You know what that Bible looks
like? All right, there's nothing but the Bible, and there's a
few maps in the back of it. See how thick that is? All right, here's
the Bible text of the Thompson Chain, and then there's all the
footnotes that come with it. And you can look up anything.
I mean, you can look up bird in the back of the Thompson Chain
Bible and find every verse that had anything to do with bird
or the word fly or anything. And you can find a theological
principle that some other guy with Zondervan had come to the
conclusion of and put it in there. And so you were the smartest
thing in the world. Imagine being in the sixth grade
and somebody said something about the Bible. And you just pop off
like 10 minutes of proof text after proof text. They called
me the Bible man when I was that age. But it wasn't learning scripture. It's not learning scripture to
have verses under your belt in memorization without its context
because you don't know what it means. It's how we can say the
Lord's Prayer at a football game. That's the stupidest thing that
ever took place in America. Why are we doing that? What does
that mean? To say the Lord's Prayer verbatim is like reading
the syllabus as your final. Well, here's my final, Professor.
Let me read the syllabus you gave me. Here's the outline of
your last class. It's an outline of how we should
pray in spirit and truth. It's not a prayer for us. It's
like Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3. It's not a prayer for us,
but by goodness, I have learned to pray a prayer like that for
me and for you. I have learned to pray as Jesus
prayed in the context in which he prayed. It's why after the
Lord's prayer and we kick off, then we can all claim Philippians
4.13 for the win. Right? It's blasphemous. First John
is the king of kings of blasphemous proof texts and evangelicalism. Oh, I know you're not a believer
because you're acting ugly. Well, you look ugly. Where's
that at? You see, people don't care about
the righteousness of God. Because ultimately they hate
the ones who are righteous by his righteousness. They hate
the ones who are righteous by his standards. They hate the
ones who are righteous by imputation. Because they want to do the same
work and get the same credit but they don't want Christ to
be their whole. They don't want Christ to be
their life because they've yet to be converted to see that Christ
is life. He is the resurrection. He is
the truth. He is the way. He is righteousness. He is the righteousness of God. The message that we've heard
is that God is righteous. God has revealed himself as righteousness. Jesus Christ is God's righteousness
in the flesh. God's righteousness did the work
of God. And redeemed his people, establishing
righteousness for his own. This is the message of the cross.
One of my brothers in Virginia sent me a screenshot of what
he's teaching this morning, I guess, in John 8. where Jesus says the
word is not dwelling in you. You can't believe. You're not
Abraham's children or you would have done what Abraham did. See,
the children of the enemy, we have been called up in this weird
idea that the children of the enemy do a lot of sinful things. They live in debauchery. They live in wickedness. They
live in murder. And that's true. But not all of them. See, that's
what we call in the magic arts misdirection. It's deception. If I don't want you to see what
I'm doing over here, I'm going to make a big to-do over here
with this hand. And you're going to look up here
and I'm going to do that. And all the while I can do whatever I
want down here. Don't believe me? You've ever been fooled by
an illusion or a sleight of hand? You've been deceived. You put
your eyes where the performer wants you to look so that you
wouldn't see where he doesn't want you to look so that he can
create the miracle. And here is the deception. Here's
all this evil world. Here's the abortionists. Here's
all the sexual debauchery. Here's the murder. Here's the
riots. Here's the awful stuff. Look at all these wicked, evil
people. And here are the evangelicals down here. It's about our righteousness.
Where's your righteousness? Where's your personal holiness?
Where's this? Where's that? It's the same stuff. It's a deception.
In the days of Jesus, when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, there
were no greater moral people. The Pharisees could not be more
moral. They weren't liars. They weren't
deceivers. They weren't going out and praying
today and then having orgies tomorrow. They weren't out here
giving alms today and then robbing banks tomorrow. They weren't
worshiping in the temple today and then cursing God tomorrow.
They would never curse God. They wore the word of God in
their face. Because they were so fearful
of not obeying God when it says in the poetic nature. of the
Old Testament, put the Word of God on your heart and forever
before you. They hung it out like a little
carrot on a stick and put it in front of their face and they
stitched it to their garments called phylacteries. They wrote
up teeny little fortune cookie scrolls of the Bible and they
put it in there so that they could walk around going, look,
I got the Word of God in front of me and I got the Word of God in
my heart, close to my heart. That was their righteousness. There
were no greater moral people and the people of Israel could
never attain the standard of obedience that a Pharisee could
live or that a priest could live. because they weren't allowed
to do the things that they were. They weren't from the tribe of
Levi. They were not descended from
Aaron. They could not obey in the things that God required.
