Audio Transcript:

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Heavenly father, we have gathered here today to worship you, to worship you Holy Trinity: father, son and Holy Spirit, because you are worthy of worship. We don't do this because we have to, we do it because you are worthy. And Lord, I pray that you make us a people who are bold and fearless. You command us over and over, fear not for you are our God, for you are with us, you are a good shepherd. Lord, we pray for our city, we pray for our country, we pray for the world.

In particular, we pray for your supernatural intervention in curbing the Corona virus COVID-19. We pray Lord, send healing. We pray, Lord, that you stop the growth of this virus. You can, you have healed in the past, you do heal today and we thank you in advance. And we do Lord, thank you for the reminder that life is short. It is temporary, we're not guaranteed tomorrow. Our life is but a breath. We're here and then we're gone. And Lord, your word tells us and experience confirms that there's a virus that is even more lethal and that's the virus of sin.

And Lord, we thank you for coming and curating the medicine for this virus and that's the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, if anyone's not yet a believer, not yet a Christian, not yet a child of yours, I pray, send the gift of repentance and the gift of faith. Lord, bless our time in the Holy scriptures. Holy spirit, we welcome you into the space. Speak to us, minister to us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

So we're in a sermon series that we are calling Stratagem Know Thy Enemy in which we are exposing and revealing the playbook of the evil one of Satan and the demonic and we're looking at different strategies that Satan uses to pull us away from God. Today we're looking at Satan, the deceiver. Kanye West, and a long time ago, he said, I know that Satan is alive. I can hear him breathing. And when Satan breathes, he breathes out lies. Satan is a liar. He is sly, he is sneaky. He is a schemer and he's shrewd in pulling us away from the Lord.

Scripture teaches that Satan uses at least three forms in order to attack humans. He uses the form of the subtle serpent. He did that in the garden with Adam and Eve. He uses the form of the roaring lion and that's what pastor Shane talked about so compellingly last week. Today we're going to talk about Satan when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come with lies, his blatant lies, he covers them up. He masquerades his lies and presents them as truth with a capital T. He's a master of spiritual propaganda. He is a master of spiritual disinformation. He's a master at using the illusory truth effect.

The illusory truth effect is when "facts seem so good", they taste so good and they're repeated so often that they become plausible. We begin to believe them and we believe them because we want to believe them. He comes to us and offers us trues that are so compelling. There is no God, there is no Satan, there is no sin. You are in control of your own life. Your life is your own. Enjoy, enjoy your life. And we end up bamboozled. Today we're looking at second Corinthians 11 verses one through four and second Corinthians 11 verses 13 through 15 in which St. Paul reveals to us that Satan when he comes, he comes off through people, people of reputation, people that we look up to, people who are authorities in our lives and behind these ideas of these false prophets is the evil one. Would you look at the text with me?

Second Corinthians chapter 11 verses one through four. I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me for I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. That's the reading of God's Holy infallible, authoritative word, may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time together. First, we'll look at the fact that Satan is a liar. Second, we'll look at Satan's top 10 lies and third, Jesus is the truth.

First, Satan is a liar. We're told over and over in scripture this is true. Revelation 12:9, Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. The words of Christ in John 8:44 he, Satan, 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. Satan can't but lie. This is his very nature and he speaks out of his nature and his strategy in order to undermine God's word, God's truth is threefold.

First of all, he comes in and he questions God's word. "Did God really say?" He asks Eve. After that, he denies God's word. No, no, no, you will surely not die on the day that you partake of this sin. And it doesn't stop there, he doesn't just deny, he doesn't just question, he also substitutes. He removes, supplants God's truth with a capital T with his own version, and he says, "For God knows that the day that you eat of it, you will be like God's. Your eyes will be open knowing good and evil." And here one of the things that we see, Satan's goal is to pull us away from a relationship with God.

God is a source of love, light, of everything perfect, of true beauty, of truth itself, and Satan wants to disconnect us from God or keep us from connecting with God. His goal is to make sure that we do not desire God, that our hearts aren't connected to God, but he doesn't often, and especially in a place like Boston, he doesn't start with affections. He doesn't start with desires, he starts with the mind. He starts with lies. He starts with planting different versions of truth. And what we see from this text is that the battlefield for your soul is your mind.

The battlefield for your soul is your mind. That's what St. Paul says in verse three, but I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. And it begins with these fallacious thoughts, by which Satan pulls our devotion away from God. And what is this devotion that St. Paul is talking about? He says in verse two, I feel a divine jealousy for you since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.

And here he's using the metaphor of marriage and betrothal from the ancient world in which the father of the bride and the best man, the friend, the best friend of the groom, their job was to protect the bride during the season of betrothal. Betrothal was this important in that culture, it wasn't taken lightly and unfaithfulness during the time of betrothal was considered spiritual adultery. And Saint Paul says, I introduced you to Christ and I'm here during this betrothal period while Christ hasn't come as the true groom, he says, I'm the bride of Christ.

I want to make sure that the bride of Christ, that her heart is continually connected to Christ. And he says, you're flirting with spiritual adultery because of these sinful thoughts, because of these lies that you are believing. And this is how Satan operates. Second Corinthians 4:4, in their case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ was the image of God. Satan blinds the truth with his own version of truth. He blinds the light with his own darkness so that people can't see that the gospel is true.

It's true in its nature and its veracity. It's a fact, but also it's true in its preciousness. That this is the only way to salvation, that God is worthy of our worship. And what we see is in this tactic as he attacks the mind, he doesn't present a lie as a lie. He doesn't present evil as evil. He doesn't present unrighteousness as unrighteousness. He masquerades lies and presents them as truth. He masquerades darkness and presents it as light. He masquerades evil and presents it as good.

That's why verse 13, for such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen disguising themselves as apostles of Christ and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. Now, how does this apply to us today? Sometimes, yes, Satan does come through religious authorities and they preach a different Christ, but he's not saying be careful that these people come with lies. It says, be careful, they actually preach something plausible. It's something that's truly desirable in our belief.

And then also he says, these people are people that you respect. These are authority figures. These are people in your life that you look up to. These are people who are successful seemingly. And when they speak, their words resonate in our hearts because our hearts long to believe some of those lies. So he says, be careful. And the reason why Satan's lies are so plausible, so powerful is because they're always half truths. He presents this truth as a half truth, as a quasi truth, and presents it as the full truth.

And whenever a half truth masquerades as the whole truth, it becomes a total lie. I swear that I will speak the half truth and nothing but the half truth and a little truth and anything besides the truth to make sure that we stop asking questions. The greatest lie is when it's presented as the full truth. It's almost true, therefore it's got to be the full truth. The poet Tennyson says, a lie that is all of a lie can be met with and fought outright, but a lie that is partly the truth, is a harder matter to fight. That's what makes it so attractive. There's just enough.

He raps his lies in just a little truth. It's like putting bacon bits on a salad, just enough to make it palatable or digestible. If you're a vegan and vegetarian, the bacon is the evil. That's how he operates, it's just enough. And when he comes to us as a roaring lion and seeks to devour us, it's scary of course, but not nearly as dangerous as when he comes as an angel of light. He doesn't come knocking on our door and say, "Good morning, I'm Satan. I'm here to destroy your present and your future. I'm actually here to destroy your eternal life. I'm here to pull you away from God." Rarely does he act like that.

Instead, he says, "Good morning. I'm your friend. I'm someone that you look up to. I'm an authority figure. Perhaps I'm someone that you want to emulate and I want to introduce you to something that's alluring, that's exciting, that's fulfilling. It's going to make your life less boring. It's going to give you that little thing, that little extra, that little buzz that you're looking for and can't afford to miss it." And he speaks lies about God, about reality and about our nature. So Satan is a liar. And what are some of the top lies that he speaks? I'll give you 10 of Satan's top lies, and particular in a place like Boston.

First of all, there is no God who judges, there is no Satan. There is no sin. There is no truth. Stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. Eight, Jesus died so that you can sin. Nine, you don't need the church and 10, and God doesn't have a mission for you. And the most effective way to battle Satan's lies is to expose them as lies and to counter them with the truth which we try to do here in rapid fashion.

First of all, there is no God. In particular, there's no God who judges. Statistically, there's not that many atheists and particularly in the United States, not that many. You're talking about 1 to 2% of the population that are militant atheists confirmed in their atheistic worldview of their atheistic faith. Most people are agnostic or I would say just apathetic, ap-atheistic, I call them. Where it's like we don't know enough. I don't care enough. Perhaps there's God. We probably didn't come from nothing. Perhaps there's a God, but we don't know who he is. So there is no God. Or there is a God, but he's definitely not a God who judges.

He's definitely not a God who's going to make me give an account for my life, for my decisions, for my actions. And this is how the lie starts. God is love, period. God loves you, period. And as I go through this list about these Satan's lies, there's just enough truth where you're like, "Yeah, but no. Yeah, but there's more. Yeah, but let me explain." And Satan puts the period where God puts a comma or a semi-colon. God loves you the way you are and then he keeps going. He says, "God loves you the way you are, so you don't need to change." And you keep going. You say, "God doesn't care about sin per se. God just wants you to be happy. God accommodates sin."

This is the lie of tolerance. The God tolerates any single one of your decisions or your actions. Jesus talked about the way that leads to destruction's wide. It's tolerant, it's unchallenging, it's uncritical, it's uncaring. Jesus does love you, God does love you. But he loves you so much, he gave his one and only son to die on the cross for your sins. That's how much he loves you. God is a God who loves you so much that he wants the best for you, and the best for you is to be forgiven of sins and to be released from the power of sin.

So yes, God loves you and yes, come as you are to the cross of Jesus Christ and receive his grace. Colossians says that Jesus Christ took our sins, the record of debt against God and he nailed it to the cross. Our sins need to be nailed to the cross. Yes, new life is a gift. Forgiveness is a gift, but it has to be received. You can't be born again without first dying to self, dying to sin, dying to your old life. Our sin needs to be brought to the cross, so come as you are and repent of your sin. All your sins will be forgiven because God is and God judges by his judgment, his mercy come together at the cross.

Second is there is no Satan. And some of us, perhaps you're a little uncomfortable that we're talking about Satan and the devil in church today, especially in a place like Boston, and some of us were uncomfortable talking about transcendent evil or a personification of evil like Satan. Because when we think of Satan, we think of a guy in a red suit, pitchfork with horns and a tail. It's ridiculous, it's absolutely ridiculous, it's ludicrous to believe this on the one hand. On the other hand, if you are Satan and you've tried many of your strategies and you're like, "They're not that effective. I've demon possessed people. And then there's the Holocaust and then 30 million died during the Soviet Union, not that effective."

And Satan hires someone to help him come up with a new strategy, Bain Consulting for example. And no offense if you work at Bain Consulting, there was a guy in the morning service that works there. Sorry, I'm not saying they're diabolic, but I'm saying if Satan were to hire someone who would hire them. So if Satan hires a consulting firm and you're like, "Please help me with a new strategy in 2020." Or in this new postmodern post postmodern era, you know what they would tell him? Convince the world that you don't exist by mocking yourself, by ridiculing even the idea that you exist.

From the movie Unusual Suspects, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist and like that he's gone. If we can't even have a conversation about transcendent evil or personification of evil, how can we even understand the world? And this started with liberal new testament scholars. German new testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann over a century ago emphatically denied the existence of anything supernatural. He said they're all myths in the new testament and we need to demythologize the new testament. He said we can only understand what our five senses show us and reveal to us about reality and there's nothing else. The material is all there is.

And what happens is once we get rid of evil, personification of evil happens, we actually lose the resources to begin to understand the world as it is. Andrew Delbanco, Columbia University wrote a book called The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. The first line in the book is, a gulf has opened in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources to cope with it. We know that deep down and we know there's transcendent evil. If we get rid of this concept of personified transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand the world?

If you don't believe in Satan, I challenge, you go to Auschwitz, go to the concentration camps and stand there. You feel it, that it's palpable there. If there is no safe, if there is no transcendent evil, how do we begin to understand true systemic evil, racism, sexual trafficking? It begins with lies. Porn is harmless. That's a diabolical lie. Abortion is healthcare, that's a lie. It all begins with the demonic. Hitler's Superman, that whole ideology, that's a diabolical lie that led to the death of millions. Satan is and Satan is a liar.

The third lie is that there is no sin and similar to the first one, it begins with God loves you therefore, there is no sin. God loves you therefore, he wants you to be happy and happiness is whatever you define. God loves you and he doesn't discriminate against your life choices and it begins with a truth from scripture, God is inclusive. God's love is inclusive, he welcomes everybody. In Christ Jesus, there is no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, slave nor free. The lie comes in when Satan begins to link clearly sinful lifestyles to that list and our hearts willingly accept that lie because we have a sinful flesh. And this poisonous lie that masquerades as liberating truth begins to slither into our hearts and causes destruction.

In that same context, St. Paul says, "Yeah, there is no, in Christ Jesus, no Jew, no Greek, no slave, no free, no male, no female." And then in that context, those are things that we can't control, but there's things that we can't control. He says, "If a thief comes to faith, let him steal no more, but let him instead work with his hands." There's got to be a transformation. When we meet the God of the universe and he forgives us of our sins. He doesn't just long for us to keep sinning, he wants to release us from the power of sin, but also from the presence of sin.

Richard Niebuhr in the book Kingdom of God in America, he said, a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the administrations of Christ without a cross. Many, many modern churches, this is what they believe is false gospel. And it begins with getting rid of a God who judges, getting rid of Satan, getting rid of sin. Once you do all of those things, you don't need a God dying on a cross for sin, bearing the wrath of God and there is no more Christianity.

Fourth is there is no truth. And this is where you could talk about this in the very beginning in Genesis three, he comes and he questions God's truth. He denies God's truth, but then there's no vacuum. There's no truth vacuum. This is how truth works. If you nullify truth, you have to replace it with another truth. If you say there is no truth, that now becomes a truth statement. And this is where we are, there is no truth. Relativism is all there is. It's just your truth and my truth. I'm going to live my truth.

Your opinion is valid as my opinion and that just keeps going and deepens where, "Well, my opinion is what I want and what I desire, what my feelings are and my feelings are reality. My feelings are truth. My life is my own." Jesus Christ comes and he says, "No, we are not God. We didn't create ourselves. We don't sustain ourselves. Our life is not our own. In creation, our life is not our own in redemption." If you're a Christian, you belong to Christ twice because he redeems us from our sins. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, capital T, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. He says I'm the, there's a definite article. I am the way, the only way. There's no other ways to God.

If there were other ways to God Jesus, the son of God, the second person in the trinity would not have had to die. He would not have had to bear the wrath of God on the cross for our sins. It's an absolute statement and it's an exclusive statement. And we know about the living word of God, of Jesus and the written word of God in the Holy scriptures which have proven themselves to be efficacious and powerful and they've self authenticated themselves in our own experience and throughout the experience of church history by transforming people's lives.

Number five is stop thinking, enjoy yourself. Usually Satan begins with these epistemological, existential questions one through four, but I think the most effective one in particular for young people is this one. Yet we can't know anything, so why even ask questions? Just stop thinking and enjoy yourself. Think about the things that you can control, don't think about the things that we don't know anything about and just enjoy yourself. And God wants you to be happy, right? If he exists and he's a good God and you define happiness as you want to define it, and usually that starts with happiness, but then it gets relegated to pleasure and says, "Just go, just enjoy yourself."

And what happens is we begin to numb ourselves with things that we think causes pleasure short term. Be it intoxication or substances, entertainment, comfort, what have you. And this is perhaps one of the most convincing lies. I mean, everyone around us is pursuing this route. And he diverts our attention for the most important questions about God, about the universe, about life. And we believe it because often we want to feel so good in the short term. And then scripture comes in and says, "No."

You never get from pleasure what you long to get from pleasure. In pursuit of happiness and pleasure, you never get what it promised you. It doesn't satisfy. C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters... If you haven't read it, it's a phenomenal little fictional work about the strategies of Satan. In this chapter about pleasure, this one line stands out. He says, an increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula. Whatever your thing is to get pleasure, you get a little pleasure and what it does, it increases your crave. You want more of it and you're chasing that first high, that first buzz and it gives you less and less, more diminishing pleasure.

The lie within the lies that pleasures the path to satisfaction to ultimate fulfillment, it's not. Happiness is in the mind, pleasure's in the body, but there's something so much deeper. There's something in the soul that we're longing for and that's fullness of joy, that's satisfaction, that's fulfillment and nothing physical can give us spiritual satisfaction. Only God can, fellowship with Christ can. Aldous Huxley says, facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. So even if you're just constantly pushing away these thoughts about God, these questions of where did I come from? What is my life? What is the meaning of life and where am I going? The facts remain, the questions remain.

Six is there is no afterlife, certainly no hell. Seize the day, you only live once. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Check off your bucket list. While you're alive, just have fun, enjoy yourself and because there's nothing left. I remember I was trying to share the gospel with a coworker of mine back, I used to work in the FBI for a little bit and my office was in a closet thing, there were no windows and my coworker smoked two packs a day. He would just smoke all the time. So he reeked and I was like, "Bro, I think you're going to die soon. So I got to share the gospel with you." And then I'm like, "So what happens when we die? What do you believe about that?"

And I'll never forget his answer. And he says, "You get buried and then you push up daisies." So there's nothing else. Most of us, we don't just believe in annihilationism, that everyone just disappears. Most people what they believe is, there is an afterlife, but it's only heaven. And the only thing you got to do to go to heaven is die. That's the only qualification. You die, you're going to heaven. Where do we get these ideas? You go to a friend's funeral, everybody says the same thing. They get up and they say, I know that this person is where? In a better place. How do we know this? What is that based on? Did someone come back and tell us?

There's only one person that ever came back and told us about the afterlife and that was Jesus Christ when he came back from the dead. And what Jesus Christ told us is there's heaven and there's hell. Heaven is the presence of God, hell is the absence of the presence of God. And when we're disconnected with God because of our sin, this is where you spend all of eternity. A lot of people say, "Only God can judge me," and he will. Ecclesiastes 11:9 says, rejoice young man or young person in your youth and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes, but know that for all these things, God will bring you into judgment.

The words of Christ in Matthew 10:28, and do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Jesus said that in order to awaken us from our spiritual stupor. These are incredibly words, that we will die and we will stand before God and the question is will you spend eternity in God's presence or apart from God in a place called hell? Jesus Christ came and he said that the only way into heaven, into the presence of God is by faith in Jesus Christ. Repent and believe, and those who believe in Christ Jesus as Lord and savior have eternal life.

You can either live once and die twice. Die physically, and then you spend eternity in a place called hell, that's eternal death. Death isn't just separation from... it's not cessation, it's separation from the body. You have an internal soul. It's either you live once or you die twice or you live twice. I'm born, I'm alive, but then I'm born again. I die to my former self. I'm born again. I live twice and I die once, and you do that by denying your sin, denying your former life and coming to Christ. C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces says, die before you die. There is no chance after die to sin, die to self reliance, selfishness, pride, and be alive to God.

Seven is you're good if you do more good than bad. This is, works righteousness, self-righteousness. This is at the heart of every single religion except for Christianity, and a lot of Christians believe this too. They believe that the way that you can be made righteous before God is by helping yourself. God helps those who help themselves. We think of grace as just extra credit or a little fudge fact. I remember I had a teacher of chemistry in high school and on every test he would grade on a curve, but if you brought him chocolates, he would give you a little fudge factor. That's what he called it. I'll always finished with an A.

That's what a lot of people, they think, "Okay, I'm going to try hard. I got a 70 on the test and thanks Jesus for the little grace, a little fudge fact." No, that's not how Christianity works. The Christianity says there's nothing that we can do to make ourselves righteous before God. We come to God. The only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary. We can't make ourselves righteous and we can never atone for our evil deeds or sinful deeds by doing good because even when we're doing good, we're just doing what was expected of us.

Eight is Jesus died so you can sin and this is more for people who have accepted Christ and have had some kind of spiritual experience, but it's very shallow. They have an understanding of cheap grace, that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, past, present, and future. He forgives you of the penalty of sin. And if you sin again, he'll just keep forgiving you because that's his job so you can keep on living in sin. And this is a lie from the pit of hell. Romans 6:1 through 2, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means how can we who died in sin still live in it?

When Jesus saves us, he doesn't just save us from penalty of sin, he wants to save us from the very presence and power of sin and he does that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Nine is that you don't need the church. In our radical, individualistic society, this is a lot of people. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Personal meaning private, it's just me and Jesus and that's all I need. And again, yes but no, right? All you need for salvation is a relationship with Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ loves the church and gave himself for her and the church is the body of Christ. So if you want Christ, you cannot want to be part of the church, which is his body, which is the one whom he loves. It's his bride. That's number one.

Number two, Satan wants to pull us away from the church because by doing so, he pulls us away from the means of God for our growth and our health. We grow when we push one another in the faith when we edify one another, when we hold each other accountable. We need community. A lone soldier is a dead soldier, and at best, a useless soldier. And this brings us to 10, God doesn't have a mission for you. If Satan can't get you to be faithless, he'll do everything he possibly can to get you to be fruitless and useless. Where, yeah, we're secure in our salvation with the Lord, but we make zero impact for eternity. We make zero impact for the kingdom of God.

We just live for ourselves in a little waiting room until we go to heaven. And this isn't God's plan for us. God's plan for us once he gives us the Holy Spirit is to lock arms with brothers and sisters in a commitment to a church and further God's mission, build God's kingdom and God through us bears fruit. Finally, point three is that Jesus is the truth. This is how we counter the lies of the evil one. Second Corinthians 11:3, St. Paul says, I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

And I love the word here for sincere, it's a word that means sincerity, authenticity, but also the primary definition of this word is simplicity. It's haplótēs which means simplicity, meaning purity. This is the unadulterated form of faith, simplicity and pure devotion to Christ. This is the main thing of Christianity. This is the heart of Christianity, the main thing of Christianity is to keep the main thing the main thing. And this is what Satan does. Satan complicates everything including religion, including Christianity. And this is how he operates. It begins with a lie.

The lie is, "Well, because we're so complicated and life is so complicated. God is greater than us, so God has to be even more complicated. Greater in complication or complex." And this is the truth of scripture, that God is basically simple. And by simple I do not mean simplistic. It means that God is understandable. There are things about him that are absolutely clear, unadulterated, truth about God. And St. Paul says, I think Satan's pulling you away from the simplicity in Christ. The reason why he does that is because that's what transforms us and makes us effective.

Thomas à Kempis says, by two wings, man is lifted from the things of earth, simplicity and purity. The truly godly life as a simple life. And this is why the reformation was so important. The reformation looked at the Catholic church and said, "It's gotten way too complicated, let's get back to the scriptures. Let's get back to the gospel." And it simplified not only religion, but all of life. And what is the simplicity? Simplicity and purity in Christ. He's talking about a daily companionship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you sense the Christ is yours all day long? If you're in love, you know that feeling of being in love? My wife and I are coming up on 14 years of being in love. And you know the feeling of being in love of you wake up in the morning and first thought is like, "Still got it." Still got the little buzz and the first thing is you want to contact that person. You want to send a text, you want to phone call, send a meme just to brighten up their day, something. There's something there where even if you're far apart, there's this connection. That's what he's talking about. This fellowship. He's talking about the simplicity and purity and devotion to Christ.

A lot of Christians, they complicate this. By the way, this is what makes Mosaic Mosaic. Our values, are love Jesus and what? Simple. We're talking about this essential, the most important thing is our relationship with the Lord. Christianity isn't a creed, it's a relationship. And the danger for many Christians is you come and you start adding things to the relationship with the Lord. I need to grow in my faith therefore, I need another book. I need a course. I need a seminar. I need a conference. I need something else to supplement my faith because I don't feel like I'm growing. And the reason why we're not growing is because we're not deepening our relationship with the Lord, our fellowship with the Lord.
First Corinthians 1:9, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He is a living Lord, he's not dead. He's not just for Sundays, he's for every single moment of every single day he is with us. If you're a Christian, you're in Christ, you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ. You have access to Christ. This is why St. Paul says, for me to live is what? Christ. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I die, I just get more of Christ. Every single moment of every single day I have access to Christ.

