Again, a new commandment I write
unto you and what we talked about and you can see this in your
outline is that when John talks about a new commandment, what
he is not talking about is a different commandment. When John uses the
term new, he uses the term new in the same way that the New
Testament uses the term new. We did talk about this, but I
just want to make sure you understand this concept. New, the Greek
word is kynos, and it actually means fresh or revitalized. It does not mean totally different. It means revitalized. So the
idea of new is the idea of something that is carried over from an
old pattern, but then perfected in a new way. For instance, we
have an Old Testament and we have a New Testament, don't we?
Old Testament portion of the scriptures are the 29 books New
Testament 37 books and we combine them and we call them our Bible
Is that right Old Testament New Testament. So some people actually
think that all they need are the 27 books of the New Testament
and they're good to go nothing could be further from the truth
right that when we talk about old and new in the sense of a
epic or period of time where something operated in an old
model, now we're operating in a new model. It's not saying
that the old model in total is done away and the new model in
total is applied. We are saying that the old model
now has lost a certain application that the new model takes up. For instance, It would be ludicrous
for us to say that we are not still operating out of Old Testament
principles when the scriptures are clear that you shall not
kill, you shall not steal, you shall not commit adultery, you
shall not commit idolatry. Are you guys following me? All
of the eternal principles are the standing principles of the
Old Testament carry over. You shall worship the Lord your
God, and Him only shall you worship. You shall love the Lord with
all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as
yourself. And hundreds and hundreds of
commandments or imperatives in the Old Testament are carried
over into the New. But they are brought into the
New Testament under a new constitution. And as a new constitution, the
relationship that we have with those new commandments are different. Under the Old Testament, the
Old Testament had the people of God looking for the coming
of Christ. They anticipated the first coming
of Christ, and God placed them under a legal code called the
Mosaic Law to restrain their passions and lusts until Christ
would come. When Christ came, he fulfilled
the old covenant, put it away in himself by his death on Calvary,
and his blood atoning work achieved for us the justification that
the law demanded. The law demanded justification. The Old Testament saints realized
that, and they were driven to look to Christ for that justification. They could not wait for the Messiah
to come. They lived in anticipation of
the coming of Christ and of the affecting of the cross work of
Christ. We live in the reality of the past finished work of
Christ so that the New Testament is the new constitution upon
which old principles now have application. For instance, for
the believer in the New Testament, and there was a spiritual continuity
between the old and new. For the believer in the New Testament,
when we talk about loving the Lord God with all our heart,
soul, mind, and strength, and that's what John is getting into
in these passages in 1 John, we're gonna see that as he unpacks
it. For us to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind,
and strength is equivalent to believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. A person to say they love God,
but do not believe in Christ is for them to not love God God
has confined the expression of human love towards him as only
being Acceptable on the grounds of us knowing and loving Christ
You cannot say you love God and do not love Christ God has revealed
himself as exponentially and in an impeccable way in the person
of Christ. Now you and I have to deal with
that revelation of Christ in terms of whether or not we will
receive Him or reject Him. If a man rejects Christ and says
he loves God, he is not telling the truth. That's why Jesus made
it clear for the 30 some odd years that He was in the presence
of His Jewish brethren. He says, if you do not honor
Me, you do not honor the Father. If you do not honor me, you do
not honor the Father. You do not have the privilege
of saying, I love the Father, but I don't love the Son. And
we're getting ready to see that again unpacked. So when we talk
about obedience to God in the New Testament, the believer is
called to obey God through the finished work of Christ. There
is an exceedingly great and blessed privilege when you understand
it that way, because then obedience is not based upon merit. is based
upon a motive of love that is based upon the work that Christ
has already done for you. So that obedience is not rooted
in threat of damnation, but promise of reward, not because of your
immediate obedience, but because of the obedience of Christ. So
you have this motive principle in the New Testament of reward
for being obedient to Christ, because Christ knows that the
man or the woman who loves Christ is willing to tell it is going
to suffer for Christ and the rate of exchange for suffering
for the gospel are eternal blessings so you and I have already gone
through that principle of the rate of exchange lots of passages
in the Gospels where Jesus says verily verily I tell you whosoever
leaves his mother and his father Everything for my sake and the
cause of the gospel shall not only in this life obtain Houses
and friends and family and everything that he needs but in the life
to come eternal life It's beautiful reward Not in the meritorious
sense of what something that we have earned But because we
have come up under the blessings of a relationship with God through
Christ God blesses that by telling us that The end product of your
suffering with him is that you will also reign with him. So
when you hear new Testament commands, hear them children of God in
the context of privilege, privilege, it's our privilege to be able
to obey the gospel. And then in your outline, if
you notice under the outline, I have several new, you notice
the scripture speaks about the new covenant, right? then the
scripture also speaks about the new man, right? If any man be
in Christ Jesus, he's what? Do you believe that? Now watch
this. But you also know now that I
have explained it, that the new does not totally do away with
the old. The old is still there. Only the new is dominating. The
new is operating out of a new principle, a new constitution.
And watch this. There are aspects of the old
that are incorporated in the new. Your physical body didn't
change. The form and structure in which
you serve God didn't change. The method and approach by which
we worship God didn't change our bodies are still used to
that same end But the body now is not is not that which is governing
you is the spirit your old man is apprehended and brought into
captivity of Christ and is dead with Christ by his work on Calvary
your physical body is which used to be a slave of sin and served
as instruments of unrighteousness, are now yielded by the Spirit
of God in obedience to Christ. But it too is waiting for its
own redemption. Are you hearing me? So that one
day the body will experience this newness of life, this kinos,
this freshness, this revitalization. Are you hearing me? So we are
operating out of sort of a tension of two. Tension of two realities,
old and new. We're operating out of old things
and new things. The old is passing away and the
new is abounding. That tension has to be accepted. Now, the implication of it thus
also is this, that even though you and I are operating out of
new principles, if any man be in Christ Jesus, he's a new creature,
the new man, the inner man is growing daily, the outer man
is perishing, 2 Corinthians 4, Because we are dealing in this
sort of intermediary state, you can never expect experiential
perfection. Because we are in this intermediary
state, you can never expect experiential perfection. All that you experience
in your new man, as good as it may be now, will never, never
fully experience the blessings of perfection until both body
and soul are renewed in the glorification. You and I have to accept the
shortcoming of not yet being made perfect. Are you guys following
me? But what's important about this concept of the new man,
the new covenant, the new life, that's the way the book of Acts
calls it, this new life. The New Jerusalem is what Christ
calls it Revelation 3 Revelation 19. He says he'll give you a
new name that we are new creatures There's a new song that we sing
all things will be made new the newness principle is where we're
going The newness principle is where we're going. The last book
of Revelation, chapter two is alluding to the crescendo of
the joy that God is going to make all things new and he's
going to make it new out of the old. So we're in that transition.