So when Jesus says in Matthew's gospel, as he's looking at the
Pharisees and he looks out the crowd and he says, unless your
righteousness is greater than these, you cannot see the kingdom
of heaven. It horrified them. Because think about it, they
were there in the presence of Jesus to learn how to get eternal
life, and they had been taught forever that that festival was
key to it. But when Jesus came along and
says, you know what? I'm gonna do the work of the Father, I'm
gonna redeem my people, I'm gonna set them free. And if the Son
doesn't set you free, you're gonna die in your sins. And what
do the Pharisees say? We've never been enslaved anyone.
Since we've been saved, we've never cursed. We've never been
drunk. We've never slept around. We've
never stolen or blasphemed. We've never missed church. Well,
great. I had had a Coke in about two
days. Whoop-de-doo, let's get a plaque, put it on the wall.
That's what God feels. That's how God looks at our works.
Especially when they're self-righteous. Why was Cain not approved? Because God didn't love him.
And why didn't God love him? Because God is righteous. Cain
was not counted righteous. Abel was. So Cain could have followed in
his brother's footstep, killed the same animal, butchered the
same way, sacrificed in the same manner, said the same prayer,
and Cain would have still been evil. This is the gospel. It is good
news that when there is favor in God's eyes towards you, it
is His righteous grace. The people, even who would hold
fast to sovereignty, but who deny that in the fullest of effect,
are either deceived because of their teacher or they are unconverted. And the difference maker is when
we correct them by the word of God and they come back with,
yeah, but we are to see them as unconverted and we should
evangelize. This is hard teaching, folks. This is hard teaching. Well,
I don't believe in election. Then there's a problem with your
gospel. Well, I don't believe in salvation by grace alone. Well, then there's a problem
with your gospel. I don't believe Christ atoned for sins on the
cross. He gave the opportunity. Then you have a different gospel.
Well, I don't believe Jesus died for everybody. You just got to
accept it. Then you have a false gospel. Because Jesus does not
reveal that. The most demonic issue that has
ever plagued our country is when Charles Finney and those following
him, and D.L. Moody and those following him,
and people on and on and on and on and on up through the line
of evangelical whatever, came on the scene and created the
idea that there was a simple way to the gospel. We just got
to say it, get people to respond to it, and that response enough
is faith. When Jesus and the commissions
that he gives on the day of his ascension is to teach people
all that I have taught you. You want to share the gospel?
Get in the gospel of John with somebody. These things are written
that you may believe, that you may know, that you may have life. Why do we comfortably sit when
our loved ones and our friends and our neighbors continue to
spew a false gospel? How do we comfortably sit going,
well, they're close enough? Love, it shouldn't be that way.
We should have a heart of angst, but a heart of hope to know that
the elect will not be lost. People hate the righteousness
of God. And they hate the righteousness of God, and they do that which
their father does, the devil, who saw the righteousness of
God and said to himself in his heart, I have that righteousness
in me. Because God gave it to me, do
you realize that's what the devil said? I should stand next to God because
look what God has made me. I'm pretty good. And every unbeliever
throughout history. has hated God's righteousness
in some way. A majority of people who claim
to be in his righteousness hate his righteousness because his
righteousness is Jesus Christ alone. And the only way we stand
before him is in Christ. We are pure. We are in the light. We are in fellowship with life. Should our walking and living
not display that? Yes. You may think I'm beating
a dead horse, but I'm not. I'm beating the drum of life.
And if we don't get this, well, if we don't get this in the first
few sentences here, we're not going to understand these things. You're going to feel in your
mind, you're going to see the click, the little arc. Wait a
minute, is that saying that I have to know that I'm saved because
of this? Is that saying it's proof? I'll be honest with you,
I don't think that John wrote this letter as a test at all.
I think John wrote this letter as an encouragement to the believers
to show them who they are in Christ securely and then to teach
them how to walk. Therefore, go back to week one
if you want to know what I mean by that. Therefore, when we walk
in the light, we have fellowship with one another. But people
hate that light. Why? Because it reveals what
they are, especially in their self-righteous ministry, in their
self-righteous religion. But I said this last week, you
can never do good enough to prove that you are in Christ. You can
only believe the testimony of Christ. That is the evidence
of a true believer, that they believe in the testimony of Christ.