Karl Barth was a grateful theologian, wrote tremendously effective studies, in particular on the book of Romans, revolutionized theology for decades. And he was at a conference at Princeton Seminary and he was asked the following question, what is the greatest theological thought that has ever crossed your mind? And people are ready for some kind of abstract answer that you don't even understand what he's talking about and this is what he said. He said the greatest theological thought that's ever crossed my mind, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

It does not get deeper than that. That's the essence, that's the simplicity of our devotion to Christ. It's easy to lose, especially in the midst of the business of our life. We get pulled away by lies. We get pulled away by pressures and anxiety of daily life. Then we get pulled away by sin, et cetera. Second Corinthians 11:4 he says, if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than we proclaim, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily. Just be careful.

Another Jesus, another sphere, another different gospel... And the message of St. Paul, the message of the Holy scripture, the message of Christ is very simple. It was that Jesus was crucified for our sins and he rose from the dead and the Holy Spirit is given to whomever believes. And anyone who accepts the gospel of Jesus Christ, who receives this through simple repentance and simple faith is reconciled with God, becomes a child of God, becomes a Christian. Simple, but it's not easy.

Repentance is simple, but repentance is extremely difficult for two reasons. Number one, because we like sin, sin feels good. Sin has an allure. And to die to sin, reject sin, that's painful. Number two, it's painful to admit that you have been wrong. It's painful to admit that you have been taken, that you have believed a lie, in particular, a lie about the most important fact of the universe. And there's something in our ego that would rather believe a lie than accept an uncomfortable truth, than accept the fact that God is God and God is in control and that we have to relinquish it and that we have to release it. But when we come to Christ, Christ gives us grace.

Christ gives us this balm for our souls to remove that pain and replace it with peace and comfort. Satan is and he is a liar, but he will not win. And how do we fight Satan? We fight Satan by holding on to Jesus Christ, he is our only power. He's our only path to victory. First John 3:8, the reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Hebrews 2:14, since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil.

Colossians 2:15, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Before I moved to Boston to plant Mosaic, I believed in Satan. After a decade of ministry, I really believed in Satan. And I really believed his lies are incredibly compelling. They're incredibly plausible, but they lead to death and destruction. And Jesus Christ said that you can know the truth and the truth will what? Will set you free. And the truth that he offers us isn't just an abstract theory. It's a person that we can have fellowship with.

So how do we fight just practically here at the very end? Number one, he wants to pull you away from your devotion to Christ, and he does it through lies. So fortify your mind with the Holy scriptures, fortify your mind with the truth. Romans 12:2, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect. Philippians 4:8, finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever's just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

And second Corinthians 10:4 and 5, I'll close with this. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh. I have divine power to destroy strongholds, destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Satan is a liar and Jesus is the truth. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the Holy scriptures, what a gift they are. And we feel Lord, that your word is powerful, that you would cut through the lies that are so plausible. And Lord I pray that you make us a people who are not outwitted by the enemy. I pray you make us a people who are not naive toward his schemes, will make us a people who know the truth and are transformed by the truth and give us the power of the Holy Spirit to live in a manner worthy of this truth. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

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Good morning and welcome again to Mosaic. We are beginning a new sermon series today that is going to take us through the season of lent all the way up to Easter and really excited about it. I usually go into these sermon series with a lot of excitement, but I am just upfront. This one is a little bit different. I'm excited, but it's a somber excitement. It's a very sober excitement. We have a very serious topic that for the next six weeks we're going to be looking at and what we're going to be focusing on throughout this series is the work of Satan and demons and how that plays a part in our lives and it's not a topic that we enter into lightly nor should we. A scripture frequently pulls back the curtain on physical reality and shows us that there is a spiritual realm and there is a spiritual war that is going on behind the scenes.

Ephesians six, Paul tells the church in Ephesus in verse 10, "Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." And so we've called this series Stratagem. That if we are to defend against the schemes of this enemy, we need to know who he is, what he wants, what he is capable of, what are his strategies, what are his tactics? What's his M.O.?

Jesus told his disciples, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That Jesus has a mission, he has a church, and that this church has an enemy and it's not one that we should take lightly. Over the next six weeks, we're going to be looking at some of the ways that scripture depicts this enemy. And so we see that Satan is sometimes depicted as the deceiver, as the tempter, as the accuser, as the divider, as the thief, as the murderer. And today we're going to start things off by looking at his primary title, which actually comes from his name itself, the name in Hebrew, sâtan or in Greek diabolos. It's this idea that Satan is our adversary.

Now, as we start just going to clear the air, acknowledge the elephant in the room, because I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you guys, you're thinking is that guy really going to stand up there this morning in front of a room of highly edumacated Bostonian's and talk about our old cleft foot friend, the devil? Yeah. Maybe we'll get to big foot in the Loch Ness Monster while we're at it. But no this is real. And I understand that a lot of us, especially from more secular or Western cultures, we come to this with a bit of skepticism. Now, others of you perhaps have come from cultures in other parts of the world where you are painfully aware of the physical and the spiritual reality of evil. That you've maybe had personal experiences with the demonic as some of you have maybe even come from cultures that have even an unhealthy preoccupation with Satan and demons. Where people live with anxiety and fear of the spiritual realm.

That really shows us that there's two dangers that we can come to as Christians when we begin talking about Satan and demons. On the one hand, we can overestimate their power and their influence. And so you have Christians who, they see a demon hiding under every rock that everything that goes wrong in their life is spiritual attack. Everything they do wrong, it's like, "Well, the devil made me do it." And that's not biblical or helpful. But on the other hand, we're tempted at times to underestimate the power in the presence, in the influence of Satan and demons, or maybe even to dismiss them to the category of myth and legend and scripture will not allow that either.

And so what does scripture actually say? That's what we're going to be scratching the surface on this morning, and looking at over the next several weeks. And if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up. We're going to be in 1st Peter chapter five primarily today. Looking at verse one through 11 we're going to begin our series looking at how Satan is our adversary and how he is actively... this is one of the ways that he is actively at work in the world today.

So 1st Peter 5:1, "So exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

Be sober-minded, be watchful, your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world and after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

Let's pray. God, we thank you for your Holy and infallible authoritative word for our lives. I pray today, Holy Spirit, that you would help us to see, to understand, to believe and to obey what you have to say to us. That you would use this word to shape us more into the image of Christ for the sake of your kingdom and glory. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Only have two points today, and the first point is pretty straight forward and it's simply this that we need to know our adversary. When I was in high school, I got really into Taekwondo, into kickboxing and I was always the smallest kid in class, but I was always also one of the fastest and most agile kids in class. And so I really picked the sport up really quickly. My friend and I, we would go and we would train like four or five nights a week. And I was really quick, I was really fast, I could also jump really high. And so my specialty, the thing that I poured the most time into perfecting was the spinning jump kick. I worked on this and actually, I got to the point where I could kick well over my head, six, seven feet in the air about as high as the instructor could hold the pad. And I was thinking about demonstrating that for you this morning, but this was like 21 years ago, I'll break a hip.

Anyways, loved it, got really involved and started entering tournaments. I remember the very first tournament that I ever fought in. It was a touch sparring tournament, which means you're not trying to hurt each other, you're just trying to make contact and score points. And because of that, there was no weight divisions. And I ended up in one of the rounds fighting against another guy who was actually, he was a police officer. He was much older, much, much bigger than me, but it really didn't matter because it was all about speed. It was just about scoring points and so I was just going to town. I was way ahead in the points and I don't know what was going through my head.

I was getting bored. I was like, "This is my moment to shine." I need to Jean-Claude Van Damme, this guy right in the side of the head, in front of everyone. Show everyone just how awesome I am." So I get ready, I square up, I take my step, I jump, I spin in, just perfectly execute the spinning jump kick. Now, here's some advice just in case you ever find yourself in a street fight on the main streets of Brooklyn, this is what you do. If someone comes at you with a spinning jump kick and this is what he did, you ready for it? You do this. They don't show you that in the movies, but if you just move your head like three or four inches, that's all you've got to do and they totally miss. And that's what I did. I totally missed. I land on the ground, my guard is down and he just side kicks me right in the gut and I fly back, literally like fly back out of the ring like 10 feet, so embarrassing.

Here's the point. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, doesn't matter if you're talking about kickboxing, boxing, warfare, sports, business, anything. You need to know your enemy, you need to take them seriously. You need to study the competition and anticipate their moves or you are likely to fail. And that's what we're doing in this series. We're trying to study the enemy so that we can anticipate his moves so that we can defend against his attacks. And now part of the problem is that there's just a lot of bad information, a lot of misinformation out there in our culture, even in spears of Christian culture, about who Satan is and about what he is capable of. So we're just going to begin by just taking a systematic look at what does the Bible say about Satan, about who he is, about where he came from, about what he wants and what he's capable of.

So first of all, who is he? It's important to understand that the Bible was not written to angels and demons, it wasn't written to the spiritual realm, it was written to us. And so the primary focus in scripture is us. It's our responsibility as human beings before God. So there's not a book of the Bible on introduction to Satan and demons. You're not going to find that but what you do find is you just find bits and pieces of information sprinkled in throughout the story of scripture. So, for example, who is Satan and where did he come from? Well, there's passages like 2nd Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6 that tell us that Satan and the demons were originally angels, right? Satan is not God's counterpart, he's not the yin to God's yang. He was an angel that God created, and in the beginning he was good. He was beautiful, he was holy and sinless.

But what these passages show us is that at some point in time between the end of creation, when God looks out and says everything was very good, between that point and the garden of Eden, where the serpent comes to Eve, somewhere in there, a faction of the angels fell under the leadership of Satan. They rebelled against God and they were cast out of heaven. You have passages like Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. These are passages that were prophetic passages and they were written about real earthly rulers who were prideful or rebellious toward God, and inevitably it was prophesying their fall. But when you read these passages, they're using heavenly angelic language and it's very clear that what's going on here is more than just what we see on the surface, that the authors, Isaiah and Ezekiel, the prophets were either using these stories to simultaneously teach us about the story of Satan and his fault, or at least comparing these earthly rulers to a story about Satan that the readers would have been familiar with.

So just for example, look at Isaiah 14:12. It's written concerning the King of Babylon, but this is what it says, it says, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn." Scripture frequently uses the imagery of stars as a metaphor for angelic beings and the day star, it's the last star to disappear from the sky in the morning when the sun comes up. So it's the most bright, it's the most glorious, the most powerful of the stars. And in this context it's talking about the most powerful and glorious of the angels. "How you've fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of the Dawn." Actually when that was translated into the Latin, Day Star is where we get the name of Lucifer.

"How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will rule over all the other angels. I will set my throne on high and sit on the mount of assembly. I'll have equal authority to God. I'll start running the heavenly staff meetings," so to speak. "I will sit in the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the Heights of the cloud. I will make myself like the Most High. I will make myself God." But you were brought down to Sheol, to hell, to the far reaches of the pit.

Ezekiel 28 is very similar language, angelic language concerning the King of Tyre and I think these passages they're meant to teach us on the one hand that there is a fearful judgment awaiting earthly rulers who defy God, who used their authority in rebellion to God and misused their positions to do evil. Now, I think these stories are also meant to show us that the fall of evil earthly rulers is merely an echo of this original fall of Satan and the demons. That becomes much more clear when we read Revelation chapter 12. Revelation 12:7 says, "Now a war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting back against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down." That ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

So we see that the story behind perhaps these other stories of the King of Babylon, the King of Tyre is a true story. It's something that actually happened, that there was a rebellion in heaven that war broke out, that Satan and the demons were cast down in and that brings us to Revelation 12:12, "And therefore rejoice, Oh heavens and you who dwell in them for the Dragon's been cast down. But woe to you Oh, earth and sea for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows his time is short." That sounds a lot like 1st Peter five, your enemy prowls around like a roaring lion in his wrath looking for someone to devour.

And really I think that is what brings us to Genesis chapter three. That Satan falls, he's cast out of heaven, he fails to take God's throne in heaven. So he sets up a fraudulent throne on earth. He comes to Adam and Eve in the garden, and what does he do? He tempts them. He said, "You don't really believe that God is good, do you? You don't really trust him, right? I mean, he just wants to control you. He knows that if you break his commandments, that you'll actually be set free. You'll be like him, you'll become autonomous. You'll be a law to yourself. Independent. So do what? So join my rebellion, follow in my footsteps." And they do.

Now the irony of Eden is that Adam and Eve had been created in the image and likeness of God and yet Satan convinces them God's likeness is not enough. You need to be completely like God. You need to be fully a lot here. You need to be independent from him, but then when they fall for that deception, they don't find the autonomy that Satan was promising them. Instead, what they find is that now instead of being under God's good, gracious, loving rule in paradise, they come under a curse. They're cast out of Eden and they come under the harsh tyrannical rule of Satan's sin and death. See, Satan's sin was pride in his own glory and his primary agenda today is to kill and to steal and to destroy anything that would bring glory or honor to God. Where he failed in heaven at taking God's crown, he's in a sense set up a throne here on earth and that sounds strange, but you actually see this in scripture.

In revelation two, Jesus is talking to the church and he says, "I know where you dwell, where the throne of Satan is." If you read through the book of revelation, the symbol of a throne, anytime you see a throne in heaven, it's symbolic of God's good and sovereign rule that anytime you see a throne on earth, it's symbolic of Satan's fraudulent tyrannical rule. Satan is now rebelliously ruling the earth. And so we see in the book of job where Satan comes into the heavenly council and they ask him, "Where have you been?" And Satan is like, "You know, just walking around like I own the place." Like to and fro wherever I want to go, all over the face of the earth. Everyone down there bows to me." And God says, "Well, have you considered job?"

2nd Corinthians four, Paul calls Satan the God of this world. Ephesians two, calls him the Prince of the power of the air. Jesus in John chapter 12, John chapter 14, John chapter 16 refers to Satan as the ruler of this world. And we just looked at this a week or two ago, and 1st John five, the apostle John says, "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." That he's called the God of this world. Not in the sense that he's the God of creation, but in the sense that he is ruling over every person, every place, everything that does not bow before God and worship and confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, that Jesus is the true and rightful King. And this shouldn't surprise us, right? Because when you look out at the world around us, are you amazed at just how much of the kingdom of Jesus you see?

Like everywhere you look, it's just like everybody's worshiping Jesus, everybody's humble, everybody's loving their neighbors. No, you see pain, you see perversion, you see chaos, destruction, rebellion. You see the chief virtue of Satan's kingdom, which is pride, everywhere you look. Now, Satan is obviously not God or equal to God in any way, but when Jesus calls him the God of this world, we know what he's talking about. So let's move now from talking about just the world and people in general. Let's talk about the Christians in the church specifically because this is who Peter's is writing to and it's who he's talking about. Peter commands us to be sober-minded and alert to that we need to be aware of spiritual reality and we need to not let our guard down. Why? Because our enemy wants to kill, steal and destroy anything that would bring glory to God. And there are a few things that do that more than his children. So he wants to take us out. Stay with me because I know the first part of the sermon is pretty dark.

And Peter's painting a frightening picture. There's a light coming at the end of the tunnel, but we need to understand the fear of being out and you hear a lion roaring on the prowl but you don't know exactly where it is that it's hunting you down ready to strike. Most of us might have a hard time relating to this, but the closest that I've ever come was one time in high school my family had taken... we were on vacation at a cabin in a Lake in Northern Wisconsin and I was walking through the grounds. I came around the corner of a building where the dumpsters were, and about feet in front of me was a black bear and I just shipped back around the corner and just sprinted as fast as I could in the other direction. I don't want to mess with that. The closest thing we have to that here in, I don't know, is probably the turkeys in Brookline. They're pretty fearsome if you've ever gotten...

Actually this happened a couple of years ago, but I had dropped Owen off at daycare. I was driving home going down Tappan Street in Brookline and I see this high school kid come over the hill and he's just like booking it, running for his life, full sprint about 10 feet behind him and there's massive turkeys. Like fluffed up, chasing him down out for blood. Satan's not a turkey, he's a lion. He's hungry, he's fearsome, he's ferocious. He's roaring. He's looking for someone to devour. Now, here's what we need to know. There are two primary categories of tactics that he uses to attack the children of God as our adversary. And the first is the tactic of stealth. We're going to talk about this in a few weeks. I'm not going to talk about a whole lot now, but sometimes he comes in stealth, concealed, hidden as a serpent. He comes, scripture tells us, as an angel of light, as a Wolf in sheep's clothing, he comes and he seems so harmless. He might even seem good, but he's aiming to tempt and to deceive and to manipulate.

So Satan will use stealth. But here Peter shows us the other tactic, which is the tactic of terror. The Satan is a roaring lion and he wants to tear, a psychological warfare. Or you hear stories of Alexander the great and would ride into battle with war elephants to intimidate the enemy. I heard stories that he would actually have his blacksmiths make these massive suits of armor that were fitted for giant men. For men like eight, nine feet tall and he didn't have anyone that large in his ranks. But what he would do is when they would abandon a camp, they would leave these behind so that if an enemy were pursuing them, they'd come up on their camp and they'd find these massive suits of armor and they'd be demoralized, they'd be terrified of, "Oh, these guys has giants." And he would through this, win the battle before it even began. Satan uses this. He wants to demoralize the children of God. And the way he does this, the roars that he uses are those of suffering and persecution.

Peter talks about that here. And he will use the threat of physical harm for the purpose of doing spiritual harm, to demoralize us, to scare us out of the fight, to scare us away from the battle. So suffering. Now, this includes some of the more bizarre stuff that you think about like demonic affliction, demonic oppression, even demonic possession, nightmares, night terrors. Other things like unexplained physical or mental illness, abuse, alcoholism, compulsive lying, drug addiction, idolatry, death, calamity, disaster. Scripture at times, attributes all of these things to the work of Satan and demons. Now we've got to be careful because scripture doesn't always attribute all of these things to the work of Satan and demons. Sometimes there are other causes.

Primarily you think about like our own fallen bodies. Sometimes what appears to be a physical or a mental illness, it could be demonic and need spiritual attention or it could be physical and need medical attention or it could be both. You need to be wise. You need to be discerning, suffering caused by our fallen body. Sometimes it's caused by our fallen flesh, by our sinful nature that we as human beings are perfectly capable of sinning and doing evil without any help from Satan or demons. Yet 2nd Timothy 2:26, says that Satan can capture people to do his will. It could be our fallen bodies, could be our fallen flesh, it could be just living in a fallen world that creation is fallen, it's groaning and sometimes suffering happens and we don't know why.

And so we should be careful not to attribute every odd or evil thing to the work of the demonic, but we should also be careful not to write that off as a possibility because it doesn't matter where that suffering is coming from. Satan can still try to use it against us and what he wants to do is he wants to pull us away from God. He wants to pull us away from God's mission so that we're not abiding in Christ. Satan also uses persecution. Now, when you study the New Testament, and especially when you read through the book of Revelation, what you see is that there's three primary categories of persecution that the enemy uses against the church. There's social persecution, there's economic persecution, and there's physical persecution.

And so social persecution is, we're talking about when Jesus says, "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven." That if I am living my life as a Christian and if people find out, they're going to mock me, they're going to ridicule me, they're going to exclude me, they're going to slander me, they're going to label me as this or that, and they're going to destroy my reputation. Satan will use social persecution to destroy my reputation.

The second is economic persecution. You read in the book of Revelation that one of the things that the church was facing is that if you wanted to be a Christian business owner and participate in the marketplace, that in some cities they would require you to join their trade guilds and in order to be part of these guilds, you needed to participate in their idolatrous ceremonies to their patron deities. And so Christians had a choice. I can compromise my faith and my integrity in order to keep my business or I can be faithful to Jesus and lose and risk being pushed out of the marketplace, being not allowed where they would destroy my business. This happens in our country still today.

It's economic persecution and then the third is the one we think of most often, which is physical persecution that if I followed Jesus, if I'm truly faithful to him, then people are going to try to harm me or my family. Perhaps even wicked systems of government will seek to have us silenced, arrested, or even killed. Now, this is not one that we face much where we live today, but it's one that's faced by many of our brothers and sisters around the globe even right now. Now this is really important. This is profound. Peter's point is not, "Hey, you need to watch out. You need to be alert so that you can avoid the persecution of the enemy." That's not what he's talking about. He's saying, Satan can destroy your reputation and he can destroy your business or your bank account and he can even destroy your body, but he has no claim on your soul.

So don't lose heart, don't back down, don't compromise. That what he really wants to do is not just to harm us, but to terrorize us and to coerce us into compromising our integrity and denying our faith. That's what he's after. And so there's more at stake in the spiritual realm than even what we see going on in the physical realm. And Peter's trying to help us understand, and he's trying to help a church that's facing this understand. It would be better for you and more blessed for you to die as a faithful martyr for the name of Jesus Christ, than to back down from this terror and compromise.
Revelation 12:10 says that the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. You see, we as Christians, we say that we trust Jesus and we say that we trust that he is going to work ultimately all things together for our good and that even in death he is going to raise us up and Satan wants to prove us liars. But you don't really believe that. This is crazy passage in Matthew chapter 10, Jesus is talking to his disciples in verse 16 and he says, "Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. So be wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

Beware of men for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake to bear witness before them and the Gentiles." And verse 28, "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but even the hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not therefore, you are more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men I will acknowledge before my father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my father who is in heaven."

This is one of the most terrifying, encouraging, scary, comforting passages in the whole Bible. But the point is, God loves you. Don't underestimate how much your father loves you. He's numbered the hairs on your head and He is strong. Do not underestimate the power of His sovereignty to work all things together for your good. So love God< Fear Him and you need not fear anything else. 1st John 4:4 says, "Little children, you are from God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." And Peter tells us in our passage today, "Resist him, therefore firm in your faith knowing that the same kinds of sufferings are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace who's called you to His eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen."

That there's nothing Satan can do that God cannot redeem. There's nothing Satan can steal that God cannot return. There's nothing he can destroy that God cannot renew. There's nothing he possesses that God cannot revoke and there's nothing he can kill that God cannot resurrect. Satan's greatest act of defiance and evil was the murder of Jesus Christ in the cross. And yet God in His sovereignty, before the foundation of the earth had ordained that this would be the very means by which he would be most glorified and bring about the redemption of his children. Using Satan against himself. And what we see is that when we look at scripture, we as Christians, we are not called to fight for victory and we are called to stand in the victory of Christ, that the war's already been won and what we need to do now is we need to hold our ground, stand firm and spread the word that the rightful King is coming, that he's offering amnesty to all who would repent and put their faith in him before he does.

So that's like a little bit of the theological framework for the spiritual warfare, and now with that as the backdrop, we begin to see that Peter in our passage today just gives us some super practical instruction for what we need to do as Christians in order to stand firm in this battle. And so we need to know our adversary and point to is we need to know our army. I'm just going to read the first part of our passage again, and Peter says, "So I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed.

Shepherd the flock of God that is among you exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly. Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock and when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders, clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

As I was studying this, I mean, I've read this text so many times, I've studied it before. For some reason I'd missed something hugely important. When we talk about spiritual warfare, we often talk about what we need to do individually as Christians because there are things that we need to do individually as Christians, we each need to, as Ephesians Chapter six tells us, "Put on the full armor of God." Ephesians chapter six it says, "Put on the belt of truth." Right? If you're going to defend against the lies of the enemy, you need to know the truth, you need to abide in the truth, you need to love the truth. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. That personal righteousness doesn't save us, but it does give us protection. That when we're walking in unrepentant sin, we actually give the enemy a foothold in our lives.

It's like we have holes in our armor, and so we need to pursue personal righteousness. Now on the other hand, we're not saved by own righteousness, and so when we mess up, when we fail, when we sin, we rest in the righteousness of Christ that we are saved by grace through faith. He says, put on the shoes of the readiness of the gospel. Be ready to share the gospel. If you're not doing this, then you're not even on the battlefield. The enemy's not... He's already defeated you. The helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and wield the power of prayer continuously for yourselves and for your fellow Christians. We all have a personal responsibility individually to be doing these things as Christians. We also have a personal responsibility though, to not be doing these things alone.

And what Peter shows us is that a soldier without an army and without a commander is like a sheep without a shepherd in a flock and there is a lion on the prowl waiting for just such an opportunity for someone to devour. We need to be soldiers and we need to be sheep. We need to stand firm in the humility that we can't fight this battle by our own strength or on our own. to stand any chance against this line, we need to stay with the flock under the mighty hand of the shepherd. The practical application here, it might be surprising, but it's very clear. We need to be members of a church. We need to be healthy members of a healthy local church. I would say here at Mosaic what that means, you need to be in a community group. You need to be serving with fellow Christians. You need to be building relationships with people who are going to know you and care for you and holds you accountable and encourage you to fight the good fight.

