Tucker Presbyterian Church Sermons

1 John 5:18-21 Rev. Erik Veerman 2/2/2023 Final Reminders and Assurances It’s been a difficult week. Like many of you, the tragedy in Nashville at one of our sister churches has weighed on my heart. I considered focusing our worship and sermon this morning on finding hope in tragedy and evil. Instead, we’re going to do that next Sunday, Easter. Ultimate resurrection hope. This morning, we’ll look at the last few verses in 1 John. There are some elements that relate to our hope – which I trust will be an encouragement to you. Sometimes when I am preparing, I realize that there’s not enough time to cover everything sufficiently. Well, on Friday, I realized there was too much to work through in chapter 5 verses 16-21. Usually what I usually do is zoom out a little bit and cover the passage at a little higher level. The problem with doing that with these verses, is they contain a couple of phrases difficult to understand. I don’t want to leave you guessing. So, I want to do something a little different. We’re going to focus this morning on chapter 5 verses 18-21. Instead of starting with verse 16, we’ll start with verse 18. After Easter, we’ll have 1 more sermon on 1 John. It will be to tie up some interpretive loose ends, including verses 16 and 17 as well as a couple of other verses earlier in 1 John. But the other thing I want to do in that sermon is talk through why we, at Tucker Pres, methodically work through books of the Bible rather than topical sermons. Well, at least 90 or 95 percent of the time. I think you’ll find that helpful. That sermon will be on April 23rd, just to give you a heads up. So, let’s now come to God’s word. 1 John 5:18-21. In the pew Bible, that is on Page 1213.  This is God’s holy Word. Stand Reading of 1 John 5:18-21 Prayer Well, even though this is not our last 1 John sermon, we’ve come to the concluding words. Recently, I heard a pastor say that he avoided preaching through 1 John for the first 25 years of his ministry. He wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. But then he preached it, and he said it was a great blessing. I hope and pray that this short book has encouraged you as well. I’ve used a few analogies to try to capture the apostle John’s purpose and approach.  • Like a spiral staircase, as we’ve circled back around to common themes, but from different perspectives.  • A washing machine with different cycles, as John has sought to cleanse and purify the church.  • Or do you remember the obsidian blade, the sharpest in the word, as John carefully cut a line between light and darkness, right and wrong, good and evil, God and Satan, true belief about Jesus and false belief. The beautiful thing about this letter has been the care and love John has displayed over and over. Even though he has been very clear about the nature of sin, and even though he has called out false doctrine, calling those who teach it antichrists, yet he has been very loving, and he has pointed to God’s love for those who are born of him. Being loving doesn’t mean compromising on truth or error or righteousness or sin. In fact, compromising is not loving. John has modelled what it means to “speak the truth in love.” Related to that, there’s been a theme in 1 John that has come up over and over. It’s come up every chapter, almost every paragraph. You could say this theme is the glue of 1 John. If you don’t remember anything else about 1 John, I hope you remember this one theme. The theme is assurance for the one who truly believes in Christ. Assurance of salvation. Assurance that you are a child of God. Assurance of the eternal life that God has given you. And the key word related to our assurance is the word “know.” John has written, “So that you may know.” Or “that you may know that you know.” Over and over. The two Greek words for the English word “know” are used 38 times in these short 5 chapters. The question has been, how do you have assurance that you are one of God’s children? The answer - You know because you believe in Jesus as God’s son. You know because you seek his forgiveness from your sin. You know because your life testifies to your faith. You see, assurance is the very reason that John has written about true belief and false belief. In order to have assurance, you have to know where the line is. John needed to be clear about faithful belief concerning Jesus’s nature and divinity versus unfaithful belief. All of it with the goal to give children of God assurance. That is exactly how John ends his letter – a reminder of that assurance. He writes “We know” four times, here. And he concludes by grounding our assurance in Christ. And let me say, the need for assurance is not distant from us. I don’t know of a single Christian who has not at one point or another had doubts. The Barna Group did a survey in 2020 and found that 35% of practicing Christians had active doubts about their salvation. You and I are not alone in our struggle. Assurance is something we long to have. We want to know that we are secure in Christ. We want to have confidence that our faith is genuine – that the Gospel is true. And when we mess up, we want to know that God still loves us. Or when the world presses in against our faith and belief, we desire that sure foundation of truth and grace. If you’re here today, and it seems like the ground you are standing on is breaking apart, my prayer is that you will leave this morning with a renewed confidence in the grace and love of God… and the truth of the Gospel. Know that there are brothers and sisters who understand and who want to come along side of you in this time. Many of you have heard of Augustine. Augustine, or Saint Augustine, or Augustine of Hippo lived in north Africa in the fourth and fifth century. Since the early church, Augustine has been the most influential theologian in all of church history. But Augustine struggled with his own doubts about his faith. He wrote this short famous prayer as he grasped more and more of God’s love for him. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” We’re going to come back to Augustine’s life in a minute, but these concluding 1 John verses direct our hearts to rest in God for our salvation. You see, having an assurance of faith is more than just an intellectual understanding of assurance. We can know what assurance is, but until we realize it deep in our soul, we will not truly rest in the assurance of God. That’s what John is directing us to in these concluding verses. And he deals with real life. He deals with the very things that cause us to question our faith. Our own sin, the evil one, and the world. That’s verses 18 and 19. And then he concludes by grounding our assurance in the immovable rock of Christ. So, that is how we’ll work through these verses. Protected from Sin, the Enemy, and the World So first, assurance in the face of the very things that cause us to question our faith! Sin, the devil, and the world. John uses a very helpful word in verse 18: “protect.” If you are a child of God, you are protected forever from those enemies of the faith. And I think you would agree, out of those three, the one that causes us the most worry when it comes to our assurance is our sin. Sin is one of the main reasons we can doubt our faith. Sin is when we fail to obey God’s commands or when we break God’s commands – that’s either in our hearts or our actions. When we sin, we therefore ask ourselves “does that mean I’m not a Christian? I mean, after all, I’m struggling with a sin and sin is disobeying God.” The answer from these verses is “no.” Christians still struggle with sin. Look down at verse 18. It says, “everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning.” “But wait a second,” you say, “I do keep on sinning. That must mean that I’m not born of God, right?”  Actually, “wrong.”  You may be tempted to interpret verse 18 in that way, but in reality, it’s saying the opposite. This is where it’s important to go back to what John had written earlier. Let’s do that.  • In chapter 1 verse 8-9, John wrote, “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.” • And very similarly, in chapter 2 verses 1-2, he said, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins.” A Christian still has the presence of sin in his or her life, but the power and the penalty of sin has been broken. As these earlier verses make clear, if you have come to God in Christ, you are forgiven of your sin – past, present, and future.   So then, what then is chapter 5 verse 18 is talking about? Well, that language is very similar to what John has also written in chapter 3. It’s talking about an ongoing practice of intentional sinning, a life marked by sin. If you have been born of God, you still sin, but your sin does not define you. Yes, some sin is very hard to overcome, like addictions. The test is whether your heart is repentant as you struggle by God’s grace to overcome it with the help of others. That is very different than an unbroken pattern of unrepentant sin. When John says, “everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning” he’s speaking of that unrepentant sin, including and especially the sin of unbelief. Let’s go back to Augustine for a minute. His own sin was the cause of his greatest doubts as a young believer. You see, early in Augustine’s life he rejected the Christian faith of his mother. Before he came to faith, Augustine was caught up in all kinds of sin and idolatry – sexual pleasures, materialism, selfish ambitions… and he described how enamored he was with different worldly philosophies opposed to God. But he found that they were all empty pursuits. And one day, when he was about 30 years old, Augustine was in anguish over his sin, he was reading the book of Romans, chapter 13. He read, “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." Those words so overwhelmed Augustine. He described how the weight of his sin was lifted off his shoulders and how he found the truth that he had been seeking for so long.  But even after his conversion, Augustine still had times of doubt. At times he was so distraught over his past sins, and he still struggled with certain sins. He felt guilt and shame and worried about God’s judgment. All of that caused him to have doubts about his faith. But the more Augustine studied the word, the more his faith grew, the more God gave him assurance of salvation. He began to embrace more and more that salvation was a gift from God. In fact, one of Augustine’s greatest theological contributions is his teaching on assurance from the Scriptures. God preserves his children all the way to eternity. That is the promise of 1 John 5:18. And look what it says next! “but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.” It is a promise of protection. Now, let me say, the pronoun “he” is a little unclear. “He who was born of God.” I think it’s likely referring to Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God, which has been emphasized over and over in 1 John. So, he, that is Jesus, protects us.  It’s also possible the pronoun “he” is referring to a Christian who diligently prays for his brother or sister struggling in sin. That would be a reference back to verse 16. Either way, it is God who does the protecting, and he certainly uses our prayers as we studied last week. The point is that God protects us. And besides our sin, there are two other things that we are protected from. Two other realities that cause us to question our faith. (1) the evil one, as he’s called here, and (2) the world. The end of verse 18 says we’re protected from the evil one. Literally, “the evil one does not touch him.” (the one born of God). Beloved, the great enemy of the faith, the devil, would like nothing more than to have you question your faith. He wants to undermine your faith and cause you to lose sight of the truth and the assurance you have. But he cannot touch you, meaning, he cannot cause you to lose your salvation. All he can do is lie. And besides trying to use your sin to undermine your faith, another avenue through which he deceives is the world. Verse 19 connects those together. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Here, the word “world” is referring to the priorities, the philosophies, the sensual desires, the temptations, and the idols of a cultures. “World,” here, is not a neutral entity. It is opposed to God. The apostle John makes that clear, the world is controlled by Satan, through his lies, his deceit, and the way he perverts goodness and truth. He uses the world to try to undermine your faith. Yet, despite all the temptations and distractions and attacks from Satan, if you are a child of God, he will protect you. Indeed, he promises to. Since we’re talking about great theologians, Martin Luther, the protestant reformer, felt constantly attacked by the devil. Legend has it that when he was translating the Bible into German, he was feeling particularly attacked. It is said that he was so angry at the devil that he took his inkwell and threw it at the devil. Of course, it hit the wall and left a stain. Supposedly you can still see the ink stain. The truth is, that story probably didn’t happen, but Luther did write about the temptations of the devil. In his commentary on Galatians, he wrote, “When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: 'I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made a satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He is, there I shall be also.'" Protected Through Christ That quote is a good transition to verse 20 – Because we have to ask the question, Upon what is our assurance based? You see, the question remains, “how?” “How does God give us assurance?” In the frailty and fallenness of the human condition, what hope is there? We feel vulnerable to our sin, the devil, and the world. I mean, there’s nothing in us that deserves this protection – in and of ourselves. No, we are full of shame and guilt and deserve nothing but death. We feel that. It’s the source of a lot of our doubts about our faith. How does God protect you from all of those things? The answer, as Luther pointed out: God protects you through Christ. Verse 20 is a beautiful conclusion to this book. We’ll get to the postscript in verse 21 in a minute. But verse 20 give us a blessed assurance. Our assurance comes through Christ. Notice how many times the word “true” is used in this one verse. Let me reads, “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true;” that’s the first time. It continues, “and we are in him who is true,” the second use. Verse 20 concludes, “in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” Three times, and they are all about Jesus. John concludes by emphasizing what he has been saying all along. Jesus is truly God. Fully and truly. He is the foundation to true faith. This verse is all about Christ.  • He is the one who gives us understanding to know him. That’s the first part of the verse.  • We are in him, in Christ. We abide in him and he in us – as John has said over and over. That’s the second part of the verse.  • And the last part is also about Jesus. He is God and eternal life. In him, we have eternal life. Past, present, and future. Our assurance is based on Christ, from the beginning of our faith through to eternity. This is why we can be assured of our assurance! It’s not based in our works or worthiness. It’s based on Christ, his work, and our worthiness in him. And finally, the very last verse. “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”  It seems a little out of place, doesn’t it? Some have suggested that maybe an early transcriber added it, or that we lost a final section. However, all of the earliest manuscripts we have of 1 John or the end of 1 John conclude with this verse. Something like 200 manuscripts. And I would say, John’s concluding words do make sense. He’s reminded his readers about the testimony of their lives. We’ve seen over and over. We do not come to faith because we are good enough, no, we come to faith through Christ, verse 20. But our lives should then reflect Christ in us and our faith. And so, John ends by calling to their attention, once last time, what true faith looks like. Keep yourselves from the very things that are contrary to God, false idols, false beliefs, false pursuits. Set them aside and pursue that which is pleasing and acceptable in his sight. Conclusion As we draw to a close, one thing is clear from the book of 1 John. The Christian life is not easy! We’ll be tempted to sin, the world with its philosophies and values will press in on us, the church will be attacked from within and from without. There’s no promise of smooth sailing through this life. Rather the promise is that through all of it, God will protect you, he will bring you through to the end, and he will do that through the power of the Gospel - faith and hope in Christ for what he’s done on the cross. And nothing can take that away from you, because it is not you, it is Christ in you. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” May we rest assured in the promises of God in Christ.

1 John 5:13-15 Rev. Erik Veerman 3/26/2023 He Hears Us Please turn to 1 John 5, verses 13-15. That’s on page 1213 in the provided Bibles. Just 3 short verses this morning but they are a rich blessing. Next week, we will finish up our study of 1 John. Let’s come now to God’s Word. Please stand for this is God’s very Word. Reading of 1 John 5:13-15 Prayer Last October, my son Caleb and I were invited to help serve at a ministry conference. We were part of a small team, which included a couple of you. It was on the island of Crete. Crete is in the Mediterranean Sea just south of the mainland of Greece. It’s actually the island where the apostle Paul stayed on his journey to Rome. After leaving Crete, Paul and crew got caught in that bad storm, they were blown across the Mediterranean and eventually shipwrecked. Well, Caleb and I were not in a terrible storm, but we did have quite the experience. On our day off, we joined a group of about 10 others on a hike. It was a 3-4 mile hike down a beautiful gorge. It was a pretty remote place… very dry and very rocky. And there were tons of fun places to boulder. Bouldering means you are climbing on the rocks but you are not tied in – so, of course, you try to stay close to the ground. I wasn’t bouldering but Caleb loves to climb, so he was having a good time. Well, about half-way through the hike, Caleb was climbing maybe 5-7 feet off the ground, when suddenly, one of the rocks he was holding onto gave way. He came crashing down onto the rocky ground and landed on his arm. We didn’t know it at the time, but he broke his arm and dislocated his elbow. I’ll say, it was quite obvious something was wrong. It looked very broken. So, what do you do when you are in the middle of nowhere, with no medical help, no sling, and still a couple miles to hike? Well, we prayed. We prayed for God’s help, for his intervention into that difficult situation. Literally, 30 seconds after we prayed, a doctor hiked by. Not only was he a physician, he was an ER doctor. He was very kind and helpful. He assessed Caleb’s arm, poking and prodding to see how bad it was. He let us know that Caleb’s elbow had been dislocated and his arm possibly broken. And with a slight twist of Caleb’s wrist, he popped his elbow back in place. The only problem was, this doctor didn’t have a splint or a sling. Well, just at that moment, a second doctor hiked by! And guess what! He had a flexible aluminum splint and a wrap. Within a few minutes we had Caleb’s arm all wrapped up and there was enough wrap to make a sling around his neck to hold it up. We were able to hike the rest of the way. It was a tremendous example of the Lord answering our prayer in quite an immediate way. And I want you to think about this. God orchestrated the answer to our prayer before we prayed it. Those two doctors were already on the path, right behind us, when Caleb fell and when we prayed. Now, I’m not saying that God always answers our prayers in such a spectacular way. No, you know that. Sometimes God’s answer to our prayers are not what we hope or in the timing we desire. We’ll spend some time working through that in a minute. But one thing you can be absolutely confident about is that God hears you. He hears you. I’m not making that phrase up. It’s right there twice in these verses. At the end of verse 14 – look at it. “if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.” And the apostle John repeats that phrase at the beginning of 15 – “he hears us in whatever we ask…” He hears you when you pray. The sense of that word in the original Greek is not a distracted hearing. No, rather it’s an engaging listening. God attentively listens to your requests. Before we get into what it means to pray according to God’s will, let’s first take a step back. I want you to see how this fits into this short letter.  This is not the first time that John has mentioned prayer, in the book. In chapter 1, we’re assured that “if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us.” In chapter 3, there’s a very short statement in verse 22 about receiving from the Lord what we ask. But here in chapter 5, this is the first time that John elaborates on prayer. We’ll see even more emphasis next week. The question is, how does it all connect? Why does he include this focus on prayer? And here’s where I want you to look at verse 13. It says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” Now at first glance, there appears to be absolutely no connection to prayer. In fact, verse 13 is John’s purpose statement for the whole book! Multiple times throughout the letter he’s told them why he was writing to them. He’s said over and over. I write to you because you know the truth. I write to you fathers and young men because God’s word abides in you. And I write to you, children, because you know the Father. All of his reasons are about assurance. John wants them to be totally sure that if they know and believe in Jesus, God’s Son, then they are God’s children - they know the truth and they have eternal life in him. That’s exactly what verse 13 says. He writes to those who believe in Christ, to affirm that they have eternal life. There’s a very interesting parallel, here, to the apostle John’s Gospel letter. At the end of his Gospel, John chapter 20 verse 31, John writes this: “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  Now, let me read you 1 John 5:13 again. it says, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” Did you catch the difference? In his Gospel, John’s goal is that his readers may believe in Jesus. In 1 John, John’s goal is that those who do believe might know of the eternal life they have. Different target audience, different purpose. Now, to be sure, there are many themes that overlap. And both books make the case for Christianity and both books talk about the abiding we have in Christ. But the primary reason that John has been writing this book, 1 John, is to give the church assurance. They desperately needed that assurance. Spiritual wolves had entered their flock, the congregation was in disarray. False teaching had been propagating false beliefs. The church was weary, disunified, they didn’t know who to believe. So John tells them the truth and assures them of the sure foundation of the Gospel upon which they stood. Jesus is the Son of God AND as we studied last week, through Christ, believers are reconciled to God and given eternal life. Nothing could take that future promise away from them. Now, some of you are probably thinking, “Ok, I get the assurance thing, but you still haven’t answered the question! Why does John all of a sudden switch from talking about assurance to talking about prayer?” And the answer is, he’s not switching topics! Look at verse 14. It begins, “and this is the confidence that we have toward him.” That word confidence can also be translated assurance. “and this is the assurance that we have toward him.” A cheerful courage because we know that we are his and he therefore hears us. In other words, John was just writing that they are assured of eternal life… out there, in the future. They have that future promise. And what he’s saying next is their future assurance has immediate benefits. We are assured that now, right now, we can go to God, and we can know that he hears us.  This confidence to go to God in prayer, comes out of the assurance that we are his children. If you believe by faith in the Son of God, not only do you have eternal life, but you have access to God the Father, now, because you are beloved by him through Christ and given his Spirit. What an amazing thing to consider, especially as we think about who God is. The God of the Scriptures, the true and living God, created all things in heaven and earth by the word of his power. Indeed, he created all of time and space out of nothing. The billions of starts in the billions of galaxies – he created it all - from the vast expanse of space to the smallest of subatomic particles. And there is not one square inch or one square nanometer in all of it that he does not know intimately. He is present in all of it and sovereign over all of it.  Everything created finds it’s life and being in him. Our God is the only being in all of the universe whose existence is in and of himself. Everything else, everyone else, every living creature relies on God. Every breath, every heartbeat all come from him. He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end - infinite and eternal in his glory and knowledge and justice and truth.  Nothing is beyond his reach and purview. Nothing is hidden from his sight. He’s King of kings, Lord of Lord. Perfect in holiness, utterly righteous and just. Set apart as the perfect standard of truth and goodness. As the apostle John has declared, he is light and he is love. He illuminates all things. He defines what is right and good and true by his very being. And his wisdom and power and holiness and goodness are beyond measure. Yes, God is knowable, but the extent of his power and knowledge and being are beyond our finite minds to grasp his eternal nature…. beyond our ability to fully comprehend his glory. This is who God is, the one true and living God, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And this God, our God, in all of his grandeur, has called you into his very presence in prayer. He promises to you who believe in Jesus as God’s son, that he hears you. You, who are one of 8 billion people in the world, hardly a blip in all of his vast universe, yet he knows you, and he promises that he will hear you when you come to him with your requests. Is that not utterly mind blowing and inspiring? It speaks volumes of God’s nature and his care and concern for you. Let me put this in perspective with a little comparison. The President of the United States receives tens of thousands of letters, packages, and emails per day (tens of thousands!). As of a few years ago, the White House Correspondence department had 45 full time staff members, 35 interns, and 300 rotating volunteers - all of them dedicated to read and filter through this glut of correspondence. That was about 8 years ago, it’s probably grown since then. The President who was serving at that time asked to read 10 letters per day. So, his team would cull through all those letters and pick out examples from a variety of types of letters and provide them to the president. That’s 10 out of tens of thousands. A infinitesimal fraction of the letters written to him. Now, I’m not critiquing just reading 10, that’s actually quite encouraging considering all the responsibilities of the President. I’m merely pointing out the contrast. Think about this, there are roughly 3 billion Christians in the world. If each Christian prayed on average three times per day, that would be 9 billion prayers that God receives each day. And he hears them all. In fact, that is nothing for him. He could hear a gazillion prayers, and intimately hear them all. All of your prayers, all of your requests, whenever you pray. Now, part of the condition of verse 14 is we need to ask according to God’s “will.” That could mean God’s revealed will, meaning his commands and precepts - what God reveals that we should be pursuing in righteousness. But I think more likely, John is referring to God’s secret will –his hidden will. Sometimes we say God’s decretive will – what God decrees will come to pass. Put simply, what God allows and pre-ordains to happen in the world. If that’s the case, what does it mean to ask according to God’s will? Does that mean that God will give us whatever we ask for? No. Rather we are to submit our situations to God’s sovereign will. We pray with an open hand. To be sure, we pray boldly for specific outcomes, specific needs, but we do so trusting that God will answer us in accordance with his will and in his wisdom, not ours. But to be sure, you should not lose the confidence that God hears you when you pray. He considers your prayer in his will. What a mysterious and wonderful thing. Before the foundation of the world, the Lord heard your prayers – and has worked them into his sovereign plan. So you can pray confidently, yet pray submitting your will to his. God heard our prayers on that hike. He answered by sending two doctors right then and there. Could God have chosen not to do that? Of course! God’s will could have been for us to carry Caleb out of the gorge (that would have been hard, he is a pretty big kid for a 15-year-old). Caleb would have learned what it is to receive the care and love from others, and we would have learned how to work together and trust God. Yet, God answered beyond what we could imagine, well, at least beyond what I imagined! This verse is pretty clear that we should ask! But when we ask, we ask trusting in the Lord’s will. The Lord’s will may be to heal you or your family member. Or it may be to not and instead to help you to trust him more and more. Or God’s will may be for you to be a Gospel example to others of what it means to rest secure in your eternal life. Or it could be that the trial or need you are experiencing helps you to minister to someone else in a similar situation…. all the while sharing the sustaining and saving grace of Christ. Look at verse 15 – it continues that promise: “if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” That word “requests” is a little tricky to understand. It’s easier to understand if you replace the word “requests” with the phrase “answers to our requests.” If we know that he hears us, then we know that we have the answers to the requests that we have asked of him.  Let me say the whole verse a little differently. If we know that God hears us when we submit our requests to his will, then we know that whatever comes about, it is God’s answer to what we asked of him. I really like how John Stott put it - late pastor of All Souls church in London. He wrote, “Prayer is not a convenient device for imposing our will upon God, or for bending his will to ours, but the prescribed way of subordinating our will to his. It is by prayer that we seek God’s will, embrace it and align ourselves with it. Every true prayer is a variation on the theme ‘your will be done.’” When we pray submitting our requests to God’s will, we are submitting ourselves to God. The ultimate example of submitting to the Father’s will is Jesus himself. As you know, over the next two weeks, we will be celebrating Easter. That includes the events leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection. One thing is clear from the Scriptures, Jesus, as God’s Son, knew what was coming. He knew the death he would experience. He knew the judgment that he would endure on the cross on our behalf. After the last supper with his disciples, Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane with them. And he was praying to his Father. He knew of what he called “the cup” that he would endure. That’s referencing the cup of God’s wrath. Listen to his prayer in the garden on the night before his death. This is from Luke 22. Jesus prayed, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Jesus prayed for the removal of what he knew was about to happen. In his humanity, he knew that he would endure physical death but even more that he would endure the weight of sin’s consequences. So he prayed for deliverance, but he submitted his prayer to the Father’s will. That is a great encouragement. Our Lord and Savior Jesus sympathizes in our weakness. He went before us in submitting his will to the Father’s will. In him we can rest assured that God’s will is good. The suffering and death that Jesus endured, ultimately resulted in his glory and our eternal hope. And so, when we pray, when you pray, you can submit your prayer to the will of God, just as Jesus submitted his to the Father’s will. Let me summarize: • First, the assurance that the apostle John has been writing about is both long term and near term. Long term, it’s the eternal life we have in him. Near term, we are assured that we can come before God now. • Second, God promises that he hears us. That is an amazing promise from the eternal God who made the heavens and the earth. • Third, when we come to God, we come presenting our request to him. Small requests, big requests. He hears them all. We can have confidence that he graciously ordains to use them in accomplishing his sovereign plan. • And finally, when we pray, we submit our prayer to God’s will – trusting in him to answer according to what is pleasing in his sight, for his glory. What is the main takeaway in these verses? It’s the confidence of knowing all of that. That word “know” is all through these verses. Knowing your assurance in Christ for eternity, having confidence to come to him knowing that he hears you. And knowing that his will is perfect. In closing, there’s one more thing. One more takeaway. One more consequence of the confidence we have. And it’s pretty simple. Pray.  We should pray! The one true living God, creator of all things knows you and hears you. You should pray. Pray because of the confidence you have in him. Pray because he calls you to come before him with your requests. Pray because he listens to your needs and desires to works them in his will. And pray, knowing that Christ has gone before you in prayer. He submitted his will to the Father’s, so that we can come to him in prayer, and submit ours requests to God’s will. Pray! Closing prayer.