It's where John goes. He says in chapter 4, Beloved,
do not believe every spirit. Do not believe every time you
hear someone say, oh, I'm in the Lord. Oh, I believe in Jesus. Oh, I'm a brother, or I'm a sister,
or I'm a Christian. Oh yeah, praise God. God is good
all the time, and all the time God is good. You know, back and
to. I mean, it gets so monotonous
in our culture how we just spew these things back and forth,
and we just go jolly long along just with it. Oh yeah, that's
my brother over there. I don't believe so. Do not believe
every spirit. Test the spirits to see whether
they're from God. How do they know they're from
God? That they testify the one who came from God perfectly.
Oh, now I heard you say it. Perfect doctrinal perfection. When it comes to the gospel,
yes. If you don't have the gospel
right, you don't have the gospel. Here's your good news. I don't
know what it is, but it's pretty good, and if you believe it's
good, then it's good for you. That's about as deep as most
people's understanding of Christ go. False prophets have gone into
the world, John says. By this you know the Spirit of
God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not
confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist.
Now, we'll get here in months to come. But let me show you
how that looks. You know how literally people
have extracted that verse, taken out of its context, and then
taught it as if somebody can say with their mouth that Jesus
is come in the flesh and that he is from God, then they are
saved. That's ridiculous. The demons, James says, can say
that. I've seen many unbelievers say
that. Yeah, I believe it. But do they believe all of it? How do we know that Jesus came
from God? How do we know that Jesus came
from the flesh? Paul summarizes it in all of its context in 1
Corinthians 15. Everything that Jesus came to
do. And then we see the prophets teach of this Messiah, and we
see the apostles proclaim this Messiah, and all that he accomplished,
all that he taught, all that he did, this is the message.
He is righteous, you are not, and if his righteousness is not
your righteousness, you're dead in your sins. It is all or none related to
the gospel. It doesn't matter about terminology.
Terminology can mean whatever I want it to mean. I can call
this a swimmer diggy or a thingamabob and that's wrong. I can call
this my computer paper, but it's a whatever it is. I don't even
know what it's called. Tablet. It's not a tablet. Why don't
we call it a tablet? That's just what they call it.
We can use words however we want to. The meaning behind them is
what's important. So ask, what do you mean if you say you believe
that Jesus came in the flesh? And if they can't articulate
what he accomplished for them, they haven't been shown the gospel.
What did Jesus accomplish? He died for my sins. So what
does that mean? What does that mean, four-year-old? What does
that mean, 14-year-old? What does that mean, 40-year-old?
What does that mean, 80-year-old? What does that mean, Jesus died
for your sins? And it needs to be answered.
What the Bible says, Jesus says, the apostles say, the prophets
say, God has said concerning His Son. You realize that's how
John closes this letter out, right? The ultimate test, if
we could dare say that there's a test, I use that phrase because
that's the way people like to do it. But you want to know that
you know that you know that you have eternal life because you believe in the
testimony of God concerning His Son. And the testimony of God
concerning His Son is that His Son came in the flesh and created
all things. Who is God? He created Mary and
the womb within her, and He created the body for Himself within the
womb that He created, and entered into the world that He created
to a people that He created who knew Him not. And He made Himself
known to them by the power of the Spirit, and He gave Himself
for them as a ransom for them so that the righteousness of
God would be revealed from glory to glory. And He clothes them
in His righteousness. And if they ever take off His
righteousness in any part, They never had it to begin with. If
they ever add any other garment, or embellishment, or braid, or
jewelry, or scent, or any type of cleanser to the top of His
righteousness, they never had His righteousness to begin with.
But because we rest in the fullness of the clothing of righteousness,
who is Jesus Christ, let us not defile that precious gift by
living in a manner that's contrary to the very nature of the one
we wear. Is it that difficult? I mean, really, is it that hard
for the world to see? Yes, it's impossible for the
world to see. It is not impossible for the saints to see. But I'll
tell you this, a lot of saints came to see it and then they've
been misled by false teachers who need to be marked and called
out as they are because the more popular they become, the more
dangerous they are. But in my spirit, I rest knowing
that God has established them for his purposes. We share in the righteousness
of God by faith. We share in the righteousness
of God because of his love for us. Therefore, we should share
in the righteousness of God by our works. You see how that sounds? Wait a minute, wait a minute.