Peter gives some practical applications. First of all, for pastors in the local church. He says, "Pastors, you need to humble yourselves under the authority of Jesus." It's not your church, it's his church. He's the chief shepherd. And so you need to lead the church with a gentle Christ like authority. Don't be passive and neglect your duties and don't be domineering or aggressive and domineer God's people, but steward the authority that you have been given with reverence to Christ leading by example, in order to equip the saints. In order to train, equip, to prepare the soldiers for battle.

In the same way Peter calls church members to humble themselves by submitting to their pastors oversight that they are His ordained means of leading and feeding and protecting his flock, the church. And then to everyone, he says, "Clothe yourselves in humility toward one another and humbly stand under the mighty hand of God." Under the hand of our chief shepherd Jesus Christ. Now, at first that might not seem terribly encouraging because when I think of a shepherd versus a lion, in my mind the lion has the upper hand. There's this epic dialogue in 1st Samuel where King David, when he's a boy, goes out to visit his brothers on the battlefield and when he gets there, everybody is cowering in fear because the Philistines have this giant Goliath they're all terrified of. And Peter's like, "Let me hurt him. I'm going to take them out. Let me go."

And King Saul's like, "No, you're just a boy. He's a massive brute of a man. He's going to eat you alive. And what does David say? In 1st Samuel 17:24, David says to King Saul, listen, "Your servant used to keep sheep for his father and when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and I struck him and I killed him. And your servant has struck down both lions and bears and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them of he's defied the armies of the living God." My first thought when I read this is modern men, we've got some work to do. I've barely killed any lions with my bare hands. And secondly, if a shepherd boy with just an audacious faith can do that, how much more confidence should we have in the object of his faith, which is the mighty hand of God, the good shepherd Jesus Christ.

See, whatever evil may come our way, be it temptation, be it spiritual attack, be it persecution, be it suffering. Romans 8:38, "Neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Later in his life, King David wrote what is arguably the most famous song in scripture, maybe one of the most famous passages in scripture. Psalm 23 and he says that, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

John 10 Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd." The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. And verse 27 he says, "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. 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." Peter says, "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of this God and after you have suffered a little while," verse 10, "The God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you."

The culture of Satan's kingdom is one of pride, anxiety, fear, darkness, and ultimately defeat. Christ Kingdom is one of humility, confidence, victory and light. Colossians 1:13 tells us that He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son and whom we have redemption, forgiveness of sins." And James 4:6 says, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you." We're going to do that today as we celebrate communion together. This is a time where we as the church of Christ, we draw near to Him as we remember that the bread represents his body that was broken and given for us. The blood represents his blood that was poured out on the cross so that we could be forgiven.

And if you're new to Mosaic, the way we do communion here is the ushers are going to pass out the elements and you can take those as they go by and pass them down the row. Hold on to them once we've all received them. We're going to take communion together. And if you're here today and you're a Christian, we would welcome you to celebrate communion with us. If you're here today and you're not a Christian, we're really glad that you're with us this morning. We would ask that you refrain from participating in communion. It's nothing magical about this. It's not going to do anything for you. It's a sign for Christ in his church, but if you've made the decision today to put your faith in Jesus Christ, then we would welcome you to come, to draw near to Him and to join us as we celebrate our communion right now.

So I'm going to pray and then the ushers are going to hand out the elements. We'll just take some time to pray and meditate individually and once everybody's received it, I'll come back up here and we'll take communion together. So let's pray. Father, your word tells us that while we were dead in our trespasses in slaves to Satan's sin and death, that you made us alive with Christ. You forgive our sins. You canceled the record of debt that stood against us by nailing it to the cross and that Jesus, through your death and resurrection, you have disarmed our spiritual enemy.

You've put Satan and demons to open shame and triumphed over them on your cross, and we thank you that the war has been won. We ask that you give us faith to believe it, to stand firm in the battle as we await your return unflinching in our faith, even as our enemy roars against us. God give us the confidence to know that you alone are sovereign and to share the good news that the true rightful King Jesus Christ has come. He is coming again, and when He does, He will come with total victory and put an end to these powers of darkness once and for all. We thank you, we praise you for this in Jesus name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com

Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane and Pastor Andy. And if you're new, if you're visiting, welcome, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you through the connection card and the worship guide or the connection card in the app that you can download in the app store.

If you fill out the physical connection card, please do so legibly and then you can either toss it in the offering basket after or redeem it at the welcome center for a gift. It's also a great opportunity if you have any prayer requests, list those there or if you today have made a decision to follow Christ or recommit your life to Christ, or if you're interested in baptism, please let us know there.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Holy word? Oh great God of the universe, Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It is so good to be in your presence. We pray Lord that you today come into this place. You're already here, but in a powerful, tangible, palpable way. Come and speak to us. Lord there's nothing better than being in your presence when our souls glorify you and are satisfied by you.

Lord Jesus we thank you for revealing the way that we can be reconciled with you. We thank you for your sacrifice Jesus. We thank you that you, the God of the universe came, and you came into history into a time and place and space and you came as a human being. Factually, you are here. Historically, you are here and you prove to us the way of God by living the perfect life, dying the death that we deserved to die and being resurrected on the third day. We thank you Lord.

We thank you that there were eyewitnesses and we thank you that you give us testimony that's objective and testimony that's subjective by the power of the Spirit, so we pray Holy spirit come. And if there's anyone here who is not yet a Christian, I pray, give them the gift of faith. Open the eyes of their heart to see you and to behold how great it is to be in the presence of God, to be a child of God. How great you are.

Lord bless our time, the Holy Scriptures, we pray all this in Christ's Holy name. Amen. Today we're finishing our sermon series through 1 John that we've been calling meno from the Greek, which means to abide, to remain in. This is how we walk in the presence of the Lord. This is how we grow. Today is our eighth week finishing off this series. Next week, we're beginning a new series that we are calling Stratagem Know Thy Enemy where we'll talk about the different roles of Satan and the different attack plan strategies that he has to pull us away.

Today, the title of the sermon is faith and facts. Benjamin Franklin said, “Nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Hopefully you've done your taxes. Deadline's coming up, sorry for the reminder. Of course, a wise man like Ben Franklin knew that there were other certainties in life and we as Christians know that there are many other certainties and of spiritual truth. We as Christians can say wholeheartedly, we know. We know who God is, we know God, we know the way to God.

We know the will of God and this is how John wants us to talk about faith, as knowing that this is true. He uses the word ‘know' 39 times and the Epistle uses it eight times in our text today in 1 John 5:6-21. Now, to say we know things of God is extremely counter-cultural, and might be strange to you. I had a conversation a few weeks back when a young lady approached me after a service and she's like, “You talk about this Christianity thing as if it's true.” “Well, yes.” “No, no, no, fact true not faith, true.”

“Yes, I believe that this is fact true.” Now, this is really fascinating. David Hume a long time ago, came up with this distinction, this faith fact distinction that there's truth when it comes to fact and there's truth when it comes to faith, and a lot of people in our culture, this is how we operate. That there's knowledge, fact which is objective. You can prove it in a lab. Objects fall, hot air rises, the earth revolves around the sun, facts.

And then there's faith truth, which is subjective. It's your opinions only. It might be meaningful to you, might not be to someone else. It could be part of your faith. Tradition has nothing to do with objective reality, and many people today are willing to believe about objective truth, fact truth when it comes to science or math, engineering, maybe history and that's up for debate. Definitely not. Faith, religion, ethics, morality.

Hardly anyone is consistent with this worldview and those who are fully consistent, those who have been historically consistent with this worldview were moral monsters, like Hitler or Stalin. Let me just give you a thought experiment. Human life is valuable, fact or faith? Human rights are real because humans have equal dignity, value and worth, fact or faith? Sexual trafficking is evil, diabolical evil, fact or faith? Love is of supreme importance, fact or faith?

There is true meaning and purpose in life, fact or faith? It's wrong for me to hit you, fact or faith? Fact, fact, don't hit me. Do you have this distinction in your mind of faith truth and fact truth? If so, why? Is that presupposition true or have you just believed in it? And this is something that we're going to talk about today in 1 John 5… the whole text of six through 21. I'm going to read six through 12 here and then I'm going to give you five certainties that you can build your life on. Five bedrocks for your faith, a substantiated faith.

Would you look at the text with me? Today, we are in 1 John 5:6, “This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood and these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.
For this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. 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. 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.”

This is the reading of God's Holy inerrant infallible authoritative word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. What can we know for sure, five things from this text? First, Jesus is God. Second, believers have eternal life. Third, God answers prayers. Fourth, Christians do not practice sin and finally, the Christian life is real life. It is reality. First of all, Jesus is God.

Here in verse six, John talks about three things that testify to the veracity, the historicity of Jesus as God. He came by water and blood. That's Jesus Christ, and not only by water only but by the water and the blood and the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is true, for there are three that testify, the spirit, the water and the blood and these three agree. What's he talking about?

In Jewish thought, to prove something in a court of law, you need to have at least two, preferably three testimonies, witnesses, and John brings forth the testimony of three witnesses, water, blood, and the Spirit. By water, what does he mean? He means the baptism of Jesus Christ. That Jesus did not have to get baptized because there was sin in Him. Jesus was baptized in order to identify with us.

At the start of His ministry, the blood is Jesus dying on a cross for our sins, bearing the penalty that we deserve for our law-breaking. That's the blood. He poured out His blood to cleanse us. That's at the end of His public ministry. The water and blood, two book ends of His public ministry and the Spirit was there at both of them. Jesus was getting baptized. The Holy Spirit comes down like a dove upon Him, to anoint him for the ministry.

As Jesus was being crucified, the Holy Spirit was right there. The sky darkened, the earthquake. People were resurrected, came from their graves and the veil in the Holy of Holies was torn from the top to bottom. The Spirit's witness was then confirmed in the resurrection of Christ, historical, factual resurrection. Over 500 people witnessed. Then Jesus was on earth for another 40 days showing Himself bodily resurrected.

Then Jesus ascends. The Holy Spirit descends again to testify the veracity that this is all fact. Upon the church on the day of Pentecost further affirms that witness through the miracles of the apostles finally inspiring the apostles to write the documents of the New Testament, and we have that witness in the Holy scriptures. What John is saying is, God has given us enough to believe.

There's enough factual evidence for those who have an open heart to see it, and this is a really important caveat because unless you're coming to God willingly and humbly and prayerfully, openly asking God, “Please reveal yourself to me.” With a searching heart, asking God to open the eyes of… your eyes to His truth. Unless you do that, God does not reveal Himself because God is not in the business of giving proof to proud sinners.

If you come to God as a proud skeptic and say, “God reveal yourself on my terms,” you will walk away with nothing. If you come to God with preconceived notions of what, “This is the savior I'm looking for. This is the God that I'm willing to submit to,” you're actually placing yourself over God, over His authority and Jesus Christ is not a savior that fits every single one of our whims and desires. He's got enough evidence.

For those who are looking, water, blood and the Spirit. Verse nine, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater for this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His son.” People often tell me, “I wish I had your faith. You've got so much faith. I wish I had your faith.” And my response is always, “Everybody's got faith.” The question is, what are you believing? What are you trusting in?

We can't but live in this world, survive in this world without exercising faith. Every single time you go to a doctor, you're exercising faith. Every time you go to a pharmacist, you're exercising faith. Anytime you order food at a restaurant, you're exercising faith. Anytime you get an Uber, you're exercising faith. Every time you go get on an airplane, every single day. Anytime you drive in Boston, you got to be a believer.

How do you not believe that the people next to you aren't going to merge into your lane? This is what He's saying. If you trust people, if you trust men, then why can't we trust God who is all truth? Verse 10, “Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. 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.”

He's not just saying, “Do you believe in God?” He's saying, “Do you believe God?” And if you don't believe God, he's saying that's tantamount to calling God a liar. To not trust God is to make him a liar and if God is a liar then nothing is certain. And this is fascinating, because he doesn't talk about unbelief as a misfortune to be pitied. “Oh, woe is me. I don't believe.” He talks about unbelief as a sin to be deplored and repented of.

Because to not believe in a God who is truth, who speaks only truth, is to ascribe falsehood to God. He's saying, “Repent of your unbelief. Repent of your audacity of calling the God of truth a liar. Receive His truth, receive His grace and as you do, you have a sure foundation of your faith.” And he says, “You have a testimony in yourself.” In the Christian faith, there's the objective truth, objective proof of God.

It's in the scriptures, it's in the archeological evidence, it's in history. He says, “But then you also have the subjective internal testimony of self-authenticating of the Holy Spirit that says, “Yes, yes. Deep down inside, I know that this is true. I know that God is Holy. I'm a sinner and Jesus Christ is the only way for me to be reconciled with God. I know this, with every fiber of my being, I know that Jesus is God.”

Second of all, “Believers have eternal life.” That's verse 11 and this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life. This life is in His son. God gives eternal life as a gift. There's nothing you can do to earn it. It's not about effort. It's not about living a good life. It's a gift. Just receive that gift by grace through faith, and we have that present possession and we already have eternal life, and the life doesn't come from Christ. It is in Christ.

That's why it's so important to abide in Christ, to walk in Him, remain in Him, and this is really the greatest gift that Christianity offers, that God offers as His son Jesus Christ. That you can walk in His presence by the power of the spirit. And if you don't have Him, you don't have life. You don't have eternal life. If you don't have Christ, you don't have eternal life. If you say, “Well, I have a connection with God, I have a connection with Allah, I have a connection with the spiritual realm,” if you don't have Christ, you don't have eternal life.

Christianity is Christ. All of God's promises are yes in Him. All that God offers us, He offers us in Christ. Verse 12 and 13, “Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son does not have life. 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.” Are you going to heaven? Lots of people who identify as Christians answer by saying, “I hope so. I hope I've done enough. I've hoped that I've done more good than bad.”

That's not Christianity. That's not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ offers us assurance is security in our salvation, ultimate security. He doesn't want you to say, “I hope so.” He wants me to say, “I know. I know so, not because of what I've done but because of what Christ has done and I'm in Him. I trust Him. I love Him. I follow Him.” Every single person alive is looking for that place of comfort and security.

And that primal drive is why many people pursue sin because they're looking for that one place where I'm fully known and fully loved, comfort and security. We're looking for that place. Thought experiment. What is your favorite place in the world? Currently, not just historically. Your favorite place in the world, the place where you feel most secure and most comfortable. What is that place?

For me, it's being at home, and not just being at home, in a very particular spot at home. The left side of my bed, under the blankets. So much do I love this one position that there's a dent in the mattress that perfectly fits my whole body, and under the blanket from IKEA, the very warm one. In that one spot, I feel comfort. I feel security. I've tested other beds in the world. You travel, hotels. Airbnb isn't nothing. Every time I'm in a place I'm like, “I wish I was home. I wish I was home.” Every single time.

We're all looking for that comfort. Whatever your places, we're looking for that comfort and that security. We're all searching for it. And this security is utterly unique to Christianity that in the hands of God, you have ultimate security. You have eternal life. Most philosophies, religions, they reject absolute security, that it's impossible. Islam, there's no assurance of paradise in the Quran.

Even Muhammad himself had dark dreams about judgment day. You hope for the best, but who knows? None of the Eastern faiths offer this. Secularism has no answers. Nothing in the face of death, just helpless. Even certain Christian faiths, Catholicism, Russian orthodoxy, even Armenian evangelicalism, who knows? You might lose your salvation.

He says, “No, you already have eternal life. You are in the hands of God and nothing will pluck you out of the hands of God because your name is graven on his hands because of the work of Christ.” For Christians, there is eternal life. Third, we know, we can be certain that God answers prayers. Verse 14, “And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him.”

Jesus in His earthly ministry, He helped people all the time. People would come and He would help earthly fathers help their children. Does the heavenly father help? Does Jesus still help? And he's said here, “Through our prayer, we come and according to God's will, God responds.” And I love how He talks about faith and prayer in the context of confidence. Prayer for Him isn't ritual. It's not obligation. It's not investment. You give a little to God and then God will give back to you.

It's a confident conversation between a child and a father. Very few people can wake me up at any moment of the day. Very few people could do it. Very few people have the privilege to do that. My kids can do that. They need help. They come to me. It's that confidence of if I go to my Father, my heavenly Father, any time that He will answer. It's genuine, personal, emotional, practical, it's confident conversation with God and you see how emotive, how viscerally motive prayer is in the scriptures.

Jacob wrestles with the Lord all night, is holding onto Him and says, “I'm not letting you go until you give me what I ask.” In the Psalms, you see an outpouring of emotion, personal appeals, crying out to God, rending their hearts before God. Jesus tells parables and is like, “This how you pray.” There's a guy that goes to his neighbor in the middle of night because he had a guest come. You didn't have any food to give him.

He goes to his neighbor and wakes him up, wakes up his whole household and says, “I'm not leaving until you give me some bread.” And Jesus said, “I want you to pray like that. I want you to pray with that tenacity, the tenacity of a widow who keeps pestering a judge, “Give me what I long for. I long for justice.” He says, “Pray like the tax collector who stands before the presence of God in the temple and says, “Please Lord, forgive me for I am a sinner.”

Honest heartfelt prayers, like the Lord and the Garden Gethsemane. The anxiety and the pressure of what is to come. He's going to the cross about the sip from… Drink down to the dregs, the cup of God's wrath, and He says, “If it's your will, let this cup pass from me, but it's not my will. Yours be done.” Here says that, “The Lord hears our prayers. When we ask, He hears our prayers,” but He hears everything. God is on mission. Why even tell us that? Because for God to hear a prayer is to answer it.

And of course, there are conditions to our prayers being answered. For example, unconfessed sin is a serious block to answered prayer. Obstacle. Psalm 66:18, “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” Dear Christian, how many of your prayers are not answered because you cherish sin? Is there sin in your heart that you're cherishing? Sinful inclinations, temptations that are in your heart.

Perhaps you're not indulging in the acts, but they're in your heart and says, “That right there, cherishing that iniquity is an obstacle.” There should be a pattern in your life, dear Christian, where you can say, “Yes, I look back at my life, I can see that the Lord answered here, and He answered here and He answered here. He's proven Himself to be faithful and even when He said no, it's to say yes to something better.”

For married couples, conflict in a marriage can hinder prayers. This is 1 Peter 3:7, “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel.” By vessel, the imagery is between the different types of vessels in the household, and he's saying, “Men are made out of clay and women are much nicer porcelain.” That's what we'll go with.

He says, “So there's got to be honor. Husbands, are you honoring your wives?” He says, “If not, they are heirs with you in the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered.” If there's conflict in your relationship, that conflict keeps the prayers from being answered. If there is conflict, husbands, wives, don't let the sun set on your anger. Reconcile and pray together, and just Christians in general, conflict gets in the way of prayers.

Matthew 5:23 through 24 so, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.” “Oh, my prayers' not being answered. I'm asking, I'm asking, the Lord's not giving to me.” Is there sin? Is there conflict in my closest relationship? Is there conflict between me and another Christian?

If so, repent, reconcile and seek peace. And then unless a believer's abiding in Christ in love and obedience, prayers aren't answered, this John 15:7, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.” Do you abide in the presence of Christ? Do you seek Him through scripture, significant times of scripture, meditation and prayer, speaking to God, pouring your heart out to God, seeking to live according to His commandments? That's what abiding means, and everything will be done according to God's will.

And this condition, I've always thought it's like… It's weird that the Lord does this. Ask whatever you want, according to my will. It's as if one nullifies the other and it's like, “Great. Why even ask? The Lord's going to do anything that He wants, but one of the things that we need to know is that the Lord predestines the end, but He also predestines the means of how the end comes to pass.

If He has a will and you're like, “Yes, God, you're sovereign.” But His will is also that we pray. He says, “I want you to pray,” because He understands that our greatest need isn't just for our needs to be met. Our greatest need is to be in the presence of God. Jesus, what were His physical needs when He was on earth? Yet He's God, but He spent significant amounts of time in prayer because He needed the Father. He relied on the Father.

And according to the will, what happens when we pray is our will begins to align with God's will. There's a unity in our wills, so prayer doesn't just move the hand of God. It shapes our hearts. The Lord Jesus, He taught us to pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. We're not asking, “Lord, let my will be done in heaven.” I'm asking, “Lord, let your will be done on earth.”

Now, the question is, what about unanswered prayers? Moses prayed to enter the Promised Land. God said, “Stop praying. Stop asking for that. You're not getting it.” Jeremiah prays that God takes away the judgment on Judah and God says, “Stop. No, stop praying that.” Jesus in the Garden Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me, let thy will be done.” Paul asking for the removal of the thorn in the flesh, three times God says, “No, because my strength is made manifest in weakness.”

We need to understand that God's will is infinitely better than our will. When He says, “Ask whatever you want, I'll give it to you,” He's not relinquishing control of the universe. He's still in control. What He's saying is that, “My will is better than your will.” Often our will is very shortsighted, because our goal is our happiness. God's goal for us is so much greater than our temporary happiness.

It's our holiness, and sometimes He's willing to sacrifice our short term happiness for our long-term holiness, which will lead to greater amount of joy and happiness. For example, when have you ever asked for a thorn in the flesh? When have you ever asked for trials? “Lord send me trials,” because James said that, “When you meet trials of various kinds, count it as joy.”

When's the last time you said, “Lord, send me suffering. Lord, send me afflictions.” And yet the Lord knows we are not going to ask that, but sometimes that's what it takes to soften our hearts, to build our faith, to deepen our humility. The reason why the Lord sent Paul the thorn in the flesh was because Paul got a glimpse of heaven, and then he comes down. He has this incredible transcend spiritual experience.

Now, what could that potentially do to a person? It could potentially puff him up with pride. “I'm so much better than all of you,” and the Lord says, “Let me just remind you. You are chief of sinners.” His will is the one that we can count on as being universally always best for us. His will alone is invariably better and advances our true interests like nothing else. It's just like in a relationship with kids.

My youngest daughter is two years and nine months, Milana. She loves to eat, so good at eating. She's a great eater. That's a spiritual gift. If she comes to me and she says, “Daddy, can I have a third slice of cake?” Honestly, if mom's not there, I'm like, “Yes, okay." Now, because girls, first of all, so hard to say no to because it's so cute. Second of all, I don't want to deal with the drama. I just don't.

As I say no, I do it with a smile and I do it in the spirit of saying yes. “No? Because this is the best thing for you. You don't understand now, but you will. You're going to thank me, long-term. I'm going to save you from so much.” You know what I'm saying? He says no because He's got a greater yes for us. That's what John is saying and also there are some times where we just don't know His will.

It feels like He's impressed upon our hearts. “Ask for this. Ask for this. I'm a great God and I have great power. Ask for this and just that desired or common asks,” that's already an act of faith. But we don't know. We don't know if that's His will so we say, “Lord, not my will, but yours be done.” We walk by faith. We walk in the Spirit and God promises to meet our needs not our greeds. We're not beggars, but we're also… we're His children and we come to the wealthy Father who loves to give His children what they need.

I love verse 15, it is a fascinating twist… turn of phrase. He says, “If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of Him. We already have the requests. What's He doing here? What He's doing here is He's connecting our present in the future and He says, “Our present in the future are connected by faith, by prayer. We may not see the answer immediately, but we have an inner confidence that God has already answered according to His will."

For example, Abraham asked for a son, “God send me a son.” God says yes, and it's another 25 years until he's holding Isaac in his arms. But He says, “Believe that you already have the request.” Mark 11:24, the words of Christ, “Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” It's hard to articulate, but I had moments in my life where God just pressed something in my heart and I know it's already a reality.

I remember in seminary, we were praying, “Lord, where do you want us to go?” My wife and I were praying. We thought we were going to Russia or Ukraine as missionaries and the Lord was pressing on our heart. “You're going to Boston and you're going to plant a church.” We started praying about that and before we left, people came to us and said, “Are you sure?” Boston's lost. There's more Dunkin' donuts in Boston than there are Christians. That's a fact.

And I said, “I don't know how to articulate it, but in my heart, it's a reality. We haven't planted it, but in my heart, this is the truth that I already believe and because of that faith, I'm going to do everything I possibly can in my actions, from my will. God's given me the grace of faith and I'm going to do everything I can with that grace so that it's not in vain.” This is what He's saying. We might not see the answer immediately, but we have this inner confidence.