Are you with me so far? We're in that transition. You
have to accept then aspects of weakness incorporated in the
process. You have to expect that there's
just, Yeah, in our, among our covenant theologian brethrens,
they would call the old covenant like the stock of the corn and
the blade and the new covenant would be the corn itself coming
up out of the stock and the blade. Do you see the imagery? You can't
have the corn on the cob without the blade and the stock. They
serve to augment each other. Again, people will say, well,
I don't need the old Testament. I only need the new Testament.
I beg to differ. The New Testament is explained
by the Old Testament. The Old Testament contains the
New Testament. Much of what you read in the
New Testament is a reference to the Old Testament. And if
you have a reference to the Old Testament by the New Testament
writings, and you can't get to the Old Testament to find the
context or the circumstances surrounding that reference point,
you're gonna be left wondering why he gave me these pointer
passages back to Hosea and Isaiah and Deuteronomy and Exodus and
thus far. How can I understand the new
without the old? See what I'm getting at? So when
we talk about Old Covenant, New Covenant, we are talking about
epics and paradigm shifts in history. When we talk about the
Word of God from Genesis to Revelation, we're talking from Genesis to
Revelation. From Genesis to Revelation. It
is relevant to us. Here we are going through the
Gospel and sexuality class, right? Where did I start? Genesis. I
have to start in Genesis because Genesis is where everything has
its birth and has its unfolding and we have to make our way through
the history, redemptive history of mankind from Genesis to Exodus
to Leviticus and on forward because those are the origins of where
we are today. You cannot understand today unless
you understand yesterday. Like someone had said, a historian
had said, before you launch out into the future, you better seriously
consider the past. So let us move forward here in
verse 8 and 9. I want to make sure that I can
get down to verse 14 Although I doubt I'll do that Again a
new commandment I write to you which things are true in him
and in you because the darkness is passed and the true light
now shines this is what you and I worked through last week John
is very Very precise when he says this, he's getting ready
to get into the dark light paradigm, which he loves to do. Dark light
is the Johannine concept. This here is your contrast. This
here is your Genesis account. In the beginning, God created
heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and darkness
was upon the face of the deep. He's getting ready to deal with
the dark light paradigm. And what he says over in verse
eight is that, The darkness is passing and the true light is
now shining. He says, I write unto you which
things are true in him and in you. The darkness is past and
the true light now shines. He gives us this concept of a
24 hour day where the darkness is leaving and the light is emerging. He's really giving us an eschatological
view of the way the gospel works first in the life of a sinner
who comes to know Christ. Before you come to know Christ,
you and I are in darkness. The heart is completely dark.
And then God penetrates the heart with the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ through preaching
and teaching. And when he pierces the heart,
when he pierces the heart with the light, now all of a sudden
you see things that you never saw before. Namely, you see sin
the way God sees sin. Listen, this is how you know
you are at least on the course of regeneration. You are not
even in the ballpark if you don't see sin the way God sees sin.
The work of the Spirit of God in John 16, 8 is very clear.
And when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will convince the
world of what? Sin, of righteousness, and of
judgment. The goal of the Spirit of God
is to help you and I to see sin the way God sees it. And whatsoever
is manifested is light. So the goal of the Spirit of
God is to help us realize that our problem is not society, it's
not our friends, it's not our relatives, it's not our job.
We love to blame our problems on other people, but our problem
is our sin nature. And the purpose for which Christ
came is to resolve the guilt and damnation and curse of sin
in our life against God. He sheds the light on the reality
that we are sinners. He convinces us that we are sinners.
That's light. Then he leads us to Christ and
the righteousness which Christ accomplished at Calvary. And
he convinces us that Christ's righteousness is sufficient to
remove all my sin and to make me stand right before God. That
too is light. Then he shows us the judgment
of Christ on Calvary, and we come to believe the Spirit's
declaration that there is therefore now no condemnation to those
that are in Christ Jesus. That's light. Security has come
by virtue of the penetrating nature of that light, which lets
me know I'm a sinner, Christ is the only righteous one, his
death on Calvary has decreed me not guilty. God imputes his
righteousness to me. God has raised me from the dead.
Now I am growing in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord.
And the Lord tells me now to walk in the light. That's what a believer is. He's
a person that walks in the light. Are you guys following me? It's
a journey with challenges and difficulties, but it's better
than it was before we had known Christ. Isn't that right? My
worst day in Christ is a million times better than my best day
outside of Christ. Okay, here we go now then. Let's
work with this in verse nine. He that saith he is in the light
and hates his brother is in darkness even until now. Do you guys see
that? And John now is getting back
to the contradictory nature of the false prophets and false
teachers who had left the church of John in opposition to the
gospel and in opposition to apostolic teaching. John calls that hate. John says, if you do not believe
the gospel we preach and teach concerning Jesus Christ, you
hate us and you hate Christ. I know that's an extreme sort
of conclusion to be drawn, but it's true. Remember what Jesus
said in John chapter 14, letting the disciples know, listen, and
we're getting ready to see this in verse 14 and 15. If the world
hated you, this is what Jesus said to the disciples, know that
it hated me first. If you were of the world, the
world would love you. But now that you are no longer
of the world, the world hates you. And what Christ was letting
the disciples know is, you know that it hates me because in a
little while it's going to crucify me. And you're going to have
to go the same way that I go. This is why this is a cross center
theology. One of the we have to be careful about it, but one
of the affirmations that you are a child of God is that you
find yourself suffering conflict and opposition by loved ones
because they don't understand who you are in Christ. One of
the evidences that you're a child of God is that on your work,
when you begin to walk in the conviction of who you are in
Christ and stand on the cause of the gospel, because they don't
understand it, there is a form of persecution that takes place.