What does James say? Faith without works is a dead
faith. What is a dead faith? Like a dead marriage, like a
dead relationship. If you're my cousin, brother,
sister, uncle, wife, mama, daddy, grandpa, whatever, and we get
upset with one another and we're not walking together, we're not
eating together, we're not living together, we're not doing what
we need to do, are we still one another's relative? Yes. And so sin and our relationship
with sin is different because we are forgiven, and if we're
forgiven, then we are driven by our intimacy with the Word.
You understand? We have to feel and eat every
day. I ate a pretty good mess last night of hot dogs. And I
woke up this morning hungry. What's wrong with me? Why am
I hungry every morning when I wake up? First thing I do, brush my
teeth, take a shower, eat. Something, coffee. I get coffee,
then I brush my teeth, then I take a shower, then I eat. Then I
get coffee. But why do we do that? Because
what we had yesterday's not enough. And if you want to know what
the word hangry means, follow me around when I am hungry. I'm
not a patient person. I'm edgy. Don't know why. It's just the way God made me.
Doesn't mean I sin in that edginess. The same thing is true in our
eating spiritual things. Why is Sunday not enough? Because
the more we come to spiritual things, the more spiritual warfare
takes place, Ephesians chapter 6. The more the enemy comes against
us, the more the flesh is tempted. Why? Because there is a working
by the sovereignty of God that we suffer as Christ suffered. Christ was tempted as every man
or woman ever will be, yet He sinned not. It's hard not to
say sinneth not, isn't it? He did not sin in His temptation.
He never gave in to these things. He never decided one moment that
he would self-glorify, or that he would self-justify, or he
would display himself apart from the Father's work. And so when we hear about working,
Beloved, it's a hard job to work in marriage. It's a hard job
to work as parents. It's a hard job to work as students. It's a hard job to work as an
employee or as an employer. It's a hard job. And if it's
a hard job to do these things, do you think it's going to be
any easier to live in a manner that is congruent with the light
that we share with Christ? But that when we share in these
things, we can also share our works together. So we must eat
and hold fast to the Word of God every single day. I promise
you, if you skip a day, if you're not in the habit of being daily
in the Word of God, your temptation and your hope and your joy is
waning. It's waning. It's going to wane. Because what doesn't bother you
when you're in the Word will bother you when you're not in
the Word. Little things. Small little stuff
that causes division like a thorn under the fingernail or a little
bit of dirt in the bed. Two or three grains of sand feels
like a beach in the bed. You get up and change the sheets. First world problems, right? But if we're in the word, and
then more, If we're together in the Word, oh, how beautiful
is that? How beautiful is that? We're encouraging one another.
We're sharing our lives together. We're confessing our sins together. Pray for me, brother, I'm struggling
here. Pray for me, sister, I'm dealing with this. Have any of
you ever dealt with that? Yes. Let me share how the Lord
helped me. Look at the word of God here
and watch this. And even in the midst of it all,
nobody has the answer. We have encouragement in our
unity, in our bond with the gospel that we are righteous, even though
we are struggling to even be good. Because the righteousness that
we are is not ours. We who are in Christ securely
should walk in this high calling. And we do so by faith in Jesus
Christ. And our motivation is love. And beloved, in that way we are
accountable to one another. We are accountable to one another.
I said last week about the assurance and the resting in the midst
of our walking And I think I closed out by stealing away from my
midweek where we were in Hebrews a couple of weeks ago where Paul
writes about Jesus, the high priest, with the indestructible
life. And because as a high priest
he is indestructible, his high priestly work never started and
it never ended because it's eternal. It's always been. And so just
as we have an advocate, as you'll see here in chapter two, verse
two, That is the work and the role of a high priest. He intercedes for us continually. His blood intercedes for us.