What breathing is to a physical person, that's what prayer is to a spiritual person, a Christian person. Luke 18:1, “And He told them a parable to the effect that they ought to always pray and not lose heart.” Pray without ceasing. The scripture says it's an attitude of the heart of dependence. “Lord, I need you, Lord. Help me, Lord. Lead me. Reveal your will.” Jesus depended on prayer, prayed all the time, spent full night in prayer. Would serve all day, wake up early and go pray.

And if the sinless Son of God needed to pray on the cross, prayed three times, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. If He needed to pray, how much more do we pray? Point four is, Christians do not practice sin. This is one of the more curious passages in the book, in scripture in general. Verse 16, “If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will give him that brother life to those who commit sins that do not lead to death.”

But there is sin that leads to death. I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin but there is a sin that does not lead to death. We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who has been born of God, Christ protects him and the evil one, Satan does not touch him. We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

Multi-dimensional texts, let me just unwrap a couple of the layers. First of all, in his mind and John's mind, and this is the same mind of Christ, there's only two sides. There's only two kingdoms, there's only two teams. There's team Jesus and there's team Satan. If you're like, “No. no, no, I'm not on team Jesus, I'm on team me. I'm on a team Switzerland. I'm neutral. Don't fight me."

And he said, “That's not a thing. Team me is actually team Satan. You're either in the Kingdom of light, in the Kingdom of Christ or you're under the rule of Satan. You lie in the power of the evil one. Then he talks about Christians who are in the kingdom, who are brothers and sisters who have been born of God and He says, “They do not keep on sinning.” And here, He's talking about the continuous pattern of sin, that Christians can't remain in this practice of habitual sin.

Christians obviously there's occasional slip-ups, occasional sins, but he's saying, “That's an exception not the rule. Christians' no longer defined by sin.” Now, he says that in the context where he's talking about seeing a brother in sin. It's a Christian, and he's saying that, for the Christian, “When you see a brother in sin, when you see another Christian in sin, we are to hold them accountable and it begins with prayer.” We pray for that person, but there… And God will give them life.

But there comes a point where even the Christian gets to a point where they commit a sin unto death. This is credible, incredibly sobering doctrine and you need to know about it. In the Old Testament, God often mentions people whom God removes from the world because of their sin. And these are people who were priests. For example, Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron, the priest deliberately disobeyed God and they died.

Korah and his clan opposed God and died. Achan was stoned because he disobeyed Joshua's orders from God and died. A guy named Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant and God removes him from the world. And you say, “That's the Old Testament. We're in the New Testament. We're under grace.” Well, let me just say, “To whom much is revealed, much is required. Who much is given, much is required.”

To a believer today, you, dear Christian, have more revelation than the Christian… than people in the Old Testament. We have the Holy Scriptures and we have the internal witness of the Spirit. In the New Testament, Ananias and Sapphira lied to God about an offering and died. Believers in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 11, took part in Holy Communion without discerning the body and blood of Christ and says that some of them were sick and some of them died.

In 1 Corinthians 5:1 through 5, a person that is in egregious, unrepentant sin and St Paul says later that if that person had not repented and confessed, they would have died. This is called the discipline of God the Father. It's outlined in Hebrews 12, and it begins with, so to speak, God's spirit convicts and then there comes a discipline from the Lord or a spanking of God's rebellious children.

But it gets to a point if a Christian does not yield his will or her will to Christ, does not repent of a sin is stubbornly sitting, the Lord might and has removed people from this world in order to not lead others astray and not bring further disgrace on his name. Hebrews 12:9, besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? Why am I saying this to you? Same reason John is telling us this, the Apostle John, that sin is not to be trifled with. Look what it cost God to save us from our sin, the sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ.

And He does not save us so that we can continue living in sin. He saves us so that we can be sanctified, so that we continue to be transformed to the image of Christ. And He says, “If a Christian sees a brother committing a sin we should pray for them, but if in our praying we don't sense that it's God's will to forgive them, then we stop praying.” That's what He's saying. Sobering, sobering truth and here's how I apply it to my life.

I hear this, I'm like, “Where is there sin, unrepentant sin that I'm allowing in my heart, in my life, repent of it, leave it, follow Christ.” Finally, Christian life is real life. He tells us in verse 20 and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him who is true and we are in Him who is true in His son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life, fact and faith. Facts and faith, for Him it's one in the same.

We believe in these facts because they're true. It's not our believing that makes them true. We believe it because it true. He is the true God. He is the true son. He is true knowledge. He is true reality. If we fellowship with Him, we have fellowship with the God of reality. It's not a copy. It's not counterfeit. Jesus is the true light, the true bread, the true vine, truth itself. That's why verse 21, He says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

And in the context, it's not idols like images and wood and stone. What He's talking about in this context is false conceptions of God, false conceptions of Christ. Whenever you go to the scriptures and you're like, “Ah, I don't like that God. I don't like that attribute of God. My God wouldn't say that. My God would not demand that.” He's saying, “At that moment, what you're doing is, you're creating an idol, god of speculation, not a God of revelation.”

Do you allow the truth about God from the Holy Scriptures define God for you or do you define God yourself? He's saying, “Be careful, that's idolatry. Keep yourselves from idols.” Fact or faith? Jesus comes and He says, “I am the truth and faith.” How are we to live? “I am love.” He's truth and love, He's light and love, and He molds the two together, the fact and faith.

Christianity isn't denying reality. It's not our escape from reality. “Oh, you're a Christian. You escape from reality, the truths of reality. On Sunday morning, I escaped from the truth's reality and Friday night.” Now, what He's saying is that Christianity isn't denying reality. It's discovering reality. The world talks about enlightenment. We're so enlightened. Christians walk in real light because God is light. The world talks about love all the time and they have no idea what real love is.

Real love is sacrifice and commitment. It's eternal. It's the love of Christ. The world displays its wisdom and learning and Christians say, “We know the truth in a humble, confident way.” God is light, love, truth, and these together make a life that is real. As we walk in Christ, abide in Him, we love Him, we know Him and we follow Him. Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Missed any of the points, what can we know for sure that Jesus is God? Believers have eternal life, God answers prayers, Christians do not practice sin and Christian life is real life. Let's pray. Lord I pray if there is anyone here who is not yet a Christian. Not yet a follower of Christ, is not yet abiding in you, is not in Christ. I pray today. Draw them to yourself. Show them that these facts are true and that we believe them because they're true, they're not true because we believe them.

We thank you Lord that you came in the testimony of the blood, the water and the Spirit together. They give us a substantiated foundation for our faith, an anchor for our souls. Lord I pray you make us that people who abide in you. We thank you for these weeks that you've given us in 1 John, what a book. And I pray that you continue to keep us close to you and clean from sin so that you, by the power of the Spirit, can cultivate much fruit through us to your glory and for our joy. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Holy father, you are a good God and you want the best for us so we glorify you, great God and we thank you for your law. We do confess that often as we look at your commandments, it does seem burdensome. It seems difficult. It seems as if life would be simpler without them. I pray today, Lord, forgive us of breaking your commandments. We thank you for the cross of Christ and the work of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ who fulfilled all of the law and extends to us a righteousness, forgiveness, grace and mercy and also Lord we thank you for sending us the Holy Spirit who empowers us to live a life in line with your will, to cry out and pray. Lord, may your will be done in our lives as it is in heaven.

Lord I pray today that you show us that when you give us the law, it's not just a dry codex for how to live, but it's actually a manifestation of your grace. It's an extension of your grace. You show us who you are through us, so show us that you are beautiful and therefore your will is also beautiful. It makes the people who love the law and enlarge our hearts so we can run in your ways and we pray all this in Christ's holy name, amen.

We are coming to the end of our sermon series in 1 John, we've been calling it meno, which is the word that he uses more often than any other word in the text. He uses it 23 plus times and what he's saying is this word meno encapsulates what it means to be a Christian, that you remain in God, that you are connected to him, that you walk in step with him in following God's ways. Another way of thinking about that is God's law. The title of the sermon is loving the law, which sounds like it's a paradox. It seems like love and law are mutually exclusive, especially when we think of human laws.

Many of the human laws that are written are good and they're for the betterment of society, but often they're actually seemingly arbitrary and actually they do not lead to result they're intended to lead to. I'll just give you a few examples. In Mexico City a little time back, they said there's too much pollution in Mexico City so we are going to ban driving cars every day. Depending on what your license plate was, you can drive on some days and you can't drive on other days. What did people do? What do people always do when there's a law that seems arbitrary, they circumnavigate, they get around that law, they find the loopholes so what people did was they actually drove more, a lot more and some people did all the driving in days that were allowed. Other people just took taxis some days that weren't and other people just bought a second car and got another license plate.

In the European Union, they set up a fishing quota to penalize people who caught too many fish and the heart behind is good and we want to prevent overfishing. What happened? What did the fishermen do? As they're catching fish, they kept all the good fish and all the bad fish they throw back in the water, often dead lead to more dead fish. Increasing the minimum wage. The heart behind it, we want to increase the wages for low level workers. What often happens is what do business owner do. They just increase the prices on everything. I was in Copenhagen a little while back and I went to Burger King. I was like, oh, cheap place to eat. A Whopper was $14. Starbucks $9 for a cup of coffee. Why? Because minimum wage is $20.

We see the beauty, we see the value in the intention of human laws, but often they're flawed. This past week we had an intense national debate over airplane etiquette. Can you recline your seat? Did you weigh in on that? A lot of people did. Here's my position about reclining seats on airplanes. Everybody is allowed to recline their seat except for the person in front of me. That person cannot. I'm six two, don't do that. That's kind of how we view the law. Yeah, I see the point in prosperity and betterment for everybody but could I be the exception? And we look to be the exception because deep down inside we have this aversion to authority. We have this aversion to being told what to do and we're born with it. Children do not need to be taught to be disobedient. Naturally they are.

I've got four daughters. My fourth daughter, her first word ever was no, her second word was mine. No and mine. Today we learned that she knows the word move. She went up to my older daughter who was eating breakfast and she pushed her and she said, "Move Sophia" She couldn't even say Sophia. She's calls her like Safa or something. Just says move. That we in ourselves, in our nature, we have an aversion to the law and a lot of times this is how we look at God's law, that it's burdensome. Sometimes it feels like life would be so much easier, less complicated if God did not make demands of us. It feels like his law is a burdensome and what John wants to say is naturally yes, but when God regenerates your heart, his law becomes beautiful from drudgery. It becomes a delight and as he's landing the plane of this letter, his three streams of one cord have been... threads of one chord have been faith, love and obedience. They go together.

There's a doctrinal test. Do you believe in Jesus Christ as who he is? There's the moral test. Do you obey him? And there's the relational test. Do you love him? It's faith, love, and obedience and one of the things that he does toward the end as he culminates this argument is he says, I want you to see just how amazing God's love is. God's love isn't seen just in that he forgives you of your sins. It's so much deeper and when you understand his love, when you're rooted and grounded in his love, then you have the energy to walk in his ways. All these three: faith, love, obedience, they belong together. Depend on one another and draw strength from one another.

I'm going to give you my three points here in the very beginning, just so you see the string of thought. The three points are love leads to faith; God's love leads to our faith; faith, which is a gift from God, leads to our loving God and that love toward God leads to life and this is obedient life, life to the full. Point one is love leads to faith. Here in the beginning, I'll just read one verse and we'll cover all the verses as we go. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who knows the father, loves whoever has been born of him. This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Love leads to faith. Why? Why this phrasing? I get it straight from verse one where he says, everyone who believes, anyone who's a Christian, anyone who is believing currently that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and for John the tense is really important. It's a perfect passive tense and what this tense shows us is the timing. Did you become a Christian because you believed in Jesus Christ? Were you born again because you believed in Jesus Christ? What comes first? This is really important for John because if our faith causes our regeneration, if our faith causes our salvation, then we still had a part to play and we can still take some credit for our salvation, which in a sense diminishes our understanding of God's love. Yes, Jesus died on the cross for my sins but I'm the one who accepted the gift. I'm the one who chose to believe. I'm the one who chose to follow and John says, that's not how it works.

He says, what comes first. Believing or being born again and by using that perfect tense, has been born. Not is born, has been born, shows that being born comes before the belief. Birth proceeds belief in the same sense that your birth preceded your breathing, our second birth, our regeneration precedes our believing and this isn't the only place that... we see this in scripture. In John 3, Nicodemus, a religious teacher comes to Jesus by night because he doesn't want the other religious teachers to know that he is interested in Jesus and his teaching and he comes and he says, "Teacher, we know that you are from God, that the works that you do, no one has ever done. What is the way to get into the kingdom of God? How can I be sure I have eternal life?"

Now, if someone comes to me, "Pastor Jan, how do I become a Christian?" You know what my response is? Repent and belief. You have sins. You've transgressed God's law. Just trust in Jesus Christ. Follow him, come to Mosaic, become a member. That's also important, but that doesn't save you. That's a sign of salvation. That's how I would present it. Here's what you do. Why do I present it like that? Because scripture does call us to repent. It does call us to believe that's not what Jesus does. You know what he tells Nicodemus? You must be born again and then Nicodemus is baffled, although he knows all of the Holy scripture and he says, "What does that mean? Do I like physically... does a grown man go back in your mother's womb, that's impossible." They have that conversation, that's in the Bible in John 3 read it, and then Jesus says, "No." And this is his answer. How do you get saved?

Verse seven John 3, do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes so it is with everyone who was born of the spirit. You must be born again. That's an imperative. It's a passive imperative. You can't give birth to yourself. You can't give life to yourself and then he says, and the wind blows where it wishes. You're talking about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gives life to whomever he gives life. If you are a Christian, he wants you to know this immense depth of God's love for you.

If you're a Christian that is miracle of God. God gave birth to you. God gave you new life. 1 Peter 1:3, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Ephesians 2:4 and five. God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we are dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved. This is how he shows the immensity of God's... look at God's love. Look at the great love with which he loved us. He gave birth, so it was life. He regenerated us. He chose us before we chose him.

Dear Christian, you believe you have faith because God caused you to have faith. It's a gift. God and love begat us. He birthed us. Regeneration is totally a work of God. It's not me 1%, God 99%. That's how my salvation happens. God 100%. Now this is important because many mistakenly think that it's my will. It's my free choice that caused me to be a Christian and I choose when I can become a Christian. Now, Christianity is not this nominal ascent to some doctrines. Christianity is rebirth. You got to have a brand new nature and you can't do it. It's only a work of God's grace and certainly we must choose to trust.

You see this in John 1:12, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, but it doesn't stop there. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. You didn't choose to become a child of God, nor the will of man, but of God. It's entirely a work of God according to his sovereign will and the reason you choose to trust in Christ is because God has raised you from spiritual death. Christian faith at the heart of it is a result of new birth, not the cause of it. Then Saint Paul, obviously many times he says, faith is a condition to becoming a Christian. We're saved by grace through faith, but even that faith is a gift. Ephesians 2:8 says, the condition we must meet is the very thing God must create in us.

Now you're going to answer the question, well, how can God call me to believe in Christ if I can't do it? How can God demand that I believe if I cannot do it. The most powerful illustration of this reality, of this tension, of our responsibility and God's sovereignty is when Jesus hears that his friend, good friend Lazarus is dead. He was sick and then he died and he was buried for four days and Jesus goes to the tomb. After Jesus wept, Jesus goes to the tomb, and what does Jesus say? He says, "Lazarus, come forth." Lazarus, come out, speaks a word to a corpse to do something that the corpse obviously can't do, but his word is efficacious. His word is an extension of his power and his word gives life. Breathes that life in and Lazarus comes out. That's what happened. That was an incredible miracle and sometimes we read the scripture and we're like, wow, I wish we had miracles like that.

Anybody becoming a Christian is a greater miracle than Lazarus coming back from the dead because Lazarus died again. If you become a Christian, you become a child of God. You have eternal life. Life for ever. This is where I start with love. God's love is so great that he gives us this gift of regeneration and the gift of faith, and he says, whoever has been born believes continues to believe. It's not you believe one time and then you live your life any way you want or faith begins to change life. The assurance of my salvation and how do I know I'm saved? How do you know you're saved?

The assurance of your salvation isn't based on the fact that you had at some point believe. It's based on are you believing today? Are you trusting in Christ today? And the faith isn't just faith in faith. There's incredible power in motivational thinking or positive thinking. A lot of people's lives have been transformed, but we're not talking about faith in faith. We're not talking about faith in you. We're not talking about a self-confidence. It's faith in Christ. John 20:31 and these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, that by believing you may have life in his name. Do you believe that Jesus Christ, the son of God, do you believe that he's the Christ, the Christos, the Messiah? Yes, he's the word of life. Yes, he's our advocate. Yes, he's our atonement propitiation. He's the Messiah and the Messiah means you're anointed, anointed for what?

Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit for the offices of prophet, priest and king. The prophet comes and speaks the word of God. Jesus is the word of God, shows us the message of salvation. Jesus is also the priest, priest brought sacrifices. Jesus brings himself, he says, I am the sacrifice for your sins and Jesus is the king. He doesn't just come to pay for our sins. Give us a get out of hell free card and say live any way you want. No, he's our king and he has dominion over every single square inch of our lives. He says, this is what it means to live a life of a child of God, to be saved. In a Matthew 16 Jesus comes to his disciples and says, what do people say that I am? And they said, well, some people say you're a prophet. Some people say you're a miracle worker. Some people say you're starting a movement.

Lots of people said lots of things and then Jesus gives them the most important question that you will hear in all of your life and you need to answer this question, but who do you say that I am? There's no more important question than that and Peter says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, and true faith isn't just, yeah, I kind of believe that. True faith is, yes, I entrust myself to Christ. We live by faith all the time. Anytime you get in a plane, you're living by faith. In the plane itself, in the pilot crew. Anytime you get an Uber, you got faith in your drive... anytime you go to a restaurant and you eat food prepared by someone else, you got faith. You're living by faith and here he says, do you entrust yourself completely, wholly to Jesus Christ your whole life to him? Do you believe that he paid the debt that you owe to God and there's nothing that you can do to pay that debt or to pay down that debt.

Are you trusting in Christ or are you trusting in yourself? And he starts that God's love pours out regeneration, which gives us faith and that faith transforms us, so we're not just nicer people, kinder people or sweeter people. We're brand new people which leads to a lot of love and that's point two, faith that leads to love. Love leads to faith and faith leads to love, love for whom, love for God and love for people. 1 John 5:1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God and everyone who loves the father, loves whoever has been born of him. And he says, if you've been truly born of God, reborn, regenerated, then you can't but love God.

In the same way that it's natural for a child to love their parents. It's natural for one who has been born of God to love God, the father. My youngest daughter, Milana, she's two and a half, almost three and she wakes up in the middle of the night. She comes to our bedroom. She does this every night. This past week she came with a flashlight. I thought that was pretty, pretty... found a little pink flashlight, walks in the room and every morning and like, it's cute. It sounds cute. Messes up my whole sleep cycle. I'm out of the REM cycle. I have a conversation with her every single morning. Milana, why did you come into my... why do you come into my bed? She gives the same response every time. She says, "Papa, because I love you." That's her response. I'm like, ah, kind of not answer, but also the best answer ever. Like it's natural. She didn't have to be taught to love her parents.

In the same way if you're a Christian, you don't have to be taught to love God the father. What we do have to be taught is how to love our brothers and sisters, so he continues and he says, whoever has been born of God loves the father and loves whoever has been born of him, starting with Christ, but then God's other children. A lot of Christians live their lives as only children. They think that you are... you think you are the only child of God and what happens is we isolate ourselves from Christian community, from our brothers and sisters, from covenant membership, from church. And you go to God as an only child. God meet my needs and then you leave after he has. And he says "no". The sign that you are a true child of God is that you love God, you love Christ and you love his other children.

Verse two by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. We love God, which leads to love for his children. How do we know when we love his children? Because we love God. That's his train of thought and that right there, and I got to set this up. Faith leads to love, this love... love leads to faith. Faith leads to love of God and we need that love because if you truly love God, you want to live for him and this is really, this is the breaking point in a lot of people's lives, this is where they misunderstand Christianity. Incalculable millions of people who consider themselves nominal Christians have missed the point of Christianity. They think Christianity is God came to make you moral or nice or kind and you think God demands only that you come to church on Christmas and Easter and do charitable things every once in... God demands your whole life. That's what it means to truly feel the love of God.

By the way, this is hard to live completely for God and Christians have always struggled with this. The Paul century or the Lübeck Cathedral, Lutheran church building was built in Germany. You can actually find it on Google Maps. It's got over 2000 reviews, 4.5 rating. Apparently it's really beautiful. It was started in 1173, completed in 1230. On one of the walls, there's an inscription in the church and this is what it says. You call me master and obey me not. You call me light and see me not. You call me way and walk not. You call me life and desire me not. You call me wise and follow me not. You call me fair and love me not. You call me rich and ask me not. You call me eternal and seek me not. Gracious and trust me not. Noble and serve me not. You call me mighty and honor me not. You call me just and fear me not and if I condemn you, blame me not.

That conclusion seems like it came out of nowhere, but this is the words of Christ. He said on that day, many will stand before me and say, "Lord, Lord, did we not do a lot of great things in your name? Did we not do a lot of good things for you? Didn't we do enough to earn our right into heaven? Didn't we do enough?" He said, "I never knew you." Like we didn't have a relationship. You did things for me and actually often to avoid me, to pay me off. Tip me off, get you off my back. We didn't have a relationship and this is essence of God's law. The essence of God's law is, do you love God? Jesus was asked to summarize what is the law, and he says, this is the law. This is the essence of the law. Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and love your neighbor as yourself, but if you do, if you love God, then you want to honor him. You want to delight him. You actually begin to love his law.

1 Samuel 15:22 the prophet says to Saul, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord, behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen than the fat of rams. He said, okay, you want to do a lot. You want to sacrifice a lot. You want to give a lot, but do you obey? Do you love? Do you have an obedience that's motivated by love and that's point three. God's love leads to our faith. This faith that he's given us is a gift that leads to our love. Now our love for God leads us to life. What do I mean by life? Jesus said that the enemy has come to steal, kill, and destroy but I have come to you may have life and life to the full, and this is fascinating because Jesus here talks about like Christianity as the way to human fullness, to life to the full and that's not how a lot of people think about Christianity.

It's not a lot of people think about God's law. A lot of people think about God's law as fence that keeps us from fun and he says, no. The law is given as a guardrail to keep you from falling off a cliff and it's given as a path to show you this is true life, satisfying life, joyful life, meaningful life. God's law and love they're two sides of one coin. I love you, therefore I want the best for you. I'm telling you things to not do and so that you are free to do the things you were designed to do, so this is verse two. By this, we know that we are the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. You see they're intertwined, love and law, complimentary.

Verse three for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Why aren't they burdensome? Because we have a new nature, new desires. We actually thrive on such obedience, even though it doesn't come naturally. Naturally we're rebellious. Naturally we bristle against God's authority. Naturally our flesh says it feels like heavy handed, but deep down inside, if you're a Christian, you long to obey even in the teeth of the opposition of sin, Satan and the world.

Deuteronomy 30:11 says, for this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. I bring in Deuteronomy here because a lot of Christians, and I don't know if it's... we live in a very individualistic society. A lot of Christians today have an antinomian streak. Antinomian means against the law. Nómos Greek for law, and here's how it plays out. A lot of Christians think that in the Old Testament people believed, those who believed God believed because they had to, because of duty alone. There was no love for God and now Jesus doesn't care about how we live. It's not about duty. It's not about obligation at all. It's not about fulfilling commandments, it's all about love, all about grace, all about mercy, but I want to show you that in the Old Testament when God talks about the law, he says, look, I've saved you from captivity therefore walk in my ways because I want the best for you and these ways are not too hard for you because I'm going to strengthen you in these ways.

Many Christians today think that the law back then was burdensome, was a yoke. It was heavy chains and Jesus came and abolished the law and he says, no, it's all about affection. It's all about love and the point of verses like Matthew 23:4, and I say this because this is bifurcation in many of our minds between love and obedience, love and duty. Matthew 23:4, Jesus talking about the Pharisees, they 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. Fascinating. The word burden here that the religious leaders are putting on the people, on their shoulders is the same word in our texts where it says God's law is not burdensome, so seems like a contradiction in terms. Is the law a burden or is the law not burdensome?
Well then you got to keep going. Acts 15 has something similar. Now, therefore, Saint Paul says, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? This yoke that he's talking about isn't like, to understand that cont... it's not God's law. The yoke, the burden that he's talking about, the burden that Jesus is railing against is not the 10 commandments. It's the corrupt, Pharisaical law where they added layers to God's law. It's human invented 1,001 rabbinical regulations. True believers in the Old Testament, they understood that God's law is good. It's not burdensome. It's actually beautiful.