That's an evidence that you are a child of God. And these are
preparatory for the battle that you have been called to as well.
I'm not saying I want you to be careful about this. I'm not
saying that we should go out and in a martyrdom spirit, look
for people to persecute us. Cause you know, there are people
who get morbid pleasure out of being hated. I don't want to
be hated. just to be hated on, you know.
People do. People, oh, woe is me, they beat
me down. Well, what you doing wrong that
they beat you down for? Make sure that you aren't provoking
someone to beat you down. But if you are living for the
glory of God and you are restraining from sin and as first Peter 4
puts it if you are holding back Because you have come to conclude
that the time has sufficed for you to have wrought the will
of the Gentile no longer Am I living for the enemy? I'm living for
Christ and they want to persecute you because you have changed
sides then then suffer that with patience That's what Peter says
because it's a token of the presence of the Spirit of God in your
life If you suffer with Christ, you're gonna what reign with
him So this is what Peter's, John is talking about as well.
But when you hear the allusion to your brother hating you, there
are some things to learn here. He that loveth, verse 10, his
brother abides in the light. You see that? And there is none
occasion of stumbling in him. So therefore, what we wanna do
now is look at that concept. He that abideth in the light
loveth his brother, and there is none occasion of stumbling
in him. What John is basically saying is, if I am walking in
the light, then two things will be minimal if I'm walking in
the light. If I'm walking in the light, the capacity for me
to stumble is minimized. We saw it in the gospel of John
chapter 14, Jesus said, walk in the light, walk while you
have the light, for the night cometh when no man can walk And
if he walks in the darkness, he's going to stumble because
he does not know where he is going. Now, I want to just talk
briefly about the stumbling block concept of walking in darkness. I want this ethical truth to
penetrate your thinking. If we are walking in darkness,
what it means is we are not walking according to God's word. And
if I am not walking according to God's word, I am going to
stumble because I'm going to be in the dark. Darkness is a
metaphor for sin. It's a metaphor for disobedience.
It's a metaphor for walking contrary to God's precepts, right? Any of you ever Traversed through
the woods. Have you ever been out to the
woods and you know how pitch-black it is in the woods It's so pitch-black.
You can't even see your head in front of your face, right?
And you know how uneven the ground is out there. You're walking
you're being very careful, right? You can easily stumble Easily
stumble. That's the metaphor now. Here's
the bigger more important imperative our concern that John has and
that's this if a person says he loves his brother and He therefore
abides in the light then there is no occasion of stumbling in
him for his brother See, here's what John is getting at also
and this is part of love if I am walking with Christ and I am
going to love my brother enough to make sure that my conduct
doesn't set him up to stumble. You got it? If I love the gospel
and I love Christ, then that means by necessity I am conscious
that other people are watching me. My family is watching me. My children are watching me.
As a pastor, The whole church is watching me as a pastor. Other
pastors are watching me, depending upon me to give them some guidance
by my teaching, by my conduct, by my life. If I am walking in
that light, I am going to make sure that my actions and my choices
and decisions don't set them up to stumble. That's called
love. Love works no ill to its neighbor. So if we say we're walking in
the light, you know what that means? We do regard not only
what God thinks, but what other people think. So in your outline,
you'll notice that we have, uh, under verse nine through 11,
light and hatred are mutually exclusive because hatred is darkness
is demonic. It's devilish. Uh, first John
three verses 11 through 15, John 12, 35, 36, second Peter one
19 and 20 Proverbs four 18. And then you notice I go into
the term stumbling block. You guys see that? Well, Jesus
talks about this in Revelation chapter 14, Revelation 2, 14.
Go there. I'll just use this one verse
and demonstrate how important it is for us to understand that
if we say we're walking in the light, what that's going to mean
is I'm going to have a conscious obligatory mindset not to live
in such a way as caused my brother and sister to stumble. Now, what's
remarkable about the book of Revelation, more particularly
the first three chapters, is that Jesus himself in his post-incarnate
glorified state has returned to the church through the letters
that he had given to John to write. And he's instructing each
church particularly. And in the church at Pergamos,
he instructs the church on this regard. He says in Revelation
chapter 2, verse 14, these words. Listen to this. This is the church
at Pergamos. But I have a few things against
you, because you have there them that hold the doctrine of what? Balaam, who taught Balak to do
what? Cast a stumbling block before
the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed unto idols
and to commit fornication. Uh, I won't stay here long, but
this is the book of revelation is another case study argument
for saying you cannot understand the book of revelation unless
you understand the old Testament. The book of revelation is a recapitulation
of the old Testament. Almost in total, almost all the
language is old Testament language carried over into the new Testament
to be understood spiritually. Jesus is talking to a church
in the first century, somewhere around 100 AD, called the church
at Pergamos, part of the seven churches of Asia Minor, 100 AD,
and yet he says, you have in there those that teach the doctrine
of Balaam. Well, the doctrine of Balaam
goes all the way back 1,400 years before Christ. The doctrine of
Balaam is the doctrine of getting members of the church to sin
by placing before them harlots and prostitutes of a religious
order that would tempt them and entice them to enter into the
religious practices of that culture at that time, telling them it's
all right to commit fornication and whoredom because this is
a way to get revelations from God. That's a pregnant pause for you
to think about that for a moment. And I've shared this with you,
and I'll share this before I go on. In the Old Testament, where
the battles between the people of God and the indigenous people
of the land, particularly the land of Canaan. In the Old Testament,
the battle between the people of God and the people of the
land of Canaan were highly symbolized by religious connotations. Baal,
Ashtoreth, Moloch. me, uh, um, um, um, various other
pagan gods that were indigenous to the land. Okay. These gods
were, uh, gods in which the people worship and they tempted the
children of Israel to worship those gods too. I want to say
this about those pagan gods. Those pagan gods still exist
today, but they don't operate on an overtly religious level. Let me help you. The same ideology
and doctrine and practice of the pagan gods indigenous in
the land of Canaan This is where we're going in our sexuality
class are present today. Only they are secular Are you
hearing me? the same ideology that was indigenous
to the culture of Canaan in the 14th century BC when Israel was
told to go into the land of Canaan and to destroy and demolish those
gods and establish the true God in Jehovah. Those gods still
are present today, but they are present not in a religious form. They are present in what we call
secular ideology, secular worldviews, hyper sexuality, paganism of
every form, idolatry and secularism. They are all still being experienced
in our present day culture. They're just only viewed from
a secular perspective. Are you guys hearing me? It's
important for you to know that because you may think that Old
Testament writing is irrelevant. But for instance, the bail PR,
this is, uh, the book of numbers around verse, uh, chapters 22
through 25 bail PR, but all is the indigenous pagan God, but
all the word by all means Lord. It's equivalent to Yahweh in
terms of the indigenous pagans believing in a Lord, just like
the people of God believed in the Lord. So it would be kind
of like in our present day, someone who is really not a Christian,
but they'd be free to use the word. I believe in the Lord.