1 John 5:6-12 Rev. Erik Veerman 3/19/2023 Testifying to the Testimony of God Please turn to the book of 1 John 5:6-12. In the church Bibles, you can find that on page 1213. As you are turning there, I want to note that historically, this is considered a very difficult text in 1 John – difficult to understand. The reason is that apostle John uses the phrase “water and blood.” You’ll hear it multiple times. He’s pretty clear that it refers to something related to Jesus. The big question is, what? Over the centuries there have been different proposals. Interestingly, most commentators today believe that “water” is referring to Jesus’ baptism and “blood” is referring to Jesus’ death on the cross. As I read, have that in mind. And once we get into the specifics, I’ll make that case. Let’s now come to God’s Word. Reading of 1 John 5:6-12 Prayer Moms and dads wear many different hats as parents. One of those is being a judge and a jury. I think moms especially are often called on to arbitrate. Here’s how it goes: “mom, I was playing with the Legos first. Then Jonny came in and he broke my Lego creation on purpose.” “that’s not true! When I came into the playroom, no one was playing with the Legos. So I started making the coolest X-Wing fighter.” “But you took several pieces off my pony’s barn!” “But I didn’t know you were working on it until you came in. Mom, then Sally stepped on my X-Wing fighter.” “Not true. That was an accident, but mom, he smashed my barn!” “No, I didn’t, it fell apart on its own.” Does that sound familiar? Whether you are a mom, dad, aunt, uncle, grandparent… it’s often hard to discern what really happened. As someone once said, “there are two sides to every story and then there is the truth.” And let’s be honest, as we get older, these kinds of disagreements don’t go away. No, rather, our arguments get more sophisticated. We become better at spinning the truth. And the stakes are higher. We have real judges and juries, courts and arbitrators, and senate hearings. People testify and swear to tell the truth. In fact, God is very very concerned that we tell the truth. Think about the 9th commandment. Often it’s simplified – You shall not lie. But what it actually says is “you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Yes, lying is related to that, but the primary emphasis is being a truthful witness. All throughout the Scriptures, we’re told that multiple witnesses are necessary for a charge to be valid. We read earlier from Deuteronomy 19. It speaks about the need for two or three witnesses. Throughout the Scriptures, there are several more references to that. Why? Why are multiple witnesses necessary? Well, for one, it’s the sin nature of humanity. Even Christians, who are called to be honest, still have sinful motivations. But second, human limitation. Our recollection of events and our words can be clouded by the limitations of our memory and our perception. So we should all have a healthy skepticism about human testimony. We should be careful and listen well and recognizing that the truth is often unclear. But here’s the rub. When it comes to matters of faith, how can we have certainty? Or let me put it this way, with the weakness of human testimony, how can we really know if Jesus was truly God’s Son? That’s what these verses deal with. How can you be sure who Jesus is? In fact, the word “testify” or “testimony” is used 8 times in these few verses. And each use relates, in in one way or another, to the question of Jesus’ identity. To give us a little organization this morning, two points: 1. Receive God’s testimony concerning Jesus 2. Believe God’s testimony concerning Jesus Receive and believe. Receive meaning hearing the testimony and considering it. And believe meaning embracing it. Believing also comes with the benefits of belief as we shall see. 1. Receive God’s testimony concerning Jesus So first, receive God’s testimony concerning Jesus.  One thing to notice is that the testimony in these verses is from God and not man. God himself testifies that Jesus is God’s Son. For example, verse 6 speaks of the Spirit testifying. Verse 9 speaks of the testimony of God, which is greater, it says, than the testimony of man. Verse 10 is the call to believe the testimony from God. We would all agree. If you had to choose between a testimony that God gives you, or a testimony from another person… we would all choose to believe God’s testimony. And what John is doing in these verses is making that case. He is saying that God himself has confirmed that Jesus is divine. Jesus was and is the promised Messiah. When Jesus walked on earth, he was not just another man, he was not just a human prophet, no he was indeed God in the flesh. Remember, this was the big issue in John’s day. Was Jesus, the man, truly God, and his promised Savior? And John is saying, if you don’t believe the human testimony, believe God’s testimony. And what is God’s testimony? That’s the focus of verses 6-9. Ok, let’s get in to the phrase “water and blood.” What does that mean? Well, over the centuries, there have been three primary interpretations. The first interpretation is that the “water and blood” refers to what happened immediately after Jesus died. Jesus was still on the cross and a Roman soldier came by and he pierced Jesus’ side. And what happened? “Water and blood” gushed forth. That confirmed Jesus’ death. That interpretation makes sense to some extent because the same words are used. The problem, though, is that these verses in 1 John 5 say that Jesus “came by” or “came through” water and blood. Well that incident doesn’t really fit that language of coming by. In addition, 1 John 5 separates “water” from “blood.” It says there are three that testify… the Spirit, the water and the blood. The problem is the water and blood from Jesus side was the same incident. A second interpretation is that the “water and blood” refer to the two sacraments of the church, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. I’ll have to say, this interpretation is appealing. After all both baptism and the Lord’s Supper testify to Christ, his cleansing work and his atoning death. In fact, I read that the great protestant reformers, Martin Luther and John Calvin, both held this interpretation. But there are two issues with it.  • First, no where else in Scripture is the Lord’s Supper referred to by the word “blood.” Rather, the shorthand reference to the Lord’s Supper is “the breaking of bread.”  • Second, if “water” is used to refer to baptism here, you would expect “wine” or “bread” to be the reference for the Lord’s Supper. You see, if the phrase “water and blood” is referencing the sacraments, it would be mixing the sign in baptism, which is water, and what’s signified in the Lord’s Supper, which includes the blood. In other words, the words doesn’t match up. And so this interpretation also has some serious limitation. That brings us to a third interpretation. I mentioned it earlier, water signifying Jesus’ baptism and blood signifying the cross.  • For one, when Jesus was baptized, we’re told the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus. Then a voice from heaven, God the Father, testified that Jesus was indeed His son – “this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus’ baptism very much aligns with these verses – it was a testimony that Jesus is the very Son of God.  • And second, blood. As we think of the cross, it is the culmination of Jesus’ ministry. And it very much testified to Jesus as God’s Son. Think of all the prophecies of the Christ including prophecies of his death. Or of the sacrificial system and the need for an unblemished sacrifice. The cross confirmed Jesus identity by fulfilling those prophecies and promises. Even the events surrounding Jesus’ death confirmed his identity. It was midday, yet darkness covered the land. And at the very moment of Jesus’ death, the massive curtain in the temple was torn in two, an earthquake shook the foundations of the city, rocks were split apart, and graves of the dead opened. After witnessing all this, listen to these words of the Roman centurion “Truly this was the Son of God!” He was testifying to all that God had caused to come about when Jesus died. So, I would submit that that understanding of “water and the blood,” seems to fit our text best.  But wherever you land, I think the point is clear – God the Father has testified that Jesus is indeed His Son. But you may have noticed, the Father’s testimony is not the only testimony mentioned in these verses. No, we’re also told that the Spirit testifies. That’s right there in the middle of verse 6 “And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.”  The apostle John is referring to the Holy Spirit – God the Spirit. Part of that may be referring to the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus at his baptism, confirming his identity. But John’s emphasis on the Spirit’s testimony is broad. He says that “the Spirit is the truth.” The Spirit witnesses that Jesus is the eternal God through many ways.  • The Spirit witnesses through Jesus’ own disciples including John himself… • through the other apostles like the apostle Paul… • through the testimony of the early church.  • The testimony of the Spirit also includes Jesus’ own testimony that he would send his Spirit who would testify to the truth.  • That testimony is captured in the book of Acts chapter 2. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the believers in Jerusalem. And immediately after, the apostle Peter testified about Jesus. In fact, every time the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the book of Acts, he testifies that Jesus is the promised Messiah and the Savior of sinner. By the way, it’s likely that John’s readers had a copy of the book of Acts. So, to summarize, the emphasis of these first few verses is that God himself is testifying – God the Father and God the Spirit. They both confirm that Jesus is the Son of God. In fact, verse 7 makes that very point. It says there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. John is merely alluding to the law about two or three witnesses. It’s a way to emphasize that God’s testimony is legitimate.  And we’re called to “receive” it. That word “receive” is right there in verse 9. “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony from God is greater.” Receiving happens before believing. That word “believe” is in verse 10 – we’ll get there in a minute.  But first we’re called to receive the testimony. Recognize its validity. Consider its source and witness. And of course, as verse 9 says, the testimony of God is greater than the testimony of man. Why? Because God is truth. He knows all. He is perfectly holy and just. Furthermore, God cannot lie! The Scriptures teach that in Numbers 23, 1 Samuel 15, and Titus 1. You see with God, it’s not one side and another side and somewhere in the middle is the truth. No, with God, there’s one version of the truth. Truth itself because he is truth himself. And that truth has been revealed to you. Receive the testimony of Jesus as God’s son. As Colossians 1 says, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (we would say, eternally begotten). Through Jesus all things were created in heaven and earth… in him all things hold together. And it says, for in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell. Receive God’s testimony concerning Jesus. 2. Believe God’s testimony concerning Jesus That brings us to our second point this morning. Believe God’s testimony concerning Jesus. There’s a difference between receiving a testimony and believing a testimony. Think about a court of law. Some testimonies are considered valid, they can be received into the pool evidence. But other testimonies are considered inadmissible. If they violate the rules of evidence, they are not allowed in the courtroom. But when the criteria is met, the jury then receives the testimonies. Their job is then to listen to the testimonies and decide which ones to believe. That’s what verses 10-12 focus on. Moving from receiving to believing. Verse 10 “Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.” Believing takes what God has testified about Jesus and not just agreeing that it is true, but accepting and trusting in that truth. And notice that verse 10 goes on. “Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.” In other words, since God the Father and the Holy Spirit testified that Jesus is God’s Son, if you don’t believe it, you’re essentially saying that God is lying. You’re saying that God’s testimony is false.  And there are two ways to not believe God’s testimony. First, you can outright disbelieve it – that’s the obvious one. But second, not deciding is also not believing. The problem is, sitting on the fence is merely receiving the testimony, but it’s not believing it. It’s the same as rejecting it. We’re called here to believe. In the late 1970’s, journalist Lee Strobel decided to disprove Christianity. His wife had become a Christian and he was determined to disprove her belief. So what did he do? He started researching the ancient manuscripts, interviewing archaeologists, and studying the historical evidence. Strobel was an investigative journalist, so he was familiar with research and finding inconsistencies. His plan was to attack Christianity on two fronts: First the external reliability of the Bible, and second, the internal inconsistency of its witness.  What Strobel found was a massive number of old manuscripts – over 5000. Many of the manuscripts dated back to the second and third centuries and from different regions in the Middle East. What was shocking to him is that a word-for-word comparison proved they were 99.5 percent similar. The differences were mainly spelling and word order. Because of that, Strobel realized scholars could very accurately construct the original writings. Close to 99.9 percent accuracy. Well, this led Strobel to start reading the accounts in the Scriptures. Reading about Jesus life, his death, and his resurrection. And something began to happen. Strobel’s whole agenda to disprove Christ and Christianity was turned upside down. He realized the documents were accurate, and the accounts in the Bible were true. He received the testimony, and he began to believe it.  In fact, his whole intellectual effort to reject Christ turned into the channel through which God brought him to Christ. Much of his journey and research is documented in his book The Case for Christ. Now, to be sure, much of Strobel’s research focuses on the manuscripts and the human eye-witness accounts, but Strobel also includes God’s testimony of Jesus’ divinity. In fact, he highlights Jesus’ baptism and he highlights the cross. Strobel writes this: “Jesus' baptism was a public affirmation by God himself of Jesus' divine identity. The voice from heaven declaring, 'This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased,' was a clear sign that Jesus was no ordinary person, but was, in fact, the Son of God." Furthermore, he writes that "Jesus' death on the cross was more than just a historical event. It was the pivotal moment in human history, when God himself took on the burden of sin and made a way for humanity to be reconciled to him.” Strobel then goes on to quote one of his expert witnesses, “The cross is the ultimate evidence of who Jesus was and what he came to do. It's the ultimate evidence of God's love for us, and the ultimate evidence of the reality of the Christian faith." Strobel had come to believe. Let me sum it up all this way - to believe in Jesus does not mean that you have to check reason at the door of faith. Reason and faith are not opposites. Believing by faith in Jesus is not some blind leap of faith or unsure hope according to our cultures’ definition of faith and hope. No, believing by faith in Christ is reasonable and sound. It’s receiving the testimony from God, himself. It’s believing that Jesus is who he says he is. It’s believing the testimony of God the Father and the Holy Spirit. And it’s believing in Jesus ministry on the cross. And when you believe, an amazing thing happens. The testimony out there from God himself becomes the testimony in here. His testimony becomes your testimony. That’s what it says right there! Verse 10. “Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself.” The Spirit’s work in you testifies to the testimony of Christ. Again, what an amazing thing – God’s testimony has become our testimony. And this is not a new idea in 1 John. Yes, John is using different words, but the concept is similar. All throughout, God has been telling us, through the apostle, that his abiding love in us. For those of you who believe the truth of the Gospel, God abides in you and you in him. This abiding is the testimony of God within you. And that testimony brings you life. This is where the apostle John ends this section. If you believe, then you have life in him – eternal life. Listen how he concludes in verses 11 and 12. “And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” All throughout our study of 1 John, we’ve talked about the line that John has drawn. The line between true faith and false faith. We’re either on one side of the line or we’re on the other. We’ve experienced how John has called out false anti-Christ beliefs, as he’s put it. And finally in these verses, he tells us why it matters to you.  The answer is life. Eternal life, beyond death, forever in the presence of God. When you receive and believe the testimony from God, then you are given life in Christ, forever. If that is you, you have that life. And if you do not have the Son – verse 12 is very clear - then you do not have that eternal life that he’s promised. No, instead, you need that life. John is saying that this is a matter of life and death. He’s calling you to receive and to believe. Believe that Jesus is God’s Son and your savior. To wrap things up…  Who is Jesus? As God himself has testified. He is very God of very God – the eternal Son of God. He came into the world to bring life. Don’t believe my testimony. Believe the testimony of this Word, given through God himself, through his Spirit… through which you can receive and believe. And when you do, you will rest in the eternal life that he has given you. Amen?

Introduction: We are at War FACT: We are at war. Bold. Underline. Italics. Exclamation point. We are at war. There are an estimated 600 million Evangelical Christians around the globe today making up about 8% of the world’s population. The majority of the other 92% are walking in darkness, held captive by our great enemy Satan who is the father of lies. Billions have been led astray by false forms of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Secularism, Materialism, Atheism, and vast array of other false religions. These all stand in opposition to the Gospel and often fight with great zeal against Jesus Christ and His people. We are engaged in a war for the souls of men, women and children. The Battle is real and it one that we cannot win on our own. Stories of persecution In a few weeks we will be celebrating Palm Sunday here at TPC. Six years ago, on Palm Sunday 2017, bombs blew up at two churches in Egypt, killing nearly fifty Christians and injuring more than one hundred others. Just hours after the blast, amid outrage and grief, Pastor Boulos stepped before his packed church in Egypt and gave the terrorists a three-point sermon that went viral worldwide. It was entitled “A Message to Those Who Kill Us.” His three points were simple: “Thank you,” “We love you,” and “We’re praying for you.” Pastor Boulos said “Thank you” because the terrorists gave the dead the honor to die as Christ died; and because the terrorists’ actions made people outside the church mindful of their eternal destinies. (After the attacks, Egyptian churches overflowed with people who had never attended before). Then Pastor Boulos said “We love you” because even murderers and thieves love those who love them, but only followers of Jesus are taught to love our enemies. Pastor Boulos closed his message with “We’re praying for you” because, he reasoned, if a terrorist could taste the love of God even one time, it would drive hatred from his heart. This is one story of persecution among millions through the ages. Across 76 countries, more than 360 million evangelical Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith today. We are indeed at war. And on our own, it is a war that we cannot win. John Piper on Prayer as a War-Time Walkie Talkie John Piper has been preaching that we are war for decades. In his book “Let the Nations Be Glad!” Piper says some convicting things about our major weapon in fighting this war against our adversary the devil – a weapon that we often misuse or do not use at all. That weapon is prayer as we know from Ephesians chapter 6 (which we read earlier). It is our primary firepower against the devil. But let me read directly from John Piper’s book, because I’m not so sure we act like life is a battlefield. Piper says: “Probably the number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands of believers is that we try to turn a wartime walkie talkie into a domestic intercom. Until you know that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for. Prayer is for the accomplishment of a wartime mission…[Our] field commander (Jesus) called in the troops, gave them a crucial mission (go and bear fruit); [he] handed each of them a personal transmitter coded to the frequency of the General’s headquarters, and [he] said, ‘Comrades, the general has a mission for you. He aims to see it accomplished. And to that end he has authorized me to give each of you personal access to him through these transmitters. If you stay true to his mission and seek his victory first, he will always be as close as your transmitter, to give tactical advice and to send air cover when you need it.’ “But what have millions of Christians done? We have stopped believing that we are in a war. [There’s] no urgency, no watching, no vigilance. No strategic planning. Just easy peace and prosperity. And what did we do with the walkie talkie? We [have] tried to rig it up as an intercom in our houses and cabins and [our] boats and [our] cars – not to call in firepower for conflict with a mortal enemy, but to ask for more comforts [and cushions] in the den.” Four Elements of Earth-Shattering Missions Prayer With that as our introduction, I want to turn to our two texts for today. We will be looking at two biblical prayers that were prayed in times of great distress for God’s people. We will look at one prayer in 2 Kings 19 and one prayer in Acts chapter 4. In both situations God’s people were at war and they were engaged against enemies they knew that they could not defeat. They knew they were hopeless unless God came to their rescue. So, they turned to Him in God- exalting, enemy-defeating prayer. In both instances, these prayers moved the heart of God and he acted with great power to help his people. Both of these prayers follow a pattern and have 4 key elements that I want to examine. As we look at prayer as a weapon of war against the enemy, I want to encourage us to integrate these elements in our prayers as individuals, as families and as a church body here at TPC. We can use these prayers as roadmaps as we pray for the work of spreading the Gospel to every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Let’s look at the pattern first, and then we will look at how it plays out in these two prayers. The pattern is printed on the back of today’s bulletin. The Pattern is: We acknowledge the DIVINE POWER of God alone We affirm our DEPENDENCE on God alone We arouse the heart of God to DELIVER his people and to DESTROY our enemies We appeal to God to DISPLAY HIS GLORY for all the earth to see Hezekiah’s Prayer (2 Kings 19:14-19) First, let’s consider Hezekiah’s prayer. Let us look at the historical backdrop. Hezekiah was King of Judah. He was a good king. In fact, the Bible says there were no kings of Judah before or after him that followed God like he did. In 2 Kings 18:5-7 we read: 5 He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him. 6 For he held fast to the Lord. He did not depart from following him, but kept the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses. 7 And the Lord was with him; wherever he went out, he prospered. He rebelled against the king of Assyria and would not serve him.” Now these last words were the epicenter of the problem that Hezekiah was facing. He rebelled against the King of Assyria. He would not bow his knee to a pagan king. The King of Assyria was named Sennacherib and the capitol of his evil empire was “Ninevah” if you have ever heard of it. It is no wonder that brother Jonah had no love for this people. So, Sennacherib was coming to extract his vengeance on this rebel king of Judah. He besieged Jerusalem with the largest most powerful army on earth. Then he sent a blasphemous letter (in 2 King 19:10-13) to Hezekiah that read: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. 11 Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, devoting them to destruction. And shall you be delivered? 12 Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations that my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? 13 Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharvaim, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’” In verse 14 we read about what Hezekiah did upon receiving this letter. It says: “Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers and read it; and Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord.” What a glorious demonstration of faith. He didn’t sit and fret on his throne, filled with anxiety and fear. He didn’t sit and strategize and mull over all of his military options to fight or surrender. He went into the temple and spread the letter before the Lord and prayed! And what did he pray? First, Hezekiah Acknowledged the DIVINE POWER of God alone: 15 And Hezekiah prayed before the Lord and said: “O Lord, the God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth.” Consider these words in contrast to the blasphemy of Sennacherib who had mocked the God of the Israelites. Hezekiah here is saying to God, Sennacherib is a blasphemous liar, for we know, we believe, we have faith that you alone, not Sennacherib, are the Sovereign Lord who is above all kings and who sits enthroned over all nations. Second, Hezekiah Affirmed His DEPENDENCE on God alone: In verse 16 we read: “Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. 17 Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands 18 and have cast their gods into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed.” After acknowledging the power of God alone, Hezekiah humbly entreats God, demonstrating his complete dependence on God. He says incline your ear O Lord. Listen to me. Hear me. We need your help, Lord. And “Open your eyes Lord and see. “ If you don’t listen to us and see us, no one will hear us, see us, rescue us. The idols of the other nations did not save them. But we depend on you, the true and the living God who alone has the power to save us! Third, Hezekiah Aroused the heart of God to DELIVER his people and to DESTROY their enemies: In verse 19 we read: “So now, O Lord our God, save us, please, from his hand.” Only after acknowledging God’s power and sovereignty, and his dependence on God alone, Hezekiah appeals for help. He simply says, “O Lord our God, save us, please from the hand of Sennacherib.” His heart’s desire was for his people to be delivered and he knew that no one else could deliver from the mighty hoards of the Assyrians, so he simply says, “save us, please.” It is beautiful in its simplicity and earnestness. Finally, Hezekiah Appealed to God to DISPLAY HIS GLORY for all the earth to see: “That all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, O Lord, are God alone.” Hezekiah was praying for something bigger to happen than just for his people to be rescued. He knew the power of the Assyrian army, the arrogance of King Sennacherib, the wanton cruelty, and destruction and annihilation that they had wreaked on the entire Middle East. He knew that if God delivered His people and destroyed the Assyrians, then all the Kingdoms of the earth would know that there is only one and true and living God who answers prayer and is more powerful than any king or empire that sets themselves up against Him. He wanted God to deliver his people in the same magnificent way that he had delivered His people from the hands of Pharoah King of Egypt hundreds of years before and all of the world heard and trembled. He wanted God to be glorified far beyond the borders of Judah, and so he prayed for this very thing. So what did God do in response to Hezekiah’s prayer? Two things. First, God sent the prophet Isaiah to assure Hezekiah that God had heard his prayer and would surely come to the defense of his people. We will not read Isaiah’s entire message for the sake of brevity, but in verse 22 God says to Sennacherib: “Whom have you mocked and reviled? Against whom have you raised your voice and lifted your eyes to the heights? Against the Holy One of Israel!” And jumping down to verse 32-34 God says: 32 “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. 33 By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, declares the Lord. 34 For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” The second thing that happens is that God acts with great power. He sent his angel and destroyed the Assyrian army. In verses 35-37 we read: 35 And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 36 Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh. 37 And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place. Indeed, now the whole world knew there was only one God, the God of Israel, that he alone had all power, and that He delivers His people from their enemies when they pray. The blasphemous king of Assyria and his mighty army were totally annihilated by Jehovah Sabbaoth—the God of Angel Armies. The Prayer of the First Church (Acts 4) Let us turn our attention now to the New Testament, to Acts chapter 4, to a prayer of the disciples, of the early church. The context here is that in chapter 3 Peter and John were going up to the temple to pray. Along the way they met a beggar who had been lame from birth who asked them for money. Peter replied: “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” 7 And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. 8 And leaping up, he stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. 9 And all the people saw him walking and praising God, 10 and recognized him as the one who sat at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, asking for alms. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.” Peter then proceeds to preach a powerful gospel sermon at the end of Acts chapter 3 to everyone gathered at the temple. This results in Peter and John being arrested because all of this greatly annoyed the Jewish religious leaders. They interrogated them and asked them where they got the power to heal this man. Peter boldly says: “Rulers of the people and elders, 9 if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. 11 This Jesus[a] is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.[b] 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men[c] by which we must be saved.” The religious leaders and rulers then ordered Peter and John to stop preaching about Jesus and doing miracles in His name. “But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, 20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” “When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and prayed.” What did they pray? Their prayer is very similar to Hezekiah’s, containing the same 4 elements although in a different order. Let’s take a look. First, in verse 24, the church Acknowledged the DIVINE POWER of God alone: “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” Before they ask for rescue, they begin with worship, adoration and an affirmation of faith in God’s sovereignty and power over all things. Second, the church Aroused the heart of God to DELIVER his people and to DESTROY their enemies: In verses 25-28 we read: 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? 26 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. They reminded God that these very same enemies of theirs, these Jewish religions leaders, who are now persecuting them had only a short time ago set themselves up against God and his Anointed son Christ Jesus and joined with the Gentiles to destroy him. But the disciples also acknowledged that all of this was part of God’s sovereign plan that he has predestined to take place. Third, the Church Affirmed their DEPENDENCE on God alone: In verse 29 they pray: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” We see that they have a simple prayer for help. Strengthen us to continue preaching your gospel in the midst of persecution. We need your help. We cannot win this war on our own. Protect us and strengthen us and give us boldness. We depend on you in this war for souls. Finally, the church Appealed to God to DISPLAY HIS GLORY for all the earth to see: In verse 30 we read: “while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” In addition to a plea for boldness, the church asks God to do signs and wonders through the Name of Jesus. They wanted something greater to happen than just to be able to continue to share their faith. They wanted God to act in powerful ways so that all the earth would know that salvation is found in no other name than in the powerful and beautiful name of Jesus Christ. How did God answer this prayer? We see in verse 31: “And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” God answered their prayer for boldness. He shook the earth and poured out the Holy Spirit upon them. Along with that, he also answered their prayer for miracles. In the next chapter, Acts 5 we read that they continued to do miracles in the Name of Jesus. People from all around brought the sick and demon possessed to the disciples and they were ALL healed. Conclusion: As we draw to a close this morning, I want to offer three words of encouragement as we wage war for the souls of the lost through prayer, as we continue the battle of global missions and church planting among every tribe and language and people and nation. First. Your prayers matter. The enemy wants you to believe that your prayers do not matter, that your prayers are not heard, that God is not moved by your prayers. That is a lie. James 5:16 says: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” In Revelation chapter 5 we get the glorious glimpse into the throne room of God. We see angels, elders, heavenly creatures and the redeemed from every nation are gathered to worship the Lamb of God. Here we see that our prayers are a fragrant incense before God. It says that angels and heavenly creatures and elders are holding golden bowls of incense before God. What is the incense that fills those bowls? The prayers of all the saints through the ages. They are a beautiful aroma to God and they move his heart. Your prayers matter and are effective in this battle. They are ever present in the throne room of heaven. Second. We do not pray alone. Both Jesus and the Holy Spirit pray with us and pray for us. In Hebrews 7:25 we read: “Consequently, he (Jesus) is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” And in Romans 8:26-27 we read: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” We do not pray alone in this war. Third, and finally, the war has already been won. As opposition to the Gospel grows stronger day by day, and persecution of the church intensifies, it is easy to be discouraged and to believe that we are losing the war. Perish the thought! King Jesus has already defeated sin and death and Satan through his death and resurrection. Satan is in the throes of death, wriggling and writhing and lashing out like the great serpent that he is. The final victory will soon be revealed, so let us persevere to the end in our faith and in our God-exalting, enemy-defeating wartime prayers. What shall we pray? And what shall we pray? Let us pray that the light of the gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit will push back the darkness that holds almost 7 billion souls in slavery to the devil. Let us pray that the lost sheep will come into the fold of Jesus. Let us pray that the Church of Christ will prevail as we storm the gates of hell. Let us pray that the elect from every tribe and people and language and nation will be saved. And let us pray that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior to the glory of our Heavenly Father. And let us pray, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus, Come Quickly, and let your sovereign rule and reign be revealed for all of eternity!” To him be the glory. Amen.