Psalm 119:97, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. He's gushing with affection for God's law and why is he doing it? Because he understands that God is beautiful and God's mind is ordered and God's law is a reflection, a manifestation of God's character. That's why. That God has given us the law because it's the best thing for us. It's how we flourish. Here's just an illustration to communicate what I'm talking about. When a young man wants to marry young woman and he proposes to her, there's certain protocol, there's certain etiquette to follow.

He cannot get on a knee and say, will you marry me? And she says, yes and that's it. No, no, no. He needs to extend a hand with a product in it. What product am I talking about? A very expensive product that has to cost at least six months of your monthly wages, at least and like new societal laws have come into place where now you need it documented, if you didn't document it, it never happened. Someone got to be in the bushes. The phone with the video camera. Someone... and you got to put it on social media and the next thing is you got to tag your beloved and say, now our relationship status has changed.

There's all kinds of things you got to do and this... why? Preparation to the wedding, you got to get the registry, you got to go a bed bath and beyond with a little scanning shooter thing and you've got to pick your products and then you've got to have et cetera, et cetera. You get the point. Why do people do this? Where do these laws come from? Where do these societal norms come from? I don't know. Corporate America, I don't know, I don't know. Here's the thing. We are more than willing to submit to societal laws. As a young man, I could not wait to do that. Did all the cliche stuff, did it all. Like met the law to a tee. Fulfilled the whole law... Why? What are you motivated by? The consequences of not doing that? Kind of, but no, you're motivated by the love for this person.

If our societal norms, which are in many ways arbitrary, if we're willing to submit to them if we're motivated by love, how much more so to the beautiful law of God and it is beautiful. This is what we... even if I were not a Christian and if I were looking at the 10 commandments, I'm like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Like if people live like this, the world would be so much better. If individuals live like this, it will be better for them. If you look at God's laws and commandment number one, thou shall have no other gods before me. He's saying, be careful what your heart loves. That's what he's saying, that there's lots of gods vying for the affections of your hearts. Our hearts are an idol factory.

Be careful not to worship and give your life to something that is unworthy. Have no other gods except for one who is worthy. Don't make little statues of God, and he's saying don't miniaturize God. God is great and he's glorious. Don't point at an object and say, that's God. God's name is powerful, so don't use it in vain. There's no higher authority. Don't abuse it. Don't misuse it and don't attach it to your own agenda that contradicts with God's. Take a day off. That's a sabbath. You don't run the world. You're only human. Take a day off. It's for your own health physically and also for your spiritual health. Honor your father and your mother. Respect those who have given you life, paved the way, sacrificed so much for you. Don't murder, human life is a gift. No unnecessary killing. Preserve it. Don't take it.

Thou shall not commit adultery and he's saying sexuality is powerful and keep the boundaries on your sexuality because outside of those boundaries, it's like a fire. Outside of fireplace can be incredibly destructive. Don't steal, property's important. Respect property of others and work hard to have your own property to be able to share with others. Don't make up things about other people's reputation. Don't cave to jealousy, envy about someone else's life, family stuff. Imagine if people live like this. Imagine the world if it were like this. Imagine if your life if you had not transgressed some of these laws and each one of us has, and this is the beauty of the gospel. Though we are guilty, though we have transgressed and reaped not just the consequences of breaking those commandments, but we actually stand in condemnation before God. This is why Jesus Christ came.

He fulfilled all of that law perfectly. Had never sinned, not sins of omission or commission and then goes to the cross to offer his life as a sacrifice for us as atonement for us, and his perfect record is counted to us. Our fallen record is counted to him on the cross as he bears God's wrath for our sins. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ when you believe all of your sins are forgiven, when Jesus is your Lord and savior. Forgiven for the negative side of the law, for breaking the law, but also there's a positive side of the law. God doesn't just say don't do these things or else he says and do these things. There's the positive side of the law where we see how much better God's plan is. That it's beautiful, that when we live by the spirit of God in the confines of God's will, it actually leads to freedom. Is God's law a burden only in the sense that a birds wings are a burden?

Are a birds wings a burden? Sometimes, maybe. It's the only thing that allows it to fly. He says, true freedom is found when we submit ourselves to the will of God. Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Where the spirit of the Lord is there freedom is. When we see God's law, we see wisdom, goodness, blessing. We see fulfillment. We see satisfaction. We weren't created to be free of God. We were created to obey and to adore and that's where true freedom is found and this right here, and he concludes with verse four and five and he talks about victory and this is really fascinating. Verse four, he says, everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that has overcome the world. Our faith.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes in Jesus and Jesus is the son of God. First of all, I think it's fascinating and I don't know if a lot of Christians think like this. That he talks about the Christian faith and walking in God's ways in terms of winning and losing. He uses the word victory over and over, overcoming, conquering, and the Greek word is it's Nike. Then we get the word Nike from it. He's saying like... He's talking about competition, about winning and losing and we're not competing with people. We are competing and he says, overcome what? Overcome the world. Now what is he talking about? First the world. We'll get back to the competing part. What is the world? He's not talking about physical world or creation. He defined this in chapter two where he says, this is the world. It's the desires of the eyes, desires of the flesh and pride of life.

Desires of the eyes is I see it, I want it. Desires of the flesh is I want what I want and the pride of life is I want to be wanted and he says those right there. If you give yourself to that, and that's the world, like when he's talking about this is the world as opposed to God. It's a worldview opposed to God. When you live for stuff like I see it, I want it. I see it, I want it. I want to feel this thing. This is what my flesh wants. I want accolades. I want applause. I want to be revered by people. He said that right there, that's loss. You go down that path and it's going to be loss after loss after loss, loss of your own spiritual life, loss of relationships, loss of things, loss loss. You're just taking L after L after L after L. Why? Because that stuff never satisfies and he says, this is why faith, that's what he says. Faith is the way we overcome.

What is the victory? It's our faith. What does faith do? God gave me faith. Now I get to see God for who he is. I get to see that Jesus Christ is immeasurably more beautiful, more satisfying than the desires of the eyes. That intimacy with Jesus feels so much better than any physical feeling that the world has formed. Jesus bed pride of life. I don't care what people think of me. I've got nothing to prove. No one to impress because God is glorious. That path right there, that's W, W, W and this... I like thinking about like this, about the Christian life like this because I like winning. I like winning a lot. This is why I did sports. I wrestled in high school. I played football. That feeling of victory no matter the sacrifices I had to make, that feeling of winning like it's the high is so much better than all the lows of all the sac... Any athlete knows this. Any student know this.

You understand that short term sacrifices, they make all the sense when you got the win and he says that's why a lot of people they go down the path of the world where in the short term feels good, it feels good, it feels good and it just leads to loss and loss, loss. The Christian path yeah, it's difficult. Obedience is hard, but when you see that this is the best thing for you, when you see that proximity of God, there's nothing better. The God's law becomes not burdensome but actually beautiful.

If you're not yet a Christian today, we welcome you to believe and repent and look to Christ, see how much he's loved you. The very moment that you trust in Christ and trust your life to him, all of your sins are forgiven. You become a child of God and you believe because you are a child of God, and I'll close with a few texts from the Psalms, just reveling in the law of God. Psalm 11 through two, blessed it is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 19 verse seven, 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. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous all together more to be desired are they than gold. Even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings in the honeycomb. Moreover by them is your servant warned and keeping them there is great reward.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the word. We thank you, Jesus, that you are the word that you came to reveal the way of salvation, that you procured sacrifice for salvation in yourself and we thank you that you sent us the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, continue to empower each one of us to live victorious lives, overcoming the attacks of the enemy, overcoming our sinful flesh and overcoming the world and as we do so to abide in you, to grown our relationship with you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com

Holy God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you are a great God and we confess that. We confess that you are glorious and majestic, and that you are exalted, that you are transcendent, and that you are imminent. You are above and you are here with us today, closer than our very own hearts. Lord, we thank you that you have loved us so much. Your love is greater than the distance between the earth and the highest of the heavens.

We thank you Lord that you proved your love to us through your sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that Christ you poured out your blood for us to redeem us, to make us twice yours. We are yours in creation, and yours as children of God, the Father. Holy Spirit, come and show us where in our hearts we are esteeming ourselves as great and esteeming you as lesser than you are.

Show us in our lives where we deem people as big and you as small. Allow us to find peace and joy and satisfaction, the reality that we are not God and we don't have to be, we are not in control and we don't have to be. Give us the grace to cast all our burdens and our worries and anxieties upon you.
And Holy Spirit, develop in every single Christian here today, develop in us spiritual discernment, so that we know your voice when we hear it, and we know that when someone comes speaking on behalf of you and it's not from you, we know clearly. Bless our time, the Holy scriptures, and we pray all this in Christ's Holy name. Amen.

The big idea of the sermon today is that ideas have consequences and spiritual ideas have real, true consequences as well. Ideas have consequences, just to prove that, think of the greatest, most consequential ideas in all of world history. Here's my little list, fire, that's a big one, the wheel, whoever invented that, thank you very much, farming, electricity, scientific method, paper, the printing press, communism, free market economics, democracy, the enlightenment, evolution, relativity, internal combustible engines, sanitation systems, refrigeration, gunpowder, Freud's unconscious mind, or the new order that was developed by Hitler, human rights, personal computer, the internet, smartphones, and last but not least, Uber Eats, very important, very consequential.

Ideas have consequences. We know that some ideas have good consequences, some ideas have bad consequences, some are for the betterment of humanity, some for its devastation. And this is something that is beyond argumentation. We know there are some ideas like human rights in general. Why is everyone equal in dignity, value, and worth? What does that grounded in? That's a great idea with great consequences. Some ideas like Hitler's, the New Order, not so much, actually evil consequences.
And when you think about ideas and consequences like that, and then you begin to understand what the Apostle John is telling us today. He's saying that when someone comes to speak on behalf of God, that we as Christians need to develop a spiritual discernment to test whether this is true, whether it's from God, or whether it's from the enemy, whether it's from Satan.

So today we're going to talk about spiritual ideas having consequences. We'll look at First John chapter 4, we'll focus our attention in the first six verses, and then some of the other verses in chapter four. Would you look at the text with me? First John 4:1, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this, you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." This is the reading of God's Holy and infallible, authoritative word. May it write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

First before we jump into our points, verse one and you see what he's doing here. Don't believe every spirit, and then the parallel with every spirit, test the spirits to see whether they're from God. For many false prophets have gone into the world. There's spirit behind teaching narrative or sermons about God. These people are speaking on behalf of God. Some of them are true prophets, some of them are false prophets and there's a spirit behind any idea about the spiritual realm. There's a spirit of truth, that's the Holy Spirit, and there's also a spirit of error, and that's from the demonic.

Verse 6, "We are from God, but whoever knows God listens to us, whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of error and the spirit of truth." So behind every false teaching is an evil spirit. The reason why he has to tell us this is because Satan doesn't usually come blatantly saying, "Hi, I'm Satan, please worship me, or today we're going to talk about child sacrifices," and things like that. The reason why he's saying this is because when the false teaching comes, often it's very persuasive. It comes through very attractive personalities and convincing arguments, and the teaching is so appealing because it makes sense from human perspective. It seems so familiar and it does not threaten our worldview. It actually helps us remain where we naturally are, where we've remained comfortably.

That's why Jesus, when he talks about these wolves coming into the flock, he says, "Don't be wary of the wolves," because obviously the sheep already know where are the wolves... The reason why he has to tell this is because they come in sheep's clothing, they disguise themselves as apostles of Christ or servants of righteousness, just like Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, not of darkness. Matthew 24:24 Jesus said, "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray if possible, even the elect." So sign of spiritual power does not mean that it comes from God necessarily.

Therefore, First Thessalonians 5:20 says, "Do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast when it's good." So dear Christian, this is what we need to develop. We need to develop our ability to test teaching, test spiritual truth, to develop the sermon. I like this, this is really important because true faith isn't just a blind leap in the dark. True faith is substantiated, it's an examined faith.

So before I give you the points of how to develop the spiritual discernment, here's why this is important. Number one, if you move from Boston, hopefully look for another church, and when you look for a church, when you're church shopping, you need to be able to discern, is this a true teaching? Is this a church that's faithful to God, faithful to Christ, faithful to the scriptures? That's number one.

Number two, there's so much preaching, so much spiritual teaching on the internet and social platforms. Anyone with a smartphone can develop a platform, build a platform, speak on behalf of God. So Christians need to develop the spiritual discernment. And then also, we need to be able to look at our own belief system and analyze it and discern whether there's any falsehood in what we are believing. So, and by the way, that that's belief system, but also spiritual experience, supernatural experience, sometimes emotional ecstasy. Did that come from God? Or prophetic word, did that come from God?

So here's the test. To test the spirits, ask, "How does this teaching affect my view of God, of Christ, of the scriptures, Christians, the self, the world, and sin." So to test the spirits, ask, "How does this teaching affect my view, first of all, of God? Does this teaching... How does it affect my relationship with God?" But also, "How does it affect? Is God glorified through this teaching? Is he magnified in my heart through this teaching, or is he diminished?" In Isaiah 42:8 it says, "I am the Lord, that is my name. My glory, I give to no other."Why? Because Revelation 4:11, "Worthy are you O Lord and God to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." God is worthy of all glory because he is the most glorious being in all existence, number one.

Number two, he's glorious because he created everything. He created everything by speaking, by the word of his power. Everything that is came from God. So he deserves glory. All of the great things in life, they're created by God. We worship a God who created truth, he created beauty, he created art, a God who created all of creation and all the beauty of creation, all the good things of creation. God created food. Whoever created... When someone cooks me a meal is delicious, I can't but be grateful. Now, what if you invented food as a thing? Sunsets, babies, the smell of little infant baby, oh my God, God created that. The smell of grass after it's just mowed, incredible. God created everything. He's worthy of all worship and praise. He created, He created music, he created... Okay, so you get the point.

God is worthy of all glory. That's why we glorify him, that's why we worship him. However, we also do that because God designed us with this desire for something greater than ourselves. We can't but long for something greater than ourselves, than our lives. We are people who need glory, we need to be awed by something. God created us this with this need to glorify him, and when we glorify him, we are most satisfied in him. That's when we find peace for our souls, that's when we find love and joy in our hearts. God created us with this need, He demands it from us because it's the best thing for us. So because God is worthy of all glory, if a revelation is from Him, if a spiritual teaching is from him, it always has the purpose of glorifying Him.

And conversely, anything that diminishes God's glory is not from God, any teaching that takes the focus off of God to us, or to the teacher, is not from God. It's from the flesh, or the world, or Satan, and here's... And it's not that easy to recognize. Here's how it works, and I've actually seen a lot of spiritual teachers, because of a good motivation, they want people to know God. And this is how they present the teaching of Christianity, the teaching of the gospel. They start focusing all of the attention on God's gifts instead of God, focus the attention on God's gifts at the expense of the giver.

Come to God and he will forgive you of your sins. Is that true? Yes. But that's not the end goal. The end goal is because your sin is now forgiven, you get God. Come to God and you will spend all of eternity in heaven. Is that true? Yes. By faith in Jesus Christ, you're spending eternity with God. You have eternal life. But what's the greatest thing in heaven? It's God. Come to God and he will bless you, He'll make you healthy and wealthy, and you'll prosper. Is that true? God loves to give good gifts to his children. But the greatest gift that He can give anyone is Himself. And by subtly focusing the attention from God to the person, God becomes a means to an end, and that end is you. You become the purpose, and the soul, and the center of the universe.

So the question we've got to ask whenever we hear spiritual teaching is, "Does God appear more wonderful to you, is God magnified? Does it purify your concept of His being? Does He increase and you decrease?" And when that happens, that's when we find joy and satisfaction and peace. Second of all, how does this teaching affect your view of Christ? How does this teaching effect my attitude toward the Lord and savior Jesus Christ? Does it magnify him? Does it give him the first place or does it also subtly shift the focus from him to myself?

So verse two, by this, the spirit of God, here's the test. "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, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already." He says, "Be careful." This is the test, false teachers come, and they may be gentle and loving and persuasive, they might even do miracles and speak prophetic words and speak in tongues, and at the same time be leading people to follow a false god.

And here's how you know. Do they confess that Jesus is both human and divine, both as humanity and divinity? So first he says that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. We read it, it seems as if the focus is only on coming in the flesh. But he says, "Has come in the flesh." Has come from where? And this right here presupposes the preexistence of Jesus Christ as the eternal son of God. So in one phrase, Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. We see that Jesus is both fully God and fully man. Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am."

John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And John here, in one full swoop, is dealing with two false teachings, diametrically opposed teachings. One was the Docetis, and they taught that Jesus did not come into flesh because matter is evil. That right there, that's not as compelling to us, primarily because we live in a day and age where we have built philosophical... Our lives are built on a philosophical foundation that the material is all there is.

So for us, it's the other heresy that John is dealing with, is the Cerinthian Gnostics. We're taught that Jesus was just a man. He was just a teacher, and at some point God used him powerfully, but then he still died. So John then, verse 14, he emphasized, "No, Jesus was also God." In verse 14, we see, "And we have seen and testified that the father has sent the son to be the savior of the world and whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God abides in him and He in God. So we have come to know and to believe and to love that the love that God has for us, God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."

Both deity and humanity, fully God fully man, why is this important? Because if Jesus is just human, then when he dies on the cross, he cannot assume the penalty for our sins. He can only atone for his own sins maybe. And if Jesus is not human, then he cannot represent us. So this is the beauty of the gospel. Jesus is fully God, fully man. On the cross, he bridges the chasm between fallen humanity and the Holy God. And he bears the penalty for our sins.

And this is why John... This is the crux of Christianity. Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man, on the cross. And he says, "This is what it means to know the truth. You confess it." By confessing it, it doesn't mean just to say that it's true. Intellectual ascent, "Yeah, Jesus is fully God, fully man. Okay." Even the demons do that. To confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh means to submit your life to him. It means that Jesus Christ is Lord and that you are willingly submitting to his Lordship over every area of your life. You don't do it perfectly, but you're attempting to grow in it on a daily basis.

And this right here is very controversial in our culture, and this is how the false teachings come. They don't focus on Jesus as King, that's offensive. We don't want... Jesus, don't meddle in my finances, my sexuality, my relationship, let's not meddle there. Let's present Jesus as a counselor. When you need some help, or need a word from God, when you need some emotional therapy, you go to Jesus. Jesus is a counselor, he'll help you out. You get your fix and then you leave. Or Jesus is presented as a consultant. Come to Jesus, he'll help you in whatever you're dealing with, he'll help you fix your problems and then you go live your life.

Everyone wants Jesus as counselor or consultant, but not as King. That's highly offensive that Jesus gets to be God. And this is where false teaching goes. False teaching has no problem with presenting a God who's there as a friend, a God who's there as a divine ATM, a God who is there as a spiritual pinata, you keep whacking him until he gives you what you want. Where do you find a the like that? God can be a God like that, just don't let him be God over my life.

So is Jesus Christ at the center of this teaching? Now, if you have dozed off for a little bit, come back, this is really important. This is a very important part. Right now at this point of the sermon, you guys say, "Doesn't this point contradict the first point?" The first point was, does this teaching put God at the center? Is it God glorifying? And point two is, Christ needs to be at the center, Christ needs to be glorified. Aren't they contradicting each other? No, because of the Holy Trinity.

One of the problems that people have with the whole idea of God demanding glory, God deserving glory, is they say, it just seems so... Why would God demand glory from us? And I already explained because that's how he's designed this, but also I want to point out something in the Trinity. God is worthy of all glory and yet inside the Trinity there's incredible humility. The reason why Jesus is at the center of Christianity is because God the Father wants Jesus at the center of Christianity. God the Father says, I'm giving you a name that is above every single name. Jesus Christ gets that glory, he deflects it back to the father. He said, "I didn't come to glorify myself, I came to glorify the Father." The Holy Spirit deflects glory, both the Father and Jesus. And inside the most glorious being, the Holy Trinity, you have incredible humility.

That's why I want you to say, "Is this teaching God glorifying and Christocentric, Christ-centered?" We get this straight from scripture, Acts 4:12, "And there is no salvation. There is salvation. No one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Jesus' name is the greatest name." And Jesus... This is why at Mosaic Jesus is at the center of everything we do, and our values. Love Jesus, simple. He's at the center. Why? Because that's what God the Father wants. That's what the Holy Spirit wants.

And then also, if you ever have a conversation with a Jehovah's Witness, I've had conversations with Jehovah's witnesses and I've pointed them to verses in the Bible, where clearly Jesus is God, but the main one, the main thing you got to do in a conversation and say, "Why is Jehovah the most important name for you?" First of all, Jehovah isn't God's name. That was actually a spelling mistake, it's Yahweh. That's number one. Number two, Jesus' name is higher than any name. Then why are we worshiping Jesus Christ? And why is Jesus at the center? Because Jesus reveals to us our greatest need. And Jesus reveals to us how God meets our greatest need.

The reason why a lot of false teaching removes Jesus Christ because it's offensive. It's offensive to tell people that they're sinners. It's offensive to tell people that we are under condemnation from God. But if you don't get people past the bad news, you can never get them to the good news. Jesus is our wisdom, he is our righteousness, he is our sanctification, he is our redemption, all of deity dwells in him bodily. He's our hope, he's our life, he's our all and in all.

So anything that makes Christ less than what God declared him to be must be rejected. Why? Because Christless Christianity is a counterfeit Christianity. So even if a church, or even if a ministry has the word Christ in the name, but doesn't put Christ in the center, it's not true and it's all in vain, and we need to be wary of it. Does this teaching enliven your heart with love for Christ? Does this teaching may Christ dear to you that it's from the Lord?

Third of all is how does this teaching effect your view of scripture? Does this teaching effect your love for scripture? Do you get a hunger for scripture? And not just this teaching, but this experience or revelation, is it from the scriptures or is it from something else? So verse six he says, "We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this, we know the spirit of truth and spirit of error."

First of all, everybody does what he just did. Every religion, every worldview, anyone who's trying to peddle a book, anyone who's trying to make a few bucks, this is what they say, "Don't listen to them, listen to me. Don't read that book, read my book, and it's on sale right now on Amazon, the Kindle version for 9.99. Don't listen to... Those teachers listened to..."

And so why is he doing this? First of all, you need to realize that John isn't just the regular Christian. It would be the height of arrogance if he were just speaking as an individual. But the apostles were entrusted with a special authority to lay the foundation for the church. They were with Christ, they were eye witnesses to his teaching, they were eye witnesses to his miracles, they saw his perfect life firsthand, they saw his death, his burial, and they were there when Christ was resurrected. And God gave the Holy spirit to the apostles to write the New Testament scriptures.

So the New Testament scriptures are our measure, our standard. And apart from the New Testament, apart from the standard, every single person's ideas about the spirituality are just that, they're opinions. They're Christless, and I say that because a Christless Christianity always begins with a scriptureless Christianity. And sometimes it happens subtly. "Oh, that's not what the scriptures meant, or they had cultural goggles on, or we have progressed past that, we have new light, we have new revelation. And at this point John says, "Hold on."

And what's really important to know is this warning comes in the midst of a discourse on love, this whole chapter's on love, this whole book is on love. And he pauses to say, "Test the spirits in the context of love." Why? Because a lot of false teachers make appeals in the name of love. They try to circumnavigate the mind or the intellect, "Don't worry about truth. Let's focus on love. And by love we mean the emotional impact of this teaching."

Some teachings about God, about the divine, about spirituality, they have an emotional impact. You feel emotional ecstasy. You feel like you are connected with the supernatural. It has nothing to do with the truth of God. I took a class with Dr. Kent, he was at Westminster Seminary. And one of the things that he was talking about when it comes to that, he says, "Be careful of manipulating people emotionally. You can do that. At the end of the sermon, when you're telling people about the cross of Jesus Christ, just have someone play the violin."

And that resonated with me because like four times I got saved at youth conferences and youth camp. When the violin comes in at the end, oh my, the tears start flowing, the waterworks are going, and I want to get saved. Jesus Christ died for my sins. And I understand that we care about emotions, we're not just brains, we're hearts. I understand all that.