What you would have to ask is what Lord? And then when they
began to define the Lord that they believed in, you would know
whether or not the Lord they believed in was the same Lord
you believed in. In fact, God, the word Baal was
so prevalent in the land of Canaan that God actually attributed
to himself once in the book of Hosea to let the children of
Israel know, no, Baal is not Lord, I'm Lord. However, under
that rubric, Baal were all kinds of hyphenated terms and expressions,
Baal Peor, Baal this, Baal that, Baal the other thing. And one
of the prevalent Baals was the Baal Peor, which is the God of
the opening, the God of the womb, the God of sexuality. Bill Peor
was the God that gives you pleasure. That's why I'm saying in the
21st century where you and I are today, the God that dominates
our present culture is the God that gives pleasure, the God
of sex, the God of sex. That's why we're dealing with
what we're dealing with. And I am convinced that in the upper
echelons of society, I'm talking about in the institutions that
run our government, our educational system, our entertainment systems,
that they bow down literally to these same gods. I'm convinced
that behind closed doors, in fact, I know this, I was doing
some study today on the land of Canaan, the Canaanite gods,
just so I can talk about this when we get to Leviticus 18 through
20, as to why God told us, don't you behave like them. I'm gonna
try to make the corollary between the practices of the Canaanite
gods and what goes on in our entertainment industry with the
symbolism and the hyper symbolism that you see taking place. They
know how to take the old pagan deities and their images and
their symbols and bring them over into a very contemporary
context, removing some parts of the symbolism, but demonstrating
other parts of the symbolism to let those know who are initiated
in those dark worlds that we are talking about the same God.
And what happens when you are watching TV or watching DVDs
or watching music videos, you are actually watching the worship
of pagan gods, the actual worship of pagan gods. and they are letting
people who are initiated know we are worshipping the devil,
we are worshipping Satan, we are worshipping pagan gods, Bel
Pior, we are worshipping Astrid, and the people that are entertaining
these young people, mostly our young people are sucked up in
this emotional entertainment world, are forming themselves
into images, and postures, and positions that indicate that
they know what they are doing. And if you were to do hieroglyphics
and go back and study some of Egyptology and some of the Canaanite
gods, you would see that the images and the symbols that are
back there are present in our media today. They are part of
our larger company emblems and signs as well. A lot of that
is present today. We haven't gone anywhere. This
is why when we get back into the study concerning Adam and
Eve being driven out of the land of Canaan, they were driven out
of the land of Canaan to head to Babylon. The direction that
they were headed to is Babylon. That's where we are. In the book,
our Bible closes out with the necessity of destroying Babylon
before God can create the new heavens in a new way. So the
fall of man leads us to Babylon by way of Canaan. In the process,
God has set up a redemption plan called Jerusalem, and Jerusalem
is the whole scheme of salvation by which God calls his elect
out of Canaan, out of Babylon, into this beautiful city, but
where is Jerusalem? Jerusalem's in Canaan. Is it
not? It's in the land of Palestine.
It's in the land of promise. So there is a geographical conflation
where in the midst of this pagan world, God has a Jerusalem. Are you hearing me? He has an
elect who are in the world, but not of the world. who know how
to live here, but not be the slaves of this present system,
who understand that their calling is not to go live on a reservation,
but to be in and to mingle with and live and commerce with everybody
else, calling men and women to exclusivity to Christ. Jerusalem
is smack dab in the land of promise, which is where the Canaanites
are. And essentially the metaphor is this, that this world is where
we live. You and I aren't going anywhere.
This is the world we live in. But as we're gonna see in verse
14 and 15, love not the world, right? So let's go to work a
little bit more on our church and see if we can get there.