1 John 5:1-5 Rev. Erik Veerman 3/5/2023 Love, Obedience, the World, and Doctrine We are on the home stretch in our study of 1 John - the last chapter. We should wrap up before Easter. And, by the way, after Easter we’ll spend a little time in 2nd and 3rd John. They are both single chapter books and some of the themes continue, so it seems like a good time to continue. Before we read, let me summarize the book so far. That will actually be helpful for this morning’s text. John has been writing to his church. They are his beloved children in the faith. He is their spiritual father in this world. At this point in time, at the end of the first century, John is the last living disciple of Jesus. He’s in his 90s. John has an urgency in his writing. That’s because false beliefs and false teachers and worldly living had infiltrated the church. And it was a big problem. The false teaching was striking at the heart of the Christian faith – the person of Jesus. And furthermore, unrighteous living had crept in. All of this was causing division, confusion, and for the true believers, discouragement. So, what was John’s response? Well in chapter 1, he first established his credibility as an apostle of Jesus, and he established the credibility of Jesus – the Word of life. Also in chapter 1, John presented his thesis for the whole book. God is light and we need to be walking in the light - walking in truth and grace. So that was chapter 1. In chapter 2, we were presented with four themes that John has come back to over and over. Obedience, love, the world, and true beliefs about Jesus. Those were the 4 life tests. And the point of the tests was to give assurance to true believers and to unsettle unbelievers. So that the believer would be encouraged in the faith and the unbeliever would come to faith. As we got to chapter 3, John introduced what it means to be born of God. If you are a true believer, as the life tests affirmed, then you are a child of God. That comes with great blessings, immediate and eternal. In the rest of chapter 3 and into chapter 4, John took those main themes and applied them in his readers’ lives. And he helped them evaluate teaching based on them. Again, the themes or categories are obedience, love, the world, and the content of belief. Up to this point, John had been switching back and forth between each theme. But here in chapter 5, John brings these themes together. As I read, I want you to listen for how he does that. How John merges all that he has taught them. Please turn to 1 John 5:1-5. In the pew Bibles, you can find that on page 1213. Stand Reading of 1 John 5:1-5 Prayer Our study of 1 John has been very provocative. Recently, I heard someone say that they came to faith in Christ when they read the book of 1 John. As we’ve seen it’s very penetrating. You can’t escape the apostle John’s clear delineation of what’s true and good, versus what is false and evil. And I’ll have to say, I’ve been convicted on multiple occasions as we’ve journeyed through the apostle John’s letter. Let me ask you, what has convicted your heart? What has challenged you as we’ve delved into this first century situation and sought to apply it today? Has it been the call to love one another? There are days when that is challenging. What about God’s call to obedience? Are you overwhelmed with what God has commanded in his Word? I mean, it’s pretty extensive. The Scriptures address not just our words and actions but our heart motivations.  Or is it the influence and temptation the world? Are you in love with the world, as John asks? Or the things in the world? Or have you found that the world’s skewed priorities and secular philosophies have crept into your life? I can say, I’ve felt that weight. In one sense, we’re all affected by the world around us in unknown ways. And when those get revealed, it’s a painful realization of how easily we are shaped by the culture. Or have your foundational beliefs about God, or Jesus, or the Gospel been challenged (in a good way)? Have you had to rethink or recommit yourself to what the Scriptures teach about truth and God as light? Which of those categories has been most convicting? …the call to love, to obey? Is it to reject the world’s priorities and teaching, or the call to belief and truth? One thing’s for sure, John has been perfectly clear and precise. But he’s also been very loving. He has assured us over and over that despite our sin, God is forgiving. He’s been clear that the life test are about whether the pattern in your life reflects the truth and God’s love. And John has been really clear about the Gospel. If we believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, we are his. Even though sin is still present in us, we are forgiven. We are his children – born of God. He abides in us and we in him. What a beautiful revelation of how we are blessed as sons and daughters together in Christ, as he abides in us. And this morning, what the apostle does is to bring all of these themes together. Everything that he has been teaching, he weaves together into one cord. What he shows is how each reality of true faith is dependent on and works together with the other realities of true faith. Our obedience, our love, our holding the world at bay, and our beliefs. I am a bad golfer. And golf is bad for me. It kind of reverses my sanctification. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I played. The thing that is hard about golf is putting all the mechanics of your golf swing together. How you hold the club, your stance, keeping your left arm straight, your right elbow in, your head in a steady position, making sure your wrists turn just the right amount, keeping your eyes on the ball, having a steady backswing, accelerating the club head at the right rate for the right distance, rotating your torso, and being sure to follow through! Plus all of the mental stuff that goes along with golf. What I’ve heard is that the more you work on your golf game, the more natural it gets. Your swing becomes second nature. All of the mechanics start to work together.  You see, as we mature in Christ, each aspect of our faith begins to merge together into a beautiful picture of grace and a reflection of Christ. The love with which we love God and others merges with our pursuit of righteousness in heart and mind, which merges with a deeper and more faithful understanding of what the Scriptures teach about God and salvation, which merges with our sensitivity to the temptations of the world around us as we reject false hopes and beliefs.  To say it in another way, this is what discipleship does. We long to know God more, we desire to know his Word, we grow in holiness, our love for the Gospel and others expands. Our knowledge of truth and grace deepens. Our hope and assurance is strengthened. All of those things, all working together as we conform more and more to the image of Christ. I want you to notice something here. Look at verses 1 and 5. Both of them speak of believing in Jesus. Verse 1, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.” And verse 5, “Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” They bracket this text. It’s a literary way of emphasizing the point. In other words, what we believe about Jesus is foundational to our obedience and love and our knowledge and discernment of the world. To quickly summarize: Chapter 5 verses 1-5 brings together all that John has been writing about so far and it centers on Jesus. Ok, let’s now get into some of the specifics. How do love and obedience overlap? How does one who pursues God’s commands overcome the world? How does what we believe relate to love and obedience? And How does love of God and one another relate to the world? Let’s begin with the relationship between love and obedience. That’s the big emphasis in verses 2 and 3. Verse 2 focuses on loving the children of God. How do we know that we love others? We know that, as it says, “when we love God and obey his commandments.” Verse 3 is very similar. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” What does it mean to love God and love one another? It means keeping his commandments. There’s a very close relationship between love and God’s commandments. When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he responded by saying, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength… and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy. It’s a summary of God’s commandments. Love God and love your neighbor. In other words, love and God’s commandments cannot be separated. We display our love by pursuing God’s commandments. Now, to be sure, it’s possible to try to pursue God’s commandments in a loveless way. That’s exactly what the Pharisees did. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the day. They had all these rules, and rules upon rules. They added to God’s commands. And even when they sought to obey God’s commands, it was a hollow going-through-the-motions kind of obedience. They didn’t have any love. In fact, they were full of hate. They rejected Jesus, thereby rejecting God, and they hated everyone else. Their rules were just a way to control. They had an upside-down view of God’s law. They thought they could get into God’s good graces by obeying God’s law and coming up with new rules to obey. But they were utterly wrong! Their loveless attempts were not obeying God’s commands. No instead, it’s the opposite: obeying God’s commands comes from the heart. It comes from a love of God and a love for your neighbor. Love and obedience to God’s commands are inseparable. When you have love without God’s commands, you have a misguided understanding of love. When you try to follow God’s commandment without love, you get hollow pharisaical religion. I want you to notice that phrase at the end of verse 3, “And his commandments are not burdensome.” That is a surprising statement! It’s saying that obeying God’s commandments should not be a burden to you. They should not wear you down. Isn’t that counter-intuitive? Our natural inclination is to think that God’s laws are restrictive. In fact, a common critique of Christianity is that the Christian God is merely an angry taskmaster. The argument is that the God of the Bible imposes harsh restrictions that stifle happiness. Friedrich Nietzsche, 19th century philosopher, described Christianity’s emphasis on obedience and as oppressive. From the outside, many believe the Christian faith is just a rules-based religion devoid of joy and love. Yet that is the opposite of what we’ve been learning in 1 John.  But let’s first acknowledge that a pharisaical view of obedience is devoid of those things. Let’s go back to the pharisees for a moment. Their version of obedience and added rules was burdensome! Jesus said so himself. In Matthew 23, he said, “The scribes and the Pharisees... tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger." Commandments without love for God and neighbors and without faith in Christ, do the opposite! They add burdens that are hard to bear.  This idea of a burden is based on farm animals that carry loads. Think of a horse or an ox that carries a lot of weight or plows the field. A pharisaical type of religion adds burdens to people, it does not relieve burdens from people. But we’re told here that the opposite should be true. And there are 2 reasons why. The first we already talked about – Love for God and one another is necessary part of obedience. When we love God we desire to pursue his commandments. That’s the first reason. The second reason is found in verses 4 and 5. It starts with the word “for.” So, it’s answering the question “why?” Why should God’s commandments not be burdensome? Here it is “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” Verse 5 continues the reason, “Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” This is yet another intersection of themes from the first 4 chapters. The world and our beliefs. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that John is using the word “world,” to mean the temptations, the idols, the evil, and the false hopes which are in the world. In regard to believing, John is referring to our doctrinal beliefs. He specifically highlights the belief that “Jesus is the Son of God.” Those are the last words of verse 5.  If you remember, believing that Jesus was God in the flesh was a big problem in John’s day. Some were teaching that Jesus was not the Christ, not the Son of God. So, John is absolutely clear: a true believer believes that Jesus is God’s Son! In fact, in order for Jesus to have overcome the world for us, he had to be God’s Son. Fully and truly God, fully and truly one of us, so that he could deal with sin our the world. Someone with a true belief in Jesus is born of God, and therefore given the victory over the world.  Just to be sure, John is not saying the world will not influence us. He’s not saying that sin is no longer present in us. But rather, he’s saying that a believer has overcome the world. It is a state of being. It’s like the end of Romans 8, “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” John’s point is this: we are victorious over a world that seeks to reject God’s commandments. In that victory, through Christ, God’s commandments are not burdensome.  Jesus said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The word yoke is similarly referring to oxen or horses. It’s the wooden harness placed on their shoulders. And Jesus says, “my burden is light.” It’s feather weight. When we believe in Jesus, he takes our burdens. And that includes any burden related to obedience. To be sure, that does not mean obedience is always easy or natural. No, the scriptures call us to strive and fight for what is good and right and to put to death our earthly nature. What I’m saying is that as you mature in Christ, as you realize the victory you have in him, and his love for you, then God’s commands become lighter. • God will give you a desire and heart to pursue them. • You will realize that his commands are for your blessing and benefit. • You will also realize that pursuing God’s commandments blesses others. • You’ll come to know that when you keep God’s commandments, you are reflecting Christ in you. • And through them you are loving God and loving others. Listen to these words from Psalm 19 – “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes;” You see, God’s law and his commandments not only become light, but as the Psalmist has said, a wisdom and joy which will revive your soul and enlighten your eyes. You see, God’s commandments are not oppressive without joy and love, rather they are freeing full of joy and love. Let me put it all together:  • As you grow in your love for God and one another, you will grow in your desire to pursue God’s commandments.  • Then, as you mature in knowing and keeping God’s commandments in his Word, you will mature in your knowledge of God and salvation in Jesus. • Next, as this understanding of God and salvation is deepened, so is your understanding and discernment of the world. • And finally, as you further grasp the world with all its false hopes and beliefs, you will further grasp how to pursue God’s commandments and how to love him and others, more and more.  So, you see, it’s all woven together. And each strand – your love, your obedience, your beliefs, and your discernment of the world – each of those strands supporting and strengthening the others. There’s a reason that ropes are often braided. They’re more durable, they can withstand stresses. They are less likely to break under load. Such will be your life as you mature in these areas. As we come to a close, there’s an important word that I’ve mostly skipped over. In fact, it’s the only time in the whole letter that this word is used. Which I think you’ll find surprising. And it’s a word that ties all of these themes together into one. Look at that two-word phrase at the end of verse 4: “our faith.” Faith is the Greek word Pistis. Faith is more than just believing. Over and over John has used the word for belief, even a couple of times in these verses. But faith is assenting to what you believe. Embracing it. Faith goes hand and hand with God’s grace. Faith is a gift of God where you see your sinful situation apart from him and you turn your life to Christ. I’m not saying that John has been avoiding the idea of faith in his letter. No, the concepts of faith have been presented all throughout, especially being born of God. But it’s significant that as John summarizes his letter, he uses such an important word - faith. So, these five verses are a picture of true faith. Faith is where it begins. When you come to faith in Christ, you are then “born” of God. And if you are born of God, spiritually born, you are his by faith.  It’s by faith that you turn from your unbelief, to him. It’s through your faith that you experience God’s love in Christ and respond to his love with love. It’s by faith that you pursue the things of God, his commandments. And it’s by faith that you trust in what he has revealed in his Word about the world and about Jesus. So, may we not think of each of these themes individually, but rather may we embrace them together by faith. May we mature in our faith as they become woven together in our lives. And when we do, God will lift the burden of his commandments from us and we’ll experience the victory that he has given us over the world.

1 John 4:7-19 Rev. Erik Veerman 2/26/2023 Love Is What Love Has Done Preamble Please turn to 1 John 4:7-19. You can find that on page 1212. This is the third time that the apostle John has come back to the topic of love. This time he is focusing on (1) God, who is love, (2) God’s display of love through Christ, and (3) our response to his love. Please stand for the reading of God’s Word. Reading of 1 John 4:7-19 Prayer In Sante Fe, New Mexico you can find one of the most famous spiral staircases in the world. It’s in the Loretta Chapel. It’s considered one of the engineering wonders of the world. There are no visible supports. No visible nails. The wood is believed to be held together by pegs. And it’s beautiful. It turns a full two rotations up to the choir loft. The railing and wood perfectly curved; the ornate balusters beautifully hand crafted; Part of the mystery is that no one is really sure who built it. Some have even suggested a saint from heaven came down and built it. That’s kind of funny. Countless articles and a couple of documentaries have highlighted its mystery and wonder. Many have said that the book of 1 John is like an elaborate spiral staircase. As you read and study, you are ascending up as it circles back to prior themes. Each time, each theme, from a different perspective. Each curve of the staircase, different nuances and emphases.  • As we’ve ascended, John has revealed Christ in his fullness and what true belief is in him;  • As we’ve curved around the staircase, John’s has revealed the world – first a warning to not love the world, then as we’ve circled around, a warning about the beliefs of the world;  • he’s revealed our call to obedience – not to gain God’s favor but in response to his favor, and as we again, circled up the staircase, John has revealed what true life in God looks like.  And it’s all connected. The curved railings all the way up the 1 John staircase are God’s assurances to his people. That you may know that you are his and that he abides in you. So, today, we are making our third rotation around the spiral and we’ve come back to the theme of love. The first time we came across love was chapter 2 – the love test. You know that you know God if your heart display the love of God. And then the second time was in chapter 3. That was the contrast between loving your brother and hating your brother. Remember the comparison? …Cain, who hated and murdered, and Jesus, who loved and gave his life?  So, first was testing your love and then second was applying love in your life. Now in chapter 4, we’re higher up the spiral staircase. John draws our attention outward. He now shows us where love comes from. I find how 1 John addresses love very interesting and inspiring. It’s very different than our usual approach. You know, most of the time, we begin with the theoretical and then we apply it with the practical - we begin with the source and then we see how that is worked out. That’s the typical approach of the apostle Paul. The first half of his letters are usually the foundational truths, and the second half of his letters are usually those truths applied in life. But John has flipped it around. He started with the application of love and now he’s going back to the source of love. It’s like he’s saying, “I’ve told you what love looks like, now let me tell you where it all comes from.” It has the effect of reinforcing what already been said about love and then motivating us to fulfill it. On the back of the bulletin, you’ll see four different aspects about love from this text. Each has a couple of verses listed. This is generally the order we’ll take them, although there will be some overlap. 1. The source of all love – that is clear. 2. The manifestation of that love – how God works out his love. 3. The response to love – that’s our response. 4. The result of love – the benefit we receive from God’s love. 1. The source of all love First, love begins with God. The church that I grew up in had a huge banner in the sanctuary. It was on the side, and it was right there in view as you walked in. I think it is still there. It was there a few years ago when I visited. If so, it’s been there for 4 decades. And on the banner are three words. God is love. That banner is profoundly true. But let me say, while those words are true (that God is love), the banner is also very unhelpful. It is very unhelpful because there is no definition of love given. There’s nothing that describes what that love means. There are no other banners that provide a broader description of God’s being and nature. It’s just God is love. And the one who sees it, is left to his or her own thoughts as to its meaning. Let me say it again, God is love. That statement is absolutely and beautifully true, but it’s also one of the most misunderstood statements of God’s nature today.  That’s because we use our definition of love, we then impose our application of our definition upon God himself. In short, we conform God to our image. If God is love, as we think, he must be pleased with and accepting of all our thoughts and actions. We use the phrase “love wins” as one author put it to mean that God’s nature as love wins out over his nature as just. To some, God is love means God would never punish sin, or that sin is no longer a category because God’s love wins. Or, as some think, certain sins are no longer sin. But what that does is misunderstand love and misunderstand God’s love. In fact, that misunderstanding takes away the reason for God’s love fulfilled in Christ. So then, what is love? I’ve defined it in previous sermons, but I think it would be helpful to restate it. The word in the Greek word is agape. It is used 24 times here. Even the opening two words. Beloved, let us love. Or Agapetoi agapomen. In fact, let me read you the best definition of Biblical love. From 1 Corinthians 13 “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;” Now, listen carefully to the next part of the definition, “it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.”  Love in Scripture is not a blind love. Rather it is a self-sacrificial love. It gives. It exalts goodness and mercy and it rests on truth. God is this love. It is a deep truth that sets Christianity apart. God’s nature is this kind of love. 2. The manifestation of that love And the thing is, God love cannot be held back. It cannot be contained. The very nature of love is action. It’s sort-of like the flip side of that well known Forrest Gump quote. Gump says, “Stupid is as stupid does.” In the case of God’s love. “Love is what love does.” Or “Love is what love has does.” In fact, these verses in 1 John 4 don’t give us a definition of love. Rather, they explain love by describing what love does.  For example, verses 9 “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world...” To be “made manifest” means to be made apparent or evident or visible. Verse 10 is even clearer that love is action. Look down at what it says, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son.” Love “is” what love has done. And here’s the implication of that: our understanding of the phrase “God is love” needs to be tested by how that love is made manifest by God. In other words, to understand what it means that “God is love” needs to understand why God the Father sent his Son. If love is God sending his Son, why did God send his Son? And I want to draw your attention to the phrase at the end of verse 10, “[God] sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.” That’s a big word. Propitiation. This is the second time in 1 John that we’ve come across the word “propitiation”. Both times it’s related to the reason Jesus was sent into the world. And let me say, it’s critical to understanding love. Propitiation means the satisfaction of God’s divine wrath against sin. In the Old Testament, a sin offering was given as a means of propitiation. It demonstrated that a sacrifice needed to be made to cover the consequences of sin. On the most important day of the Jewish calendar back then, the Day of Atonement, the blood of the lamb offering was sprinkled over the Ark of the Covenant. Those activities all demonstrated the idea of propitiation. A sacrifice needed to be made - blood needed to be shed. Let me put it this way, because God’s nature is also just and holy, he cannot stand the presence of sin. Sin is completely opposed to God. Therefore, God is wrathful against sin. Sin has to be dealt with. That’s what propitiation is - the divine satisfaction of God’s wrath against sin. And that’s what Christ accomplished on the cross. He fulfilled God’s eternal demands against sin and therefore displayed God’s infinite love. I’m not saying that the “God is love” banner should come down. The banner is true! Rather, I’m saying that if a church is going to have such a prominent banner, they should add more banners. God is just. God is holy. God is good. God is true. God is light (remember that from chapter 1 – he sees all, knows, all, reveals all). All of those banners would deepen and enrich our understanding… not just of God, but also of each of those attributes. Our understanding of God’s love is intensified by understanding his justice and holiness. Our understanding of his nature as good is furthered by understanding his nature as true. Our tendency is to think that by adding more attributes to God’s list, that it diminishes each attribute. But that’s not true. It’s not like a pizza, where the more slices you make, the smaller the pieces. No. Rather, it’s like adding more toppings. Goodness, truth, holiness, love. The pizza is better.  I should probably stop. Anytime you try to use an analogy with God, you risk some heresy. My point is this: Our understanding of God’s love is deepened by our understanding of Jesus’ propitiation for sin. You see, God’s love does not win out over his justice and wrath. Rather, God’s love and justice are both perfectly fulfilled on the cross. God’s holy wrath against our sin is satisfied on the cross. Jesus is the only sacrifice that could satisfy God’s wrath. That is love. It is the most profound love. It does not dismiss sin or God’s holy justice against sin. It deals with it. Do you see how the manifestation of God’s love on the cross defines love to the fullest? And the beautiful thing about God’s love is that it is for you… it’s for each one of you here. God’s love is for you. You either have God’s love in Christ, or you need God’s love in Christ, which he offers. To have God’s love is to know it, to believe it, to abide in it, and to confess it. Everything in verses 13-16 captures what it means to have the love of God in Christ.  • We have God’s love if God has given it to us through his Spirit. That’s verse 13.  • That means we testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the savior (verse 14).  • And we confess, verse 15, that Jesus is God!  • Confessing includes believing (verse 16) that Jesus is not just the Savior, but that he is your savior. That he loves you by satisfying God’s wrath for your sin on the cross. That is amazing love. We read Ephesians 3 earlier in the service. It speaks of being grounded in God’s love, knowing its “breadth and length and height and depth” …knowing “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” God’s love is infinite beyond measure. And the way you can know his love is to know the manifestation of that love on the cross. It is the very definition of love. Let me recap so far: 1. God is love. Not a love defined by the world, but a love defined by God himself. A self-sacrificial love that exalts in truth and goodness. 2. Love is what love has done. The love of God is a love that manifests itself. God’s love is fulfilled in Christ. Jesus’ propitiation for our sins on the cross perfectly fulfilled God’s nature as love, as just, as holy, as true, and as good. And this love of God, which is manifested in Christ, is a love offered to all. In order to have God’s love, you need to confess and believe in God’s love for you – the sacrifice of Jesus. 3. The response to love So, we’ve circled up the spiral staircase of 1 John. We’ve come again to love. We’re higher up now, and we’ve been shown the source and manifestation of God’s love. God is love and his love is perfectly fulfilled in Christ. But God’s message here, through the apostle John, is not just about God’s nature as love and the fulfillment of that love. No, there are two more things: (3) a response and (4) a result. It’s like we are looking down from our new vantage point and we can see the ground level. Through this perspective of God’s love in Christ, John brings us back to rubber meets the road application.  In fact, we didn’t read verses 20 and 21 this morning. That’s because I included it 3 weeks ago when we covered love and hate in chapter 3. Verses 20 and 21 take us back to what John has already said. That loving God necessarily means loving your brother. The way that these verses speak about our love is by way of response. In other words, because God is love and he loved us, therefore, we ought to love. • That idea is captured all throughout here… .like right at the beginning of verse 7. “Beloved, let us love one another.” Why? “…for love is from God.” God is the source of love, our love is from him, and therefore we love others because he is love.  • Or take verse 11. “If God so loved us, we ought to love others.” God is the source of love and he loved us in Christ, therefore, our response is to love others.  • Verse 19 takes it one step further. “We love because he first loved us.” It’s not just that we ought to love, we can love, we’re enabled to love, because of the love of God in Christ Jesus for us. So, what is the response to God’s love for us? Love. And we’re talking about agape love – the brotherly sacrificial love to which Scripture calls us. The love of God in Christ (1) enables us to love one another; (2) it motivates us to love one another; and (3) it calls us to love one another. Let me say it in another way, when you are struggling to love someone else. Maybe they hurt you in some way. Or maybe they hurt someone you love. Or you had an argument with them. Or they weren’t there for you, or they said something or didn’t say something. There are 100 reasons we come up with not to love others.  Whatever it is, step number 1 is to return to the source of love, God, and the manifestation of his love, the sacrifice of Christ for you. There is no other place to start. In order to love others, you need to embrace the love of God, recognize the love that he has given you, and draw upon that endlessly deep ocean of his love. When you go there, when you meditate on Christ, and rest in his love, he will enable you to love. Even when love for someone else seems unattainable, when you draw upon the love of God in Christ, praying for a heart of love, God, through his Spirit will give you his love. 4. The result of love And that really connects to the last aspect of love in these verses. The result of love, or the result of God’s love for us. The reason we can go to God and draw upon his love in Christ, is because we abide in him and he in us. That is what God’s love gives us. Look down at verse 12. It says, “if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” It’s not saying that our love for others causes God to abide in us. No, that can’t be! Verse 19 is clear about that. We love because he first loved us. Rather verse 12 means that when we display the love of God in us, by loving one another, then we know that we have God’s love in us. It is a confirmation. This theme of abiding has come up over and over in 1 John. As I mentioned, it’s like the railing that we hold onto as we ascend the staircase. God abides in us and us in him. Jesus himself described abiding this way. He said, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” In other words, we get our sustenance from him. In him we have life flowing into us. And part of that is having his love. When we have the love of God, we have the Gospel hope of Christ in us. The Holy Spirit has bound us to Jesus. We can go to him, we can trust in him, we can rest secure in him, we can have confidence in our salvation, we can draw on the endless source of his love. In all these things we are abiding in him because his love abides in us. There’s a second part to that here. It also says that God’s love is perfected in us. It’s fulfilled in us. Verses 17 and 18 explain what “perfected” means. It means we have confidence and assurance in God’s love. In Christ we have peace and joy because of his love. As we grow in our understanding of God’s love, he removes the fear of judgment. You see that in here as well. That idea goes back to knowing that Christ is our propitiation. He bore the judgment for us. So, instead of fear God gives us his peace, instead of doubt we grow in confidence. Instead of hate, we have love. All of those blessings – love, confidence, assurance, peace - are the result of or byproduct of having God’s love in us. Conclusion And where does it all begin? God. Because God is love. A love way beyond the world’s misdirected understanding of love. A love that is which is a love that had done. A love through God giving himself for us. A love intensified by God’s character of Justice in the judgment that Christ bore for us. A love perfected and fulfilled in Christ. A love that enables and motivates our love, unlike any motivation. A love far deeper and richer than we could ever imagine. A love that abides in you  May we know God’s love, confess believe in God’s love, and thereby confirm God’s love in us, which he has given through the cross of Christ. 