But then Kent Hughes told the story. He said, "I saw the power of just focusing on the emotions when one Sunday I got up and I told people about what happened that week. That week I lost my dog, my dog died. I got up and I just talked about I had a hard week. We had the dog from when he was a puppy and my kids loved him, play in this pictures and then he died." And he said, as he's telling that story, grown men are weeping in the congregation. And he said, "It has nothing to do with Jesus. And yes, it's sad." So all of that I'm trying to say here is that the emotional impact isn't the goal.

And a lot of false teachers come and they say, "Look, this feels more loving, so let's focus on this." And John says, "Be careful when you try to separate love from light, God's love from God's truth." Also, this whole idea of just because we're alive today means that we are smarter or wiser than people who came before us, this idea is inherently false. It's called chronological snobbery. C. S. Lewis has done a lot of work on this. The idea that just because I'm alive today means I'm smarter than everyone who came before me.

First of all, try reading Jonathan Edwards. Try taking a volume of Jonathan Edwards' sermons, read anybody from 200 years ago. You can't even get through a paragraph without spending like, "Okay, that's enough. Can I get Twitter or Facebook, or something that stimulates my attention. So that's not true. But this is what false teachers do. They come and they say, "I have new light. We're advanced past the experience of Latter Days." And scripture says, the exact opposite happens. Once God has given light, he doesn't give new light that contradicts the past light.

So First Timothy 4:1-2, the spirit expressly says that, "In latter times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciousness is seared." So beware of anyone who claims to be wiser and holy are more spiritual than the prophets, than the apostles, than Christ himself.

Does this teaching deepen your hunger for the scriptures, your love, your steam for the scriptures? Because growing in acquaintance to God and the Holy Spirit always grows your desire for the Holy scriptures. You can't love God the Father without loving Christ, and you can't love Christ, the living word of God, without loving the scriptures, the written word of God, and you can't love the Holy spirit without loving the book that he wrote.

Fourth of all, how does this teaching effect your view of Christians, your relationship with other Christians? If you hear a teaching, or if you have a spiritual experience, supernatural experience, does it cause you to withdraw from Christian community, find fault in Christian community, or exalt yourself over Christian community? And I've seen this happen at Mosaic... I've seen this happen in my own life, where you have a spiritual ecstatic moment and you come back to church and you start looking at everyone and you're like, "You're Pharisee, you're a hypocrite, you know nothing about Christianity, I've just experienced God, I've come down from the mountaintop."

I remember I had this incredible spiritual experience and I was like, "I'm going to cut out all the sin of my life, anything worldly out of my life." I was driving to my sister's school, and she put a Jessica Simpson CD in our CD player called Sweet Kisses. And as soon as I heard that pagan, satanic music, I just hit the eject button and rolled down my window and tossed it out the window. And by the way, at the same time, I was going home and pirating music on Morpheus where my screen name was John the Baptist, so all kinds of inconsistencies there.

But you have this experience where like, "I know God, I saw the face of God," and you want nothing to do with Christians. And John says, "No, that's false. If you know God the Father, if you have a deeper experience with the Father, you want to have deeper experience with his children." And we never graduate past needing other Christians in our lives. Verse seven, "Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God, and anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love."

Growing in grace always leads to growing in love for God's children. Verse nine, "In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only son into the world, that we might live through him and this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his love to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." What's the connection between God giving his son, loving us, not because we loved him, but because he loved us. Why could... How does he connect that with loving one another?

What he's saying is, God loved you before you were lovely. God loved you, not because you loved him, God loved you as a one way love, and then that love transforms you. So in the Christian community, when God tells us to love people, the assumption is it's hard, and sometimes we've got to love unlovely people, and it's sacrificial, and it's costly, and it's uncomfortable, but we do that because God did that with us. By the way, if you've been following along with the sermon series, you're like, "Are we talking about love again?"

And this is how I felt when I'm writing the sermon, like, "What do I do with an another chapter chuck full of love, I already preached that sermon two weeks in a row. And like I mentioned in week one, he's not writing a philosophical treatise. What he's doing is, it's like a song, it's lyrics, and he wants you to remember the most important love. And this is why he's emphasizing love because there's nothing more important in the Christian faith.

The church Father Jerome, he tells a story of the Apostle John in his old age, and he couldn't even walk to the church gatherings anymore. He had to be carried in. And at the end of the meetings of the services, they would bring him to the front and they would hold him up for his final exhortation. And he would say the same thing every time, "Little children let us love one another." And one of the deacons or elders said, "Hey, don't you have something else? You say the same thing every time." He said, "No, I say the same thing every time because it is the Lord's commandment. And if this only is done, it is enough."

Ideas have consequences. And the greatest idea, the most consequential idea for all of the betterment of humanity has been this, that God loves us so much that he gave his son so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Whoever believes receives that love and then we love one another. And that idea has transformed the world for the good like nothing else. If you don't believe me, just imagine, thought experiment, imagine the world and world history without Christianity.

And there's so much that Christians have done, so much good that Christians that brought into the world, and fine arts, and science and education, and healthcare. The first hospital ever built was built by St. Basil in 369 in Caesarea. The whole idea of private property and the dignity of work comes from Christianity. The whole idea of human rights, that we are all equal in dignity, in value and worth. Where does that come from? What's the foundation for that? It's that we are image bearers of God.

Modern science, started by Christians, the calendar, you measure your birthday from the birthday of Jesus Christ. The first 123 universities in the United States were started by Christians as schools, to study the world and study God's word. The printing press invented by Christians. You look at art and you look at music, God's love filling the hearts of God's children, bringing that love to those who don't deserve it is what changed the world.

The Greek writer, who's not a Christian, Lucien writing in the second century, he says, "It's incredible to see the fervor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing, and their first legislator, Jesus has put it into their heads that they are brethren." We are. We're family. If God is our father, we are brothers and sisters and we are to love one another and serve one another and this right here is what furthers the kingdom of God. Because Jesus said, "The world will know that you are my disciples." By what? "By your love for one another."

Five is how does this teaching affect my view of myself? Does this teaching show me who I am in comparison to God? Does it feed myself? Does it feed my pride? Or does it grow me in humility? Does this teaching point me to the true Trinity, Father, Son, the Holy spirit? Or does it point me to the false Trinity of me, myself and I? And again, I've already dealt with that, God is a means to an end, but the Holy Spirit and our fallen self, our sinful, rebellious self, they're diametrically opposed to each other. Galatians 5:17, for the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.

The inner war inside between God's light and our fleshly darkness, that war, if it's waging in your heart, in your life, that's a sign that you have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is displacing your sinful nature and replacing it with the image of God. So does this teaching that you're listening to, does it help you see there needs to be war on the inside? I need to mortify my flesh and I need to vivify my affections for God.

And this is why false teachers often gain a huge following because they never talk about the sinful flesh. They never talk about sin. What they talk about is how wonderful you are. You're wonderful and you know what, that feels so good in the short term. I love when people tell me how wonderful I am. Thank you so much. But then if I keep coming and I keep hearing how wonderful I am, I'm like, "Dow, okay, I don't need you anymore." So in the short term, it's effective to grow crowds. In the long-term, it doesn't change their life. It doesn't help them with the true problems going on inside. And then they leave. And that's why whenever people move away from the gospel, from the scriptures, in an attempt to grow the church, what happens is actually the opposite.

Six is, how does this teaching affect my view of the world? And by world, I don't mean God's beautiful creation. I don't mean God's image bearers, God so loved the world that he gave his son for it. What I mean is the sinful thought process, or the systems in the world that pull us away from God by replacing glory that God deserves, and giving it to people. So this is verse 16 of chapter two, "For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever."

So this is the word by which we must test the spirits. Does the teaching increase my desire for the flesh, desire of the eyes, and the pride of life? Or does this teaching show me that those things do not satisfy? No matter how much they pull, no matter how strong the siren song of these desires, I understand that nothing satisfies more than God, that nothing satisfies more than Christ.

And finally, how does this teaching alter my view or affect my attitude towards sin? Does this teaching cause me to tolerate sin? Or does this teaching make sin intolerable and holiness more desirable? And often it comes like this, "God loves you so much that he died on the cross for your sin. He forgives all of your sins. Accept that forgiveness and now go live any way that you want." And it presents Jesus Christ only as savior. Yes, he's savior. And he's Lord. He saves us from sin so that we live a life following him. And this is true grace. True grace turns our hearts away from sin toward holiness.

Titus 2:11, "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, and training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ." Grace that saves is also grace that teaches. So anything that weakens your hatred to sin and your love for holiness is not from God.

This is... I was watching the Kobe Bryant tribute that the Lakers had at their first game after Kobe's passing. And they played Amazing Grace. It was so powerful. And one of the most powerful lines in amazing grace is this, "It was grace that caused my heart to fear." What does that mean? It's God's grace that awakens in us a realization of our fallen flesh, a realization that we have followed the ways of the world, a realization of my own personal sin. And there's fear there, there's condemnation there, when we realize this is how serious God is against our sin, about our sin. This is what it took for God to save us, the death of his son.

And then the next line is, "In grace, my fear's relieved." Grace awakens my fear and it relieves my fear. This is what it took for God to save you, the death of his son on the cross. But this is how much God loves you, that he was willing to take it. And that's how glorious God is. If the glorious God in the universe who created everything, if he's so big and I'm so small, and I'm worse than small because I'm sinful and I rebelled against him, but he still loves me, then that right there just stokes my love, my affection, my worship for him.

I'll conclude with this, just a verse about the immensity of God's love. Psalm 103:11, "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the East is from the West, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." He removes our transgressions because of the cross of Christ. All you need to do is repent of your sin and believe in Christ. And he removes your sin from you as far as the East is from the West. Why? Because this is how much he loves you. How much? As high as the heavens are above the earth.

How high are the heavens above the earth? Just to get to the edge of our galaxy, the Milky Way, you have to travel at the speed of light for a hundred thousand years. What's the speed of light? It's 188,000 miles per second. When you snap your fingers in that time span, that takes to snap your fingers. Light can travel around the world six times. How far? Well, the universe isn't just our galaxy, the universe consists of 80 billion galaxies. That's more than 10 galaxies for every person that's alive today. You get a galaxy and you get... Everybody gets galaxies. That's how massive the universe is. And to travel from earth to the edge of the universe as we know it would take 15.5 billion years. God's love for you is as vast as the heavens are above the earth. How do we know? Because of the cross of Jesus Christ, his death, his burial, and resurrection?

If you missed any of the points, they're up here, if you're not a Christian today, we welcome you to receive the love of Christ, the grace of Christ. We all need grace. We all need forgiveness, accept it, accept him as Lord and savior and accept his love.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for the immensity of your love. It's beyond our ability to even comprehend. And I pray that you make us a people who revel in this love, who glorify you because you are great, and glorify you because you are good. I pray, pour your love into our hearts so we continue to love you and one another. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio for Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Heavenly Father, on communion Sunday today, we just want to take a moment to confess that we are sinners, that we are selfish, that all too often our own self-interests dominate our thoughts, dominate our imaginations, and take up our energy. Lord, I pray today that you focus our gaze from ourselves and refocus it on you. We are not glorious. We are not infinite. You are glorious, and you are infinite, and you are love. We thank you, Lord, that you showed us with true love is, that you, the Father, gave your Son, your beloved, the one in whom you delight, and, Jesus, that you showed us what love is, that you gave yourself for us on the cross, that you through the gospel defined for us that true love is action, that true love is sacrifice of self for the benefit of others and that sin is diametrically opposed. It's seeking self-interest even at the sacrifice of the interest of others.

I pray, Holy Spirit, show us that deep inside our hearts, we're still struggling with hate. Even as your children, as your beloved, there's still this darkness, this streak of Cain within each one of us. I pray, little by little, incrementally, remove it and transform us into the image of your Son. Holy Spirit, we pray that you come and speak to us, speak a word that every single one of us needs to hear, specific words from you. We pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen. We're in a sermon series through the epistle of 1 John, the apostle of love. We're calling it Meno. Meno means to abide in the original Greek, abide, to be connected, to keep in step with the Spirit, to have our heart be intact with the heart of God, the Father.

John, if you haven't noticed, John is a person who understands that the world's divided into two, two kingdoms, one of light, one of darkness. There's two fathers, God, the Father, and the enemy. There's two DNAs spiritually speaking, two spiritual essences. There's righteousness and unrighteousness. Today he wants to delve into the topic of what love is, and he compares and contrasts love with hate, love and hate. The word love, not just in the English language, but in every language, it's one of the most elastic words. It's been stretched to mean so many things. It's one of the most misused and overused and abused words, used in so many ways of so many things, and often it's employed actually to describe something that is opposite of what love truly is from God's perspective. I'll just give you one example of this from the Old Testament.

It's the story of Amnon and Tamar in 2 Samuel 13. Scripture says that Amnon fell in love with Tamar. He loved her with an incredible love, and he does everything he possibly can in order to woo her. In pursuit of this "love," he deceives her, ultimately rapes her, and ruins her life. Then, as scripture says, almost immediately after that heinous act, it says that his love for her morphed into a hate that was even more intense than the intensity of the love that he had for her. Love for him wasn't a true love. It wasn't a sacrificial love. It was actually just a synonym for selfish desire, which is actually hatred. Scripture says that true love isn't just sentiment. It's not just affection. True love is self-sacrifice for the benefit of the beloved. Hate is the opposite, where you're willing to sacrifice the best, the benefit, the interests of the other person for self, for your yourself.

Here, as we get into the text, one of the things that the apostle John wants us to realize is that, in and of ourselves, naturally speaking, we can not love like this. We can not love with this kind of love. Naturally, we love people that can benefit us in some way. We love people that can help us in some way. We love people that love us. Oh, you love me. Thank you. You have such good taste in people like me. Thanks so much. I love the fact that you love me. Supernatural love isn't just loving people who are lovely or loving people who love us. Supernatural love is I'm willing to sacrifice even for enemies. That's what Jesus said. Love your enemies even as yourself. It's a supernatural love, and we can only do it by the power of the Spirit.

Today we're in 1 John chapter three verses 11 through 24, 1 John chapter three 11 through 24. Would you look at the text with me? "For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. From whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him, and by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given to us." This is the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points, the first two really straight forward. Stop hating people. Number two, start loving people, and, number three, greater than your heart. First of all, stop hating people, kind of common sense. John, why do you even have to tell us? In particular, he's writing this letter to Christians. You are children of God. You have God's love in you. You have experienced God's love. Why does he need to command us to do what we should do naturally? This is verse 11, "For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." Then he brings in a case study. "We should not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous." It seems like this case study's out of nowhere. Talking to Christians, you should love another. Okay, great. Now he's like, "Let me contrast that. Let me bring in the most severe example I can have the opposite of love."

Why do we as Christians need to hear this? Well, first of all, he's dividing the world, again, into two categories, those who love and those who hate, those who are of the pattern of Abel who was righteous and was saved by grace through faith and those who were like Cain. He says you have been saved to be like Abel. You have saved by grace through faith. You are now loving. However, be careful of the streak of Cain that every single one of us is susceptible to. Though God has given you a brand new heart, a heart that loves God and loves people, if you do not practice this love, the hate within can dominate. There is a little Cain within each one of us. He starts talking about this hatred and murder, and it seems so extreme. Why are you telling us this? It seems extreme if we look at love and hate in terms of our cultural definitions.

Love for people today is just kindness or being a good person or being nice to people, and hate is just an extreme reaction emotionally speaking, but when scripture talks about love and hate, it doesn't talk about emotions per se. Love, Biblically speaking, is self-sacrifice for the benefit of other. Hatred is being willing to sacrifice others for self. Now we got to ask, "Why is Cain the epitome of this hatred? Why is he the example?" Well, he's the example, and primarily because Cain and Abel were the first people born under the curse of sin. The curse of sin's deep within every single one of us. It's a bent toward self. It's the self-centered bent of human nature. I'll help you if it helps me. However, if helping you doesn't help me at all, then if it's going to be too much of a hassle, if it comes down to you or me, obviously I'm going to choose me. If push comes to shove, I will push, I will shove. That is human nature.

Now he brings in the example of Cain, and this is a really fascinating case study because Cain and Abel are brothers raised by Adam and Eve, their same set of parents who discipled Cain and Abel the same way. Abel, he worked with animals. He was a shepherd, and Cain was a farmer, different livelihoods, different vocations, however, same parents. One of the things that we realize is the contrast here isn't between Abel, who is like a Christian and a religious person, and Cain, who is an atheist. The contrast is between a person who by faith responds to God's commandments and one who responds by works. Now, here's how it played out. They both bring sacrifices. Abel brings an animal sacrifice, and Cain brings vegetable or plant sacrifices, but both bring from their first fruits. Both bring from their livelihood. The question there isn't about the type of sacrifice.

The question isn't about what we bring in our hands to God. The question from God's perspective that it's most important isn't what we bring in our hands but what we bring in our hearts. Abel, Hebrews 11:4 says, comes to God and brings a sacrifice by faith. Cain does not. This shows us that his relationship with God is already tenuous. There's something going on in his heart. Well, what's going on? We see later on that God rejects Cain's sacrifice, and Cain begins to seethe. There's anger in his heart. God then comes again and says, "Look, Cain, be careful. There's sin crouching at your door like a predator. If you do not control, if you do not overpower, it will overpower you." Why that reaction came to God's saying, "Look, I'm giving you another chance. Now come to me with faith instead of works," well, we see what's going on in his heart before he lashes out at his brother and actually murders him by slitting his throat.

That's the word spousal in the Greek. He slaughters and butches his brother out of hate. Before he had hate in his heart towards his brother, he had hate in his heart to God. Now we need to analyze what was that hate in his heart to God. Well, with what kind of posture of heart did he bring a sacrifice to God? Love? No, indifference. He comes to God in order to manipulate God. He comes to God, gives God what he thinks God wants to get God off his back. God sees that. He sees the manipulation, and he rejects it, and then we see Cain lashing out at his brother. What's going on in his heart? Well, John tells us this. He says Cain was of the evil one. Cain's spiritual DNA is similar to that of Satan. Now we do a little more analysis. What made Satan Satan? Satan was the greatest angel of all the angels, of the greatest army of angels, he was in charge. He was the number two before God.

What made Satan Satan? What made Satan Satan was he wanted to get rid of God. He wished that God were not. He wanted to mentally murder God. That's what made Satan Satan. Here, John tells us that Cain is of the evil one. What does Cain want to do? Cain hates the implacable fact that God exists, that God is omniscient, that God is omnipresent. He hates that fact. He can't get rid of God, so he wants to pay God off, manipulate God to ultimately get what he wants. Cain was of the evil one because Cain wanted God gone. He wanted God to be dead to him. That gets to the heart of what hate is. Cain, ultimately, he can't get rid of God, so now he turns to his brother Abel, hates Abel. What does he do? He physically murders Abel, but the physical murder came only after there was mental murder or heart murder. He wished that Abel were not. That's what hate is.

Now we can apply this. With this definition, we see hate in our hearts all the time. You're driving. Someone's going 45 in the high speed lane. I wish that you were not in the lane. That's what I'm saying. You don't vocalize this. Someone's not using their blinker. I wish that you were not. Double parking on Beacon, I wish that you were not. You're in the self-checkout lane at Stop & Shop and someone uses it for the first time ever. I wish that you were not. Now, you can apply this to your boss. You can apply this to colleagues with whom you're competing for promotions or someone that you competing with for a grant or a scholarship. My life would be easier. I wish that you were not. Now, the reason why John uses this story, employs this story, is because these are brothers. These guys know each other like no one else knows them.

I'm telling you you've heard the adage, the line between hate and evil is thin. That's a thin line, in particular with people who are closest to you. Have you ever thought that, "I wish that you were not," about a sibling, about a child, about a spouse? It's so crazy. One moment, you love them so much. You're snuggling. Everything is great. Then another moment, you're like, and something's going on. That's that streak of Cain that John is talking about. He says be careful. In particular, he's talking about the brethren, brothers and sisters in a church where God makes you spiritual siblings. You didn't choose one another. You're spiritual siblings. You can think of the people closest in your life. These are the people where it takes a sacrifice of self, of convenience, of comfort, of your own preferences in order to love.

The fact that we do love, the fact that we want to grow in love is a sign that we have become children. That's verse 14, 1 John 3:14, "And we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death." Here we got to ask ourselves, "Are there specific brothers and sisters in my life, Christians in my life whom I'm seeking to love?" If so, that's a sign that we are children of God. If not, perhaps you have not... If that's not even a category in your mind, that I should pursue loving other Christians, if that's not even a category, perhaps you need to ask, "Have I passed from death into life?" The assumption here is that people don't begin neutral spiritually or basically good. Ephesians 2:1 says that we are born in a state of spiritual death. John 5:24, "Truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life."

If you're unsure of your salvation, if you're like, "I don't know if I'm a Christian," scripture says all you need to do is place your faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, repent of sin, and now you pass from death to life. The signs of that life, the signs of that first heartbeat, are love toward God and love toward neighbor. Verse 15, "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." Again, he gets to the final consummation of what happens when hate is birthed in our hearts. What it does is lead to ultimate murder. That's the end. We want that person gone, but Jesus doesn't focus on the murder. In Sermon on the Mount, he says, "If anyone is angry toward a brother or sister or another person, you have already committed murder in your heart." He's saying that murder in the heart, hatred in the heart, is tantamount to real murder because you are wishing that they were not.

The other thing I will just mention here, he's talking about murderers and that murderers are representative of their father, of Satan. Scripture says that anybody who's done absolutely anything can come to God and repent of sin. Even the sin of murder can be forgiven. Any person who's still alive, if you're still breathing, you can be made right with God through repentance. The moment you repent and believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, your sins are forgiven. This is the only way our sins are forgiven. Our culture is at a point where the only thing you need to do to go to heaven is die. That's false. You need to repent. You need to believe. That's the only way. Stop hating, and we're all struggling with that. How do we get rid of the hate in our heart? We need to grow in love or start loving people. Again, love is action. Love isn't just emotion or feeling. It's action. It's what we do.

What are we doing to love the people in our lives? What are we doing to encourage, to help, to care, to lift them up? What are we doing to grow in generosity? We're doing this not because they deserve our love. We're doing this, we're loving them, not because we're just responding to their love for us. We're loving them in the same way that Jesus Christ loved us. How did Jesus Christ love us? When we are yet sinners, when we're still enemies, he gave himself for us. This is how we truly understand love. In verse 16 he says, "By this we know." How do we know? By this we know that he loves us, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. He says this is the definition of love. It's laying down your life for another, sacrificing the greatest thing that you have for the benefit of the other person. I love the sublimity of thought and simplicity of words. I understand every single one of these words, and you bring it together and it's like, yeah, that is the greatest love.

The greatest movies you've ever watched, there's always someone giving their life for friends, for other people. We understand this is the greatest sacrifice. This is how scripture talks about love. That the greatest, most supreme demonstration of true love, it's always the cross. Whenever the New Testament talks about God's love, it always talks about God's love in the context of the cross. John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son." You see this Galatians 2:20, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 5:25. This right here, this is true love. When you realize what Christ did for you, it melts your heart, begins to push the darkness out and replaces it with love. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. Hatred even just for hatred can't get rid of hatred. Only love can dispel the hatred in our hearts."

When we experience God's love, we begin to experience that God is true love. This right here allows us to sacrifice self-interest for the interest of others. It's a miracle. It's miraculous when it happens. Every time when it happens in your life, you need to attribute it to the work of the Holy Spirit and give God the glory. One example of this from game theory, if you study game theory... This is first semester econ in college. We're going to go back there to the prisoner's dilemma. Remember the prisoner's dilemma? There's two prisoners, and both of them have been arrested. They committed a crime together, maybe, allegedly. We're not sure. They're in different rooms with detectives. If one guy confesses, gets off scot-free, and the other guy gets 20 years. If one guy does not confess, say, "I didn't do it," and the other guy says, "I didn't do it either. We didn't do it," they get off but only after like six months prison sentence.

If each of them confesses, they get 15 years.Now you got to do the math. What do I think my partner is going to do? Are they going to confess or not? Well, it's in their best interest to confess because if they confess and I don't confess, they get off, I get 20 years. It's also in my best interest to confess because if they don't confess, the same thing happens. If both of us confess, we get 15 years, which is bad, but it's not as bad as 20 years. What economists say is like most people are reasonable actors, and most of them act in their best interest. Most people say, "I'm going to confess because I'd rather take 15 years than 20." Now, I'm not saying we're prisoners. We didn't commit crimes, hopefully.