You see the comparison made in the New Testament where Paul
talks about the blood of Abel. In Genesis where Cain killed
Abel, we see that the Bible says, God says, as a matter of fact,
I would say God the Son walking with them in the garden said
these words. He says, The blood of your brother Abel cries out
for justice from the grave. From the ground, actually. And
Paul says that the blood of Jesus cries out greater than the blood
of Abel. But what does the blood of Jesus
cry? Forgiven. Purchased. Mine. Redeemed. The blood of Jesus
is not in the ground. It has been shed and it has done
its work and Jesus was raised to life and he sits at the right
hand of majesty on high and he has the name that is greater
than all names because he is king. He is God. He is Lord. To not agree with this is to
make God a liar. Forgiveness, our relationship
with sin is simply understood and simply recognized as a state
of forgiveness, a state of redemption. From which our mind learns to
recognize the sin that is in our lives and that there is never
a day when there isn't sin in our lives. But yet there is a
time when we can recognize that act of sin that we have been
empowered to put away today. We can, just like the cults,
just like unbelievers, just like haters of anything divine. They
can walk in a manner that does not defile their reputation. But they don't walk by faith.
Neither do the self-righteous. For they look continually at
how they live and to the point they become blind at the fact
that they still have sin, which we said last week. The scripture
says that that's to make God a liar. But it happens to believers,
too. Sometimes we can be walking in such a way that literally
we have been freed from all of the sins that sort of befell
us in our younger days as a believer, not necessarily age. And we can
look sometimes, and it's usually when you're brushing your teeth.
You ever think when you're brushing your teeth? I think. Teeth brushing's a four-minute
job, so four minutes to the second, by the way. It's a minute per
quadrant, all right? Then flossing. So it gives you
some time to think. So after six to eight minutes,
sometimes you can think about a lot of things. And I remember
one time in particularly that I had been praying for the Lord
to help my heart and to help my mind and to help my frustration
with a certain individual. And I had gone like two or three
months, not even thought about it. And I'm brushing my teeth
and I go, Lord, you really do help me in this one. I've put
away that sin. An hour later they called and
made me mad. Not without it. You see, something
simple. I'm not going to boast before
the Lord that he's done something to strip me of a sin. I'm going
to thank him that he stripped his son and destroyed his flesh
for my sin. So in this message, John is saying, look, I'm writing
these things that you may not sin. After he's already established,
if we say we have no sin, we lie. Our relationship with sin is
that we know we are sinners and that we are not righteous. And
beloved, listen to me very carefully. Only a believer can fully see
that in conjunction with seeing that
Christ is his righteousness. That is why we reject that the
apostles reject any form of law as a form of evangelism. Any
form of using the Decalogue as a way of introducing the gospel.
All men know what is right and wrong. All men. All men, all
humanity. When I say men, that's a plural
for humanity. All humanity knows right from
wrong. And there is no one that has
to teach them of that because there is a witness in the spirit
of creation. in our human hearts and minds
that know it is wrong to take what is not ours. We know it
is wrong to hurt other people. We know it is wrong to defy authority. We know it is wrong to deceive.
We know it is wrong to desire something someone else has, and
we know it is wrong to hate them because we don't have it. Sounds
like the book of James, doesn't it? We know it is wrong to speak
ill of others, to gossip, to murder. We know that it's wrong
because we do it in a way, in a manner that we only do these
things and speak these things and think these things and engage
in these things. We only do it with people that we know will
give us what? Approval. And we do it in darkness. We do it in the middle of the
night. We do it at closed meetings. We do it in private messages. So everybody knows they're wrong. Everybody understands sin. And
everybody understands justice. Everybody understands judgment.
Everybody understands condemnation. That is why the legal standing
of the laws of the world keep many people from becoming bank
robbers, thieves, rapists, and murderers. Because the consequence
far, far outweighs the act. and its fruit for some people. That is not an entryway into
salvation because when we know that already and God grants us
the change of disposition to see righteousness from the point
of the good news of Christ, that's the definition of repentance,
by the way. It has nothing to do with what we do with sin,
it's how we see righteousness in light When God grants that,
we have been granted, we have been given the gift of faith
to believe in the finished work of Christ and His righteousness.
And when we do that, now we see our sin in a different light.
We see what it really is. We see what it really costs.
We see that the wages of sin is death, that we shall not bear
for our Savior has died in our place. And we see that even if
we could before men for the rest of our lives always be seen as
righteous person, we are so far from righteousness that we are,
if judged at any given moment, worthy of all hell. But we are not worthy of all
hell because Christ has clothed us with Himself. And when he responds, when John
responds in that way and teaches about the finished work of the
continual intercession of the blood of Christ, when we find
ourselves guilty, he's going to say all this. I mean, he's
outlined it already. He's going to repeat himself over here. That God is
greater than our heart. God is greater than our enemies.