1 John 4:1-6 Rev. Erik Veerman 2/19/2023 The Spirit of Truth vs. the Spirit of the Age Preamble The Scripture reading for our sermon is from 1 John 4. We’ll be looking at verses 1-6. You can find that on page 1212 in the Bibles. One difference between the first half of 1 John and the second half of 1 John is its focus. In the first couple of chapters, John gave us foundational truths about Jesus and what true faith looks like. A big part of that was testing our own lives and beliefs. Well, the second half has been about applying those truths in our lives and the church. That’s what our verses this morning do. And they intersect two themes already covered: (1) our beliefs about Jesus and (2) the influence from the world. The difference is, rather than asking us to test our own beliefs and lives, the apostle John reveals how to test what’s being taught in the church. Is the teaching from the Holy Spirit and true, or is the teaching from the world and false? We’re talking about core matters of faith. Now, you may remember. At the end of chapter 2 when we looked at the doctrine test, I made you a promise. I said when we get to these verses in chapter 4, I would get specific on worldly philosophies that are infiltrating the church today. We’ll consider those in the second half of today’s sermon. Let’s now come to God’s Word. Please stand as you are able. Several of you have been memorizing this chapter, so let’s read it together. Feel free to look on or try saying it by memory. As a reminder, this is God’s inspired and authoritative Word given to us. 1 John 4:1-6 - together Prayer Brushing your teeth is bad for your health. Think about it. Every time you brush, you are wearing down the enamel that protects your teeth and nerves. Furthermore, toothpaste is toxic to your teeth. Fluoride is a corrosive chemical. Not only are you subjecting it to your teeth, but you are introducing it into your body. Brushing your teeth is merely a marketing scheme by big pharma. In 1961, Dr. William McGuire conducted a study on persuasion. His topic was brushing your teeth. His goal was to see how easily we are deceived and how to prevent it. One of his study groups had no warning. Someone came in and began to argue against brushing your teeth. By the end, people felt sheltered by their families and duped by society. This group couldn’t believe they used to think brushing your teeth was good. Another group of people were prepared beforehand. They were given positives for brushing your teeth and they were told of possible arguments against brushing your teeth. Later when someone argued against brushing, this group was able to discern truth from error. That’s what the apostle John is doing here. He’s teaching his church how to know what’s true and how to know what’s false. Yes, he’s addressing false teaching that had already infiltrated the church, but he also wants them to be prepared for the future.  That’s my goal for this morning. To give you principles from this text to discern core matters of truth from error. And to analyze our current cultural moment and some worldly philosophies that have infiltrated the church. Before we get there, we have to understand what John is saying and why he is saying it. As I read, you probably noticed that word “spirit.” It’s used 8 times in these 6 verses. Two of the times it’s referring to the Holy Spirit. Capital “S” spirit. The Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one whom God the Father gives us, through Christ, who testifies to the truth and brings comfort and conviction. He’s called in Scripture the Spirit of Truth. That’s what he’s called here along with the Spirit of God. He’s called elsewhere the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Helper, and the Comforter. In contrast, in these verses, is the spirit of error. Lowercase “s.” It’s not referring to any specific person. Rather, it’s referring to teaching that claims to be from God. The sense we get is that false teachers were going around claiming to have a word from the spirit. But in reality, they were teaching falsehood.  Now, put yourselves in the shoes of John’s audience. They had heard contradictory teaching. Both sides claiming to be from the Holy Spirit. How were they to know what was true and what was false? That is why John is using the language “testing the spirits.” Testing to see whether the teaching is from the Holy Spirit or whether the teaching is from the spirit of error. It’s not from God, but rather it’s from the “world.”  That’s another word that is used multiple times in these verses. The word “world.” Six times in these 6 verses, especially in verses 4 and 5. In fact, the word “world” is one of the apostle John’s favorite words. But he uses it in different ways! Let me give you a couple of examples. In the Gospel of John chapter 1:10, John writes “He [Jesus] was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” There are two uses right there. Jesus was in the world, meaning earth. The world was made through him, very similar - world meaning all of God creation. But then it says, yet the “world” did not know him. There, he’s referring to the people in the world. Or as a contrast, take John 3:16 and 17. A very well-known passage. It begins, “for God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” In that context, John is using the word “world” to mean the people in the world whom God loves. Verse 17 confirms that. It continues “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” There, John is talking about people who would believe in Jesus. In other verses, it’s quite the opposite. He talks about judging the world and the rulers of the world who will be cast out. In those cases, it’s the world’s systems and beliefs, which are opposed to God in Christ. So, you see, the word “world” is a utility word for John. Here in these verses, the word “world” is that last definition. It’s the things which are contrary to God. Idols, beliefs, systems, desires, philosophies. Look at verse 5 for example: “They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.” Let me rephrase verse 5 into, “they are from the world’s corrupt systems and ideologies. Therefore they speak from those worldly philosophies and beliefs, and the people in the world who do not know God, listen to them.” So, to summarize: There’s truth from the Spirit of truth versus error from the spirit of the age – the world. And John tells them, here’s how you discern which is which. Now, I know, all the parents here want me to say “Brushing your teeth is healthy.” It is! And flossing too, by the way. I just made up some ridiculous arguments against it. But, did some of you wonder for a moment? We are, after all, a susceptible people. Kids, throughout your life you will have to discern what people are saying and teaching. And we’re not talking about secondary matters. It’s not about brushing your teeth. No, John is talking about core matters of faith and life. You will need to be like the Bereans. In Acts 17, it says they received what the apostles were teaching, but it says they did so “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” You will need to do that throughout your life, and these verses give you some guidance. Ok. What was the issue at hand? What was John dealing with? Well, we’re told. Right there in verses 2 and 3. “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.” The problem was, there were people in the church who denied Jesus’ humanity. Saying that he did not come in the flesh. Or maybe that Jesus was not the Christ – not the promised one. Again, we’re talking people in the church in John’s day. And we’ve already talked about where some of those false beliefs came from. Remember, in John’s day, Gnosticism was on the rise. This worldly philosophy separated the spiritual realm from the material real. Proponents believed their goal was to achieve a heightened spirituality and enlightenment – kind of like an out of body experience. Everything material, including our flesh was corrupted and evil. This worldly thinking was the new kid on the block at the turn of the first century. And it was cool to think about and believe in these things.  As you can imagine, that worldly philosophy began to infiltrate the church. And think of the consequences. For those that bought in to this gnostic belief, if matter was corrupted and evil, then they couldn’t imagine that Jesus came in the flesh. If he did, he would have been corrupted (again, according to them)! Do you see that connection? How this false worldly philosophy had crept in and struck at the essential doctrine of the incarnation?(God becoming flesh) As a result, they denied Jesus humanity or that Christ had even come. And John says, “no! this belief is not from the Spirit. It is a lie. The Holy Spirit only testifies to the truth of what we, the apostles, taught. And the foundation is that Jesus Christ has come, and he’s come in the flesh.” Matter and the flesh is, in fact, not evil. We live in a very different context. In John’s day, the canon of the New Testament was yet to be established. The creeds on the Trinity that unified the church were yet to be written. For us, broadly speaking in the church, there is unity surrounding the person of Jesus – his humanity and divinity. No, in our day, in the church, the winds of secular philosophy blow in different way into the church. But they do the same thing. They strike at the core principles of faith – maybe not Jesus’ humanity or divinity, but they oppose Christ and salvation in other ways. Look down at verse 3. Notice what John says there, “every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist.” Opposed to Christ. John is saying, we test beliefs and teaching in the church by evaluating whether they are antichrist. The teaching is against Christ if it distorts or denies (1) the person of Jesus (again, that’s what John was dealing with), (2) sin and the need for salvation in him alone, (3) God’s nature and character, or (4) the life we are called to live. John has written about each of those. Again, if any teaching in the church distorts or denies any of those, it fails John’s test. That is how you will know the Spirit of Truth vs. the Spirit of the Age. So then, what worldly philosophies today have crept into the church and are seeking to strike at the vitals of the Christian faith? Here we go. Now, You may feel uneasy with some of the things I am going to say. We can talk more later. Let me start with an easy one. About 100 years ago the church was dealing with the winds of modernism. The ideas coming from the Enlightenment that centered on man - that man is the measure of all things. And furthermore, that there’s nothing outside of the universe - it’s all a matter of chance. It took a while for that worldly philosophy to infiltrate the church, but when it did some teaching in the church began to question the physical resurrection of Jesus, question the virgin birth, and question miracles in general. Really, it questioned the supernatural within the natural world. This denial of God’s supernatural work contradicts Scripture and strikes at the vitals of salvation and Christ. It is the spirit of error. Now, modernism hasn’t gone away, but it’s current impact on the church has waned. Ok, let’s take another one – a little closer to home. In post World War 2, there has been a boom of consumerism. Our culture has an almost insatiable appetite for things and entertainment. We live in a world where we click a button and stuff shows up on our doorstep the next day. Security is found in money. Identity is found in what you own. The right doctor can heal almost anything. Broadly as a culture, we long for money, things, and comfort. This philosophy has affected the church by distorting the hope of the Gospel. What Christ has done for us is to reconcile us to God and to give us hope beyond the grave – eternal life. But in certain circles of the visible church, that hope is focused on this life. Some teachers will say, “God wants you to materially prosper in this life.” They say the confirmation of a Godly life is your heath and the ways in which you prosper now.  Brothers and sisters, that distorts the Gospel. It minimizes the suffering of Christ and our comfort in him when we suffer. There’s often very little eternal hope spoken of in this social or prosperity gospel. It also minimizes sin. It is not the Gospel. To be sure, I’m not advocating minimalism nor a rejection of medicine. But this teaching has turned good things into ultimate things. It is a spirit of error. Ok, let me take the next two together. Recently I read an article titled: “What Would Francis Schaeffer Say to Today’s Evangelical Church?” Shaeffer was a Christian philosopher and Presbyterian pastor in the middle of last century. He was masterful at analyzing the culture and the culture’s impact on the church. I’ve referred to Schaeffer before. Now, it’s risky to surmise what someone would say after they’re gone, but I thought the article was well done. It was written by a Schaeffer scholar. The author had worked at the L’Abri study center with the Schaeffers who started it. And this author had started a new L’Abri in England. So he was very qualified. In Schaeffer’s day, postmodernism was the cool kid on the block. Postmodernism questions truth itself. It pushes an agenda that says your truth is your truth, but it’s not my truth. In response, Schaeffer hammered home the church’s the need to stand for the objective truth of God’s Word and the objective guilt of every man before our holy God. That message still needs to be trumpeted today. There’s still a postmodern relativistic mindset in the world. It has watered down the Scriptures and is a spirit of error. So, that’s one thing, postmodernism. But today, the bigger ideological impact on the church is experientialism. Relativity has moved from the realm of truth in the mind to our experiences and feelings. And we see that all around us. Our culture says, “if it feels good, do it” or “follow your heart” or “be true to yourself.” The problem is, this expressive individualism denies sin. However, it, in fact, is sin – it’s the sin of pride and self-idolatry. It rejects the very thing that it is - sin. When the winds of this cultural ideology bleed into the church, God’s law is relativized and sin is minimalized. It strips away the core of and need for salvation. It is the spirit of the antichrist. So, then, what would Francis Schaeffer say today? I think the author is right that Schaeffer “would,” he says, “call [us] to stand for the Truth of Scripture, to not compromise with the current thought of the day, and to proclaim Christ alone as the way, the truth and the life... [and] that everything is not relative, that God’s laws are good and life-giving.” So, modernism, consumerism, postmodernism, and experiential or expressive individualism – any of these worldly philosophies will compromise the Gospel message of hope in Christ alone. They therefore fail 1 John 4’s test. I have two more philosophies to highlight. In our nation, we live with the sins and scars of racism. The pain of our history of slavery and segregation continues today, and racism certainly continues. I’m using that word racism to mean partiality and prejudice against someone else based on the color of their skin, or their cultural, ethnic, or national heritage. The answer to that sin is ultimately the Gospel. Ephesians 2 speaks of true reconciliation in Christ. It says, “For he himself [Jesus] is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two.” The ultimate hope of reconciliation and peace is found in Christ alone. And the pattern in Scripture is love for God and love for our neighbor which includes repentance and forgiveness. The answer to the sin of racism is not found in the secular ideology of critical theory, or to use the popular term, critical race theory. The reason I bring it up is because there continues to be a movement in the church to adopt some of its tenants. However, it replaces sin with sin, oppression with oppression, and racism with racism. It has no concept of forgiveness or reconciliation, no understanding of guilt or redemption. None of its solutions to racism remotely resemble the Gospel or hope in Christ, but rather perpetuate sin. This is the spirit of error. I’m not saying the path is easy to work through the sorrow and suffering of the sins in our nation (now and in the past), but the answer needs to conform to the pattern in Scripture. And ultimately focus on a true understanding of sin and redemption in Christ. And finally, one more message of the world that I fear is infiltrating the church. Politics. Let me tell you what I mean and tell you what I don’t mean. Our country is so polarized these days. That alone has raised the prominence of partisan politics. Along with that has come a disproportional hope in political solutions. When that intersects with the church and either parallels the Gospel in importance or displaces the Gospel as the answer to sin and salvation, it’s then that it becomes a message of the world and is a spirit of error. I am not saying that you should avoid politics. There are important matters, and the Bible speaks to some of the matters that come before our state and federal systems. But even on a personal level, we should not trust in chariots and horses (as Psalm 20 puts it) but rather we should trust in the name of the Lord. It’s a matter of priority and hope. Well, there you have it. Let me recap so far and then conclude. 1. You should brush your teeth. 2. The apostle John is calling us to test the spirits… test the teaching in the church. Why? He says there are many false prophets that have gone out into the world. There is the Spirit of God who is the Spirit of Truth and there are spirits of error, or spirits of the age which come from the philosophies of the world. 3. The test is whether they confess the truth of Christ in his person… and I believe, by implication, in his work – the Gospel. Any worldly ideology that denies a core principle of Jesus or salvation is a spirit of error, just like the Gnosticism of the second century. 4. There are many false philosophies in the world that try to subvert the Gospel. And there will be more tomorrow. We’re called to be discerning by testing them with the Word of God, such as 1 John 4:1-6. In conclusion, when we focus on Christ in all his fullness and glory and in his Gospel of peace, we are assured that we have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, in us. When it seems like the world and the devil are encroaching in on the truth and the church, we hope and rest in what verse 4 says. “Little children,” beloved of God, “you are from God and have overcome them,” now listen… “for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” God has given you his Holy Spirit in you. He is infinitely greater than he who is in the world. Through him, God’s Spirit May we believe the truth of Christ, may we reject the world’s philosophies, and may we rest in his work in us. Amen?

Mark 12:13-34

1 John 3:11-24; 4:20-21 Rev. Erik Veerman 2/5/2023 A Tale of Two Hearts Please turn to 1 John 3:11-24. That is found on page 1211 In the pew Bibles. We will also be looking at chapter 4 verses 20-21. You’ll notice that the apostle John is returning to the topic of love. In fact, this won’t be the last time that we’ll come back to this importance subject. Each time, he emphasizes something a little different. And this morning, John’s focus is on the contrast between brotherly love for one another and hate for one another. Last week’s verses contrasted the children of God and children of the devil. This week describes the heart of each – either a heart of love or a heart of hate. And as I read, I want you to notice the word “heart.” These are the only verses in 1 John where that word is used. It’s not heart in the sense that people use it today – feelings or emotions. Rather it’s heart in the Biblical sense: our deepest beliefs, the center of who we are, what drives us, what we base our life decisions on. Do you have a heart of love or of hate? Let me also say, the use of the word “love” here is not referring to a romantic love, rather it’s referring to a deep care and concern for your brothers and sisters in Christ. One where you exercise patience and kindness and gentleness and compassion and self-sacrifice. Let’s now come to God’s holy Word. Stand, as you are able. Hear now God’s Word. Inspired, authoritative, given to us. Reading of 1 John 3:11-24; 4:20-21 Prayer The sharpest knives in the world are made out of the material obsidian. You may not have heard of obsidian before. But is essentially volcanic glass. An obsidian blade is only three nanometers thin at its edge. That is 10 times sharper than a razer blade. And when you look through a microscope at one, you will see tiny ridges. Kind of like a saw. That increases the blades surface area for cutting. In fact, when you are cutting something with an obsidian blade, it slices right through the cells of the object you are cutting. A normal blade will push the cells out of the way or crush them. But this kind of blade will literally cut a cell right in half. In these verses, the apostle John is slicing down to the heart of the matter. He’s cutting in to two, many things like love and hate; life and death; righteous deeds and evil deeds; self-sacrifice and murder; He contrasts Cain and Abel, and God and the evil one. In fact, wouldn’t you agree that the whole book of 1 John has been like an obsidian blade. It’s distinguished good from evil, light from darkness, truth from error. John has not been dealing with secondary or tertiary things. No, the apostle has been writing about core matters of faith and belief.  Yet, even though John has pulled out his obsidian blade, he has used it with the utmost care and skill. He has displayed a love towards his readers whom he knows and cherishes. He’s demonstrated that love while at the same time being firm about what is true faith and what is not. And that clarity has not only been about correcting doctrine concerning Jesus and faith, but also about how our lives should reflect true faith. To say it another way, John is like an expert surgeon with good bedside manners! He’s cut with such precision and care, not to injure us, but to heal us. I think, out of all that we’ve studied so far in 1 John, this text is meant to bring healing and unity. Let’s take a moment to enter in to the situation. John’s church, to whom he is writing, had gone through a lot. We’ve talked about it. Division, false teachers, wolves in sheep clothing, the world had crept in, lives were not reflecting true faith and righteousness. It doesn’t say this, but how can all of that not lead to disunity and mistrust. Even with the wolves gone, the community had been shattered. They were jittery, had trust issues, were unsure, and they acted out of those feelings and fears.  John would not be writing about hate unless there was hate present in the community.  And think about this, if the devil (whom we talked about last week) wanted to attack Tucker Pres, one of the ways he would do it is from within. Discord, anger, jealousy, mistrust. That’s what was happening in John’s church! And, as usual, John does not beat around the bush. He doesn’t avoid eye contact with his audience. No, he gets down to business! John gives them the core differences between love and hate. He gives them examples, he describes what heart motivations drive each, and gives them the path to which each lead, life or death. I have two points this morning. I think I’ve had more two-point sermons in this 1 John series than any other series. With all the contrasts. 1. A heart of hate is on the path of death  2. A heart of love is on the path of life  In other words, our hearts display either love or hate, which reveals the path that we are on. And remember, we’re talking about the Biblical definition of heart and love, which I gave you earlier. 1. A heart of hate is on the path of death So, first: A heart of hate is on the path of death. And just like the verses from last week, John takes us back to the beginning… to Genesis, to the events right after creation. Last week was about the deception of the devil. Genesis chapter 3. This week is Genesis 4. We read it earlier. Eve bore to Adam two sons, Cain and Abel. We’re told Cain and Abel each brought an offering to God. Now, at this point, Adam and his family had been banished from the garden. But God in his mercy allowed Adam and Eve to live and to continue on with the mandate that they had been given. That responsibility was to subdue the earth, to rule over the animals, and be fruitful and multiply.  The Lord also given them instructions about sacrifices. We are not given those instructions. But they had been passed down to Cain and Abel. And Cain comes with his sacrifice of fruit from the ground. And Abel comes with his first-born sacrifice from his flock. The Lord received the offering from Abel, but not from Cain. We’re not told the reason up front. We don’t know, at first, why God did not receive Cain’s sacrifice. But in Cain’s response, his heart is revealed. In Genesis 4, we’re told that Cain is very angry. And God warns Cain. He says, “sin is crouching at your door. Its desire is contrary to you.” Here in 1 John 3 verse 12, it expands that. Cain’s heart was “evil” and it includes the phrase, “his brother’s righteousness.” In other words, Cain was jealous of Abel, of his righteousness. And that seed of sin in his heart, developed into a hatred of Abel. That hatred led him down the path to cold-blooded murder. It began with jealousy. The progression of sin went from jealousy to hatred to murder. It began in Cain’s heart. That’s where all sin begins. In the book of James, he writes, “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” For Cain, the temptation led to the sinful desire of jealousy, which grew into hatred, which led him to murder. Once and a while, our family will watch the show “Shark Tank.” It’s about entrepreneurs who present their ideas and work to shark investors. The hope is that one of the investors will see the amazing potential of their invention and invest millions. Well, this one investor has a favorite phrase. When he makes an offer, he’ll say something like, “you’re not going to get this good of an offer again, if you don’t take it,” and here’s the saying, “you’re dead to me.” In other words, I will cut you off from any interaction and relationship, I do not care about you. “You are dead to me.” Even though anger and hate doesn’t often lead to actually killing someone, the heart sentiment is the same. We read part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount earlier. Specifically, that anger violates the sixth commandment. The sixth commandment is “Thou shall not murder.” And Jesus explained it this way: “you have heard that it was said, do not murder, but I tell you, anyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment.”  What Jesus was explaining is that the commands of God are broken from the inside out. You may have heard me say that before. One more time - the commands of God are broken from the inside out. Sometimes they are only broken on the inside. Coveting, lust, anger, but those internal sins break God’s law just like their external counterparts – stealing, adultery, murder.  You see, it’s out of a heart of hate that murder happens. And what John is talking about in these verses is the state of your heart. It’s either opposed to God in Christ, with no concept of repentance and no display of love. OR your heart is redeemed by Christ, and desires to forgive and love.   To be sure, John is not saying that a Christian never struggles with anger against a brother or sister in Christ. He’s also not saying that a murderer cannot be forgiven by Christ. I want to be clear about those things. If someone’s heart is closed (verse 17) with zero love, it indicates a heart that does not abide in Christ. Verse 20 uses the phrase “our heart condemns us.” You can see that phrase at the beginning of verse 20. Translators have had a difficult time translating that verse. I think the overall sense is that God knows everything, which, of course, includes our hearts. Our hearts are either filled with love or hate, and God knows that, so our hearts condemn us. And just to say it again, John is not referring to our cultural use of the word heart. Rather, the essential and fundamental nature of who you are and what you believe.  Let me say this first point, again. A heart of hate is on the path of death. When your heart is a heart of hate – meaning, devoid of love, forgiveness, or grace, then the eternal benefits of God’s grace in Christ are not yours. That’s what verse 15 is saying, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” A heart of murder for a brother, like the heart of Cain, is a heart that does not abide in Christ. The path is not eternal life, but rather leads to death. Let me summarize where we’re at so far.  1. There are two kinds of hearts – a heart of love and a heart of hate. 2. A heart of hate is like the heart of Cain. It’s filled with jealousy and anger on the inside, and often displays that hate on the outside.  3. A heart of hate does not have or recognize the love of God in Christ. It therefore does not have life in him. As we’ve travelled through 1 John, I’ve been finding myself wanting to constantly give you reminders. 1 John is very stark, but he needs to be. We’re talking about matters of life and death. But be reminded of the love that God offers in Christ. Be reminded that struggling with sin does not indicate a lack of faith. And be reminded of the forgiveness and love of God in Christ. So, yes, be warned about a heart of hate, but be reminded of those things. 2. A heart of love is on the path of life  Let’s move on to point #2. Point #1 - A heart of hate is on the path of death. Point #2 is the contrast. A heart of love is on the path of life. The father of a dear friend of mine is an airplane pilot. He’s retired now, but still flies. In fact, he and his wife decided to build their own airplane. There’s a company out west that provides all the parts and instructions, but you build it yourself. And so, he and his wife would take trips out there to work on their plane. It took a couple of years, but just over a year ago, they finished. And, of course, they wanted to fly it home. All the work they had done would now be put to the test. Would it fly? And of course, it was a matter of life and death! You don’t want to be up in the air and have something catastrophic happen. At the beginning of 1 John chapter 2, we talked about the love test. It was John’s introduction to the importance of love. It was like taking the test, it was like putting all the parts of the airplane together. But the verification is when you actually fly it. These verses in 1 John 3 are like that. They validate that you passed the love test.  Well, it was time to get in the cockpit, to pull out onto the runway, and to take off. And, good news, this couple did just that! It took a few days to fly home, but they made it without any problems. All the preparation and work were proven. I want you to notice something about these verses. They are very practical. You can’t just say you love, you have to show it. Look at verse 16. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us,” that’s talking about Jesus, we’re going to get back to that. Then it says, “and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” Do you hear how love needs to be demonstrated? Verse 18 verifies that, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” A true heart of love yields a life of love. We need to fly our plane of love. It can’t just sit in the hanger. I mentioned earlier that the commands of God’s are broken from the inside out. Well, this is the other side. The commands of God are kept from the inside out. When we have a heart that has been transformed by Christ, through the Holy Spirit (verse 24), that heart will desire to love and display that love. In the first few verses Cain was the ultimate example of a heart of hate. That hate led down the path to murder. Here in these verses, we are given the ultimate example of love. Not hating and killing someone but loving and dying for them. Now, these verses are more than just the example of Jesus’ sacrificial death, he died for us – we’ll come back to that, but these verses use Jesus’ death as a model for us to emulate. Back to verse 16 – “he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for others.” The ultimate display of a heart of love for someone else is giving your life so that they may live. That is what Christ has done, and that is what we are called to do. It displays the utmost love. Now, in 99.999 percent of cases, laying down your life is not physically dying for someone else (although there are examples of that). No, in the vast majority of cases it’s giving up something for a brother or sister in Christ. John gives us an example of that in verse 17. “If anyone has world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him,” meaning he doesn’t help him, “how does God's love abide in him?” Laying down your life in daily terms means giving up something for someone else. Maybe it’s something you cherish but you give it up for the blessing and benefit of someone else. Maybe it’s setting aside your dreams and desires for a family member. Maybe it’s helping someone with a tangible need (food or a place to live). Maybe it’s giving your time to be with a brother or sister in Christ who needs encouragement, presence, and prayer. All those are displays of love, which come from a heart of love. Let me try to make this tangible with two concrete examples. First, children. Kids, many of you have brothers or sisters. If you don’t, imagine that you do. Ok, let’s say you really want to be on the chess club at school. It meets every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. However, your sibling wants to play on the soccer team. Unfortunately, it also meets every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons across town. There’s no possibility to get a ride, so it’s either chess for you or soccer for him or her. What could it mean to lay down your life for your brother or sister? Well, I think you know where I’m going with this. To display your love for him or her, it would mean letting go of being on the chess club. That would be really hard to do, but it would be an example of dying to self and demonstrating your love. Next, married couples. Let’s say there are some difficult family situations happening in your spouses’ extended family. Maybe disfunction, maybe infighting, and you often find yourself caught in the middle. Because of the stressful and complicated dynamics, you don’t enjoy being with them. Well, there’s a week-long family reunion coming up. You would rather be at the beach. But even though your spouse understands that it’s no fun, yet it is his or her family. Laying down your life for your spouse, would mean going to the family reunion. And not in a begrudging way but being supportive and present while there. I’m sure you could come up with many more examples with roommates, fellow church members, or elderly parents. Laying down your life for a brother or sister in Christ means surrendering something; giving up something; submitting to the other person’s needs or desires over your own needs and desires; and with a heart of love. Jesus said, “this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus’ death is the ultimate example for us. We’re to love others as he loved us. But Jesus death is more than just an example. If you are a believer in him by faith, you are the recipient of his self-sacrificial love. Listen to these words from the apostle Paul in Romans 5. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” His death is the very thing that will give you new life. He will take the burden of your sin and give you a new heart in him. And he can do that because he laid down his life for you. And when you believe, you will have that new life in him. That is amazing love. Jesus’ self-sacrificial death for us is the greatest example of love; it is the source of our hearts of love; in it we find the strength to love one another; and when we demonstrate that love in our lives, we demonstrate, as verse 15 says, that “we have passed from death to life.” A heart of love is on the path of life. Not a love that comes from ourselves or is defined by our culture, but a love that comes from Christ – a self-sacrificial love. Conclusion May God give you or renew in you a heart of love. May your heart display the self-sacrificial love of Christ, as you love your brothers or sisters in him.