We got about 15, 20 minutes. So here in the text, it says
over in verse 14, I have a few things against you because you
have them there that hold the doctrine of Balaam who taught
Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel
to eat things sacrificed unto idol and to commit fornication. And so what the what the Lord
was warning about is stumbling blocks. If a person calls himself
a Christian, but he places a stumbling block in front of his brother,
whatever that stumbling block is, it makes that individual
a person who is walking in darkness. Look at your outline. Stumbling
block, Balaam equals to bad doctrine, seduction, fornication. That's
what Belpior, the God of every way. Do you see that? All paths
ultimately leading to illicit sexuality. Illicit sexuality
go with me in your Bible to Romans chapter 14 verse 13. This is
one more verse and then we'll move on in our thoughts I'm concluding
this portion of our consideration with this statement if you and
I are Christians We are obligated to rejoice in our position in
Christ on the grounds of our justification before him and
the unchangeableness of what he has done for us in Jesus,
giving us an immutable righteousness upon which we can be secure that
we're his. But as a consequence of that
relationship, we are to walk in obedience to Christ because
it glorifies God and it leads other people to Christ. My obedience
to God is for God's glory and for others to be safely led to
Christ. Now, if I disobey God, I do not
glorify him and I set up stumbling blocks for my brothers and sisters
so that they cannot get to the Christ that they need. Are you
guys following me? Those are the motives for which
we want to obey God because it glorifies him and it gives people
clear access without stumbling stones to get to Jesus. Romans 14 verse 13. Let us therefore judge. Let us
not therefore judge one another anymore, but judge this rather. This is the thing that we should
preoccupy ourselves with. That no man put a what? Or an
occasion to fall in his brother's way. Now, if you were to go through
all the passages that I gave you, you would find that that's
written in Leviticus chapter 19, verse 14. And here's what
it says before we go on to our next point. You shall, excuse
me, you shall not put a stumbling block in the path of the blind. You shall not put a stumbling
block in the path of the blind. How cruel are we when we see
a blind person struggling to make their way and we stick something
in the way to trip them up? Spiritually, that's the same
way. When you know that people do
not yet have their eyes open to the glory of God in Christ,
they are still blind. And yet you hinder them from
getting to the light by disobedience. Some form of immorality or disobedience
so that they never obtain that for which they are striving.
And that is a revelation of the glory of God. Christ. All right,
let's go on go back to our text now John is actually making a distinction
between the true believer and a false believer the one who
professes to know God and The one who actually has a possession
of him and then he goes on to develop it this way And you're
gonna see this I'm gonna I'm gonna make my way through verses
11 through 14 fairly quickly because I want to touch on verse
15 tonight But he that hated this brother is in darkness and
walks in darkness and does not know where he goes because that
the darkness has blinded his eyes. Now I write unto you little
children because your sins are forgiving you for his namesake.
I write unto you fathers because you have known him that is from
the beginning. I write unto you young men because you have overcome
the wicked one. I write unto you little children
because you have known the father. I have written unto you fathers
because you have known him that is from the beginning. I have
written unto you young men because you are strong and the word of
God abideth in you and you have overcome the wicked one. Do you
guys see that? Now it almost seems redundant,
but it really is not. In verses 12 through verses 14,
John speaks to three categories of people and he essentially
says two things. The letter that you guys have
in your hand, I have written that to you. The letter that
you have in your hand is designated to the fathers in the church
first. It's designated to the young
men in the church. And then it's designated to the
new babes in the church. Those are the three categories
that John recognizes to whom he's writing. He says, you fathers
to whom I am writing, I'm writing to you. because you already know
God. You've known him from the beginning.
You've been walking with him for years. Now, what is a father
in the faith? A father in the faith is a person
that is mature in Christ because he has walked with Christ for
decades and he has settled in the faithfulness of Christ in
his life. I have written unto you fathers
because you have known him. One of the beauties of growing
in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and having 10, 20,
30 years under your belt is that there is a sense of settled knowing
that God doesn't lie, doesn't fail, or doesn't change. Are
you hearing me? Now that knowing is that knowing
which gives you a real confidence in time of trouble that the young
man doesn't have and certainly the babe doesn't have because
it is part of the relationship that you have with God that over
time he proves himself faithful in your life. So that when you
are 30, 40 years in the Lord and you go through certain trials,
you actually have this otherworldly settledness in you. That is going
to be all right. Right? It's going to be all right.
It's just gonna be alright cuz I know God see I just I know
him like that that's the blessing of maturing in Christ because
you didn't been through some things and You may not be able
to explain to people why you have this confidence other than
to say I've been through some things and God has delivered
me out of all my troubles His word is right. His works are
done and true and God is faithful takes maturity to come to that
And when you have that kind of maturity, you become a stabilizing
factor and a bulwark for other people for whom the same trial
is testing them a little bit more ferociously. For instance,
he speaks to the young man in that text, I speak unto you young
men, right? He says, and I am confident that
you are strong in the Lord because you have overcome the wicked
one, because the word of God is abiding in you. Notice what
he says to the young man. This is not exclusive of the
young women, but here's what he's saying to us who are in
our youth. Those of you who are listening
to me that are in your youth, what God fully requires of you
in order for you to make it through the trials that are coming to
you in your life is that you grow deep in your knowledge of
God's word. that you learn to understand
the word of God in his promises, in his power, in his purpose,
so that you can apply that word to the trial in your life and
see how the word of God delivers you in the midst of your difficulties. What God is saying when he says,
and I am writing unto you young men because you are strong, he's
referring to the fact that it is part of God's providence that
in our youth, in our In our vitality that we are going to wage war
with the devil Now follow me now Because this is all part
of the normative progress progression of living It's sad, but it's
true that The the progress of development from a new babe in
christ to a mature person in christ is the same for everybody
It has everything to do with uh uh, the, the chronological
span of life that we go through. If we're young in the faith,
20 years old, uh, we're going to go through everything that
everybody that's 20 years old goes through. When we get the
40, we're going to be going through the, uh, midlife crisis that
everybody else goes through in their forties, pretending that
you're still 20, but you, but you listen, your crossover ain't
the same. I'm sorry. It just ain't the
same as why those youngsters can come up and say, Oh gee,
look, man, You, you, you, you play the baseline. You okay.
Cause you, you know, you're still, you still feel strong. Then when
you hit 50, you know, you didn't got your legitimate OG card at
50. Am I telling the truth? You got your legitimate OG card.
The transition from being strong in the Lord and fighting those
spiritual battles to maturing as a mother and a father in Christ
is the ability for you to rely much more on prayer. and the faithfulness of God,
then for you to be able to pull out and quote 50 Bible verses
like those of us who are young can do. Are you following me? So you don't have to feel bad
because you forgot that verse. Watch this, that verse didn't
forget you. Isn't that good? You might've forgot that verse,
but that verse didn't forget you. That verse stands at century
to obey God anytime God wants that verse to obey him. See,
and that verse is there for you. You're not there for the verse.