God is greater than our sin. God is greater than our hope.
God is greater than anything that we could muster within ourselves.
And He's greater than any measurement that we could put over ourselves
because He is our righteousness. God the Son. And because of that, then he's
writing this letter, not just what he just said, he's writing
this letter with several things in mind. The first one he said
he wants to write this letter so that the saints can be joyful
in their fellowship with each other because they have fellowship
with Christ. I'm hanging out with Jesus. I'm
doing what Jesus wants. I'm doing what Jesus does. I'm
hanging out with Jesus' people. So I'm doing whatever I can do
to put away things that divide my mind or my heart or my works
or my hands away from engaging in this great sharing of this
great righteousness that is mine in Jesus Christ forever. See, sin is contrary to the light
of God's nature. But yet, sin is the cause of
the life of Christ being given. Why did Christ die? For the wages
of sin is death. So where do we stand? The free
gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus. How? Because God put forward Christ
as a propitiation. What am I supposed to do with
that? Believe it. To be received by faith. So I'm writing these things to
you, beloved, that you would stop sinning, that you would put away
sin, that you would not sin, that when you would see temptation
arise, when you see the desires of your flesh begin to become
strong, that you would, by the grace of God and by the power
of the cross, that you would, by the knowledge of the blood
of Jesus, that you would just say, Father, please lead me not
in this way and get up and walk out. Brief conversation not related
to the text this morning about Potiphar and his wife and Joseph. Joseph was a man. Joseph was
incarcerated. Joseph had it made. What better
thing to do if you're in prison than to have a mistress on the
side? I mean, you offer that up at
Smith Penitentiary as a benefit, people be going to jail on purpose. That's the way the human heart
is, the way the human flesh is. And Joseph, in an opportunity
to either go with his flesh, he honored the king, and in doing
so, he honored God. And he ran out, and she tore
his clothes off. Don't leave me. Ruddy cutie pie,
come here. Let me get some kissing. I mean,
this is it. And he's like, I'm out of here.
Flee sexual temptation. I'm gone. So she rips off his
clothes. He rips his shirt off. And then
she's so offended that he rejected her. She goes to her husband.
Your servant tried to have his way. I have his shirt. He tore
it off and threw it. I mean, you know what? What is
this? He fled, and it cost him. That didn't make Joseph righteous. It didn't make Joseph good. It
didn't make Joseph... God didn't go, oh, my little Joseph. I'm
so proud of him. He's such a wonder. All right,
all you angels see, that's how you do it right there. I could
just get him to teach everybody else. God doesn't do that. At
the same time, God didn't roll his eyes. You know, that's an
expectation of humanity that they would flee sexual sin. Believer
and unbeliever alike. Because it's sin. That we would flee any sin. But
what motivates us to have that mind? Because we have the mind
of Christ. And we do for the sake of Christ
and for the sake of one another in love. And see, that's the
trouble about not reading the whole letter every week. Because
we miss out on the point that he's making because we belabor.
You realize I haven't even started the sermon. This is all introduction. But it sits so well with these
first two verses of chapter two. Sin is the cause of Jesus' life. It disrupts our living in joy.
Sin destroys our loving intimacy, but sin cannot take away our
salvation. Sin cannot take away our salvation.
If we went to Luke 15 and we saw the teaching of the prodigal
son, a lot of people teach that. in a vacuum, Jesus was teaching
as a way of rebuking and condemning the fateful obedient son, who
are, who is in that metaphor, the spiritual leaders of Israel. who lived and served and worked
and never asked of anything and always were good stewards of
the father's stuff, didn't squander anything, and yet the son who
didn't deserve anything considered his father good as dead and went
out and spent his money on what? Booze and prostitutes. That's
what the Bible says. And found himself living on a
pig farm, which is a big jab, y'all. I've worked on a pig farm
as a child. That's messy, but it was fun.
Imagine if it were unclean and you were unfit to even be on
your father's property because you have worked with pigs, much
less slept with them, much less desired to eat their slop. And what is the picture there?