1 John 3:4-10 Rev. Erik Veerman 1/29/2023 The Marks of a Life Born of God Our sermon text for this morning is 1 John 3:4-10. You can find that on page 1211 in the church Bibles. And let me say, if you don’t have a Bible of your own, please take one. We’d love for you to have a copy of God’s Word to read and study. 1 John 3:4-10 is a continuation from last week. We focused on the amazing truth that those born of God, who know and have faith in Christ, are his children. He is your loving Father. You are his beloved child. It comes with blessings now and the promise of blessings forever. These verses continue the theme of being a child of God. You’ll hear some of the same words, like being born of God and being his child. The apostle John answers the question, what is the identifying characteristic of a child of God? And he contrasts that with the identifying characteristic of a child of the devil. Let’s now turn our attention to God’s Word. Stand. (I know we have multiple Scripture readings in our service). We stand for the sermon text as a representation of our reverence for God’s Word. Hear now God’s Holy Word. Eternal. Perfect. Inspired. Sufficient and given for us. I’m going to start with 1 John 3 verse 3 – to bridge the reading from last week. Reading, Prayer. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Jeffry Dahmer, Mao Sedong, Nero. Even the reading of those names likely evokes in you a righteous anger. And it should. The atrocities they each committed are the epitome of evil. Even people who do not believe in God, use the word hell to describe their eternal destiny. And we would agree. We would say they were children of the devil – deceived by Satan in the most unbridled way. And, of course, there’s the other side - the likes of Mother Theresa. Now, I don’t know her heart, but from what I’ve heard and read, she appears to have had a genuine faith in Christ. Assuming that is so, she was a child of God – and when Christ returns, she’ll be with him in glory. And her faith in Christ was the source of her humble heart of service. So, two extremes – evil personified (children of the devil), and righteousness personified (a child of God). But what about the rest of the world? What about everyone else not on either extreme? Is there a third category of people? Not a child of God, but also not a child of the devil? That is a hard question but with a clear answer. These verses give us that clear answer. John tells us here that there are two kinds of people in the world, children of God in Christ, and children of the devil. Or let me say it this way, people redeemed by Christ, and people who need the redemption found only in Christ. There is no third category. And that is a hard truth. But remember that the offer of the Gospel is for all. As we continue on in 1 John, we’ll see that the apostle writes a lot about God’s love, which is manifest in his Son. But in this morning text, John is focusing on the two categories of people, children of God and children of the devil. He gives us the identifying characteristics of each, which revolve around either a pattern of sin or a patterns of righteousness in one’s life. And I should say, this is a really important Biblical text when it comes to understanding sin and righteousness. Take your bulletin and flip to the back. I included a longer outline today because if your mind wanders off or if you fall asleep for a little bit, and therefore miss the argument, you could misunderstand the point of the passage. So let me walk you through the outline. I think you will find it helpful. • We’re going to start out with a reminder about sin, and some of the reasons why John wrote his letter. • The main two points this morning are about the two categories of people • First, Lawless living displays a lawlessness from the lawless one (1 John 3:4, 8, 10b) • And second, righteous living displays a righteousness from the Righteous One (1 John 3:5-7, 9, 10a) The heart of each of those categories is not the external pattern of sin or righteousness. Rather the heart of those two categories is where the righteousness or sinfulness originates. The external display merely reveals of whom we are born, either God or the devil. And that is the hard consideration. Hang in there with me, because when we get to the second category and consider the righteousness of God in Christ and our righteousness in him – it is a blessed truth upon which we can rest and live. So, that is where we are headed. Background And let me begin by defining sin. In fact, we don’t really have to look outside of these words to define it. In verse 4, John writes that “sin is lawlessness.” Sin is breaking God’s law, in any way. God’s law as given to us in his Word, which is also written on our hearts. Sin is both what we do or say or think which breaks God’s law, and sin is also what we do not do or say or think, where we are failing to obey God’s law. So, what we do which we shouldn’t do and what we should do which we don’t do. Now, when reading this passage, you may be tempted to think that God is calling us to be perfect. It says, after all in verse 6, “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning.” On the surface, it sure sounds like John is saying that a true Christian no longer sins. But that cannot be, in any way, what John is saying. Let me give you two reasons why. • First, in chapter 1, verse 8, John writes, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” John has already made clear that a believer still has sin present in his or her life. So, he can not be saying here, two chapters later, that a Christian does not sin. • Second, the language in these verses is about the pattern of sin or righteousness in your life. Multiple times it uses the word “practice.” In your life, are you making an effort to “practice righteousness” or rather, does your life display a “practice of sinning” or you “keep on sinning.” So, in other words, Christians still sin, but are called to righteousness and enabled to pursue righteousness. We’ll get into that more later. But we have to ask the question Why is John writing this? I want you to note verse 7. He says, “let no one deceive you.” That’s a clear indication that John was writing to counteract false teaching. We’ve talked about false teaching a lot. Different kinds of false teaching. But specifically related to these verses, there were two false beliefs being taught: • First was the belief that it was not possible to sin in the flesh. I’ve brought up Gnosticism before. I know that is a big word. John’s church was dealing with an early version of Gnosticism. That false teaching basically saw all matter including our bodies as totally corrupted. Therefore, Gnostics eliminated the category of sin in the body altogether. Only the mind or immortality mattered. So, you could do whatever you wanted in your body and you were not sinning – according to this false teaching. The very reason that the apostle John uses the word “lawlessness” in these verses is to reject that thinking. Breaking God’s law in the flesh is sin. So, that’s the first false belief that had entered the church – that sin wasn’t really a category when it came to our actions. • Second, was the opposite end of the spectrum! Some were teaching that it didn’t matter if you sinned, because God forgave you. We sometimes call that thinking cheap grace. It’s the reason we read part of Romans chapter 6. The false thinking is that the more I sin, the more I receive God’s grace. So, therefore, sin boldly. But that mindset has also been rejected over and over in 1 John. We’ve read about walking in the light, pursuing obedience to God’s word, and loving others. To summarize, John was writing to correct false teaching about sin and righteousness. Sin is real, is still present in the believer, but the one born of God is able to practice righteousness and put away sinful patterns in his or her life. And that brings us, now, to the main point of these verses. The differences between one who is a child of God and one who is a child of the devil. 1. Lawless living displays a lawlessness from the lawless one (1 John 3:4, 8, 10b) So, first, a child of the devil. I’m putting it this way: “Lawless living displays a lawlessness from the lawless one.” John is really clear about the source of lawlessness. It’s from the devil, Satan, and goes all the way back to the beginning. He says that “the devil has been sinning from the beginning.” Verse 8. And he’s referring to Genesis 3. God had created heavens and the earth with all the goodness of his nature as good. And God created Adam and Eve reflecting his goodness and created in his image. They had access to all of God’s good creation. God gave Adam and Eve responsibilities over his creation. But there was just one thing. There was just one command, one prohibition that God gave them. It was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All the rest of God’s creation was theirs. They could prosper and flourish in that good creation. But Satan came along. And he attacked the very command of God. You see, he was a lawbreaker and a liar. He said to Eve, “did God really say?” He questioned God’s command and told them to eat of the forbidden tree. He lied to them and told them to break God’s law. In the apostle John’s Gospel account, chapter 8, Jesus said these words to the pharisees. “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” The devil utterly opposes Christ and rejects God’s law. He is the complete opposite of Jesus. He desires to propagate sin by lying about the truth and rejecting God and his Gospel. Everything about the devil is opposed to God’s law. He is the father of lies, as Jesus said. Someone who “practices sinning” (that’s what it says) indicates that they are a child of him, the devil. And the million-dollar question is: What does it mean to practice sinning? Let me try and answer that. To “make a practice of sinning” means there’s no conviction of sin in that person’s life. They may even reject the concept of sin, or they may talk about sin, but display no repentance over sin. Someone who says they believe in God and perhaps even in Jesus, yet persistently violates God’s law without any fruit of repentance is making a practice of sinning. In addition, someone who rejects God or rejects God’s Word or rejects God’s Son or rejects God’s law, is practicing sinning through their disbelief. They may do good things, be kind to others, but if they reject God by denying him or rejecting Jesus, or salvation in him, then they are practicing sinning. I’m not dismissing common grace goodness in the world, but common grace goodness does not indicate whether you are a child of God or a child of the devil. There’s another related phrase here. It’s in verse 10: “whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.” It’s the flip side of the same coin. Violating God’s law happens not only when you actively break it, but also when you do not seek to practice it. That means no interest in growing in holiness or striving to know God’s Word in order to glorify God and keep his law. Yes, being a son of the devil is tragically displayed in the likes of Stalin or Hitler, but anyone who denies or rejects God in Christ or whose life demonstrates a willful pattern of sin without Godly remorse or who reject the pursuit of righteousness is of the devil. Their lawlessness is the lawlessness of Satan. And it’s really important to recognize, that if you and me were left to our own devices, left to our own will, left in our sin, we would all be children of the devil. All of us. No one would have any hope! But thanks be to God! He did not leave us without an escape from sin and death. He didn’t leave us to be bound by Satan. No, look down at the second half of verse 8 – “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” You are not bound to be a son of the devil. No, through Christ, you can become a child of God. 2. Righteous living displays a righteousness from the Righteous One (1 John 3:5-7, 9, 10a) That brings us to the second category of people identified in these verses – children of God. The question is, what is the identifying characteristic of a child of God? This is point number 2: their righteous living displays a righteousness from the Righteous One. I know that’s a lot of uses of the word “righteousness” in there. But look at verse 7. The second half of verses 7 “Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.” A display of righteousness in someone’s life, indicates a righteousness that he or she has, which comes from the Righteous One. Because he, that is Jesus, is righteous. Last week, I defined righteousness, but let me do that again because of its prominence in these verses. Righteousness is to be right or just in God’s eyes. So, to practice righteousness is to pursue what is good and right and true according to God’s standard of what is good and right and true. It all begins with and is founded on the righteousness of Christ. You see, Jesus is the standard of righteousness. Everything about Jesus opposes sin and unbelief. In him is the full righteousness of God. Verse 5 captures that. “He appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” Jesus is the opposite of the lawless one. He has no sin. He kept all of God’s law, every part of it, perfectly. He is therefore the Righteous One, the perfect Righteous One. And children of God have his righteousness. Children of God have been given his righteousness. If you are a child of God, you are righteous in Christ. God sees you as righteous in his sight. That idea is all throughout the New Testament. • For example, Philippians 3:9. It speaks of being found in Christ, “…not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” • Or take 1 Corinthians 1:30. It says by God’s doing, “you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption” • 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that God “made Him [that is, Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Beloved of God, you are not just or righteous before God because of anything in yourself. You cannot keep the law to become righteous. That is not possible. Rather, you, as a child of God, are righteous because of Christ’s righteousness, which you receive by faith. To boil it down. Jesus is perfectly righteous. If you believe in him by faith, you are righteous in him. Therefore… and this is the big point of these verses. Therefore, the identifying characteristic of a child of God is displaying his righteousness in your life. Think about this. If God sent his Son to defeat sin, then why would he be anything but opposed to sin in your life. That’s not to say you don’t receive grace when you sin, but in Christ, you are enabled to pursue righteousness. And that pursuit testifies to having Christ’s righteousness as a child of God. Have you heard the expression before: “Like father, like son?” or perhaps “He’s a chip off the old block” or maybe “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Those expressions all capture the same idea. When you see a son who has a similar character trait as his father, well then “like father like son.” You can tell whose father the son is. Well, that same idea applies here. A son or daughter of God the Father, will live like a son or daughter of God the Father. In Verse 9, the apostle put it this way: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.” If you are a child of God, born of him, God will give you a heart to pursue him and his righteousness and God will enable you to practice that righteousness. Practicing righteousness means, first of all, that you believe and know Jesus, and you desire to pursue God’s commands. And when you sin, you feel convicted and repentant of that sin. We each have temptations and sin, but the testimony of being a child of God is your Godly sorrow for your sin and your demonstrated desire to pursue righteousness. A child of God will not be marked by a pattern of sin but instead by a pattern of righteousness. Let me acknowledge one more thing. It can be really hard when there’s a sin in your life that is a constant struggle. Even though you grieve and repent of it in an ongoing way, you can often feel defeated. Or you can read these verses and question your faith. And that is the last thing that John wants you to do. Your grief and Godly sorrow testify to being a child of God. You are his. He is yours. But what should you do when sin comes knocking at your door, or you have been overcome by its temptation? Yes, you should repent of it and grieve over it. That displays your heart. But you should also drive yourself to Christ. It’s very tempting to rely on your own strength when faced with sin. To try to overcome your sin by your power. But beloved, we are called, not to rely on our strength but to abide in him. That’s in verses 6 and 9. Abiding in him means drawing your strength from his strength. It means drawing on the source of his grace, the cross and resurrection. So, Run to him, know that your sin has been defeated. Remind yourself that you have been ingrafting into the vine. You have his Holy Spirit and His Word, and you have his people. Abiding in him is abiding in all that is his, which is yours. And, of course, Abiding in God is not just for those times of struggle, but for all your righteous pursuits, as well. In all of it, we should go to him, go to Jesus, knowing of his righteousness and his truth for us, as his children. Conclusion In summary, righteous living displays a righteousness from the Righteous One. A heart that knows God in Christ, has his righteousness. And when God is your Father – “like Father, like son.” He enables you to be like him and practice righteousness, abiding in him. In contrast, lawless living displays a lawlessness from the lawless one. A heart that rejects God, His Son or his law, displays the lawlessness and sin of the devil. There are only two paths, two lives, two destinations. Everyone is in one of two categories, either a child of God or a child of the devil. And the only way to escape from having the devil as your father is to become born of God… born through the Gospel of God’s Son. May we each be a child of God, knowing the Righteous One and demonstrating his righteousness in our lives as we abide in him.

1 John 2:28-3:3 Rev. Erik Veerman 1/22/2023 A Child of God, Now and Forever I’ve really enjoyed our study of 1 John so far. Every time I read through it, I see something else that I hadn’t seen before. It’s very different, from say, the book of Romans. In Romans, you know, Paul presents more of a legal treatise on faith. It has a very logical flow, step by step. 1 John, on the other hand, is very free flowing. It has so many intertwined layers like knowing God, abiding in Christ, walking in faith, loving others, identifying false beliefs, and following God’s commands. Those themes which are included in the four life tests that we’ve worked through are now going to be applied. Do you remember the tests? Obedience, love, the world, and doctrine. And as John applies them, we will see them overlap in different ways. Really, we’re at a transition point. The apostle John has just given us external confirmations of authentic faith. And now he will give us the internal reality of what that means. These are perhaps the most powerful words of the entire book.  Please turn to 1 John 2:28. You can find that on page 1211. We’ll read through 3:3 Stand as able. Reading of God’s word. Prayer At the beginning of the pandemic, a middle-aged man named Rob Kenney started a new YouTube channel. It’s called, “Dad, how do I?” You see, when Rob was young, his parents divorced. His father got custody, but when Rob was 14, his father walked away from Rob and his siblings. It was incredibly difficult, like many situations. Over the years, Rob decided he did not want his children to go through that kind of pain, so he determined to be a faithful father… and also a father figure to others. So, at age 57, he started up a YouTube Channel, “Dad, how do I?” His first video was “how to tie a tie.” You can find a whole bunch of videos like “how to put up a shelf,” “how to jump start a car,” “how to make chili,” “how to file your taxes,” “how to unclog a sink.” Besides explaining how to do those things, he’s very loving, he tells dad jokes, he likes to say “I’m very proud of you” and he includes fatherly advice. As of this week, Rob is up to about 4.4 million subscribers. He’s been called the internet dad. And he had no idea this would happen. The reason so many people have resonated with Rob is because so many have strained relationships with their fathers, or have absent fathers, or are painfully aware of the failures of their earthly fathers. You see, there’s something deep down in us that wants our fathers to love us. That desires our fathers to give us wisdom, to be there for us. That longs to know our fathers, or be reconciled to him, or to be with him again. I know that’s the heart desire of many of you. And that’s why these verses are so personally meaningful. That despite the weakness and failings and sin of our earthly fathers, we have a God who is a loving Father. His fatherly love goes far beyond any earthly father’s love. That’s not to minimize the encouraging love of some of our earthly fathers. But God’s fatherly love to his children is infinitely deeper. And if you know God the Father, and his Son, as verses 23 and 24 speak about (that was last week), then you are a child of God. You have all the blessings and benefits of being his child. You are his. You are a member of his family. You can call him Father. He is with you. You can go to him and he will listen. And he will be present with you, forever. I think these verses in 1 John are the epitome of Scripture’s declaration that God is our heavenly Father and we are his beloved children. To be sure, there are many many verses in Scripture that speak of God’s people as his children, and God as Father. But these verses capture the amazement of that truth. John is expressing an overwhelming assurance of God’s love for his children. It’s an eternal assurance that we possess now and forever. An assurance and love that we can abide in. That pretty much captures the heart of this text. Before we work through what that all means, there’s another father here. Meaning, there’s another father mentioned in these verses. Really the whole book. An earthly father, a spiritual father. And that is the apostle John. Over and over, he calls his readers, “children” or “little children”. We’ve seen that already. That’s because he is writing to his church. John is writing to the people whom God had entrusted into his spiritual care. As we’ve worked through 1 John so far, we’ve experienced John’s love for them. Sometimes it has been a tough love. The love of this spiritual father for his spiritual children has required love paired with firmness. Clarity paired with sensitivity. That’s because children need discipline and direction. Kids, Do you like it when you are punished? Of course not. Who does? Do you like it when your mom or dad sits you down and says, “we need to talk?” Probably not! But the thing is, that discipline and that tough guidance is meant to mature you. The more you resist it, the harder it will be for you. Jesus said, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” Kids, the discipline that your parents exercise with you will help you to mature and bear spiritual fruit in your life. And your parents do it because they love you. Let me say, it’s easier and better for you if you receive that tough love rather than resist it (Parents, you can thank me later for that one!) You see, John has been very firm with them, because some in his church were not displaying a true faith. Either their disobedient words and actions… or their lack love for others… or their love of the world… or their false beliefs… demonstrated a false faith. And the source of this, as we read last week, were false teachers who rejected Jesus. They had left, but their mark had been made. And they were still seeking to deceive the church from the outside. And as their spiritual father, John desired to spiritually care for his spiritual children. And that included a firmness but full of love and reassurance. That is kind of the theme of the whole book. And these verses, today, take it to another level. Because John says to his spiritual children, if you truly know and abide in Christ, you are God’s children. You are born of God. And that is truly amazing. I mentioned that we’re at a transition point. We’re going to come back to verse 28, but look down at verse 29. You’ll see evidence that these verses are a transition point. Verse 29 does two things.  First, it summarizes the life tests, and second, it sets up the second half of John’s letter. It says, “If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.” At the beginning of chapter 2, in the first verse, Jesus is given a title: “Jesus Christ, the righteous.” When verse 29 says “if you know that he is righteous” it’s referring to Christ. He is the one from which all righteousness emanates. He’s the embodiment of righteousness. Sometimes we think of that word righteous (or righteousness), and we just think of Biblical morality. You know, living according to God’s commands, loving others. But the word righteous includes more than just our character and our conduct. It includes our attitudes and our understandings – our beliefs. To be righteous is to be right in the eyes of God, which includes believing what is right and wrong. Verse 29 is saying that righteousness emanates from Christ, who is righteous. In fact, Jesus is our righteousness, we have his righteousness. And true believers seek to work out Jesus’ righteousness in their lives. From the inside out. Notice that is talks about everyone who “practices righteousness.” That’s what it’s referring to - striving to reflect the righteousness we’ve been given in Christ. That’s why verse 29 is a summary of the life tests. “Practicing righteousness” testifies to a life of faith in Christ. So, verse 29 summarizes chapter 2. But, it also previews chapter 3, 4 and 5. That word “practice” or “practices” is used 5 times in chapter 3. So, we’re going to get into what that means in more depth next week. Also, the phrase “born of him” “born of Christ” is introduced here in verse 29. And it’s used several times in the rest of the letter, especially chapter 5. Let me say it this way, if the life tests of chapter 2 reveal that you have a genuine faith, then you have been “born of him.” Him is referring to the righteous one, Jesus. You have been born of Christ. You are a child of God. So that’s verse 29. When we get into chapter 3, it begins to answer the question, what does it mean to be a child of God? 1 John 2:28 through 3:3 doesn’t give us the full picture, but what it does is establish the fact. Believers in Christ are children of God. God is our Father. We are his children. These verses establish the relationship between God and us as Father and children.  If you are a follower of Christ, and your life and beliefs testify to a true faith in him, redeemed by him, then you are a child of God. A child of the king. You have a heavenly Father who loves and cares for and provides for and hears and protects you. That is truly incredible. That the creator God of the whole universe…. The God who created time and space, who set in motion the stars and the galaxies, whose power is infinite, who knows all and sees all and whose justice is perfect. This same God, the one true God, in all of his grandeur and majesty and might determined, in his perfect will, to call and make us his children. Those who know and abide in him, through Christ, are children of the living God. He’s established a relationship between himself, the creator God, and you, his creature. He is your perfect loving Father… if you are believer, as the apostle has affirmed through chapter 2, then you are born of him. Verse 1 of chapter 3 affirms that in a tremendous way. The English translation that we use, I don’t believe really captures the underlying Greek. It says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.” The word for “see” is at it’s root the same word for “know” – to intimately know. And immediately after that is the phrase “what kind of love.” It’s two words in the Greek. If you were to translate it directly, it would literally be “from what country is this love.” The sense is the incredible origin of God’s love. So, see or know the incredible nature of the love from the Father that we should be called children of God. Other translations put it this way: • “See how great a love the Father has given us…” • Another one “See how very much our Father loves us…” • Or my favorite, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” The defining characteristic of God’s relationship to his people is a loving father to his beloved children. Well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens wrote a book titled God is Not Great. An atheist is someone who does not believe that God exists. In the book, Hitchens includes what he thinks God would be like if God were actually real.  He wrote these sad words regarding God’s existence: “I think it would be rather awful if it was true. If there was a permanent, total, round-the-clock divine supervision… of everything you did, you would never have a waking or sleeping moment when you weren't being watched and controlled and supervised by some celestial entity from the moment of your conception to the moment of your death … . It would be like living in North Korea.” I cannot think of a more inaccurate description of God and especially his relationship with his people. It tragically misunderstands the God of the Scriptures. 1 John 3:1 gives us a radically different perspective. JI Packer, in his book, Knowing God, has a very pertinent response to this kind of misunderstanding. Packer wrote, "If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all." To summarize so far: You are a child of God if your life and beliefs testify to Christ’s righteousness in you. You still sin, but the broader pattern of your life and beliefs confirm your faith. If that is you, you are born of him – Jesus. And you therefore have God as your Father. It is an amazing display of love that we can behold. Ok, besides the description of the Father-child relationship that God’s has with those born of him, we’re also given the extent of the relationship. It’s described here as present and future. It’s a present tense reality with the promise that will last into eternity. The present tense reality is right there in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 3. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God;” And look what it says next, “and so we are.” It’s not just a “will be” and it’s definitely not a “have been.” It’s a “we are” his children. And if John’s readers didn’t catch that in verse 1, he emphasizes the reality in verse 2. “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” Right now, if you have been born of him, you are a child of God. And you have all the benefits of being a child. I’ve already touched upon some of those benefits. In other places in the New Testament, the word adopted is used. We’ve been adopted into the family of God. We have the status of being a full member of the family “now.” What does that mean? That means we bear the name of God in Christ. It’s like we’re given a new last name because we are now his adopted child. As a child of God, we have full access to him through prayer. And because God loves us, he desires for us to come to him, to seek him, to know him. God desires us to know that he knows us, intimately. Besides that, being a child of God also means that God will provide and protect you. He’ll provide for all your needs. He will comfort you through trials. He’ll be there in times of sadness and grief and sickness, because he’ll be present with you at all times. And none of your true enemies will ever overcome you. Sin, death, and the devil. Because God has conquered them for you. Those are all present benefits of being a child of God. But these verses also establish our eternal status as a child of God. Forever. When you become a child of God, he will never let you go. Jesus said, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand” Let’s now go back to verse 28. It says, “little children, abide in him, so that when he appears.” John is writing about the second coming of Christ. “when he appears.” Or “when he comes again.”, “we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.” Confidence that we will be his on that day. We don’t need to shrink back, or worry, or fear that we’ll lose our status. That cannot happen. If you are his, you are his forever. Chapter 3 verse 2 also speaks of the future. In fact, right after it says that we are his children now, it speaks of the future promise. “…we know that when he appears,” It's speaking of the same thing. The appearing of Christ when he returns. “When he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.” Christ has been exalted to the heavens. He has a resurrected body. And on that day of his second coming, we will have resurrected bodies just as he has. We don’t fully know what that means. The apostle Paul’s said as much. In 1 Corinthians 2, he quoted Isaiah 64: “…no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him.” We don’t know what it will be like for us when Christ returns, but it will be a glorious thing. We will be, in some way, physically present with our Savior forever. As God’s children, we will be heirs with Christ in eternity. That is the future benefit of being an adopted child of God – being a future heir of the king. Having the assurance that all that is his is ours. SO being a child of God not only means the present reality with all the comfort, protection, and presence that comes with God being our Father. But it also means that being a child of God is an eternal blessing. We will be glorified with Christ, forever. This week, I went looking for statistics… comparing families with a father in the home to families without a father. I was blown away by the number of studies. The presence of a father, especially a father engaged in the life of his children, has a profound positive impact on children. There are tons of different statistics from different angles. A devoted father in a home brings stability and direction and confidence to children. It’s not without exception but it’s overwhelming. On the other side, a home with an absent or disconnected father often leads to various struggles including crime and depression. And of course, our earthly fathers run the gamut of faithful to unfaithfulness. Even those of us that seek to be faithful dads are limited and often fail. Whether or not you know or knew your earthly father, whether or not he sinned against you (a little or a lot), whether or not he was present and there for you, whether or not he gave you wisdom and sought to protect you. Through any or all of those situations, if you are a child of God, you have a loving heavenly Father. And in him, you can draw strength, and confidence, and peace. You can rest assured in his faithful love. You can abide in him. For you ARE his, now. You have all of those blessings, and they will be blessings forever. And it’s all because you have been born of him. Born of Christ. God the Son has made you a son or a daughter of God the Father. Jesus is the one who has given you his status as son. You are a child of God because in Christ you have been reconciled to God, AND through him, you have been united to him by faith. And through that union, you are God’s child. If you are not a child of God, there’s no special hoops to jump through, no mounds of adoption paperwork, there’s no good works that you have to accomplish before becoming a child of God. No, it’s as simple as turning your life to him by faith. It’s believing in Christ as Savior of your soul and Lord of your life. And when you come to him confessing your sin and your shame, he will make you his child forever. Next week, we’ll continue through chapter 3. We’ll continue exploring what it means to be born of God. We didn’t touch upon verse 3 this morning, but we’ll come back to that next week. In the meantime, rest assured as a child of your Heavenly Father. Amen?