And so even though you forget the verse, the verse doesn't
forget you. It's going to keep you. When you go through the
fire, God will be with you so that you are not burned or scorched
or cinched at all. The waters will not overflow
your head because I, the Lord, your God, am your redeemer, am
your savior. God says that. And I may forget
where that verse is, but that verse doesn't forget where I
am. But the young person needs to be able to utilize biblical
truth in the times of their trials So they've got to read they've
got to diverge divulge. They've got to study They've
got to immerse themselves in scripture because they've got
to fight battles every day in terms of the intensity of the
flesh And the fact that they don't have that, uh, that level
of maturity and journeymanship that the older saints do It's
just true. So john makes those distinctions
in verses 12 through 14 to bring us to verse 15, which is where
I want us now to kind of begin to unpack verse 15 through 17.
We're going to just touch on it tonight, and then we'll get
back here next week. Listen to what he says. Love
not the world. Do you see that? Love not the
world. In your outline, it's under verse
14 through 17, but it's verse 15 through 17. Love not the world. neither the things that are in
the world. If any man loved the world, the
love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world
is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye and the pride
of life. It is not of the world, but it
is not of the father, but is of the world. And the world is
passing away. the lust thereof but he that
does the will of God abides forever so I want to I want to I want
to just begin to work with verses 15 through 17 to help us understand
what John is saying now that he has encouraged the church
the little children who are born again he said to them I write
unto you little children because your sins are forgiven isn't
that what he says that is the beauty of and joy that the new
believer has resonating in his being when he comes to Christ.
The idea that my sins are forgiven. Now that's true for us old folks
too, don't get me wrong. But for the new believer, what
he or she is really animated about is the possibility that
they stand before God on the grounds of Christ's righteousness
as completely righteous. that God does not look at their
sin and set them up for eternal destruction because of the forgiveness
that comes through Jesus Christ. To have a real internal sense
of your sins forgiven is, besides glory, the greatest feeling you
could ever have. To have the feeling, that sensible
feeling that your sins are forgiven, besides glory, is the greatest
feeling you could ever have. Am I making some sense? The weight
of sin, the burden of sin, the guilt of sin, the heaviness of
sin, the burden of sin, the blinding nature of sin, the corrupting
nature of sin, the smothering nature of sin, when it's removed,
like the burden on the back of Christian, to drop into that
casket at the bottom of that hill where that cross stood,
to be relieved in your soul so that the Spirit of God says to
you, there is therefore now no more condemnation. It's the greatest
feeling in the world short of glorification. The greatest feeling
in the world. The greatest feeling in the world.
John is encouraging a new believer. Don't thwart that. Don't play
that down. Don't belittle that. Value that
with everything in you. That freedom cost the death of
the second person of the Godhead. So the young believer is to wallow
in and immerse themselves in and revel in the freedom that
they have in Christ. Are you walking around today
as a child of God, thankful because you are a child of God and not,
not, not impeded by, or troubled by, or strapped down by iniquity
and transgression? That's only by the grace of God.
It's only by the grace of God. And so he gives him that encouragement.
Then he says, but I want you to understand something now.
You who have been blessed with the forgiveness of sins, you
who have been blessed with the word of God, you who have been
blessed with a knowledge of God, and this is eternal life, that
they might know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom
he has sent. You, in all these categories,
do not love this world. So let's work through that for
a moment. I'm just gonna lay the foundation here. And when
John says, do not love the world, What he is not saying is do not
love the people of the world. John is not saying to not love
people. The word world there must be
understood as this world's system, philosophy and way of life. That's first. If we understand
our Bible, we understand the analogy of scripture. We are
to love the Lord God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and
strength and our neighbor as ourself. So we are not saying
don't love people. Christ love people. We love people,
but we do not love this world system. So now stay with me.
Saints, this world system is what God saved you from. That's Galatians chapter one,
just in case you didn't know. that he might deliver us from this
present evil world system. When God saved me, he opened
my eyes to this world's system. Prior to him saving me, I was
all together in concert and in harmony with this world system.
I love the world. I love the things of the world.
I love the way the world thought. I love the way the world taught.
I love the way the world acted. I was just like the world. When
God opened my eyes, I found myself looking at the world differently.
Not the people of the world, but the ideology of the world,
the conversation of the world, the affections of the world,
the worldview, what people thought about, what they valued, what
they treasured, how they operated, what their agendas were. That's
the strange thing that happens when you find yourself in quorum
day or fellowship with God. God now infuses into you his
thoughts and his affections. And now you see the world a little
differently. Isn't that true? You go, whoa, this is really
wild because I used to actually think like that, but I don't
think like that anymore. Now stay with me because I want
to work this for 10 minutes before I open the floor for questions,
if you have any. To love not the world John is
saying that you and I must see that this world system is the
thing from which we are being delivered It is the system that
God hates James chapter 4 verse 4 says if any person will be
a friend of the world. He is an enemy of God Are you
hearing me? God hates this world system because
this world system is under the influence of the devil That's
first john chapter 5 when we know that the whole world lieth
in the lap of the wicked one It's controlled. It's governed.
It's operating by the maniacal agenda and matrix and system
of the devil from the top down Are you guys following me? When
God opens your eyes, your transformation of mind is that you learn teachings
and truths that help you see through the lies and the agenda
and the destructive doctrines of this world system. That's
what is meant by love, not the word. And the word is agapeon,
it's agapon, from which we get the term agape. And agape is
a Greek word for love that corresponds with being obligated to, committed
to, sacrificially. When we talk about operating
out of agape love, here's what we're saying. When I love someone
with an agape love, I am committed to that person to the death.