He was never not a son. And no matter the level of sin,
from the world's point of view, the guilt of sin is equal for
us all. And the merciful love of God
the Father in giving his son. He restores us to him. Because
he loves us. My little children. Please don't sin. Help each other,
not sin. Remember the blood of Christ
when you're tempted to sin. But don't stand guilty. Don't
harm yourself. Don't harm your conscience. Don't
beat yourself over the head in such a way that you aren't even
able to come to the fellowship of the saints or approach the
Bible or approach prayer. It's just part of the deception. Well, you're not good enough. You're not like us over here.
Look, you're like these guys over here. Now, these people
give those comparisons. Sin destroys loving intimacy.
So grace gives life and that life feeds fellowship. And this fellowship is, of course,
sharing in righteousness that is Christ. But out of our love
for each other and out of our love for Christ who loved us
first, we live and delight as best we can. That no charge could
be brought against us. And this living produces a joyful
is, is not produces is a joyful fellowship, sharing in life and
joy. How do you know? Because of verse
two, he is. He is our propitiation for our
sins, John saying he took this in the plural, in these pronouns,
Jesus is the propitiation for my sins, for the disciples' sins,
for the apostles' sins, and for y'all's sins. Y'all's. I'm sure that's what he said. We, who are the Jewish brothers
in the Lord Jesus by love and by grace and by mercy and by
sovereignty, we are in the love of God, and Christ
has satisfied the wrath of God for us, so please don't sin. But if you sin, this is the remedy. And we'll deal with this next
week. And not for ours alone, but also
for the sins of the whole world. You see, that pretext is like
a loaded cannon for people who hate the righteousness of God.
See, Jesus satisfied the wrath of God for every person, they
say. Not possible. You and us are Jews God satisfied
the wrath, His wrath in Jesus Christ for His children who are
Jews and for His children who are of the world. And that's
the context. And I can prove that with no
error. And next week, by the Lord's
mercy, I will show that to you as we move forward. He is the propitiation for our
sins. What's left to do? What is our
relationship with sin? We are forgiven. What about the
sin I did this morning? Forgiven. What about the ugly
word I said last week? Forgiven. What about the murderous
heart I wish I could just punch somebody in the throat? Forgiven.
What about the illegal activity? Forgiven. What about the fight
I have with my spouse? Forgiven. What about tomorrow if I slip
up at work? Forgiven. What about next week
if I get in a fight and I kill somebody? Forgiven. Well, a Christian
wouldn't murder somebody. Baloney! That's not true. Our flesh is
capable at all times of doing any evil. By the mercy of God,
the discipline of His love, we grow not to do and not to partake. And He at any moment, I haven't
felt ugly about this person in months. I hate that guy. Just
an hour later, Lord, you've caused me to be so loving. I hate the
world. Say, you're preaching lessons.
I have not. That's a false accusation. I'm saying don't sin because
of your love for the Lord Jesus. And John says when we do, it's
forgiven. It's forgiven. Beloved, so our
relationship with sin has drastically changed. Now when we see sin,
we are not condemned, but we are free. We are free because
we are forgiven and we are free to stand up in the midst of God,
in the presence of righteousness and say, we are children, Papa. And as a child, I've come to
your throne of grace. And God says the blood of my
son has satisfied my judgment. There's no condemnation for you.
Go and sin no more. Yes, sir. I love you, Father. And I love you, son. I love you,
daughter. I love you, child. This is the
message of grace. This is the message of the cross.
This is the message of John. Let's pray. Father, we are overcome by the pure joy of knowing you,
the pure hope that comes in a way that only you could bring it
in a manner that can only be known because of your loving
mercy, because of your divine power. Father, I pray that as
we grow to understand this letter, as we grow to understand the
gospel, that we would truly see the separation of our assurance
and our living. And that though we will sin,
we should encourage one another out of gratefulness. out of love
to put it away. We should help each other. We
should pray as your servant who wrote this very letter says in
the very end to pray for the sin that does not lead to death.
And father, there is no sin that leads to death for any of your
children. Though there may be sin that leads to death in this
physical life, there is no sin that leads to eternal death. For they all have been put upon
Christ, and you have wiped them away. You remember them no more. And Lord, as you reveal that
to us, you are revealing yourself to us in the fullness of your
glory through the person of Jesus Christ and the message he brings.
In his name we pray. Amen.