1 John 2:18-27 Rev. Erik Veerman 1/15/2023 1 John 2:18-27 Knowing that You Know Him: the Doctrine Test Our sermon text this morning is from 1 John 2:18-27. You can find that on page 1211 in the pew Bibles. Before we read our sermon text, there are two concepts which we haven’t come across in 1 John before. Without some background, they may be a little confusing, so, I thought it would be helpful to explain them before we read.  • The first is the phrase “the last hour.” You’ll see that twice in verse 18. John says to his readers that they are in “the last hour.” By it he means that in all of history, they are living in the time right before the end of the world - the end of history on the earth as we know it. The end will happen when Christ comes again. And when he does he will bring a new heavens and new earth. The reason that the phrase “the last hour” may be confusing is that John wrote this 1900 years ago. To us that is a long time, and we may be tempted to think that John was wrong, that it was not the last hour. However, when we look at the New Testament as a whole, we see that the concept of the last hour is referring to the era after Christ’s first coming. The last days are a time when two things are happening. First, Jesus is exalted and reigning in heaven, and second, false teachers and false Christs are prevalent on earth. Jesus himself referred to the last times this way in Matthew 24. Also, the books of Hebrews, 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, refer to these last days in that way. In other words, we are in the last times still. Jesus has already come in the flesh and has ascended to heaven, while at the same time Satan is seeking to undermine true faith through false teaching. So, that’s the first helpful concept to know in this passage. • Second is the word “antichrist.” Or the plural “antichrists.” The apostle John is the only one who uses that word in the Bible. It literally means against Christ. The Antichrist (capital A) is someone who will come and be the opposite of Christ. The apostle Paul spoke of the man of lawlessness – same idea. Jesus spoke of false Christs and false prophets. And all throughout history, people have been distracted trying to figure out who is the Antichrist (capital A). And let me say, the Protestant reformers were also distracted by this. In fact, in the original version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it says that the Pope is the antichrist. One of the minor changes to the confession that our church uses today was the removal of that. The more important concept in these verses is the plural antichrists. John uses it in a general sense to mean false teachers who are teaching false doctrines about Jesus. In that sense, they are anti-Christ, against Christ. We’ll get into that more but I didn’t want you to be distracted thinking about THE Antichrist as I read. Hopefully that will help you as we now turn our attention to God’s Word. Stand as you are able. Reading of 1 john 2:18-27 Prayer As you know, this is our third Sunday worshiping in the school here. It’s great to have more space to spread out and grow. But one of the drawbacks is setting up every week, and then taking everything down and putting it in the storage closet. The many hands have made that helpful. One of the little things is not having a place for our plants… our pulpit plants. They obviously need sun, and the storage closet is pretty dark. So, we couldn’t bring them here. You are probably thinking right now, “wait a second, I see two plants next to the pulpit, what are you talking about?” Well, the thing is, these are not real. They may look real. They appear to be genuine. The leaves are green. They are shaped like a small plant. But they are not a living organism. They don’t grow. They don’t need light or water. They are fake. In fact, the company name that made them is called Faux Real. That’s faux – f-a-u-x. The French word for “fake.” They are not “for real” they are “faux real.” Cute. If you closely examine these plants, you would realize they are fake. Even close up they look good, but when you feel the leaves and look at the stems, it’s pretty obvious.  Well, in 1 John, chapter 2, the apostle is revealing false teachers. They were faux real – false. They may have looked real and sounded real. Their words may have been smooth, but they were not alive in Christ. They were dead. If I could borrow one of John’s analogies, these false teachers were not in the light of God. They did not reflect the light. They did not walk in the light. They were utterly fake. We are nearing the end of chapter 2, and here is where we finally learn what was going on in the church – what John’s readers were dealing with. And I want you to notice something. It’s past tense. These false teachers, called “antichrists,” were no longer in the church. They had left. Verse 19, “they went out from us, but they were not of us.” But even though they were no longer part of the church, they were still trying to deceive the church. We see that in verse 26, “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.” That’s why John needed to write about them. These false teachers were still around – out there. Breathing out their lies. Trying to look real… trying to steal sheep from God’s flock. So, it was very important for John to call them out AND to call out their false teaching. Now, before we get into their false teaching, let me first remind you what John has been writing about. Because it directly relates to his words here.  John has been giving us life tests. Tests for you and me to examine our faith and our lives – to see if we have an authentic faith. The first test was the test of obedience. The first few verses of chapter 2. Are you seeking to pursue God’s commands which are in his Word? It’s really important to realize that we do not come to faith through obedience to God’s commands. No, John has been clear about that. Rather, the test was about whether you are seeking to live out God’s commands, which testifies to a genuine faith. The second test was the love test. A true believer in Christ has a heart that desires to love others and demonstrate that love. We don’t have a perfect love for others. No, we still sin (John has also been clear about that, too) but we should be striving to love others which includes forgiving and asking for forgiveness and listening well, among other things. The third test from last week – what Coleman preached on, was the world test. Are you in love with the world? Meaning the things of the world – the various idols in our culture; the cultural entrapments; the things that replace God; all which give empty hope. Do you love the world in that sense, more than you love God? Let me remind you of one very important thing here. John’s desire is to give true believers assurance. Remember, if you truly know God in Christ, he wants you to know that you truly know God in Christ. And he has said that in many different ways. He said in chapter 1, “if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with him [God].” Or earlier in this chapter, “whoever keeps his word, in him truly is the love of God.” And also “whoever loves his brother abides in the light.” The apostle is not trying to get you to question your faith if you are a believer. These are pretty cut-and-dry life tests. Because part of giving assurance to true believers in Christ, is revealing what does not reflect true belief. Well, that same assurance is part of John’s goal for this fourth test. Look at verse 21. “I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” So, this test is about truth and error. And John’s readers, by in large, know the truth. He wants, therefore, to affirm what is true and what is false.  That’s why I’m calling it the doctrine test. It’s the test of what you believe. And John does not just say that there are false beliefs and false teachers. No, he gets specific about the false teaching. And it boils down to one main question. One central belief. And it’s the most important question in your life… In fact, I would say, it’s the most important question for everyone in the whole world. The question is this, “who is Jesus?” Who do you believe that Jesus is? There is not a single question more important in your life than that. In other words, the doctrine test is not about secondary matters – like your view on baptism or the end times. To be sure, those are important discussions, but those are secondary matters. They don’t determine whether you are a Christian. The doctrine test here is about the center of Christianity, your faith in Christ. Who is Jesus… which by the way, includes his relationship to God the Father and God the Spirit. We’ll also see that in these verses. And I don’t think I’m overstating the importance of the matter. John calls these false teachers antichrists. He can’t be any stronger than that. Even though they claim to be Christians, their teaching reveals that they are totally opposed to Christ. Anti-Christs. And because of that, they are not “of us” even though they came out “from us” as John puts it in verse 19. And in verse 26, as we already considered, John plainly says that they are trying to “deceive you.” Over the last few years, the superhero genre has been dominating the box office. Marvel. X-men, Transformers, DC comics. And of course, there are endless villains. Really evil villains like Thanos, the Green Goblin, Ultron, the Joker, Megatron. My favorite, Doctor Occ. Good versus evil. Light versus darkness. But the thing is, these villains rose to their evil dominance from outside of the superheroes. They don’t claim to be superheros. They didn’t begin good and turn evil. No, they were evil. They started that way. Now, I’m pretty sure one of the middle school boys is going to correct me. I’ll probably hear, “you forgot about so and so. He was good before he was evil.” Well, the difficult thing in 1 John 2, is that these antichrists didn’t arise outside the church, no they and their false teaching arose from inside the church. Which, as you can imagine, wreaked havoc in the church. And John was writing them to affirm that their departure was good for the church, and also so that they would be on guard against other false antichrists who would seek to destroy the church from within. But what was it? What was it that these false teachers had been teaching? Give a look at verses 22 and 23. There’s a word in those verses that is repeated three times. It’s the word “denies.” It says, “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who,” again, it says “denies the Father and the Son.” And John says one more time, “No one who denies the Son has the Father.” The central false beliefs of these antichrists, these false teachers, was rejecting Jesus as the Christ. They were denying that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Oh, they believed in a man named Jesus, the person, but they denied that he was God in the flesh. They denied the incarnation. They denied that Jesus was God’s Son. Some may have taught that Jesus was born as an ordinary man, but later in life God bestowed upon him his Spirit, and that’s when he became the Messiah. But beloved, that is not what the Scripture teach about Jesus. It’s not what Jesus taught about himself. No, in Jesus the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily. Colossians 2. He is the Word made flesh, John 1. The baby, the Christ child, is Immanuel, God with us, Matthew 1. God took on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Philippians 2. [Jesus] is the radiance of the Glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. Hebrews 1. Any denial of Jesus as God’s son or the denial of the incarnation in any way is a rejection of God’s truth. And that could be flipped around. A denial of Jesus humanity is also antithetical to true belief. And I want you to notice something. These verses are not just about Jesus, God’s Son. They also include God the Father and the Holy Spirit: • The reference to God the Father is clear. He’s explicitly mentioned in verses 22, 23, and 24.  • The Holy Spirit is also referenced in these verses. Verse 20, “you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you have all knowledge.” The reference to Holy One is a reference to Jesus Christ. He is referred to in the Scriptures as the Holy One or the Holy and Righteous One. And he anoints his people with the Holy Spirit. This anointing, verse 20, is associated with pouring out of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in his Gospel, John is very clear about the giving of the Holy Spirit to those in whom God abides. All true believers. And one of the roles of the Holy Spirit, as John explains in his Gospel, is the giving of knowledge through God’s Word. That’s also right there in verse 20. And finally, verse 27 continues the theme of this anointing, pointing to the Holy Spirit as our main teacher of God’s Word. So all of those elements together – the Holy One, the anointing, the giving of knowledge all point to the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. To summarize, these verses center on a true understanding of who Jesus Christ is, but they also include Jesus’ relationship to God the Father and God the Spirit. It teaches about the Trinity. You see, we can’t separate a correct understanding about Jesus from a correct understanding of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Spirit. If you look in your bulletin, you’ll see that we are going to recite the Nicene Creed in a little bit. Last week we affirmed the Apostle’s Creed. We usually use them once a month or every other month. But given this content in 1 John, I thought it would be helpful to affirm them. These creeds have been very helpful to the church over the years. But they were written 200-300 years after John’s letters. These creeds summarize what we believe the Scriptures teach about the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they came about because of a variety of false teaching that had arisen. Like the false teaching that John was experiencing. The early church fathers, in fact, identified several heresies – several false teachings about Jesus. I’ve mentioned Gnosticism, but there was also Nesorianism, Docetism, Arianism, Adoptionism, and Donatism, plus a couple of others “isms.” And what the creeds do is help bring clarity and unity and protection to the church around the person and work of Christ, including God the Father and the Holy Spirit. And these verses in 1 John 2, tell us why that is important. Because when the doctrine of God is compromised, it strikes at the heart of Christianity. A few years ago, I had an ongoing dialog with a pastor friend. He was very much about holiness… pursuing holiness in our lives. Which is great. God calls us to pursue holiness and Godliness. That’s clear in the Scriptures. But when I would preach a passage like this, my friends would sometimes say to me, “you didn’t get to any application!” By that he meant more of the behavioral response to the text. To which I would reply “What do you mean, the application in this passage is the doctrine!” You see, the beauty of the Scriptures is that in them we learn who God is, what he has done for us, our hope in him, and our response to his character and love. Our doctrine and our lives both need to reflect the truth. The apostle John is clear about both. You see, the heart of these verses is believing the truth. I’ll come back to what it means to believe the truth in a minute. But first, I want you to jump over to the beginning of chapter 4. Give a quick look down at it. The first 6 verses of chapter 4 are very similar to our text this morning. Antichrists, denials of Jesus, false teaching. In fact, I almost preached them together. But I changed my mind on Friday. When we get to those verses, which will be in the middle of February, I plan to apply this doctrinal test to false teaching in the church today. In other words, what teaching has or is arising today, which strikes at the core of Christianity. And they are many, and I plan to be specific. Worldly philosophies that are attempting to hijack the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s the reason that I decided to just focus on chapter 2 this morning, so we would have more time at the beginning of chapter 4 on those ideologies. Let’s go back to the creeds for a minute …while they have helped the church unify around a true understanding of Jesus as the Scriptures teach, there is still false doctrine about Jesus out there. I think the most obvious example of this are the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They claim to be the true church, yet they deny Jesus’ divinity. They believe that Jesus was a perfect man, but not God in the flesh. They fail the test of doctrine. Their teachers, as John describe them, are antichrists. Opposed to Jesus Christ. For the last 2-3 weeks, there have been a couple of JW followers on Main Street. Right downtown. They are trying, as verse 26 says, to deceive. I’m not saying they don’t believe what they are teaching, rather that their teaching is a violation of the core beliefs of Biblical Christianity about Jesus, as the Scriptures teach. So, to summarize so far: • First, this fourth life test is the test of doctrine • Second, John is writing to the church because false teachers and false teaching had infiltrated the church. These antichrists had left the church, but their impact was still being felt. • Third, John was writing to the true believers to assure them of their truth belief. • And forth, this true belief centers around Jesus as God’s son, who is fully and truly God and man. Jesus Christ is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. So, now you know! These plants are not real. And neither is anyone who denies Jesus’ nature as God or as man. They are rejecting the very foundation of our Christian faith. They are small “a” antichrists, rejecting him and rejecting the truth. As we come to a close, John includes for us, one more thing. What to do about this all. He calls you to believe and trust in Jesus. Look at the language at the end of verse 23. “Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.” Confessing is more than just believing. It’s taking to heart and professing not just who Christ is but believing in the hope and redemption he offers to you. Verse 24 even expands on that. “Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” Deep within. Why? Verse 25 answer, because of the promise he made to us, “eternal life.” Friends, this is the hope of knowing and believing in Jesus. When you believe in him by faith, when you abide in him, he will abide in you, forever. Forever in his presence. After we sing this next hymn, we will declare together what we believe about God, and then we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper, what we believe Jesus has done for us on the cross…. paving the way for that eternal life in him. Will you believe?

Hello TPC! Did you miss the service on Sunday? Coleman Erkens preached on 1 John 2:15-17 in his sermon titled, “Knowing that You Know Him: the World Test” Check it out! 

1 John 2:12-14 Rev. Erik Veerman 1/1/2023 Because You Know and You Are We’re back in the book of 1 John for our sermon text. It’s been a few weeks. Although, it seems like it’s been a few months. I’m glad to have our church move mostly behind us. By the way, we have some Bible available in the back, if you didn’t pick one up, feel free to do so now. Our reading is from 1 John 2:12-14. It’s found on page 1210 of the provided Bibles.  As you are turning there, let me give you some reminders. The apostle John wrote this letter to his home church. Likely that was the church in Ephesus where he lived. 1 John is one of the last letters written in the New Testament… written at the very end of the first century. John was in his mid-90s at the time. Imagine that. The last living disciple of Jesus. I think you would agree, he was very with it. That comes out in his letter. Our banner behind me captures the theological heart of John’s letter. It’s from chapter 1. “God is light and in him is no darkness.” John is very clear about (1) who God is and (2) who Jesus is, and John is very clear about what true Christianity looks like. That’s the second part of the quote on our 1 John banner. The call to “walk in the light.” To not walk in darkness. To walk in the light of God and his Gospel. We’re in the middle of chapter 2 this morning. It’s more of a side comment that John is making. It has some very encouraging reminders for us. Let’s now turn our attention to God’s Word. This is God’s Holy Word. His sufficient, inspired, and inerrant word. Please stand. Reading of 1 John 2:12-14 Prayer. My Christmas gift to Amy this year was a washing machine. It wasn’t a hint. She loves it. In fact, I didn’t buy her a new washing machine. Instead, I bought her a 23-year-old washing machine. Let me borrow the words of verse 7, “I am giving you no new washing machine, but an old washing machine that you had from the very beginning.” This thing has a very powerful motor in it. When it’s doing its thing, it really agitates your clothes. Especially when you set it for heavy dirt. The most important feature is that you tell it how much water to put in it. If you have a small load but the clothes are really dirty, you can max out the water to get your clothes clean. I think the old adage is true, they don’t make them like they used to. So far, 1 John has been like a heavy-duty washing machine. Here’s what I mean: the church at the time was living in the gap. It was around the turn of the first century. It had been about 65 years since Jesus walked on the earth. All the apostles, except John had passed into glory. But at the same time, the New Testament had yet to be formed. Some letters and a couple of the historical accounts of Jesus life had begun circulating, but there was a void. As a result, two kinds of corruption began to emerge in the church. First, false beliefs about God, about Jesus, and about salvation. Because there was no the New Testament yet to evaluate truth from error, multiple perversions of the truth began to emerge.  The second corruption in the church was about their living. Their words and action were not lining up with true belief. This must have pained the apostle John so much. He had spent three years with Jesus. He heard and he witnessed the Word made flesh, as he calls Jesus in chapter 1. John had seen Jesus demonstrate what it means to follow him. John knew that the church needed to be cleansed from the impurities. There were false teachers and false witnesses that needed to be dealt with. But think about it. That’s complicated. John needed to call out false beliefs and practice, while, at the same time, build up the true believers and their desire to practice righteousness. To do that, John puts the church into the washing machine of sorts. That is this letter. The church needed to be cleansed from false belief and practice. So John needed to be very clear. This is what is true, this is what is false. Evaluate your own life. We are in the middle of four life tests. We’ve already looked at test #1 - the tests of obedience. Remember that one? The beginning of chapter 2. The call to keep God’s Word and his commandments. We’ve also considered test #2 – the test of love. That’s verses 7-11. The call to love your brothers and sisters. Remember that test? A true believer who is walking in the light, seeks to love others.  To be sure, John has been really clear that we all still sin. What John is saying is that these tests of true faith is demonstrated by your heart’s desire to pursue these things and demonstrating that desire. Let me go back to the washing machine. It’s like we’ve been in the agitation stage. You know how that works. Your dirty clothes get immersed in soapy water. And then the washing machine stirs them, agitates them… the goal is loosen up the dirt … that’s how clothes get clean. Imagine being a piece of clothing. John has been stirring you up… in a good way, mind you. He wants to dig deep into your life. He wants you to evaluate your heart and mind. But you may feel a little shaken. And that’s where verses 12-14 come in. This is the soaking phase. The last thing that the apostle wants to do for a true believer is take away your assurance of faith. No, one of his main points is to assure you if you truly know him. But his straight-forward-ness has been a little jolting. So now, John wants you to soak in the true Gospel. He wants you to embrace God and be reminded of his forgiveness. Now, John is going to turn the agitator back on. Next week will be the third life test – the test of the world. The week after next will be the fourth life test – the test of doctrine. But before the motor spins back up, John wants to soak you in the soapy water of the Gospel. He wants to assure you, believer in Jesus, of God’s grace. He wants the Gospel to seep deep into the core of your being. He wants you to stand firm on its truth and its grace. That’s what these verses are about. To build you up and remind you of God’s grace. Isn’t this a great message for New Year’s day?  Ok, let’s focus in on these verses. And let’s consider them from two angles. Two points that summarize John’s message here. First, Knowing of Your Security - That’s a big emphasis in this book. The assurance of God for those who know the light and walk in the light. Again, number 1 knowing of your security. And second, Growing in Your Maturity - There’s a progression here in these verses. A spiritual maturity that is presented. It gives us a vision for what God will do in us as we spiritually mature in him. So that’s number two. Growing in your mature. Again, number one, knowing of your security. And number two, growing in your maturity. 1. Knowing of Your Security So, let’s jump in to that first point. One thing that is very apparent in John’s writings, is that he is really pastoral. He loves those to whom he is writing. He calls them beloved many times. They are his spiritual children. Multiple times in this book, he calls them children. God’s children, his children. He’s not saying they are immature; he’s saying they are his beloved spiritual offspring. God’s children. He wants them to know that God loves them. These verses are the epitome of John’s expression of his love and care. And besides children, he calls them young men and fathers. To be sure, this is not John just writing to the men in the church. Rather, these are terms that are broadly applicable to both men and women. It’s like the word “brothers” which is used in several New Testament letters. Even though it’s a masculine tense, it refers to brother and sister in Christ. It’s the same idea here. Fathers and mothers in the faith. Young men and young women in the faith. It’s a very personal appeal to the faithful believers. And these are words not just for John’s original audience. No, they are words for you, believer in Jesus. Words for me. Words for us to hold on to, dearly. Words to build us up. To give us the surety of faith in Christ. Now, look at the verses here. There are six “because” statements here. John is writing because of this reason. And because of that reason. And because of another reason. There is a progression here. We’re going to get into that progression in point number 2. But for now, I want you to notice two general categories, two general reasons why John wrote this letter. Knowing and receiving. That word “know” is repeated three times. I write to you because you “know him who is from the beginning.” That is repeated in verses 13 and 14. It’s referring to Jesus. John is pointing back to the very opening verse of his letter! He spoke of Jesus, whom John said was “from the beginning.“ He was saying there that if you know Christ, you know the eternal life that is found in him alone. If you know Jesus, you know the word made flesh who was from the beginning. But John also adds, “I am writing to you… because you know the Father.” It’s not just the Son of God that you know, you know God the Father. The providential, loving Father who superintends all things for his glory and your good. I write to you because you truly know God. You know Jesus and you know his heavenly Father. And the benefits of truly knowing God is what you receive in him. What he has given you. In other words, your status in him. That’s the other general reason why John wrote this letter. You see it right there in verse 12. I write to you “because your sins are forgiven.” Your status is forgiven. Freed. Redeemed. Restored. Delivered. Rescued. You are no longer under the weight of sin and its consequences. You are forgiven for Jesus’ sake. Then twice John adds, “I am writing…because you have overcome the evil one.” That is another part of the blessing and benefit of knowing God in Christ. The great enemy of the faith no longer has dominion over you. You are more than conquerors in him.  So, your status is forgiven and you have overcome the evil one… And both of those come through what Jesus has done for you. His atoning sacrificial payment for your sin is how you are forgiven. His conquering of death through his resurrection is how you have overcome the evil one. What John is saying is that you can rest assured in the finished work of Christ.  Jesus himself put it this way, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Beloved in Christ, you know this Jesus, you know his Father. And because of that, you are his, forever. Forgiven and assured that the great enemy of God, the devil himself, will never overcome you. And there’s something endearing about the repetition here.  I was thinking about the movie Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon plays a young man named Will. He’s had a rough life. He was physically abused by his father. He’s brilliant, but very rough around the edges and of course, has deep-seated pain and mistrust. Will’s counsellor, Sean, is played by Robin Williams. He’s a father figure but himself was abused as a child. So, he has a level of understanding. Probably the most well-known scene of the movie is when the counsellor Sean tells Will that it is “not his fault.” …what happened to him. Will responds “yeah, I know.” Sean says it again, “it’s not your fault.” Again, Will responds, “yeah, I know” Again, “It’s not your fault” …“I know, stop messing with me” Will starts to get angry. But yet Sean moves closer and closer to him and again says “It’s not your fault.” Over and over. Finally, Will breaks down in tears and they embrace.  You see, Will knew the answer, but he hadn’t fully believed it. I am writing to you, beloved, because you know Jesus. I am writing to you, dear ones, because you know the Father. I am writing to you, my children, because your sins are forgiven. Hear me. I write to you. Notice the change in verb tense in the middle of verse 13. John is emphasizing his point.  I write to you because you know Jesus, you know the Father, you are forgiven. You have overcome the evil one. Be confident that you know him, and rest in his security forever. Is your assurance just something you repeat because someone told you that you have assurance? Or do you believe that you are secure in Christ. If you know him, he abides in you and you in him. And he will never let you go. It’s like John is saying this: “I’m not writing to shake your faith. I’m not writing for you to question your faith. No, rather, I am writing because I want you to have the utmost confidence in God. I know that my words so far have been strongly worded. But beloved in Christ, they needed to be strongly worded. Your fellowship has been infected with beliefs contrary to the truth of God in Christ. And some in your fellowship are not displaying lives that reflect true faith in Christ. But for those of you who know Christ Jesus, who believe in the forgiveness of sins through him. You are his. He is yours. Nothing can take that away!” You are secure in him.  Knowing of your security. 2. Growing in Your Maturity And that bring us to point number 2. Growing in your maturity. There’s something that happens in you the more and more you know that you are secure in Christ. And it’s this: you grow in your spiritual maturity in him. Let’s take a step back for a minute. The three categories of people that John is addressing are children – little children, it says here, young men, which includes young women, and fathers, which includes mothers.  I do not believe these are referencing someone’s age, or whether they have children. No, rather, I believe these categories are referring to someone’s spiritual maturity. Children in the faith. Young men and young women who are growing in their spiritual maturity. And fathers and mothers of the faith. Not necessarily people who have had children, but spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers. For children, those young in the faith, John writes two things. “Your sins are forgiven” and “you know the Father.” These are two things that new believers are often overjoyed with. The amazing forgiveness of God and how God is a loving Father. Maybe you are a new believer in Christ. You came to him because of the love with which the Father loved you in giving his son for you, to redeem you. Or maybe you look back and you remember those feelings of joy knowing God’s forgiveness in Christ and the deep sense of the Father’s embrace. These are some of the first things that we experience as new believers. God, our loving Father, and the forgiveness we have in His son. But as you mature in your faith, God gives you more. Look at the description of young men. First, John writes – “you have overcome the evil one.” He says that twice for young men. It’s also there at the very end of verse 14. You see, the great enemy of faith, the devil, does not want you to mature in your faith. No, he will attack you. He wants you to question your faith. He will tempt you to fall back into patterns of sin. The mark of a maturing believer is overcoming those temptation. Notice how John puts it in verse 14. “You are strong.” In other words, you’ve begun to demonstrate your faith. And he adds, “the Word of God abides in you.” That is where a maturing believer goes… to God’s Word. It is the mark of a maturing faith. A desire to know God’s Word more and more. The Scriptures will direct you in evaluating truth from error, instruct you in how to pursue Godliness in your life, and remind you of God’s grace and assurance over and over. Maturing believers in Christ display a growing strength of faith, overcoming temptations, and display a growing desire to know God’s Word. So, first children in the faith and second young and maturing believers. And the third category is fathers in the faith. Mature Christians. By the way, kids, you don’t have to be old as dirt to be in this category. It does take time, to be sure. Years… perhaps decades. As you grow and mature in your faith, you will demonstrate your sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, you will show your desire to pursue God and his Word, you will display a willingness to be discipled by others in the faith, including your parents. Then over time, you will grow into a father or mother in the faith. You will become one who nurtures others and cares for them in the faith. Notice there’s just one phrase associated with these fathers in the faith. It’s mentioned twice: “you know him who is from the beginning.” Now, that may seem simple…. but I want to suggest it is rich and deep. I’ve already mentioned that it refers to the opening of the letter. In those words, John has given us a full description of Christ - the fulness of his deity as God; the amazing testimony of the incarnation – the Word made flesh; John calls Jesus the Word of life because he brings eternal life. It tells us of the fellowship of God within the Trinity, and the breadth of God’s ministry through Christ as light. Do you see?  • The more and more we mature as believers, the more and more deeply we understand and know God in Christ… in all the wonder and amazement of his person and work, his being and presence; his glory and power.  • The more and more we know his Word the more and more we know him as the Word.  • The more and more we understand the atoning work of the cross, the more and more we are amazed at the undeserved grace we have in him.  • And the more and more we mature in him, the more and more assurance we derive from him, through all of life, in the joys and sorrows, the grief and hope… looking to him, the author and perfector of our faith. Who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. What an exciting thing to look forward to as you mature in your faith. To know him more and more. Beloved in Christ, this maturity in him is for you.  You see, the assurance that John is writing to you about is paired with the blessing of maturity that you can have in him.  As you seek him more and more through his Word, living in his grace, he will bless you with a deepening maturity in him. Know of your security, but also grow in your maturity. Conclusion Well, the apostle John is about to turn the dial again… back to the agitator. And pretty soon after that, the spin cycle.  But through it all, his desire is to cleanse the church, to purify her as a bride ready for her savior – the bridegroom, Jesus himself. So, as we continue to be challenged in our beliefs, in our lives and action…. may we know that it is for our good, and God’s glory. And may we also be assured… believer in Christ, may you rest secure because you know God in Christ and you are forgiven and redeemed in him. Amen?

Hello TPC! Did you miss the homily on Sunday? Peter Van Wyk preached on 1 Peter 3:8-22 in his Christmas message titled, “Reason, Hope, and Jesus” Check it out! 