It doesn't have anything to do with how I feel. Are you hearing
me? It has everything to do with
how I value and treasure the relationship that I have with
that person. It's not about feelings. Phileo includes feelings, affections. As we're gonna see down the line,
Eros includes feelings and affections. But when you love with the kind
of love that God loves, you are operating out of obligation,
covenant principles and commitment. Now this is essential in marriage.
This is where the devil has hijacked marriages too. Because marriages
are stable or unstable based on how people feel. This is why we're in this gospel
of sexuality, so we can understand the difference between biblical
love and carnal love. What God tells us to do is to
not be committed to, not be obligated to, not sacrificially committed
to this world system, because this world system is diametrically
opposed to God. In fact, the verb form in that
this verse goes like this. You are presently not loving
the world. Continue not loving the world. Are you hearing me? Is what is
called the present verb form. And what that means is you are
not loving the world. Continue not loving the world.
Don't ever get to a point where you stop not loving the world. That's interesting, isn't it?
So now in order for you to do that, you have to continue to
grow in the word so that you can see the world for what it
is, because there is this ever pressing temptation for us to
wake up every day, putting on different bifocals, different
prisms. Let's say you've got a pair of
glasses through which you see, and those glasses are a biblical
worldview. When you put them on, you see
the world the way God sees it. but also you have another pair
of glasses and this is called a secular carnal me-ism worldview. If you put them on, then all
of a sudden the world looks good to you, feels good to you, and
you start thinking, you know, this world is not that bad. In
fact, I kind of like the way it's going. I mean, you know,
if I kind of modify my doctrine a little bit, I can get along
with folks in this world. Come on. Am I telling the truth?
I know I'm telling the truth. That's the sin within, willing
to put on the prism of secularism and start compromising what you
know God's word says about this world so that you can get along.
So what God says is, do not stop having this critical, objective
view about the way this world operates. And here's the reason
why. I'm going to unpack these, open up these few concepts, and
then we're going to deal with it next week. Do not love the
world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man
loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. That's
verse 15, right? So what he did was create that exclusivism principle. You can't love the world and
have the love of the Father in you at the same time, right?
That means there is a sense in which this world is not loved
by the Father, right? Doesn't that follow? Okay, now
follow verse 16. For, this is what we call the
purpose clause, all that is in the world. Now he's getting ready
to give us What is contained in this world system? What's
contained in this world system? Here's what he says. For all
that is in this world is the last of the what? Now, the word
last. Epe. Thumeo. Epe is a preposition, E-P-I. E-P-I is generally a word that
we use for something that is deep, penetrating, and central. Like the epicenter of an earthquake
When an earthquake takes place, there's an epicenter where it
starts and reverberates and affects its region from its center outward.
The greatest intensity is at the center of the earthquake.
We call it the what? Epicenter. The preposition epic
means deep, deep. When we use the term epigenosis,
we are talking about a deep knowledge of God. So when we use the word
epi through maya the verb or noun through maya Is from that
term from which we get thermometer Thermometer Temperature rising
What john says is all that's in the world is a lust that rises
from deep down inside our fallen nature All that's in the world
is a lust that rises from deep down in our fallen nature and
it dictates to us our choices. I'm not telling the truth. That's
what happened at the fall. It dictates to us our choices.
Please, there are two voices you hear, at least in your being. your intellect and your emotions. You can pretend that you don't
know which one is talking, but watch this. The one that's talking
down here is the one that always gets you in trouble. And people
that are self-deceived, I talk about this with my brothers coming
out of drug addiction. I can talk about people who are
wrapped up in porn. I can talk about people who are
wrapped up in homosexuality. All kinds of sins where you know
intellectually, rationally, propositionally, cognitively that it's wrong,
but you do it. Why do I do what I know is wrong? Because you got two voices going
on. The one voice says, man, you know the book is right. The
book says don't do that. The other voice says, man, you
can do whatever you want to do. In fact, you know, this is about
you. This is about me and you. This
is, you know, man, that's crazy, man. You know, I'm going to keep
working you until we get this thing done. You know that, right?
That's the lust. And what it does is it speaks
deep down in the core of your being and it touches your affections
so that if you are not walking in the spirit, you will fulfill
the lust of the what? Here's what God says. All that
is in the world is that system. That system operates for one
purpose alone, to fulfill carnal passions. So now when you look
at the television and you listen to the radio and you see the
advertisement and you see what's going on in the world, you understand
that the premise upon which it operates. The world never asks,
what does God say about this? Are you hearing me? All that's in the world is the
lust of the flesh. And then the lust of the what? Stay with me
now. This is why we have to regard
God's word. Because the eye gate is connected
to your lust by way of rationalization. You and I rationalize what we
see by our lust. That's how Eve saw the tree differently
after the serpent told her what it could do for her. Are you
hearing me? This is called temptation. Temptation
is the moment before you are enticed, a thing looks one way,
And it's not attractive. But once you get enticed, that
thing looks a total different way. You go, wow, that thing
looks good now. And you are moving towards that.
The eye gate becomes the medium between your objective and the
proposition that goes on in your soul. And it's called the lust
of the eye. And what Solomon said about the lust of the eye,
which is very important, now watch this now. This is why I
know. I don't care what anybody says.
I know that the devil knew what he was doing when he got the
human race to fall into sexual sin. I knew he knew what he was
doing. And especially the sacred institution of sex combined with
the body. You and I struggle enormously
with what we see. That's what our advertisement
is all about. Advertisement is about selling
you on what you see This is the superficiality of the man who
lives by the epitome of the flesh The flesh dictates to you To
go after that thing that you see Right all that's in the world
is the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and she
saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes. Right? That becomes the battle. That
becomes the battle. How you see a thing. You and
I have to be careful that when we look at a thing and we see
a thing that we are not driven to view that thing for more than
what it really is. Right? Because if we go beyond
what it really is into what we want it to be We are now operating
out of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eye We're
getting ready to commit idolatry Am I telling you true? We get
ready to go into the James 1 14 through 16 model Drawn away by
our own lust entice enticement leading to to sin sin leading
to death. It becomes a process, right?