Here's how it applies to us. Imagine if everybody lived like this. Imagine what the world would be if everybody acted not in their own self-interests but in the self-interest of the other person. This is so great. Deep down inside we know that this is how we ought to be. This is the is-ought dilemma. John's like, "You ought to be loving. Why do I have to tell you? Because you're not loving." Everybody in the world, we know that the world would be a much better place if people were loving. Where do we get the power to do it? We get the power, the spiritual resources to do that from the Holy Spirit, from Christ. John talks about this is the greatest love. We should love like this, and the greatest level of love is to give your life for the brethren, give you your life for other people.

Here he's asking us a question, "Would you honestly be willing to die for another person, in particular other Christians? Would you be willing to die?" You've got to meditate on that. It's easy to say, "Yes, I would," until that moment comes. That's where John takes us emotionally. Are you willing to die for other Christians? Then he gives us verse 17. Wat he's saying is, "If you're willing to die for them, then why aren't you willing to live for them? If you're willing to give the greatest sacrifice, which is your life, then why aren't you willing to sacrifice things in your life for this person, be it time, convenience, comfort, money, what have you?" That's verse 17, "If anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, sees other Christians in need in particular, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth."

Are you growing in love? Well, let's look at your life. Let's look at what you do. Let's look at your calendar. Let's look at your budget. Are you budgeting for generosity? Are you budgeting margin in your calendar in order to act out love, in order to give acts of love? You see all this throughout scripture. The greatest example is the story of the good Samaritan. A priest walks by, a rabbi walks by this person who was mugged. Then, finally a Samaritan walks by, a person of the wrong race according to the cultural Jews. He comes, and he's inconvenienced for his time. Now he lost a day from his schedule. He's going to make up all that work. Now he finances the guy's stay at a hotel, finances the medical attention. He's inconvenienced. He's sacrificing time, convenience, comfort for the benefit of the other person. Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."

Are there people in your community that you're looking to bless, looking to love just in action? That's number one. Number two, scripture teaches that we are to have a posture of heart. We're ready for it, where we do. Some of them was godly Christians I know at Mosaic, I know that they do this personally because they come to me sometimes. They're like, "Pastor Jan, we budgeted this much to give people in need. To whom should we give?" That's so inspiring to actually practice this systematically, to help others, and to love others. Obviously this doesn't mean that we indiscriminately dole out money to people who are irresponsible. 2 Thessalonians 3:10 through 12 says, "For even when we were with you, we would give you this command. If anyone was not willing to work, let them not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living."

If you're running out of energy to love people, and I'm here. I'm here every once in awhile, mostly Mondays like before 10:00 AM, before my coffee. You feel like it's the energy to love people is gone. You've just given so much. Where do you get the energy to keep loving and keep giving? John would say you just need to spend time in the Lord, abide in him, in his love. Meditate in what God has given you. He's given his Son so that you can give now of yourself. He's forgiven so that you can now be forgiving. He's served so that now you can serve. The other thing I just want to point out here before we move to point three is that we love not to earn affection from God, not to earn salvation from God, not to earn acceptance from God. We love because we are his children and we can't but love.

The imperative to love flows from the indicative of this is what's happened to you. You love because you have become loving. You see this in 1 John 13:14. He says, "We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. We love the..." This is what he said, "We love the brothers." John, why do you need to tell us to love the brothers or love Christians or love people if we already do it? That's verse 14. You are a Christian. You are beloved from God. You love people. Then he tells us verse 11, "This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." That's the imperative. We love. You should love. Verse 16, "By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." We love. You ought to love.

Verse 18, "Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth." Again, the imperative, and the imperative flows out of the indicative. What's going on, he's like, "You have been miraculously regenerated. God has made you his child. The DNA of God's seed is within you now. Practice love. Grow in love. Make sure of your salvation and your calling and your election," scripture says. Possess your possessions. Be who you are. We need that reminder every once in a while. We kind of forget with the hustle and bustle of life, with jobs and busy schedule. We kind of forget. This is who I am. My nature is that I'm a child of God. God has loved me. I am his beloved, therefore I am to love.

Point three is greater than your heart. Stop loving, start loving greater than your heart. What's John doing here? Well, John has written this letter for the purpose of helping Christians realize that they're Christians, to have confirmation. I want you to know that you have eternal life. Simultaneously, what he wants to do is if anyone is not a Christian to awaken them from this lie, the self-deception that they are Christians. John here, and we've talked about this in the first sermon, he gives these three tests over and over with which we can examine our salvation. Test number one is doctrinally. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he died on the cross for your sins, that he bore the wrath of God that we deserve, that by grace through faith when you believe in him, all your sins are forgiven, there's no condemnation now?

Doctrinally, morally, do you seek to obey God now? Do you seek to live righteously, honor him, and please him? Then relationally, do you love God? Do you love people? Now, he sets the standards so high, and he understands that for some some Christians who are true Christians, when they see how high the standard is and how far they fall short of that standard, that their hearts begin to condemn them. That's the scene that he sets in verse 19 and 20, "By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. For whenever a heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything." He says at some point, even for Christians, our hearts will condemn us. The scene that he sets is that God is judge. There's my heart who's the lawyer that's accusing me and then myself.

Sometimes Satan accuses us. Sometimes it's own heart, where our own heart says, "Look, you're as loving as he ought to be. Look, the pattern of your life is so selfish. The pattern of your life is so unrighteous. You're probably not a Christian." John would say go through those three tests, but then also he says, verse 19, "By this we know we are of the truth and reassure our heart." When our hearts condemn us, he says, look to this. By this... What's the this? That's the previous verses, 17 and 18, where he says that we love the brethren. We sacrifice. We give of our physical goods, and we give of our time, and we give of our money. There's a track record in our life of loving people in a supernatural way.

He says so even if today your heart is condemning you, questioning your salvation, look at your track record since you became a Christian. Have there been moments of supernatural love, and are you growing in that? If so, if you can point to times in your life and like, "That definitely wasn't me. Wow, God really showed up here. God showed up here. God showed up here. God helped me love this difficult person and this difficult person and that difficult person," that right there is proof, that track record is that, that you are a child of God. When we fall, he's saying, when we have moments of doubt, self-condemnation, don't focus on the failures. Focus instead on this track record of growth in the Lord. Refocus on the times that God's love has flowed through you. That's verse 19. He says, "Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything."

Assumption in your heart is not infallible even as a Christian. Then the other thing that's really fascinating is that he brings in God's omniscience, that God knows everything, and he brings it in in order to bring comfort and relief to the Christians instead of a cause or a concern. Whenever I think that God knows everything, knows all of my sin, knows all the sinful inclinations in my heart, like it scares me. John says, "Look, for the true believer, God knows that you want to obey him. God knows that you want to grow in love, and he knows your battle. He knows your temptation. You can be reassured that if there is this track record, you can be reassured that God knows. He knows the imperfections. He knows your desire to love, obey for Jesus' sake, and God will continue to equip." You see this in Romans eight verse one, "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

If you're in Christ, there's no condemnation. Then, in verse 31 through 34, "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who was at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who is going to condemn us if we are in Christ Jesus? Not even our own fallible hearts." One example of this is the heartbreaking story of Peter, the apostle Peter who denies Jesus, three times denies Jesus. In John 21, Jesus, the resurrected Christ, meets the disciples on the beach. He's got some fish that he's broiling for them. He's cooking for him. It's a wonderful scene, just a brunch on the beach.

Then Jesus says, "Peter, let's go for a walk." This is where Jesus asks him the three heartbreaking questions, where he says, "Peter, do you love me?" Peter said, "Oh, you know I love you." "Peter, do you love me?" "Yes, of course I love you." Finally, "Peter, do you love me?" Peter's response is, "Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you." This is a fascinating response because what was happening in Peter's life was a crisis of faith. Do I? I think I love him, but I just denied him three times. Jesus here reinstates Peter, gives him more grace. Peter's saying, "Lord, as far as I know, I do, but you know greater." That's what John is saying. Even for the Christian who's struggling to love, struggling to follow, who's struggling to obey, if you believe in Jesus Christ, if you are attempting to grow in love and there's a track record of growth, God is going to give comfort to the heart. He will give a confident heart.

That's the phrase that he uses in verse 31, "If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God." God brings confidence to our condemning heart and gives grace. We have confidence before God. The word means boldness of a child coming to the father as opposed to the accused appearing before a judge. Then he gives us these two benefits of walking with the Lord, two benefits of the confident heart when you know that you're in Christ. The first is answered prayer. This is verse 22, "Whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him." By the way, this is a staggering claim, that a child of God, whatever you ask, God will give it to you, but there's conditions. The first condition is that we seek to grow in obedience. We're seeking to obey his commandments and do what pleases him, meaning that if there's disobedience in your heart, knowing sin, like sin that you know of in your heart, it interferes with our prayers to God. It gets in the way. That's number one.

Number number two, we need to understand that whatever we ask, it has to be in accord with God's will. That's what in Jesus' name means. A lot of people pray whatever they want and they think, "If I tack on Jesus' name at the end, like, 'Lord, please let me win the Powerball, and I'll tithe the off the winnings, post taxes, in Jesus' name.'" That's not... In Jesus' name means according to God's will, for God's glory. He says, "Are you seeking to live an obedient life?" The Christian who's seeking to live an obedient life, praying in Jesus' name for God's glory, can point to prayers in their life that have been answered, one after another after another after another. Some of the most righteous people I know in my life, whenever I come to them with a prayer, this is why they're on my team, I ask them to pray, and you just see there's this track record.

Scripture says, "The prayer of a righteous person availeth much." It's powerful. Are your prayers being answered? God often doesn't answer in our timing, and God often answers with what we really need, what we would have asked for if we knew everything that God knows. One of the prayers that I've always been curious about is when Jesus to Peter, as he prophesies that Peter is going to deny him, Jesus says this, "I've prayed for you that your faith would not fail." I've always thought that's a fascinating prayer. Jesus, why are you praying for his faith to not fail? Why not pray for him not to deny you? That's a puzzle, but Peter needed to go through that trial to cement his faith for everything that was coming. Jesus will always give us, to his children, what we really need, not necessarily what we desire at the time.

Then, the second blessing after the answered prayer, verse 24, "Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us." This is incredible because he says when we keep his commandments, when we're striving to keep his commandments, we understand that it's the Spirit at work with us. The Spirit of God is abiding in us. This is an important verse because when a lot of people talk about the Holy Spirit, they connect the Holy Spirit with subjective experience, emotional experience. Oh, I felt the Spirit today in worship. I got some goosebumps. I love when I feel the Spirit. I love when I feel the presence of God, when the presence of God is heavy in a place. I love those moments. However, that's not what he's focused. He's not just focused on the subjective experience of the Holy Spirit.

He's not saying, "By this you know the Spirit is with you because you feel him." He says, "By this you know that the Spirit is with you. Whoever keeps his commandments," meaning can you look at your life and say, "I desire to keep God's commandments. I desire to live according to the will of God. I desire to please God. I desire to believe in Christ"? If so, that right there is miraculous, and that is a sign of the objective work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Stop hating, start loving, and God is greater than our own condemning hearts. At this time, we're going to transition to holy communion. Holy communion is an opportunity for Christians who are repentant to celebrate God's grace. For whom is holy communion? It's for anyone who is repentant, anyone who has repented of sin and today continues to repent of sin.

If you're a Christian and in your life there is sin, in particular relational sin that we talked about, hate, hostility, bitterness toward another person, today's an opportunity to repent. We are called to repent before we take communion. If you are not a Christian, if you have not repented of sin, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service or repent of your sins today, and then you're welcome to partake. The way that we celebrate communion is the ushers are going to hand out the elements, the bread and the cup. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ broken for us to heal our souls, and the cup symbolizes the blood of Christ that was shed for us to cleanse us from sin and guilt.

The ushers are going to hand them, out the elements. Please hold onto them, and then we'll partake together afterwards. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time in the holy scriptures. Lord, what a word that you've given us, that we can be your children and that we can grow in love, not to get something from you, not to earn acceptance, but because you have loved us. You have made us your beloved children, and you have made us loving. Now help us grow in that love. Jesus, we thank you that you showed us what true love is. You met our greatest, most tangible need, which is reconciliation with God the Father. We thank you for your sacrifice, and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

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Heavenly father, we thank you that you are our father, and Lord, we do not take that for granted. And for those of us who do, Lord, I pray today, reignite in us desire and affections for a relationship with you where we understand that you are father. We don't take that for granted. We understand that we were children of wrath. We understand that we are under your judgment. and still Lord, you came and you poured out your love on us by giving your son. To give your love, to give your forgiveness, to give your grace, you had to first give your son. And you have so loved the world, you have so loved us that you gave your son.

Jesus, we thank you that you came and died on the cross for our sin to save us from the condemnation in order to reconcile us with the father. I pray, Holy spirit, show us that if we are your children, born again, regenerated by the spirit, that we are to grow in resemblance with the father, we are to grow in your likeness, in your image, growing, giving, and serving and sacrificing in the same way that you give, serve and sacrifice. Lord, we pray that you bless our time in the Holy scriptures and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

We're in a sermon series that we are calling menó. And menó comes from the original Greek, Koine Greek. It means to remain, to abide in, to strengthen a relationship by walking in step with the spirit of God. And why are we using this term? Because 24 times in the Epistle of first John, the book we're in, he uses this word, this is a big theme of his book, that what it means to be a Christian isn't just intellectually saying that we believe in God, it's actually to be with God, to live with God, have God abide in you and you and him. And today, the Apostle John focuses our attention on the first person of the Trinity, God the Father, that God is father, son and Holy Spirit, equal in essence and still three individual persons.

And one of the things that John wants us to know is that God loves us with a fatherly love. My wife and I, we have four daughters, and I've been a father now for 11 plus years. I tell people I've got a PhD and a half in raising daughters. I'm pretty good at it, not the best, I'm okay, growing at it. We had our first baby when I was 26, when we had Sophia. And Sophia is 11, Elizabeth is eight, Ekaterina just turned five, and Milana is two. I love being a dad, I love it so much. Obviously, it's hard, there's always challenges.

Will Ferrell has three sons and he recently was talking about that and he's like, "Actually, raising kids is like operating a mini correctional facility." I'm like, "That's good." He was talking about water cannons. I was like, "Not going to go that far, maybe water pistols." Yes, there's challenges, but there's so many blessings, so many benefits. I made a list of all my favorite stuff about being a dad. Number one, and this list isn't in order of importance, but maybe it is. Number one is I love providing, I love to provide, in particular food. I love watching them eat food that I bought, food that I cooked, that I cut. I love it so much. I don't know what it is, it brings so much joy to my heart.

We were cooking steak the other night, Friday night, that's what we do. And I cut up a steak and I put it on a big plate and my daughter Milana, who's two and a half, she didn't point to the little plate that I gave her, she said, "No," pushed the little plate away, pointed to the big plate. Obviously she got the big plate and devoured most of it. It brought joy to my heart. I love that. I love discipling. I love watching them grow. I love teaching them to read. I love caring and nurturing and snuggling. My daughter's very affectionate. My five year old just spontaneously comes out and she says, "Dad, I love you so much. I love you 1,040." Same number every time, I don't know why.

And my response is always, "I love you 1040 plus one," and she's like, "Ooh, that's a lot." Same response, we have the same conversation every day. My two year old, I ask her, "How much do you love your dad?" She says two, because that's the only number she knows. I'll take it. I love being a dad. And one of the things that I've noticed is, people come up to us, and my girls are really beautiful and whenever they say, "Oh, your daughters are so beautiful," I always say, "They take after their mom, praise God."

But there's a clear physical resemblance of me in them. I look at them I'm like, "Yeah, you're mine," especially my youngest, that is mini me. And one of the things as we raise kids is you do see that they don't just physically resemble you, they begin to resemble you in speech patterns, in humor, they begin to resemble you in character, in self-control, in all the most important things, but in particular the begin to take on or emulate your relationship with the Lord. We want them to emulate us in all the most important things, but in particular in having a relationship with God the Father.

And this is what Saint John talks about today, is that we as Christians are made children of God through heart surgery, that God takes out our heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh, a heart that's numbed her toward God is replaced with a heart that beats for God. Now we have a spiritual DNA, the God's seed is in us and we begin to grow in resemblance of God, and that's what we're talking about today. That's the title of this sermon is Growing in Resemblance of the Father. That God is Father, Jesus is our older brother. One of the things I will mention is, this is what happens to many people. When we hear about God the Father, we begin to measure God the Father through our earthly fathers.

And lots of work has been done about the father wound and father issues, and here's the thing, every single one of us has been raised by a fallen father. And I got to be careful here because my dad is actually here in the crowd. What's up pop? If you see the guy who looks like Sean Connery right there, he's right there. Great, great dad, phenomenal dad. But every one of us, we're fallen and we're raised by fallen parents. So there's all these some kinds of dysfunctions. So here's what I ask you to do, despite the pain, do not measure God the Father by your earthly father.

Instead, measure your earthly fathers by God the Father. And by the way, the reason why the father wound is so deep for so many people is because in our heart of hearts, we know what a good father should be like. How do we know that? God has planted that in our hearts, he's written that on our hearts so that we don't seek that completely fully in our earthly parents, but in God the Father. And today we're going to look at 1 John 2:28 through 1 John 3:10, so please look at the texts with me. 1 John 2:28. "And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming."

"If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that every one who practices righteousness ha been born of him." See what kind of love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness."

"You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you, whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes the practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sitting from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 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."

"By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. One big idea in three points, born again to abide, behold the father's love, and three, resemble the father. Here in 0.1, born again to abide. John begins by calling the Christians children. He's not talking to little children per se, he's talking about Christians, who from God's perspective are his kids. And he says, "Abide in him."

At the end of verse 29, he says, "Whoever practices righteousness has been born of him." Here he's giving us the doctrine of regeneration. The doctrine is what I mentioned in the beginning that you are born again, you are born to new life, you have a new identity and new responsibilities. Now, when it comes to the term born again Christian, it has all kinds of political undertones. So one of the things I want to do here is just reclaim it from all of that baggage. I was at a lunch yesterday visiting a dear sister who's in a nursing home, she had a pizza party.

And whenever I get invited to social events, I'm always seated at the table with the non-believers, be it baby showers or weddings or dinner party, anything. So I'm at the table with the non-Christians because I'm a professional Christian, so that's what I do. So I'm at that table and a lady from the Christian table looks at me and she says, "Oh, you're a pastor?" I said, "Yeah." She said, "Oh, that's great. I'm a born again Christian." And I felt the unease immediately from everyone at my table, and I was like, "Yeah, I'm a little uneasy too." And usually when you think of a born again Christian, there's all kinds of things that come to mind in a flag-waving and etc.

What I want to do is I want to show you that from John's perspective, saying born again Christian is like saying Christian, Christian. For John it's the same reality. If you're born again, you are a child of God, you are a Christian. For John, this is what happens when a person becomes a Christian, they are reborn. And that leads to growing resemblance of God the Father. That's why he says whoever has been born again, perfect tense, that person practices righteousness. What comes first? It's being born again. So you practice righteousness, which is what it means to grow in resemblance of the father because you have been born again.

The righteous life is evidence of the new life. It's not cause, it's not a condition, it's the effect like begets like, God The Father begets children who are like God the Father. The son of a fish is a fish, the son of a duck is a duck, the son of God is a godly son or daughter, that's what he's saying. And he points out, what does he say? What's the main verb here? What's the imperative? He says, "Little children, abide in him." And this is really important because a lot of people are overwhelmed when they come to Christianity or they're trying to explore Christianity, and they're overwhelmed by all the theology, they're overwhelmed by scripture, which is 1,189 pages in my Bible.

Just overwhelmed by all of this, and you feel like you need a graduate degree in Christianity to be a Christian. And he says, "No, you're a child of God. Revel in that." Now what do you do? Just spend time with God, that's what it means to abide in him. You have everything you need for growth in the Lord, and scripture is part of it, you spend in scripture, you spend time in prayer. Just spend time with God. How do children grow in their relationship with their parents? They have conversations, they spend time together. There's the gift of presence where you're present with one another. So as a child of God, abide in him.

And he says, "Abiding in God prepares you to meet Christ." And here he starts talking about second coming in verse 28. "Now, little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming, Jesus has come once, he will come again, he will come suddenly, unexpectedly, without warning. Jesus said, "Be prepared for you don't know the hour or day that he comes." New Testament talks about the second coming all the time. One in every 25 verses in the New Testament talks about the second coming. In 260 chapters in the New Testament, it's mentioned 318 times.

And every single book of the New Testament except for the particular epistles of Galatians second, third John and Philemon, and he says, "Be prepared. That's how you get prepared, is by abiding in him so that you have confidence so that when he appears," meaning he's already here, that's why he uses that phrase, so that when he appears, meaning he's here, God is omnipresent, but he will physically appear and is coming. As the word Perusia, which in that context meant the coming of an emperor or a King, or Caesar is an event of a lifetime. And he says, People will have two reactions when Christ returns. Either they will be confident, a fearlessness. You're glad that he's here, you're rejoicing that he is here as judge and King because your sins have been judged on the cross because of repentance.

And he is your Lord, he is your King and you have been attempting to follow him all of your life, or he says you will shrink back from him in shame. Shrink back from him and shame, meaning there's something to be ashamed of. And he says, "Which one will it be?" Well, are you abiding? And this idea of shrinking back in shame, you've probably experienced this, it's when you haven't been doing what you should be doing. I remember at my first job out of college, I got yelled at by a CEO of the company who was in a meeting. I didn't know that he was the CEO, I know he was in a meeting, and I was buying a car on Craigslist. He saw that on my screen and he yelled at me in front of everybody. So that job didn't work out.

And so I learned my lesson. And then my second job, I applied for a job with the government and had to take a polygraph. And it was a four hour pilot polygraph, and by that point I was like, "You guys know everything." I told them everything I had ever done that I thought was wrong, and I was ready for this exam. And I was like, "They can throw nothing at me because I've already told them everything." So it was at peace and I passed the polygraph. That's kind of what repentance is. You come to the Lord Jesus Christ, you confess of all your sins, and you're in confidence because you're abiding in him, so there's transparency.

In Proverbs, it says that the righteous are bold as lions, they've got nothing to fear. So faithfulness leads to fearlessness, that's what he's talking about. So are you ready? Are you confident in seeing Christ? And John uses this word confidence four times in this text, twice is the confidence at the second coming, twice is the confidence we have when we pray. The way you prepare for the confidence in the second coming is you're with confidence come to the Lord in daily prayer of confession and adoration and just spending time with the Lord. So abide in the Father, abide in his love. That's what happens when you're born again.

The question arises here is, how do I become a child of God? How am I sure that I'm a child of God? And this is 0.2; Behold the father's love. In verse one of chapter three he says, "See what love the father has given us." "Behold," the King James version says, which I think is a word with more gravitas, it's not just the look in, it's the stare at, direct attention, reflect and ruminate upon this amazing love. And he says, "Behold, what kind of love." It's an incredible word that has to do with be amazed It's a sense of wonder he's trying to evoke, "Be in awe." It's only used seven times in the New Testament. Mark 13:1 the disciples with Jesus are walking out of the temple, and as they came out, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, teacher, what wonderful stones. What wonderful buildings, this is all incredible."

When Mary heard from the angel that she was going to give birth to the son of God, she said, "What kind of greeting is this?" Another definition of this word is, what kind of world is this message from? It's so unearthly, it's coming from a different planet. And why is John so amazed by this? He's so amazed because we get to call God Father. In all of the Old Testament, not one individual person calls God Father, directs a prayer to God as father, not one. Collectively as Israel they said you are our father, not individually. They called God judge or protector or provider or sustainer or ruler or creator, never father.

Jesus Christ comes, revolutionizes our relationship with God, and how does he teach us to pray? Our God in heaven? No. Jesus also doesn't pray to Jesus. Jesus prays to whom? Our father. Our father who art in heaven. Revolutionizes our relationship with God. And he says later, "God doesn't just call us his children. And so we are," he says. He makes his children not just entitled but actually in nature, we become the children of God. And we should be amazed by this, this should be... If John were texting us, if we are in a text chain with John and the Apostle Paul, and John were texting us, he would say, "Behold, the love of God that we are his children. This is how he loves us. Behold, his love."