Rev. Erik Veerman 12/18/2022  Matthew 1:18-25 A Savior who Is God with Us Our sermon text this morning is from Matthew chapter 1, verses 18-25. You can find that on page 959 in the pew Bible. Last week we looked at the first 17 verses. In the very first verse, Matthew claimed that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah. And if you’ll remember, Matthew’s main audience was Jewish. That claim would have been very significant to his audience. After all, they had been waiting for the promised savior. And, think about this, they would have had a ton of questions. How can we know for sure Jesus was the Messiah? Did he fulfill the covenant promises? Did the prophecies come true? In other words, prove it! After making the claim that Jesus was the Christ, Matthew had a lot to prove. And I think you and I would have had just as many questions. Verses 1-17 answered the human and natural lineage of Jesus. As we now turn to verses 18-25, Matthew explain Jesus’ divine nature and supernatural lineage – his incarnation. As I read, I want you to think about Joseph. What was he going through and thinking when he found out Mary was pregnant? What changed his mind? And how did he respond? Let’s now turn our attention to God’s Word. Stand Reading of Matthew 1:18-25 Prayer Over the last 100 years, the virgin birth has drawn some of the most intense critiques directed at Christianity.  By the way, we say virgin birth… what we mean is that Jesus was conceived in Mary by God. Mary was still a virgin. And if you think about it, from a mere human perspective, it is quite unbelievable. Absurd even. Biologically impossible.  Yet, the birth of Jesus by the virgin Mary is considered an indispensable part of the Christian faith. I would put it up there with the resurrection as the two supernatural events upon which Christianity stands or falls. Can it really be true? Could Mary really become pregnant as a virgin? I was reading an article this week about that very question. The author quoted CS Lewis, who was grappling with that same question. What would it take for a supernatural event to occur, like the virgin birth? Well, it would take a supernatural God. You see, if all that existed was mere matter, if the laws of nature, as we call them, governed everything, then of course, we would have no expectation or hope that a virgin could conceive. But if on the other hand, if God does exist. If he is the creator of all things, sovereign over all things, as the Scriptures claim, then what would prevent him from bringing about a miracle in his creation? CS Lewis was saying, if God is God, then he most certainly could accomplish something outside of the ordinary and natural processes. We read Matthew’s account of Jesus birth, which focuses on Joseph. In Luke’s account, he focuses on Mary. And when the angel tells Mary that she will conceive in her womb and bear a son, she asks the natural question, “How can this be so, since I am a virgin?” And how does the angel answer her? “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” And the angel says, “For nothing will be impossible with God.” Really, it’s the question of plausibility. Could it have happened? And I think you would have to agree, yes. If God is the creator of all things. If he set in motion the stars and planets. If he created time and space itself. If he sustains it all through his all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-present character, then there’s nothing outside of his ability, that he could not cause to come to pass. And that of course, includes conceiving a child in the womb of a virgin. But it’s one thing to intellectually ascent to that possibility, it’s another to believe that it happened. If a pregnant woman today claimed to be a virgin, what would you think? I think I know what you would think. So now, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of Joseph. Because that is exactly the situation he’s in. He believed in God. If someone asked him, could God cause a virgin to conceive? He would answer, “yes.” God could certainly do that. He is God, after all. However, like us, Joseph was living in the normal order of things all around him. He had no sense, at the time, of the special role that he and Mary would play in redemptive history. Now, before we work through the situation, let’s consider some cultural similarities and differences.  Today, when a couple gets engaged, they are both agreeing to get married. And there’s an engagement ring to symbolize that commitment. If they break up, it hurts and it’s painful, but they each move on. In Jewish culture back then, a betrothal was much more formal. In order to break off a betrothal, the couple had to get a formal divorce. In fact, a betrothed couple was called husband and wife. You see that right there in verse 24. Mary is called Joseph’s wife even though they were not yet married. Now, to be sure, they were not to physically consummate their relationship until marriage. Scriptural was and is clear about that. So Mary and Joseph were betrothed. But then tragedy from Joseph’s perspective. Mary had become pregnant. Now, an angel had spoken to her. He told her she would conceive a child, but she had yet to tell Joseph. From an outsider’s perspective looking in at Mary and Joseph, there were only two possibilities. The most likely was that Joseph was the father of the baby growing in Mary. Of course, that would be the natural assumption. The only other possibility was that Mary has been with another man. Unfaithful. Either case would have been scandalous. Shame would have come on them and their families. It wasn’t practiced at the time, but the law allowed stoning of the unfaithful party. That’s how serious it was. From Joseph’s perspective, there was only one possibility. Joseph knew that he was not the father. Imagine the burden and weight on him. The hurt. Mary, whom he loved, had rejected him in unfaithfulness. She had betrayed him. Joseph could have made this very public. He could have sought to save his reputation. He could have directed the shame on Mary. But in verse 19, we’re told, no. That was not the kind of man he was. As much as the situation pained him, he was a righteous man. He wanted to divorce her quietly. Joseph still loved Mary despite what he thought she did. But then, it all changed. An angel appeared to him. And here’s what the angel said to Joseph. “Joseph, son of David….” Even that spoke volumes. Joseph’s earthly father was named Jacob. Joseph would have been called son of Jacob. But the angel goes back into Joseph’s heritage to remind him of his ancestral line. You are a descendant of king David. And the angel continued, “do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Up to this point in Joseph’s mind, there had been no third option for how Mary could have become pregnant. But all of that changed when the angel spoke to Joseph. One of the things that the angel said, was that Joseph should name the child “Jesus.”  Now, we’ll come back to what that name means. We’ll also come back to Matthew’s commentary on Jesus birth. But first, how did Joseph respond? After all, the angel was telling him that God had done something supernatural. Something way beyond what Joseph could ever imagine. The angel was saying that indeed Mary was still a virgin. That the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. In other words, God himself, through the work of his Spirit, supernaturally caused Mary to become pregnant. God brought about this miracle. How did Joseph respond to that message? Jump down to verse 24. “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” Joseph’s response was immediate. He didn’t hesitate. In other words, he demonstrated his belief by following through with the angel’s command.  Joseph demonstrated that in two ways.  • First, Joseph remained with Mary. He took her as his wife. He did not quietly divorce her as he had considered. And there’s an important note there in verse 25, “he knew her not until she had given birth to a son.” That phrase “know her not” implies they did not consummate the relationship until after Jesus was born. He remained faithful to God and faithful to Mary. • The second way that Joseph demonstrated his belief was naming the child. That would have been his responsibility as the man. Joseph named the baby “Jesus,” just as the angel had commanded. In a way, Joseph is an example for Matthew’s audience. Joseph had gone from seeing the situation as heartbreaking, to hearing the word of God through the angel, to then believing and embracing Mary’s child as from God. This is how Matthew wanted his readers to respond. If they had heard of Jesus before, likely they would have thought he was a problem. Jesus had, after all, caused a split in Judaism – a new sect had started. But Matthew wanted his readers see and know the truth. Jesus coming was not an unfortunate situation, like the unfortunate situation that Joseph thought he was in. Rather, Jesus was the fulfillment of what they had been waiting for. Matthew wanted them to understand and believe - understand that this baby was conceived by God himself, but more importantly to believe… believe that this child was and is the savior. The first part of Matthew’s argument concerned the virgin birth. The second part involved the names of this child. And he gives us 2 names here: Jesus and Immanuel.  Verse 21, the angels tells Joseph, “[Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” We hear that and the question we ask is, how does the name Jesus connect with saving people from their sins? To us, Jesus is just a name. However, to a Jew at the time, the name Jesus had significant meaning. Jesus is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Jeshua. Or Joshua. So, Joseph would have connected in his mind the Greek name Jesus (or Iesous) with the Hebrew Jeshua. Translated it means Jehovah is salvation. Or the Lord is salvation. That’s why the angel said, “for he will save his people from their sins.”  The angel was explaining the meaning of Jesus name and how he would fulfill that name. It’s like the angel was saying this: “you shall call his name the Lord is salvation, for he will save his people from their sins” I was reading a commentary this week… just to get a better understanding of Jesus name. I really liked how this one commentator, William Hendrickson, described Jesus’ salvation. He put it this way, “to be saved means a. [first] to be emancipated from the greatest evil: the guilt, pollution, power, and punishment of sin; and b [second] to be placed in possession of the greatest good.” Hendrickson goes on “…One cannot be saved from something without also being saved for something: true happiness, the peace of God that transcends all understanding, freedom, joy unspeakable and full of glory, answered prayers, effective witness bearing, assurance of salvation, etc” That is the “salvation from” and “salvation for” which this Child, Jeshua (Jesus) will bring. You may be thinking. “Ok, but the angel didn’t actually include the part about what we’re being saved for.” That’s a fair point, but that’s where the prophecy comes in – verses 22 and 23. The second name mentioned, Immanuel, means, as Matthew highlights, “God with us.” Jesus will save and through him, God will be with us. Verse 23 there is first of about 40 Old Testament quotes that Matthew includes in the book. And there’s a pattern. Look at verse 22. “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet” That phrase, “to fulfill what the Lord has spoken,” is used multiple times in Matthew’s Gospel. Other places say, “you have heard that it was said” or “for it is written by the prophet.” Matthew is very intentional to point his reader back to the Old Testament. And I want to point out this. Notice it says, “to fulfill what the Lord has spoken through the prophet.” Even though the words are penned by the prophet, God is the one speaking. Matthew is reminding us that it is God’s Word. Ok, verse 23 is a quote from the prophet Isaiah chapter 7. If you have been to advent or Christmas eve services, you’ve no doubt heard this prophecy many times. We read a large part of the chapter earlier in the service. There’s not enough time to give a full explanation of Isaiah 7. But let me give you the short summary. Ahaz was the king of Judah in Jerusalem. By the way, Ahaz is listed up there in Matthew 1 verse 7. He’s in the lineage of Jesus. At the time, Judah was being threatened in the north by Israel (the northern kingdom) and by Syria. The prophet Isaiah called on king Ahaz to trust in the Lord and ask him for a sign. However, Ahaz refused both. In fact, Ahaz mocked the prophet Isaiah, and then made an unholy alignment with the nation of Assyria. In other words, Ahaz didn’t trust in God’s protection, instead, he put his trust in man’s strength – a pagan nation at that. Isaiah 7 is a judgment on Judah because of Ahaz. Even Assyria, whom Ahaz trusted, would turn on Judah. But yet, in the midst of God’s prophecy of judgment, God nonetheless gives his people hope. And he does it with this sign. “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.” Matthew is saying that this child conceived in the virgin Mary, is the fulfillment of Isaiah. This Child will be God with us. And there’s a critical connection between the virgin birth and the name Immanuel – God with us. This child, Jesus, is not descended through ordinary generation. He does not have an earthly father, yet he has an earthly mother. That means that he has two natures, God and man. He is truly Immanuel, God with us. Truly God, but also truly man. The God of the universe came down to us. He knows our weakness, understands our sorrow, and temptation. Jesus is Immanuel. Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century pastor put it this way: “Emmanuel, God [means] with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with Him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and [and Spurgeon includes] Second Advent splendor [ when he will come again]” This child, born of the virgin Mary, the one whom we celebrate each advent. He is Jeshua – Jesus, savior, and he is Immanuel, the sign of Isaiah 7 fulfilled. God with us in the flesh. And this is just the beginning of Matthew’s case. Through the rest of his book, he reveals many other ways in which Jesus fulfilled God’s promises and prophecies. But it all begins with virgin birth. Without it, there is no Immanuel – God with us. Without the virgin birth, there is no salvation, because there would be no God in human flesh. But as the angel revealed to Joseph, Mary’s child was indeed conceived by the Holy Spirit, and Joseph believed. Let me summarize everything so far: 1. First, the virgin birth of Jesus is one of the most contested beliefs of the Christian faith. Yet nothing is impossible with God, the all-powerful creator of all things. 2. Second, Joseph himself was confronted by the reality of Mary’s pregnancy. Yet before he could divorce her, the angel revealed that this Child was no ordinary child. No, he was conceived through the Holy Spirit in the virgin Mary.  3. Third, this child was to be called Jesus - savior. And he was and is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. Through the virgin birth, this child would be God with us. 4. And fourth, in all of this, Joseph believed. And just as he believed, so Matthew wanted his Jewish readers to believe as well. For those of you that believe as Joseph believed, you have the great hope that God is with you. Right before Jesus ascended to heaven, he said “behold, I will be with you to the end of the age.” Immanuel, God with us, was not a one-time thing during Jesus’ life on earth. Rather, he is with you now. In times of joy and in times of sadness, pain, struggle, and sin, you can come to him and know that he is with you.  For those of you unsure about the virgin birth of Jesus, uncertain about Christianity. Would you believe as Joseph believed? Ask yourself, what is holding me back from believing?  • Is it the seeming irrationality of the virgin birth? Could not God, creator of the universe, accomplish it. • Is it that you don’t know God, or that you don’t know how to know God? Come to Immanuel – he knows you and desires for you to know him. • Or Is it thinking of Christianity as a rules-based religion and you fear you would fail at every turn? Well, Jeshua is the answer. Jesus is salvation. The answer is not that we work our way up to God, but that he has come down to us.  As the angel said, “he will save his people from their sin.” He desires you to be one of his people. The very reason that he was born was to be savior. At the end of his earthly life, he gave his life so that you may be saved in him. And when you believe, God will be your Immanuel, God with you. All the blessings of Immanuel will be yours in him. The presence, the comfort, and the sustaining grace of God in Jesus for you. Pray

Matthew 1:1-17 Rev. Erik Veerman 12/11/2022  The Lineage of the Promised Savior Given that it’s advent season, this Sunday and next Sunday we’ll be considering the book of Matthew, chapter 1. You can find that on page 977 in the pew Bibles. As you are turning there, let me give you a quick background. Matthew was one of Jesus’ disciples and he wrote this account of the life and ministry of Jesus. We call it the Gospel of Matthew. It’s one of four testimonies about Jesus. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each was written for a different purpose and audience. The Gospel of Matthew was written to a Jewish audience. One reason we know that is there are roughly 40 direct Old Testament references. That’s a lot more than the other Gospel accounts. We’ll begin with the first 17 verses. Please stand. Reading of Matthew 1:1-17 Prayer Once upon a time there was a kind and beautiful girl, whose name was Cinderella… and you know the rest of the story. Or, once upon a time there was a poor widow and her son Jack… who had 5 magic beans. … and you know the rest of the story. Or how about this one: Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away… and you know the story. I can’t say you know the rest of the story, because it seems to be never ending! We hear those word, “once upon a time” and we know, it’s the script of fairy tales… of fables with far-fetched plots, or other fictional stories. We’re transported to far-off lands, other worldly settings, wicked witches, magic bean stalks, light sabers, elves, and dwarfs. “It’s the stuff of dreams” as the saying goes. There’s no illusion about them. They are fun, made-up stories that stir our imagination. What a contrast to the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel. Really a contrast to all of the Gospel accounts, but especially Matthew. It doesn’t begin with “once upon a time.” In no way does it set the stage for some mythical tale. No, rather, Matthew begins with real people, real history. Fathers and mothers, sons and daughter.  One of the underlying messages is that this is true. It is history. It’s legitimate. Matthew is saying that this is not a contrived story about a fictional man. No, Jesus’ birth, his life, his death, his resurrection are real events. Let me put it this way, they are the center of all of history. Now, some of you may not be familiar with many of these names. Others of you may very well know their stories. I’ll touch upon some of their situations as we work through this. But I want you to put yourself in the mind of first century Jew. Imagine you are living somewhere in the Mediterranean region. You know the history of your forefathers. You’ve studied Moses and the prophets. You are intimately familiar with the God’s promises. You’ve read the accounts of the judges and kings over and over. And you believe in the coming of a Messiah – a promised king. But maybe… maybe you’ve never heard of Jesus before. Or perhaps if you have, it’s only been in passing. Something about a wise Rabi who caused a stir.  Then someone gives you a scroll. It contains this Gospel account. And you begin to read it. And from the very first words, you are captivated. You see, our 21st century, non-Jewish eyes tend to gloss over when we read lists of names in the Scriptures. Am I right? …but to a faithful Jewish audience, each word and each name here is full of meaning and history.  And my goal this morning is to explore some of that meaning and history and how it relates to Jesus and to us. Before we begin, though, let me try to answer a common question. What’s the difference between this genealogy, and the genealogy listed in Luke chapter 3? This genealogy in Matthew chapter 1 is a genealogy of Jesus through Joseph. Joseph was Mary’s husband. Mary, the mother of Jesus. Even though Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ father by blood, yet Joseph was considered Jesus’ earthly father. And the paternal line was very important in a Jewish family, so Matthew begins there. Some call this the royal line of Jesus. It includes the formal kingly descendants leading to Joseph. That’s different from Luke chapter 3. There, you will see the genealogy diverges after king David. It tracks the legal descendants down to Jesus. In other words, the first-born sons leading to Jesus versus the royal descends in Matthew. There are often multiple paths in a family tree to an ancestor. Some believe Luke gives us the maternal ancestry through Mary. That possible as well. I didn’t want to leave that question unanswered But let’s get into this family tree. And to give us some structure, let’s consider three points.  1. Trust the Sovereign Lord 2. Believe in the Promised King 3. Behold the Savior of Sinners All of these have to do with what God is conveying in these opening verses. • Trust the sovereign Lord – God ordained it all from the beginning • Believe in the Promised King – God promised a son would be born. He would be an eternal king and a blessing to the nations. • Behold the Savior of Sinners – There’s a lot of messiness in these generations and it demonstrates the kind of salvation that Jesus brings.  1. Trust the Sovereign Lord So first, trust the sovereign Lord. To the astute Jewish reader, even the opening five words had significance. It says, “The book of the genealogy.” Sound a little boring, but that phrase is very similar to the phrase used in Genesis chapter 2 verse 4. Genesis is the first book of the Bible and deals with creation. In Genesis 2:4, it reads, “These are the generations [and it continues] of the heavens and the earth when they were created.” In fact, Matthew’s opening words in Greek are identical to the early Greek translation of Genesis 2:4. Matthews’s readers would have known that translation. And it’s not just Genesis 2:4. Genesis 5:1 also begins with the same phrase. “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” So, even though Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham, the opening words are an allusion to the creation account.  Let me put it this way: these first 17 verses summarize the history of God’s people up to that point. From creation to Israel’s forefathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) to the kings (David and Solomon), and to the exile, when Babylon overthrew Judah and Jerusalem. In other words, the birth of Jesus connects to all of Israel’s history up to that point. And if you jump down to verse 17, it tells us that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David… fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian exile… and fourteen generations from the exile to Christ. That number 14 is significant because it represents the number 7 times 2. The number 7 in Scripture is the number of completeness. That also goes back to creation – the seven creation days. And when you add multiples to any significant numbers, it merely emphasizes the message. 7 times 2, 7 times 2, 7 times 2. Matthew is saying, God’s plan is being fulfilled in Jesus. Now, some may argue that it’s not exactly 14 generation between each. For example, notice Jeconiah is listed as last in the generation before the exile (verse 11) and he’s listed again as first in the generations in the exile (verse 12). Well, the reason he’s included in both is that he belongs in both. He was the last generation of kings before the exile, and he was the first generation in the exile. Here’s the point: Matthew is conveying that it was all planned out; It was all in God’s sovereign plan from creation; it was a perfectly complete plan. Each step, each generation, worked out precisely in the way that God intended in sending his Son.  That plan was established before creation, and it reached it’s climax in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. What Matthew is doing is pointing us to God, to Yahweh… pointing us to the one true God, who oversees and superintends all things.  Jesus’ birth wasn’t a reactionary decision on God’s part. Rather he planned it all and he is accomplishing that plan through Jesus. For Matthew’s readers and us, this is not a human invention, it’s not a “once upon a time” fictional story, but rather, the very God of the universe worked in history to fulfill his plan in his perfect time. Isn’t that amazing to consider? We worship a God who works everything according to his perfect plan in his perfect time. We’ll see in a minute that God plan is worked out even through the struggle of sin and suffering. God is sovereign over it all. Trust the sovereign Lord. 2. Believe in the Promised King And that brings us to point number 2 - Believe in the Promised King. That is the second thing that these verses highlight. So, we’re going from God’s sovereignty in orchestrating it all, to now how God communicated his plan. You see, the coming of Jesus was not something out of the blue. No, God had been preparing his people for generation upon generation. God communicated over and over that he would send a savior. And he revealed that plan to his people. He did that in multiple ways, but one of the main ways that God communicated his plan was through promises. Scripture calls them covenants. A covenant is an agreement that God established with his people. They defined his relationship with them. You could say they are relational contracts. God’s covenants with his people include future promises that God would fulfill. And God established these covenant promises through representatives.  Now, the reason I’m telling you all this is look again at verse 1. “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Those words speak directly to Jesus fulfilling God’s covenant promises. • Notice it doesn’t just say, the genealogy of Jesus. Rather, the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The word Christ is a title. It is the word for the anointed one, or the promised one. Matthew is stating right up front that Jesus is the promised Messiah. • And add to that, Matthew calls Jesus, “son of Abraham” and “son of David” (referring to king David). The reason that’s significant is that Abraham and David were two of the primary covenant representatives. Abraham was the patriarch of Israel. The father of God’s people. And David was king of Israel. Not Israel’s first king. That was Saul. But rather David was the king after God’s own heart. And through both Abraham and David, God vowed that he would send a descendant who would fulfill his covenant promises. Earlier in the service we read parts of those covenant promises. In Genesis 12, God promised to Abraham that he not only would make Abraham’s descendants a great nation, but God promised all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him. Later in Genesis, we read that a promised descendant of Abraham, would bring this great blessing. Again, that was the Covenant promise to Abraham.  The Covenant promise to David was similar. We read it in 2 Samuel 7. It’s that king David would have a great descendant, in his line. This king of kings would be an everlasting king. His kingdom would have no end. In several Advent and Christmas hymns, we sing of Jesse’s lineage. Jesse was the father of David. You see that right there in verse 6. He’s the promise of Isaiah 11. All the nations will come to the root of Jesse.  Imagine, again, that you are an Israelite living in the first century. Imagine that you are reading these words for the very first time. Your whole life, you have heard of the Messiah. You’ve read all of the promises in the prophets. You’ve read of God’s covenant promise to Abraham – that his descendants would be like the stars of the sky. And you’ve known of God’s covenant promise to David, that one of his descendants would sit on an eternal throne. Put yourself in that situation. And imagine reading these words. Matthew is saying that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of all the covenant promises. The son of Abraham, the son and David.  You see, for century upon century, God’s people had been waiting. They had been yearning for God to fulfill his covenant promises. And Matthew is writing to you. Matthew, a disciple of Jesus, who witnessed it all, is writing that you may believe. He wants you to know that Jesus is the one who would inaugurate the everlasting kingdom and be a blessing to all nations. He is the one. Matthew’s whole book was written so that you would see and know that Jesus is the Messiah. That’s why Matthew opens with that very clear declaration. And you know this, Matthew’s Gospel is not just written for the physical descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people. No, God’s purpose through Matthew is also for spiritual descendants of Abraham. He’s calling us to believe. To know that Jesus is the promise to the nations. Jesus is the eternal king. He rules and reigns over a kingdom that will have no end. God wants you to believe in the promised King. 3. Behold the Savior of Sinners So, first Trust the Sovereign Lord – it’s was all worked out in God’s perfect plan and timing. Second, Believe the promised King. And now, point #3, Behold the Savior of Sinners. Over the last few decades, there’s been a renewed interest in family trees. Several websites help you identify relatives and common ancestors. As of this year, the largest documented family tree has 27 million people listed.  There’s also a huge interest in DNA tests to better understand your heritage. You can even be connected with relatives you may not know. There’s been story after story of people connected with half siblings they never knew they had. Or stories of people finding out their dad isn’t their biological father. Family trees are messy. They’ve always been messy. When someone is drawing a family tree, there are all these symbols that indicate things like death, divorce, separation, infidelity. And the truth is, which many are finding out today, family trees can be messier than the known messiness. Well, this family tree in Matthew 1 is no different. You may be tempted to think, “well if God sent his promised Savior into the world through ordinary generation, well then each and every ancestor must have been faithful and Godly.” I mean, right? That’s what we may be tempted to think. But that is far from the reality. And one of the things that this genealogy clearly displays is a need for a savior. As Jesus himself said, “I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Some of you know the story of Judah for example. He’s listed there in verses 2 and 3. Judah was one of the 12 sons of Jacob. So, Judah was one of Joseph’s older brothers. Well, it says here that Judah was the father of Perez by Tamar. Tamar was actually Judah’s daughter-in-law. Judah had shunned her, and so she seduced him while he was travelling. She covered her face, and he didn’t recognize her. And she became pregnant. Judah, of course, was guilty himself, even more so. Judah, thinking Tamar was a prostitute. Yet Judah, Tamar, and their son Perez in the line of Christ. Or take King David, himself. Verse 6. It says, “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.” It’s speaking of Bathsheba. David used his position to take Bathsheba. He then committed adultery with her. She became pregnant, and when that happened, David had Uriah, her husband, killed on the battlefield. Solomon was their second son. And let’s talk about Solomon. He began his reign seeking wisdom from the one true God. But Solomon lost that faithful pursuit. He loved many foreign wives, and he came to love their idols and false gods. David, Bathsheba, and Solomon in the line of Christ.  The list of kings itself is a telling list. It includes godly kings like Josiah, the young king who tore down all the false places of worship and who restored worship of the true God. The list also includes Hezekiah who sought the Lord and sought the Lord’s protection and whom the Lord used to protect Jerusalem.  But the list also includes Ahaz and Manasseh, two of the most wicked kings of Judah in Jerusalem. Devoid of any heart desire to please the Lord and serve him. No, these kings sought their own worldly power. They displayed no interest in the Scriptures or in seeking God. That ultimately led to the nation’s downfall. Ahaz and Manasseh in the line of Christ. This is all reality. Difficult circumstances, sin, evil, and shame. Yet God demonstrated his faithfulness through their failures. It reveals that God works in the fallen world to accomplish salvation.  The very reason that Christ came was to save sinners. Jesus own family tree demonstrates that. He entered into the miseries and sin of this life to redeem those who live in the miseries and sin of this life. Yet he was without sin. A savior of sinners.  But there’s a second thing that this genealogy also highlights. It demonstrates that salvation is for all. Or maybe it’s better to say, salvation is offered to all. There is a diversity in this genealogy.  First of all, you would expect Jesus’ lineage to be exclusively Jewish. But that’s not the case. Rahab, for example, verse 5, was a Canaanite… an inhabitant of Jericho. In fact, Rahab had been a harlot. A prostitute. Yet, she faithfully helped God’s people. The Lord redeemed her and brought her into the family of faith.  Or take Ruth, King David’s great grandmother. Ruth was a Moabite. Moabites had been cut off from the blessing of God for their false worship and cursing of the children of Israel. Yet God redeemed Ruth and brought her into the family of faith. It’s likely Bathsheba was a Hittite. She is referenced as the wife of Uriah the Hittite. The diversity in Jesus’ lineage is also seen in the number of women referenced. For a patriarchal society, it would have been very uncommon to list so many women. And if a lineage did include women, you would expect to read of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, or Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, or Rachel, Jacob’s wife. But no, they are not referenced, rather, Tamar and Rahab and Ruth and Bathsheba, and, of course, Mary.  Besides Jesus’ lineage highlighting that he is the savior of sinners, Jesus’ lineage highlights that he is the savior of the world. Salvation for all peoples and all nations.  As God had promised Abraham, through his lineage, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And this family tree demonstrates God’s blessing to all people. Conclusion Beloved, it is a real-life history... not just of any man, but of the promised Messiah And in it, may we: • Trust the Sovereign Lord • Believe in the Promised King • Behold the Savior of Sinners In this advent season, may you wonder in awe at this savior! Amazed at his family tree… Instead of skipping down to verse 18, may you take heart in how God orchestrated it all, how God fulfilled his promise in history, and how we have been given a king and a savior. A savior of the world. May you believe in him.

Hello TPC! Did you miss the sermon on Sunday? Dr. Guy Richard preached on Luke 15:1-32 in his sermon titled, “The Love of God” Check it out! 