Because you are seeing that thing through Eyes that are covetous
That's a real battle for us, isn't it? The world knows that
our God says that's all that's in the world is the lust of the
flesh epitome of the passions of our carnal nature the lust
of the eyes the Never-ending Solomon says the eye is never
satisfied with seeing Are you following me? I'm 50. I'm going on 52 years old and
my eyes is never weary at looking at stuff and Do your eyes ever
say, man, just stop looking, man. I'm tired of looking at
stuff. Do your eyes ever say that? I'm just tired of looking
at stuff. Can we just take a day off, man? You wake up in the
morning and your eyes say, man, look, every time you wake up,
you got me going. Can we just shut these down?
Can we just walk blind for a day? No, your eyes are always looking.
And your eyes are always trying to hone in on something that
will correspond to your lust. This is where you try to get
happy. Now, what can I do to get happy today? Let me let me
see what I can do to get happy today. Am I telling the truth, brother?
I'm almost done. All that's in the world is the
lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh. This is why nakedness
is so destructive. We're going to unpack this over
the next two weeks. The devil has taken the most sacred entity
that God gave us, our bodies, and destroyed the sacredness
of it and has prostituted it. He knows the power of nakedness. He knows the power of nakedness.
So we live in a pornographic world. Am I making some sense? Your world is pornographic. And
here's the power of the eyes. Listen to me, here's the power
of the eyes. The power of the eyes is the capacity by which
the thing you are looking at will transform you into its own
image. The power of the eye has the
capacity to transform you into the thing at which you look. Am I telling the truth? Some
of y'all looking at me like, what you talking about? I just
want to help you because this I've shared this for years. And
sometimes I suggest, you know, man, you're the only one that
believe this stuff. But see, because our children, our teenagers,
our young people are in between being a child and being an adult
where they're not fixed in their identity, they get trapped by
what they see and what they see. They transform into. Am I telling
the truth? Then we got stupid grownups that
try to do the same thing. Have you ever seen dumb grownups,
550 years old, trying to transform? You know, I expect that with
young people because young people have not forged their identity.
You know, you gotta work with them. This is why the relationship
between the parent and the children between ages one and ages 13
and 14 is so critical. They need you as a model. the
eye Looks at an object that object becomes its God and it is transformed
into that same image This is why we must have our eyes fixed
on Christ If you think you're gonna look
like Christ while your eyes are wandering all over planet earth
is never gonna happen Transformation into the image of the thing requires
a fixation on the part of the subject to the subject until
the subject looks like the object This is why God created us in
his image and in his likeness and immediately we have fellowship
with him Correspondence because we are the image bearers of God
Am I making some sense and they that worship them are like unto
them And the devil knows this. He
knows if he can put it on an advertisement board, on the media,
on the television, on the radio, pretty soon you'll go out and
buy it and you'll start transforming yourself into that idol. What
you'll also start doing is mimicking that idol. Some of the biggest
idols that our young people transform themselves into are people. Human beings are idols. And the
young people transform themselves into those idols. They vicariously
live through those idols. Am I telling the truth? And that's
the battle we are fighting. The battle we are fighting is
teaching our young people to think God's thoughts after him,
understanding how to view the world very objectively and biblically
so that they are not lured into the power of this world system. Because this world system will
take them on a ride that will transform them into the image
of this world. And the destination is death.
That's what the text says. So John says to us, you already
are presently not loving the world because the love of the
father's in you. You have a sense of detachment
from the world because you're Christian. You love the people
in the world, but you understand that the system of this world
does not love God does not obey God's word You know that you
are fixed on following God He's saying continue that way because
listen all that's in the world is these three things lust of
the flesh. Let's be a and pride of life
Pride of life pastor. What's the pride of life? This
one is really simple and It's hard because the translators
of the King James did it in a way that I think is a little obscure.
But here's what the pride of life is. It's the resume of all
that you achieve. It's the resume of all that you
achieve in life. Stay with me. It's the resume
of all that you achieve in life. See, the goal of this world system
is to distract you until you die and go to hell by telling
you you need to get all you can in life. And along the way, it
rewards you with accolades. You didn't finish the sixth grade.
Good. You didn't finish the 12th grade.
Good. You're going to college. Good. You get into work now.
Good. You're going to become a CPA.
Good. You're going to get your BA. Good. You're going to do
that. And they keep running you up the ring run of success. And you are boasting all the
way. We have great conferences and meetings and give you plaques
and awards. Look what you have accomplished.
All this. Are you guys hearing me? Now
follow this. What have you really accomplished? What have you really
accomplished? What does becoming the president
really accomplish? The secretary of state, a lawyer,
a doctor, a fireman, police officer, a business owner, an entertainer. What does it really accomplish
if it doesn't further the cause of the glory of God and set people
up for eternity. What does possessing the whole
world accomplish and achieving the accolades of the world accomplish? All that's in the world is the
lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. The word life there is the word
bios. We get biology from that. We
also get biography from that. The pride of my biography. Got
it. So what did he accomplish? Well,
he accomplished being saved. That's huge. He accomplished
coming to know the true and the living God. That's huge. He accomplished being delivered
from this present evil world. That's huge. He accomplished
becoming a son or daughter of the true and the living God.
That's huge. He or she accomplished obtaining
eternal life. That's huge. They accomplished
obtaining the righteousness that's in God through Jesus Christ,
which makes them a son of God for all eternity. That's huge. He accomplished, she accomplished,
they accomplished an eternal inheritance that's in heaven
that cannot fade away and endures for all eternity. That's huge. That's huge. What did he accomplish? See, let's pray. Father, thank
you for this time. Thank you for your word. Thank
you for the truth that's in the scriptures. Help us to understand
that the poultry blessings of this life can never be compared
with the glory that will be revealed in us at the coming of Jesus. Help us to love people and hate
this world. and love you and love your world
and tell men and women how to get into your world through Jesus
Christ. Prepare us for worship on Sunday. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.