BBC Sermon Cast

2020 was a year of numbers—significant numbers. Numbers are significant. Often, numbers represent people and therefore matter. They matter to God and should matter to us. Perhaps no other book of the Bible makes this point more clearly than one of the most neglected books: the book of Numbers. Here, we learn, among other truths, that the number of God’s people is important and yet people are more than a number. That’s always an important truth to keep in mind.

The apostle John was concerned that his readers, if they bought into the lie of the Gnostics, would find themselves unprepared to face the Lord at the final judgement. Rather than facing him with confidence, they would face him with shame. To avoid that, he wrote to tell them how they could be sure that they would stand with confidence at the final judgement.

John’s readers anticipated the imminent arrival of an Antichrist figure. Rather than fuelling their speculation, John wrote to warn them of a far greater threat: an antichrist spirit. Even as they looked for the Antichrist to come, they missed the fact that many antichrists had already come, and those antichrists were a far greater threat to them than the Antichrist they were expecting. While these verses were written in a specific context to a specific church, there are important lessons that we can draw from them. We will consider these lessons under three broad headings.

The night before the first Christmas was a long and dark one. For four hundred years, God had remained silent, seemingly abandoning his people. Israel was in a woeful spiritual condition. It seemed as if a spiritual eclipse had overtaken the nation. But one day, the silence was broken, a spiritual sunrise occurred, and the long dark night was replaced by a new, brighter day. That is the story of Christmas.

The living can’t feast on death things. Only the dead can feast on the dead. The lives of those who are in the world will be destroyed while the lives of those who are in God will abide forever.

Having given the general mark of a Christian, someone who walks as Christ walked, John now expands on that principle with an old commandment, which takes on a new significance with the coming of the Holy Spirit. In addition, he lays down some fundamental assumptions we can make about those who belong to Christ.

The true meaning of Christmas is the good news that the Saviour was born. The good news that amid a world of bad news, God is with us, the world has not been abandoned, sinners will be saved, the King has come, and therefore his kingdom has come.

Having given the general mark of a Christian, someone who walks as Christ walked, John now expands on that principle with an old commandment, which takes on a new significance with the coming of the Holy Spirit. In addition, he lays down some fundamental assumptions we can make about those who belong to Christ.

The way we worship reflects what is going on in our hearts. Our worship should be approached with open ears and thoughtful words and followed by actions.

John wanted his readers to be exposed to the truth that he and his fellow apostles had received from Jesus himself. That truth was more than mere theory. It had deep practical implications. The practical implications of the gospel truth form the major emphasis of the text before us. John argues that the truth of Jesus Christ will have profound implications on the way we walk.