1 John 2:7-11 Rev. Erik Veerman 11/27/2022  Knowing that You Know Him: the Love Test Our sermon text this morning is 1 John 2:7-11. You can find that on page 1210 in the pew Bibles. If you are visiting for the holiday weekend, we are in the middle of a series in the book of 1 John. This book is the first of three letters that apostle John wrote. And he wrote them very late in the first century. John was likely the only disciple of Jesus alive at the time, in his late 80s or early 90s. John’s purpose in writing was to correct some false beliefs that had arisen in the church. This included not just the content of what they believed about faith, but also their practice – how they were living. At this time, the church did not yet have the New Testament cannon. They may have only had a small handful of letters and likely they had John’s Gospel account. So, overall they had a limited set of the apostles’ writings upon which to evaluate truth versus lies and right versus wrong. So, this letter was very much needed for the church. And John gave them clear criteria in order to evaluate their faith… not just the content of true faith, but whether their lives demonstrated true faith in Christ. Last week, we began to look at a series of life tests. Each test is given to help you evaluate whether or not your faith is authentic. The first test was the test of obedience. True faith in Christ is marked by a life that seeks to obey God’s commands. To be sure, these tests are not telling you how to know God in Christ, but rather whether you do know God in Christ. This morning the life test is the test of love. Does your life display love? Not the world’s definition of love, but God’s definition. Let’s turn our attention to God’s Word. 1 John 2:7-11. Reading of 1 John 2:7-11 Prayer The day started without much fanfare. The life of a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee included the mundane task of mending nets. James, his brother John, and their father Zebedee were each involved in the task.  But what started out as a normal day quickly turned to an extraordinary day. We’re not told directly whether James and John had any sense of what was about to happen. The fact that they were busy repairing their nets suggests they didn’t. But as soon as Jesus called out, the Holy Spirit so compelled them that they immediately dropped their nets to follow him. We can only imagine the questions swirling around in their minds. Who is this Rabi? What will following him involve? How can we be fishers of men? And imagine what the next three years of their lives would be like. In the presence of the promised messiah…. Conversing with him, sitting under his teaching, seeing and experiencing many miracles.  John saw Jesus multiply the bread and loaves. He witnessed Jesus calm he sea; heal the paralyzed man, raise Lazarus from the dead. Miracle after miracle.  John was with Jesus when he taught the crowds. John heard him explain the Scriptures, witnessed him confronting the pharisees and loving the outcasts. Over those three years, the crowds grew and the tension with the religious elite escalated. And over those three years, the disciples slowly realized Jesus‘ identity - the Son of God. A few weeks before his death, Jesus set his sights on Jerusalem. He and the disciples slowly made their way to the holy city. When they arrived, it was this mixture of love and hate. The crowds initial shouts of joy quickly turned to shouts of murder. The Jewish establishment seethed - Jesus’ claimed an authority that only God possessed. They wanted him killed. But then, the calm before the storm. Jesus gathered his disciples in the upper room. They retreated from the fray. The disciples didn’t know what the next 24 hours would hold, but in the meantime, they were with the Lord. And something amazing happened. Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist. He knelt down and then he began to wash his disciples’ feet. John, James, Peter, and the others. The Lord of all creation humbled himself to do the work of a servant. Immediately after that Jesus returned to the table with them. And he said these words. Now, listen carefully and think about how they relate to our sermon text. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” That is recorded in John’s Gospel chapter 13. For the 60-70 years since Jesus washed his feet, no doubt John had been cherishing that moment and pondering those words. Really that was true for John’s entire time with Jesus, now that he could look back and reflect on what it all meant. But when it came to John’s audience in this letter, that particular event and those particular words came to mind. Jesus demonstrated his love to his disciples by washing their feet… and he commanded his disciples to love one another as he had loved them. John wanted his audience to know that love and to demonstrate their faith with the same kind of love. Jesus had said to John, “…people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And John now was passing along that same message to his audience. Look at verse 9, “Whoever says he is in the light,” meaning he thinks he has faith in Christ, “and hates his brother is still in darkness.” John continues,  “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light.” His faith is authentic and true. This love is the second test of authentic faith. Last week was the test of obedience. If you look back up to verse 3, it’s captured right there, “…by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” That involves knowing God’s commandments and pursuing them. Not the world’s standards of right and wrong nor our standards of right and wrong, but God’s standards.   But last week you may have had the question. “Ok, fine. I get it. God gives us commandments and we’re to keep them. But if keeping God’s commandments proves that someone has true faith, my question is this: What’s the difference between a pharisee who doesn’t have true faith yet is trying to obey God’s commands and someone who has true faith who is trying to obey God’s commands? That is a very legitimate question. Jesus was vehemently opposed to the pharisees, yet they were the ones trying to keep God’s commandments. So what gives? What’s the difference between a pharisee and someone with true faith in Christ? • Well, three things. Number one - Last week we saw that obeying God’s commandments begins with faith in Jesus for salvation. That’s the point of verses 1 and 2. The Pharisees rejected Jesus – and by doing so, they rejected true faith in him. • Second, John is really clear that obeying God’s commandments is not the way to come to faith in Christ. No, seeking to obey God’s commandments demonstrates true faith in Christ. The Pharisees believed that by keeping God’s law, they were righteous and therefore worthy of salvation. That is completely opposed to what John has been teaching. We are all sinners. None of us is righteous, and we all need the righteousness of Christ by faith. Pursuing God’s commands will never save you. So really, the Pharisees failed the test of obedience. • And third, the Pharisees would have failed the love test. These verses. Rather than love, the Pharisees were full of hate and pride. They didn’t love the least and the lost. No, they harassed and persecuted them. To the Pharisees, these sinners were merely pawns to be used or outcasts that that were damned. The Pharisees never loved and never considered God’s love in calling sinners to repent. My point in bringing this up is that the obedience test of the first 6 verses of chapter 2 cannot be separated from the love test of verses 7-11. They go together. The apostle Paul put it this way: “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” He wrote that in Romans chapter 13 after listing some of the 10 commandments. All of the commandments of the law are summed up by love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. John opens these verses by confirming that. Love is not a new commandment that began in the New Testament. The call to love was not inaugurated by Jesus. No, rather love has always been the purpose of the commandments. When John writes that it’s an “old commandment from the beginning” he’s going back to the Old Testament law. It’s the call of Leviticus 19 to love your neighbor. It’s the call of the book of Deuteronomy over and over to love the Lord your God. Yet, it is also, at the same time, a new commandment. That’s exactly what 1 John 2:8 says. John had in mind Jesus’ words that love is a new commandment. With Jesus’ fulfillment of the law through his righteousness, and with the Gospel promise for the nations, in that sense, love is a new commandment for all the world. So it is both an old commandment as well as a new commandment. In a minute, we’ll talk about what true love looks like. But before that, notice that in these verses, John has returned to the theme of light and darkness. He introduced that theme in chapter 1. “God is light,” he said, “in him is no darkness.” And then John called us to walk in the light and not darkness. Walking being a metaphor for living. Chapter 1 was the general command to walk in the light. And now, in chapter 2, he answers the question, “what does it means to walk in the light?” If you haven’t noticed, John is very big on contrasts, light and darkness, truth and lies. And here he introduces another dichotomy: love and hate. Verse 9 “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.” In other words, whoever says he knows God, yet his heart is turned against a brother or sister in Christ, he, in reality, does not know God. Verse 11 further explains, “whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” In college, I spent a summer in Bolivia… in South America. We were helping build a summer camp for kids. It was in a remote part of the country. The camp was right on a tributary of the Amazon River, so we were in the jungle. There were just 3 of us. And the missionaries just dropped us off with some instructions. To make sure we were ok, they had a short-wave radio in a shed on the property. And every night, one of us had to walk an 1/4 of a mile down a pitch-black path to this shed, to communicate with them. We took turns. It was dark. Even the light from my flashlight seemed to get swallowed up in the darkness. We could hear monkeys in the distance. And one night, while on the path, I saw this pair of beady yellow eyes staring at me. No just kidding about seeing eyes! …but you know, your mind goes there. There are things out there that could attack me at any time. And I thought, “what if my flashlight breaks? I won’t be able to see anything. I’m going to die in this jungle, trying to feel my way back to our base camp, but going in the wrong direction!” Have you ever been in a room where it’s so dark, you can’t see anything? And if you were to turn in circles, you wouldn’t know where the door is? That’s what the apostle John is describing. The darkness of sin and evil without the light is so overwhelming, you can’t see where you are going. There’s no light to follow. The darkness has blinded your eyes. John says, “whoever hates his brother is in the darkness.”  In his sermon on the mount, Jesus spoke of hate its consequences. “You have heard that it was said… ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.” Jesus was equating anger with murder. Our very thoughts condemn us. You see, hate and love are matters of the heart. If your heart is full of anger and resentment and hate, John is saying that you are in the darkness. To be sure, John not saying that if you are experiencing anger, you are walking in darkness. No, rather the question is whether your life is marked by hatred. Whether you anger is unbridled, and you feel no conviction about your hate and no desire to turn from it. If that is the case, then John is calling you to examine your life. It is not displaying the love to which you’ve been called. Hate is the negative side of the love test. A life of hate is life of darkness apart from Christ. On the flip side is the call is to love. The life of a true believer in Christ is a life marked by love… that seeks to pursue love, that demonstrates love for others. Someone who loves his brother, as verse 10 says, is in the light.  The reason we read 1 Corinthians 13 earlier is that it defines love for us. Love according to the Scriptures is not a fleeting emotional feeling that comes and goes. No, love for your brothers and sisters in Christ is patient. It is longsuffering. It overlooks wrongs. It forgives. It endures the test of time. Love defers to the other person. It is selfless and humble. It honors the other person. The one who loves well, listens well and cares well. Love seeks to be united or reunited. Loving your brother and sister in Christ does not mean never disagreeing. Rather it dictates how you disagree. It’s the manner in which you listen and perhaps compromise. It’s the kindness and demonstration of your heart’s desire for the wellbeing and honor of your brother or sister in the faith. Furthermore, love does not mean an acceptance of someone else’s beliefs or lifestyle. That’s what the world thinks. A common expression today is “choose love and not hate.” You’ve probably heard that. You’ll see it on memes and tweets and t-shirts, and hear it in songs. Several books have been written with that title. The phrase “choose love and not hate” according to the world is about acceptance. If you disagree with someone’s decisions, their self-identity, then you hate them… again according to the prevalent cultural norms. But that is not what love means. No. As 1 Corinthians 13 says, love “rejoices in the truth.” This is another reason why the test of love cannot be separated from the test of obedience. We display our love for others by speaking God’s Word… with kindness and compassion and care. Some of you are probably familiar with Rosaria Butterfield, author and speaker. She wrote about her conversion in her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. It’s quite the testimony because Butterfield was a liberal university professor, totally opposed to Christianity. She described herself as a leftist lesbian feminist professor. She did not want anything to do with Christianity. Her philosophical heroes were Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin. In 1997, she wrote an article blasting Jesus followers, their conservativism, and their hate for women. In her book, she describes the types of letters she received. Fan mail and hate mail – those who supported her and those who vilified her. But one letter came from a local pastor. In the letter, he was kind and not mocking. He asked her questions about her presuppositions… questions about how she came to her beliefs. Initially, Rosaria crumpled up the letter and threw it into the recycle bin. But the questions were gnawing at her. Unable to shake them, she fished the letter out of the recycle bin. And she responded to this pastor. That began a series of communications with him and his wife.  They invited her over for dinner. She accepted. They had open conversations about philosophy and sexuality and about faith. It started a friendship. Butterfield experienced the love of this pastor and his wife for her, and, also, over time she experienced a church family that loved one another and loved her. She witnessed deep heartfelt prayers for one another in the community, and care for each other’s needs. And love not just for her, but also love for her friends. She witnessed the love of 1 John 2. A faithful and loving community displaying the light, caring for her in word and deed. The ministry of that church family and the words of truth spoken to her in love bore fruit. She turned her life and her lifestyle over to Christ. When we display the love of God to one another and to others, we not only testify to God as light, but we shine that light to the world.  After Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, his words about love challenged them not just to display love, but how their love would be a light to the world. Did you catch that? Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” One of the purposes of loving each other is to be a light to the world. Our love is to be displayed to the world… not in a look-at-us and see-how-much-we-love-each-other kind of way but rather in a humble way that demonstrates the love of God for us in Christ. One of the many experiences that John witnessed was Jesus teaching in the temple. He returned there multiple times. On one occasion, the crowds were amazed at his teaching. Jesus explained the law. He appealed to the authority that God the Father had given him. He spoke of the rivers of living waters for those who would come to him. It stirred the crowds. Many thought and realized he was the Messiah. But the Chief Priests and Pharisees rejected Jesus and sought to arrest him. It is on this occasion that Jesus spoke these word: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” You see, when John spoke of the light here in 1 John chapter 2, he wasn’t speaking of God as light in a general sense as he did in chapter 1. Rather, here in these verses, John was speaking about the light of Christ. He had in mind the words of Jesus in the temple that he was the light of the world. We see that in these verses. At the end of verse 9, he writes that “the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.” The light that he is speaking about is a light has already come and which is now shining in the darkness. John is conveying that the light is growing. The darkness is passing away. This is the Gospel light of Christ – the hope of salvation in him. By the time that John is writing these words, the Gospel had spread all throughout the Mediterranean region and had begun spreading to the rest of the known world in Europe and Asia and Africa. And as the light of Christ spread, the darkness began to pass away as more and more people received his light.  Notice also, verse 10. John writes that the one who “loves his brother abides in the light.” There’s that word that we came across last week. Abides. It means to take lasting residence in… to be one with another. In the opening verses of chapter 2, this abiding is not associated with God the Father or God in a general way, but rather the abiding is in Jesus. Knowing him and abiding in him is knowing Jesus and abiding in Jesus. When we display the true love of God, when our lives reflect the love of Christ in us, then we are displaying the light of Christ. That love in your life is a testimony of a true faith in Jesus. You have passed the love test. As imperfect as your love is, it indicates that you are walking in the light of Christ. However, if you do not know Christ. Or if you say you do but your heart is full of hate for a brother or sister, then, as the Scriptures say, you are walking in darkness. If that’s you, come to the light. Come to Jesus, the light of life.

1 John 2:1-6 Rev. Erik Veerman 11/20/2022  Knowing that You Know Him: the Obedience Test Our sermon text this morning is from 1 John chapter 2, the first 6 verses. Page 1210 in the pew Bible. This is our third sermon in 1 John. The book opens with the apostle John establishing his credibility and emphasizing Jesus. Jesus is the eternal Son of God who has been made manifest. He is, in fact, the foundation to this whole letter. John then turns his attention to the matter at hand: authentic faith. He makes a clear delineation that there is true belief and false belief. True living and false living. He calls his readers and us to be on the right side of the line – walking in the light of true faith in Christ. And that brings us to chapter 2. John goes a level deeper. He begins a series of tests to determine whether your faith is genuine. So, let’s come now to God’s Word. Reading of 1 John 2:1-6 Prayer Introduction In a 2017 article about religion, an author wrote these stinging words: “Ahhh, Christianity in America. Or should I say, the single greatest cause of atheism today. You know who I’m talking about, right? The type of people who acknowledge Jesus with their words, and deny him through their lifestyle.” Or take these thoughts written earlier last week. “Dear American Church… you are slowly dying. If you are paying attention, you probably realize that. Your buildings are slowly clearing, your pews gradually emptying, your congregations visibly aging away, your voice carrying less resonance than it used to. There are many complicated and interconnected reasons for this,” he wrote. This author then went on to identify what he believed was the number one reason. He wrote, “You are dying because of your hypocrisy.” By the way, while it’s true that church attendance in the United States has been slowly declining, it’s not actually true for Gospel-centered churches. The opposite is happening. But nonetheless, it’s generally true. And many outside the church see the church as full of hypocrites - people who believe one thing, but their words and actions betray their belief. According to a recent study, 55% of people outside the church see people inside the church as hypocrites. Now, some of that is a perceived hypocrisy. That’s because sometimes the ethical standards used to evaluate the church and Christians are different than the ethical standards that the Scriptures teach. We’ll get into that later. But some of the hypocrisy is real. You know this. Many high-profile pastors and Christian leaders have been “disgraced” so to speak. The reasons include infidelity, bullying, or extravagant lifestyles. And that’s just some well-known leaders. Real hypocrisy is seen and experienced at all levels. Some of you have been deeply hurt by similar hypocrisy. We need to be honest, each of us has areas in our lives that don’t line up with what we believe. Sometimes we’re blind to it, but sometimes we know it yet stubbornly persist in our hypocrisy. And what the apostle John is teaching us here is that our lives need to reflect our beliefs. Our words and actions cannot be disconnected from our relationship with God. Part of knowing God is pursuing his commands.  If you look at verse 3, that idea is right there. “…we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” It’s talking about knowing Christ - knowing him and his commandments. And do you see that layered use of the word “know?” “We know that we…. know him” It does not say, “we know him if we keep his commandments.” In other words, keeping his commandments is not how you come to know God in Christ. It’s not the basis for your knowledge of God. Rather, keeping his commandments demonstrates that you have indeed come to know God. It’s a confirmation. The end of verse 5 and into 6 is very similar “By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” It’s speaking of Jesus. We know we are in him if we walk as he walked… meaning the manner in which we live reflects the manner in which Jesus lived. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my sermon titles and I usually don’t mention them. Sometimes, in fact, I wish I could change them. This morning, though, I want to point out my title because the next three 1 John sermons will have similar titles. My title this morning is “Knowing that You Know Him: The Obedience Test.” Next week will be, “Knowing that You Know Him: The Love Test.” The sermon after that, which will be in January, “Knowing that You Know Him: The World Test.” And after that, “Knowing that You Know Him: The Doctrine Test.” So, the obedience test, the love test, the world test, and the doctrine test. One of the key phrases in 1 John is the phrase “by this we know” or “by this we may know” Verse 3 is the first time that it’s used. And we’ll see it 7 other times in the book. And it’s connected to how we know…. How we know that we truly know God. How we know that he abides in us. How we know what we believe is true.. It’s the idea of assurance. Helping us to have confidence in our faith in Christ… or actually moving us to true faith in Christ. And John does that by giving us different tests to check the authenticity of our faith. Again, the obedience test, the love test, the world test, and the doctrine test. That’s where we’re headed this morning and the next three 1 John sermons. If you remember from last week, John’s message was framed in general terms. Sin in general terms. Walking in the light and walking in darkness in general terms. He was drawing the line for us, telling us that there is a line between true faith and false faith. And now in chapter 2, he gives us these specific tests. Before we go there, though… before we jump into the test of obedience, let’s consider 2 things: • First, sin and redemption. That’s the focus of verses 1 and 2. • And second, the word “know.” That word is used over and over throughout the book, so it would be helpful to understand it. Sin and Redemption But first, in the beginning of chapter 2, John continues his explanation of sin. At the end of chapter 1, if you remember, John rejected any notion that sin is no longer present in the Christian life. No, even though we are redeemed, in this life we still struggle with sin. We can’t reject sin’s continued presence. John says in chapter 2 verse 1, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” In those few words, it’s a recognition both that sin still is present in the Christian life, but that we can pursue holiness and righteousness. He continues, “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” This is a great word of reassurance for the Christian. If you are truly in Christ, when you do sin, Christ is interceding for you, continually. He is your advocate. But how is that so? That’s what verse 2 answers: “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” That word “Propitiation” is a big word, isn’t it? It essentially means to satisfy a demand. Our sin deserves punishment and judgment, but Jesus is our propitiation. He satisfied God’s wrath against sin. It does not mean that God the Father is the angry one and Jesus, the Son, is the loving one. No, not at all. God the Father loved us so much that he gave his Son to be the propitiation for sin. To satisfy divine justice. In essence, that’s the Gospel. That’s where John wants us to begin. To say all of that in another way, redemption in Christ is the foundation to knowing God. The life tests that John is going to apply are to validate that you know God… that you truly have the Gospel hope of Christ. That’s why John begins with the Gospel in verses 1 and 2. Let me make a brief side note. When it says that Jesus is the propitiation for “the sins of the whole world,” it does not mean that every person in the whole world is saved through Jesus. Some people have claimed that it means that. But that makes no sense when you consider that the entire book of 1 John is clear that there is true faith and false faith, true belief and false belief. Those who truly believe and demonstrate that by their lives, have this redemption in Christ. Those who do not have true faith, do not have redemption in Christ, but need it. What it means for Jesus to be the propitiation for the whole world, is that true faith in Christ is for people of every tribe, language, and nation – the whole world, in that sense. To Know And that bring us to a second important consideration. What does the word “know” mean? We see it multiple times here. It’s the Greek word “ginosko.” That word can be applied in different ways. For example, when it’s applied to a relationship, it implies a very deep and personal relationship. Our English understanding of the word “know” when applied to relationships doesn’t really capture that. For us, when we know someone, it could just be an acquaintance. But John’s readers would understand that it’s a lot deeper. When John talks about “knowing him” he’s not talking about knowing of Jesus. He’s talking about faith and trust in him. Furthermore, back to verse 3, the second use of the word “know” (“to know him”) is an active perfect tense. It indicates a present relationship with Christ, that began in the past, but is ongoing. Someone who truly knows Christ has that kind of relationship with him. It’s similar to the word “abiding” in verse 6. Abiding in Jesus means living in or living with him in a permanent sense. And to say it again, that knowing and abiding in Jesus comes through the Gospel. Besides the word ginosko/ (“to know”) applied to relationships, it’s also used here in a general sense. In verse 3, the phrase “by this we know” is speaking about knowing something. In fact, those uses are similar to knowing about something in English. That use of “know” is pretty straight forward. So, to put it all together, verse 3 is saying this: “…we have a clear understanding that we have come to a genuine personal ongoing relationship with Christ, if we keep his commandments” You may have figured this out already, but the word ginosko is where the word gnostic comes from (g-n-o-s-t-i-c). Last week I mentioned that John’s audience was dealing with very early forms of Gnosticism. Even though he doesn’t name this false teaching, John uses language that they would have used. The Gnostics were all about knowing God. And because he uses the word ginosko over 30 times in the book, his readers would have been keen to hear how to truly know God. You see, there’s no problem with the goal to know God. We all want to know God, but some of John’s audience (who were being affect by this early expressions of Gnosticism) either rejected the basis for knowing God, which is faith in Christ … or they rejected the implications of truly knowing God, which includes obedience. Here's how one commentator described this influence. He writes, “Like an infection in the Christian community, this virus urged that the pathway to salvation did not depend on freedom from sin, but rather freedom from ignorance. If esoteric mysticism opened the way to God, then other mundane matters, such as earthly obedience and morality could easily be swept aside.” He’s saying that this hyper spiritualism was disconnected from sin and redemption in Christ. It therefore ignored the moral implications connected with knowing Jesus. Ok, let’s take a time out here! We’ve just gotten into some weeds – words, definitions, philosophies. Some of you may be tracking along, but it’s a lot to take in. Let me try to summarize it, then we’ll get into the obedience test. • First, the foundation to knowing God is found in the Gospel – the redemption of Christ through the cross. That’s the first two verses.  • Second, the people to whom John was writing, were dealing with a grave misunderstanding of how to know God and the implications of knowing him • And third, in response to the misunderstandings, these verses are part 1 in a series of practical tests that the apostle is giving. These tests are not telling you how to know God intimately. Rather, they are telling you how to know that you know God intimately. The Test of Obedience And that (finally!) brings us to the test of obedience. To put it simply, John is answering the lingering question from chapter 1: If true faith is demonstrated by walking in the in the light, and false faith is demonstrated by walking in the darkness, how do we know what those walks of life look like? Because if I say to you, “walk in the light” and I leave it at that, you could respond, “ok, great. I can do that. And by the way, I think that walking in the light means this or that.”  For example, some have said, “there’s no problem sleeping with my girlfriend or boyfriend. That doesn’t reflect on my Christian walk. After all, we’re committed to each other.” Or “I’m not affecting anyone else, when I watch pornography.” Or, “the tax laws in our country don’t matter to my Christian beliefs. I can fudge my write offs. Afterall,” as some think, "taxation is theft.” But you see, those are examples of coming up with your own morality. It’s not what the apostle John is saying. Rather, he’s putting a flag in the ground. He’s saying, knowing God in Christ is tested by your obedience. Not an obedience that you define, where you decide what is right and wrong. Rather, it’s tested by your desire to pursue what God has commanded. You see, what John’s readers were dealing with is different from what we are dealing with. Yes, there are some gnostic influences out there, today, but the bigger issue for us is moral relativism. Or its counterpart, ethical relativism.  • Moral relativism says: “what is right and wrong is not dependent on some objective standard out there. Rather you, the individual, determine what is right and wrong based on your own feelings and intuitions.” An example of moral relativism in our culture is the area of sexuality. The growing trend is seeing sexual identity and sexual practices as an individual choice, not something where there’s an external standard of right and wrong.  • And similarly, ethical relativism says: “what is right and wrong are not determined either by an individual nor some objective standard for everyone. Rather what is right and wrong are determined by the society in which you live.” For example, take honor killings. In some middle eastern cultures, in order to preserve the honor of a family, it is acceptable in certain circumstances to kill someone. If someone commits adultery and shames the family, the family is justified to take the life of that individual. Someone who subscribes to ethical relativism would be fine with that. To them, it’s a standard that the broader community has determined.  But the Scriptures teach neither moral relativism nor ethical relativism. Rather, they teach that God has a standard for all humanity. His laws and commands are transcendent. God has given us his law – the moral law. It’s summarized in the 10 commandments. In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he explains and applies God’s law to different situations. Jesus also reveals that obeying God’s law begins in our hearts and minds. Furthermore, God has written his law on the hearts of all humanity, but we suppress that truth in unrighteousness. But when we come to truly know God, to truly believe in Christ, God gives us a desire to pursue his commandments… to love him, to worship him alone, to love our neighbors. And the place we go to know his commandments, to know how to worship him, to know how to love our neighbor… is His Word. That’s the emphasis of verses 3-5. Keeping his commandments, verses 3 and 4. Keeping his Word, verse 5. It’s not seeking to keep my personal beliefs of what is right and wrong. Neither is it seeking to keep my community’s beliefs of what is right and wrong (in moral categories) but rather it’s seeking God’s standard. Part of what it means to keep God’s commandments, is recognizing that his law is the only true standard of right and wrong. So, the first test of whether you truly know God is the test of obedience. That means your heart’s desire is to know and keep his commandments…. your heart’s desire is to live a life honorable to him in those those commands… and your heart’s desire is to grow in your understanding of God’s Word and mature in keeping it. That’s the positive side of the test. Verse 4, on the other hand, is the negative side: “Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” In some sense, that is what hypocrisy means. Saying you believe but not demonstrating that you believe. And let me make a distinction. John is talking about a capital “H” hypocrite. Someone who says they have faith in Christ, but there is no evidence in his or her life of repentance… no desire to know or pursue God’s commands. That’s different than say a lowercase “h” hypocrite. Someone who has some inconsistencies in their life between their faith and their living. Because at one level, we are all hypocrites. The difference is, are we striving to grow and mature in our obedience… or are we living a lie, as John puts it. I want to make sure that something is really really clear. That word “perfected” in verse 5… it does not mean perfection in you. Rather it means that that God’s love for us is demonstrated to be true or proven to be true when we are pursuing his Word. In that sense his love for us is perfected. Verses 3-5 do not teach that a true Christian no longer sins. John has already clarified that in chapter 1. And verse 2 of this chapter also makes that clear. We do sin. The test of obedience is whether we are seeking to know and keep his commands. And when we do fail and break his commands, whether we feel convicted about that and have a renewed desire to keep them. You may be struggling with an addiction, and while there may be times when you have victories, you may also experience setbacks. Times when that temptation gives way to that sin… in the moment, you are pulled in. The test here is how you respond in those times. Are you grieved but renewed in the grace of God in Christ… with a desire to press on in pursuing obedience? In those cases, run to verse 1 – “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.” Run to him. Your strength in keeping his commandments, after all, is not in yourself, it is in him. Jesus is the one to whom we all need to turn. The reason he’s called “the righteous” in verse 1 is because he is the only one who perfectly obeyed the law. Jesus was the only true non-hypocrite. He never thought or did one thing that violated God’s commands. He never acted in a manner contrary to God’s will. He is the only one who knows God perfectly and has kept his commands perfectly. He’s the embodiment of the law and the word. As John puts it in chapter 1, he is the Word of Life. And to that end, Jesus is the perfect model for us. He is the one to whom we can turn as we seek to keep God’s commands. Through him we can seek to walk in the same way as he walked (as it says). And in him, we can truly know God. So as you search your hearts, and as you apply the test of obedience, may you realize that you passed the test, knowing that you know him. Pursuing his commands… not in your strength, not to be saved, but because you have been saved. You are living out that salvation because you know him. May that be the testimony of your life. And if it is not, may you come to know him… may it become your testimony.