And then you would send us the Paul Rudd meme. I don't know if you've seen the meme or the GIF, whatever, I always mix those up, where he's sitting with someone and he's opening a drink and he says, "Look at us. Look at us." You know that one? I love that one. "Look at us. Who would have thought? Not me." That's the reaction that Christian should have, "Not me. Why? I can't believe that I am a child of God." Now, here's why we don't have that reaction. We don't have that reaction. If I tell you that you're a child of God, you're like, "Yeah, okay." If I tell you that Jesus loves you, you're like, "Yeah, I know. Everyone loves me."

It's not shocking to us because we feel like we've earned it, we feel like we deserve it. "God exists, he made me, therefore I'm his kid." And one of the reasons why we believe this is because we have swallowed wholesale liberal theology that came to us in the 18th century, 19th century after the enlightenment and it went like this, it was the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of humanity. And it goes like this, that every single person who's alive, just by virtue of being alive is a child of God. And every single one of us we're brothers and sisters, we're all together, universal brotherhood. And that theology is nowhere to be found in scripture. Why? Because that theology, it jumps over the fall. Yes, God creates us, and Adam and Eve are children of God and then we sinned.

Now, scripture says, because of our sin, there's something in between us and God, there's a chasm between us. Therefore, this chasm is the chasm of God's wrath that we deserve for our sin. So God goes from being father to judge. Now, how do we go back to having a relationship with God, the father? And this is what makes Christianity so incredible, that because of Jesus Christ, because God gave his son to bridge that chasm, to absorb the wrath that we deserve for our sin, and by grace through faith in that sacrifice, you can be a child of God, you can be born again.

In John 1:12-13 says, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Nor of the will of a man. It's not because you chose to be a child of God, it's because God chose to make you his child. That's what it means to be born again, that we were dead in our sins, meaning we don't deserve any of this. That's why we should marvel. We don't behold, and we don't marvel getting a paycheck. Like if you get paid biweekly or at the end of the month, it gets deposited into your account, you don't look at the deposits like, "Behold, I got paid."

You don't do that, because you earned it. And if you are beholding, you're probably stealing from the company. No, you behold at grace, "I did not deserve this." 2 Peter 1:4 says, "By which he has granted to us the precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature. Having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire." Holy scripture teaches that in our flesh we are not children of God because in us there's a corrupt DNA. And actually in this text, he talks about being children of God and children of Satan, that there's godly, divine DNA and there's ungodly, satanic, demonic DNA in each one of us.

And before you check out, I know exactly how we react because I preached through this text when we just launched the church. We were like two months in 2011, I preached these texts and I had a guy send me an email. I was reading the email recently and he's like, "I liked everything except for the part where you call the Satan spawn." And I was like, "I just read the Bible verse." Let me just do a little explaining. Who is Satan? Satan was an angel. Satan was the premier being, he was the number two in all of God's army, of all the beings in the universe. He was number two. So what made him Satan? What caused the fall?

In Isaiah 14, I can't get into this text now, but go home and read it. In Isaiah 14, we see the progression. He got to the point where he got puffed up with pride and he says, "I will ascend to the throne of God. I will make my throne with the most high. I will be God. I am my own." And in that text you see, I, I, I, I. What made Satan Satan wasn't that he just broke God's law. What made Satan Satan is that he got, attempted God... Get rid of God. He wanted God to worship him instead of worshiping God. And that's the temptation with which he tempted Jesus in the desert. Remember, Jesus is fasting, Satan comes to him and he says, "Fall down and worship me." That's what makes Satan Satan.

It isn't just breaking God's law, is trying to get rid of God and putting yourself at the center of the universe, putting yourself on the throne of God. So when you understand that that's the DNA, the DNA of satanic, DNA as John talks about, that it's a selfishness. It's living as if you are God and there is no God as if you are the giver of your own life and sustainer of your own life, that every single good gift that you have is from yourself. Who made you to differ? Scripture says, was it you yourself? No. It was God.

And that's what makes this DNA so insidious, there's DNA of spiritual darkness and then you compare it with the DNA of Christ, spiritual DNA, godly DNA, where Jesus Christ in Philippians two it says, "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing." Satan said, "I will ascend." Jesus said, "I will descend." Taking the form of a servant and coming to serve us and ultimately going to the cross and paying the penalty for our sin to save us. He didn't say, "God serve me." He said, "Father, I'll serve you. I'll worship you, command me."

This is like, when you become a Christian, you get this godly DNA in you, but then you got to grow this DNA, so this DNA overpowers the corrupt nature. Then this is the battle between the flesh and the spirit. And I shared this illustration in my newsletter, but one detail I didn't share, if you read the newsletter you... This gentleman Chris long had, he was suffering from leukemia, had a bone marrow transplant, and he was working in as a criminologist in a crime lab. And one of his colleagues said, "Hey, you had a bone marrow transplant, let's test your DNA and see what happened."

So they test his DNA and they find, there was his strand of DNA, but then there was the donor strain of DNA, a German gentleman for 5,000 miles away, and that DNA was overpowering his own, so that in many facets in his body, his own wasn't even visible. This idea is called chimera where you have two kinds of DNA. And this is an illustration of what happens, and this is what John is saying. You have this new seed that has been planted in you through the preaching of God's word. Now, you need to grow it by abiding in Christ. In verse one he says, "Look at the love that the father has given us."

God loves and he proves his love by giving. Remember John 3:16 the small famous verse in all of scripture, "For God so loved the world that he gave his son." And he says, God gave his son to give us his love, and against the perfect tense of the word, he has given us, and that means it's perfect. You didn't earn it and it can't be withdrawn, when God makes you a child of God, you are a child forever. And he says, "Look, he calls us his children and makes us as children of privilege that he didn't even give to the angels." God could have just forgiven us as judge and that would have been great, but he doesn't just forgive us as judge, he loves us as a father, which is so much greater.

Now the reason why John is also very amazed here is because he's writing to a culture where parenthood and fatherhood and motherhood were not honored because children were not treasured. Now, in the Greco Roman world, fathers were aloof, not affectionate, and never equitable, not fair, and a lot of the time children were abused and often left unwanted. The church, father Tertullian talking about... he was writing under the proconsul ship of Tiberius in North Africa. He said, "A lot of children were left to die in the woods or killed through drowning or exposure to cold and hunger and the dogs."

In that culture, John is saying, "Look how shocking is, the God is a father who gives and he loves and he's with you always and loves you as a child." And by the way, it's as shocking in our culture where parenthood is diminished and fatherhood is diminished and we live in a culture of abortion are on demand. And as shocking it was to know then that God is father, it's also shocking that God is a great father. Dear Christian, do you understand the fatherhood of God? J. I. Packer wrote this book called Knowing God, which every Christian should read and reread and he's got a chapter on what makes Christianity Christianity.

And he says, "I know that a person understands the depth of Christianity by how they pray. Do they pray just to God in general or do they pray to the father, as a child coming and pleading and conversing and just enjoying the relationship with God." And the other thing before I move on to point three, why is John bringing this up now? Why focus the attention on the father's love, that God is loving and that we are children? Well, he says this in the second part of 1 John 3:1, says, "The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him." The reason why the world doesn't know us is that it did not know him. And the reason why he mentions that is because they don't feel like God is with them, they don't feel that God is present. They don't feel like they were in God's hands because they're suffering at the hands of the world.

They're asking question, if God is a good father, why is there suffering? Why is there schism in the church? Why is the world so sinister and hostile? And he said, "Look, if the world is being hostile to you as his children, is because are first hostile to God the Father. They don't know him. Like you love God the Father so much and you can't believe that other people don't love this great God. That's how we feel. But he says, "You need to understand that they're on the other side and they don't see this. They don't understand this relationship." And that's why we share the gospel with them and show them how great the father's love is.

A former member of the church texted me recently and he texted me a meme of a pie chart. And the pie chart had three parts. And the first part it said 1%... It's a football metaphor by the way, sorry. 1% is San Francisco fans who are going to root for San Francisco in the Super Bowl. 2% is the chiefs fans who are going to root for Kansas city in the Super Bowl. And then said 98%, the rest of the country who's just glad that the Patriots aren't in the Superbowl. And he said that to me as a jab. And I was like, "I just don't understand. I'm on the right team. How can you not love the right team? Sorry for equating the Patriots with God the father, from all metaphor's breakdown.

But that's what he's saying, the world doesn't understand. So we love them and we pray for them, and we ask for the Holy spirit to regenerate them, but we still keep shining God's light and we keep spreading God's love because that's what the father does. And the more that we resemble the father, and this is point three, the more that the people around us will long to know the father. So verses two of chapter three he says, "Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is." And this is incredible. That DNA, that seed of God in you, that divine nature that's in you, he's saying, ultimately it will be brought to completion or combination and we will be like him.

We will not just be called children of God, we will be like him, not just act like him, but be like him in nature. And that hope of one day having a sinless body and this is the doctrine of glorification in heaven, that hope of being with the Lord in a sinless body gives us strength in verse three, to purify ourselves, "And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." In 1 John chapter one he said, "Whoever confesses their sin, you can be sure that God is faithful and just to cleanse you from all sin." To forgive you and cleanse you, to purify you. And now he says that, "Because you've been purified by Christ, we are to purify ourselves." It sounds like a contradiction in terms, it is not.

And you know the adage, God helps those who help themselves? I'm sure you've heard that. It's false. It's a false theology. And this idea that God shows up when you've done everything you possibly can. That's not how the world works. That's not how Christianity works. It begins with God helps you, God purifies you, God gives you a new birth and then he equips you to purify yourself. So if I could change that, I would say God helps you to help yourself. Not God helps those who help themselves. It begins with God doing 99.99% and then the other 0.09% he equips you to do. But we are to purify ourselves. Can we be absolutely pure of sin in this world? No.

But, the sign that we actually have a new life is the fact that we want to grow in grace. The more intimate your relationship with God, the more you're exposed to his light, the more the light exposes your darkness. The closer you get to the light, the more darkness that you see. So he's purified you, so now you have access to the light. You abide in him, and then you see more and more darkness. So, you thought the sins that you were dealing with were bad and God gives you strength to overcome and you purify yourself because he's purified you more, and then you go deeper and deeper and deeper. And this tension is always here.

On the one hand, we understand we're fallen sinners. On the other hand, we understand we're children of God and we are to grow in resemblance. And we do that every single day by grace, through faith and repentance. But this is really important because some traditions of Christianity focus all the attention on you purifying yourself. How's your week? Were you perfect? Did you sin? Oh, if you sinned, you lost your salvation, that's terrible. And John says, "But you're a child of God. God doesn't lose children. He doesn't divorce children, he's adopted you for eternity. That's the rule. Other traditions are all about you're saved by grace through faith and Jesus died for all of your sins on the cross so you can live any way you want. God loves to forgive, you love to sin. You get to do what you want, he gets to do what he wants.

And John says, "No. If you've become a child of God, you hate sin and you grow in hating sin and you want to purify yourself." How? You do that through practicing, and that's the phrase that he uses in verse seven, and he says, "Little children, no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous." It's a matter of practicing that the more we practice a thing, the easier it becomes. The more I practice not working out, the easier it is to not work out. The same thing with food, the same thing with anything. But once you get in a routine, it gets easier and easier because your willpower isn't used because it become a part of your character. And he says that the people of lawlessness or the people of the satanic DNA, they practice lawlessness, it becomes easier and easier and easier. And he said, we got to do the opposite.

In verse eight he says, "Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. For the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil, of the evil one." And again, it gets back to this idea of lawlessness and he separates sitting and lawlessness. Sinning is transgressing God's law. Lawlessness is getting rid of God and getting rid of his law. And if you're like, "I don't know about sin, I don't know about transgressing commandments." Well, the question that John will put before you is, what are you living for? Like what is the ultimate purpose of your life? What do you find more worthy of your time, of your money, of your talents than anything else?

Well, whatever the thing is that you're living for, whatever you find more worthy than anything. That is what you're worshiping. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, it could be a good thing. And you take the good thing and you put it in place of God and now it becomes a bad thing. Worship is building your life or meaning on anything other than God. The other thing before we close, I just want to deal with this, verse six and verse nine he says, "No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. " Verse nine, "No one born of God makes a practice of sinning." And a lot of Christians read that and they're like, "What does that mean about my faith? Like I have sinned."

And again, the emphasis is on the practice, it's on the personality. It's on what's progressive on the life pattern, on the character. What are you practicing? What is the habit of your life? What is the culture of your life, the ethos of your life? Is it the same as the ethos of the father's family? Is your life resembling the father. And I'll close it with this illustration from F. F. Bruce. Every family has rules, every organization has a culture. And my family, I tell my girls, there's only two real rules. Rule number one, no screaming, rule number two, no complaining. The screaming one, you can make, we live in Boston and we have neighbors on three sides of us, so don't scream and I don't like it either.

Complaining biblically speaking, God punished Israel for 40 years and made them walk around in the desert in circles because they complained. So don't do that. No screaming, no complaining. We don't do that here. Now, I use that phrase all the time with my daughters, we don't do that here. And in response you could say, "I just did that here." And that's kind of what John is getting at. And so F. F. Bruce, I'll close with this illustration and then we'll pray. F.F. Bruce was a New Testament scholar in the 20th century, probably the greatest in the 20th century. And he went to this private school that was founded in the year 1224. 1224 school of tradition.

And in his commentary in first John, he talks about, in the school, whenever a student would act out or disobey or misbehave, what the teachers would say is, "We don't do that here." And F. F. Bruce was like, "I just did that. I was just saying, I just did that." And then he concludes and he says this, "But the literalist might reply, "But obviously it is done. This boy has just done it, but he would be deliberately missing the point of the rebuke. The point of the rebuke is such that this conduct is disapproved of in this school, so anyone who practices it can normally be assumed not to belong to the school."

Fellowship with the sinless one and indulgence in sin are a contradiction in terms. We don't do that here. As part of this family. We don't, we don't abide in sin, we abide in the savior. So for the Christian, we're born again to abide. And how do we abide? We behold the father's love, and that's what allows us to resemble the father. If you're not a Christian, today, look to the father, look to Christ, look to the Holy Spirit, beg God to forgive you of your sins and turn to him in faith. And at that moment, and when you do a wholeheartedly, he will pour out his love into your heart, you will be regenerated and you become a child of God. So as we pray now, you're welcome to do that and we ask you to do that. Let's pray.

Heavenly father, we thank you for grace and we thank you for the gospel. We thank you father, that to give us your love, gave your son for us. We thank you Jesus, that you were willing to give your life for us to make us children of the father. And we thank you that you are our older brother and you are your brother's keeper. And we thank you Holy Spirit, that you are here with us now, and I pray that you grow us, each one of us, in our obedience to you, in our abiding in you, so that we continue to resemble the father. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Heavenly father, we thank you that you are a God who came down. You did not leave us in our sin, you did not leave us in our fall, you didn't leave us in our darkness, but you sent your son, Jesus Christ who came through the incarnation. Jesus, fully God, fully man. You came and the eternal broke into the temporal, the infinite broke into the finite and Lord you came to save us because there's nothing that we can do to save ourself and we thank you that salvation, true salvation monergistic.

You're the one who starts our salvation, you're the one who sustains our salvation, you're the one who ultimately secures our salvation. We thank you that you do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, we thank you for anointing us for those of us who are Christians. And for those who are not, I pray today, Lord, regenerate hearts, turn on the lights, anoint and separate those who are in darkness and transfer them to kingdom of your beloved son.

And Lord, show us that along with the truth, along with the salvation that God, you create, sane comes and offers us a counterfeit that's often so tempting, but it's false. And I pray that you make us a people who are discerning, who have a critical mind, who have skepticism when it comes to figuring out if something's true, if something is not. And I pray that you strengthen our trust and faith in the ultimate authority, which is the Holy scriptures, which are self-authenticating along with the Holy Spirit.

I pray, bless our time in the Holy scriptures and I pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. Fake news. You've heard that term bantered around in the last few years, probably a lot more than in the past. And it has to do with spin, it has to do with pushing a narrative or an agenda from the different media outlets. So we as discerning people, we've learned to develop a critical mindset. We've learned to check the sources, we've learned to examine evidence and see who else is reporting the story, look for images or videos that are doctored.

We know that not everybody is just giving us straight truth, it always comes from their particular perspective. If that is true with information about politics, information about the economy, information about what's going on in the world, it's even more true when it comes to spiritual reality, spiritual information. And that's why the apostle John writes this epistle to these young Christians.

He calls them children. As a father in the faith, he writes to them and he gives them this epistle, this incredible letter inspired by the Holy Spirit so they know that they know the truth. So that they know that they have eternal life. We're in the series that we're calling Meno, M-E-N... In the Greek, it looks like a V, but that's an N. And the W is an O sound, Meno. It means to abide, to remain, to be connected to, and it has to do with our relationship with God.

That if you are a Christian, you abide in Christ, you abide in the Holy Spirit, you abide in the scripture, you abide in the church. And John is writing this letter today, in our text today where we're in particularly talking about the topic of the antichrist. The topic of the antichrists, plural as well. And when we hear the word, perhaps you've heard it, if you've grown up in the church and even if you haven't, you probably heard about this shadowy figure that's coming.

Many of us that think it's a political figure or someone who wields all kinds of influence and what John wants us to know is that the antichrist isn't just a person of physical power or a person of political power, it's a person of ideological power. And he comes and the power is found in the ideas, ideas have consequences, spiritual ideas have consequences. And what the antichrist ultimately does and what the antichrist today do is present a false gospel.

God creates the gospel, the good news, Satan counterfeits that gospel and makes it pretty good news, mediocre news, an okay news, spiritual fake news. And the consequences of believing the spiritual fake news is significantly higher than just misinformation. The stakes are so much higher than just being misinformed or misinformation. The stakes are condemnation or eternal damnation. Our eternal souls are at stake and the enemy is an enemy of our soul, is like a roaring lion seeking to devour those who are with Christ, seeking to devour those who want to know about Christ, saying praise on the praying.

That's what first John is all about. We must develop biblical discernment, we must remain vigilant. So today we are in first John chapter two verses 18 through 27, would you look at the text with me? Children, it is the last hour and as you have heard, the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy one and you all have knowledge. 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. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, this is the antichrist he who denies the father and the son. No one who denies the son has the father, whoever confesses of the son has the father also.

Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you if what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you two will abide in the son and in the father. And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you for the anointing that you have received from him abides in you. And you have no need that anyone should teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie just as he has taught you, abide in him.

This is the reading of God's Holy and narrative fallible, authoritative word may write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The title of the sermon is also the first point of our three points, which are: beware the lies of the antichrist, confess the truth of the Holy one and abide in spirit, scripture and church. First, beware the lies of the antichrist. In verse 18 he addresses them as children. He's a spiritual father.

He loves them and he longs the best for them so he teaches them the truth. He says it is the last hour. And that's an interesting phrase that a lot of people misinterpret. The phrase, the last hour, talks about a span of time from Jesus's first coming to a second coming from the ascension of Jesus going up to heaven sit at the right throne of God, the father to intercede for our sins to the return. And he is coming back. Since John has written these words, 2000 years have elapsed. So what does it mean the last time?

Well, from God's perspective, there is no time. From God's perspective, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. Why doesn't Jesus come sooner? Well, the reason why and the apostle Peter says that God is patient, that God is loving, that God wishes all to repent. If he comes now, those who have not repented, have not accepted God's free gift of grace, at that moment and when he comes, now he comes not as a savior, but as Lord and as judge.

So God is waiting for everyone to repent of those who are called to repent. And the apostle Peter tells us that the day of the Lord will come and it'll come abruptly like a thief in the night, and the heavens will pass away with a roar. No one knows when this period will come, but he tells us that the last hour is here in order to instill in us a sense of urgency that Jesus may come at any single moment. A lot of people say, "You know what? I'll go to church later on after I have some fun in my life. I'll go to church when I have kids, and then I'll bring them up in the faith," and et cetera, et cetera.

What if Jesus comes today? What if you die today? There's no guarantee. Not one of us is guaranteed tomorrow. So Jesus says in Mark 13:33, "Be on guard, keep awake for you do not know when the time will come." And he says, "We know it is the last hour." He says, why? Because the antichrist is coming and the antichrist have already come. So first of all, he is the only apostle who uses the term antichrist. He uses it five times in this epistle, once in second John.

And this refers to the figure that is coming, the figure who will be used by Satan in the end times. Daniel seven talks about this person, the antichrist as the horn. Revelation 13 talks about the beast and second Thessalonians to Saint Paul says, this is the man of lawlessness. The coming of the lawless one is by activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders. Who is this evil future leader?

Many Christians throughout church history have pointed to specific people and said, "That's the one." Christians in the first century said, "Nero. Clearly it's Nero." Other Christians during the reformation, Calvin and Luther would point to the popes. Clearly it's the popes. Other times they would point to political figures, Hitler for obvious reasons. Some people said Obama, some people say Trump, some people say Putin, whoever. Some people said Mikhail Gorbachev because he had a birthmark on his forehead. Clearly the mark of the beast. Who knows? We know. We have no idea.

John isn't talking about the physical qualifications, the physical characteristics of the antichrist. What he wants us is to develop a sixth sense, spiritually speaking, for what the lies of the evil one will sound like. He wants us to know that the antichrist will come with ideas that are anti Christ, not just antichrist. And the word here for antichrist in the Greek, that prefix means in opposition to. So the one who will come will come opposed to Christ but also means instead of, and that's what John wants to focus on.

He wants to focus on the antichrist who have come now and they're presenting a different Christ, and they're antichrist because they're presenting a Christ instead of the true one. And this is the main surprise of the text. That these antichrist have come from within the church, not from outside. They're not political figures, they're not economical figures. They're coming from within their spiritual figures, perhaps pastors or elders.

Saint Paul warned the church in Ephesians verse 30, from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. These are people who present a gospel that sounds mostly true. And the most insidious lies are mostly true, there's just a little that's off. And that's exactly what they're doing. We have a deeper secret, we have a deeper knowledge. We have a special anointing follow us, and they appeal not to the scriptures, not to the apostles, not to the historic Orthodox faith. They appeal to themselves, to something subjective.

And the surprise here is that Satan operates in the realm of religion and spirituality. Second Corinthians 11:14 to 15, and no wonder for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, their end will correspond to their deeds. So the apostle wants Christians to develop the sense where they know that's the sermon, where they know what's true and what's false and be able to say, "That's true, that's false."

And we as Christians, we need to dwell this ability and be able to say it, have the strength and courage, the audacity to say it. Mormonism is not true, Jehovah's Witness, not true. Unitarian Universalism, not true. Islam, not true. Judaism, not true. And I know how that sounds because I've heard done in the first service, I understand the unease that we feel. Why do we feel that unease? The apostle of love looks at the false teachers and says they're liars. They're anti-Christ.

The apostle of love that seems so unloving, he says, "No, what's unloving is actually calling darkness light and a lie the truth." That's what's unloving. And it says in first John 2:21, I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. You know this truth. He's not writing to inform them of the truth. He's writing to confirm them in the truth. You know and the truth is self authenticating. The Holy Spirit within you confirms that this is true.

Verse 26, I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. And this is how the enemy works, sows confusion. So here we need to pause and say which theological issues are you talking about John? Which theological issues are so clearly essential that schism is preferred to compromise? What are the close hand issues we're not budging here, and what are the open hand issues?

When it comes to the methods of gospel dissemination, when it comes to the method of music, when it comes to the method of how we do church, we can budge there. We can contextualize when it comes to the message, John says the message of who is Jesus Christ that cannot change? Augustan said, inessentials' unity and non-essentials' liberty in all things love. I love that quote. But what are the essentials? And John would say, "Well, who is Jesus?" What did these teachers say about Christ?

And he says, "They deny the son. They deny that he's the Christ, that he is the Messiah, that he's fully God, fully man, that he came, lived the perfect life, but he died a death that we deserve. And on the cross through his atoning death, through his propitiation, we have access into the presence of God. He died, he was buried, and then he was resurrected on the third day." Who was Jesus? What did he come to do? What did he teach? And if you deny that, he says that is antichrist. That's a false Christ.

And in our culture, and part of the reason why we have such a hard time of calling the truth the truth and calling a lie a lie when it comes to spirituality is because spirituality has been relegated to the realm of preference and feeling. If I feel that a spiritual truth is true, then it's true. So we put on our glasses, our goggles of feelings, and we interpret facts or reality through our feelings. And Saint John says that's not how it works.

When we talk about spiritual truth, he says you know the truth. It's an absolute truth. We need to put on the goggles of this truth and then interpret reality through that. You can sincerely believe something about God and you can be sincerely wrong and it has real consequences. This has to do with reality just like gravity is part of reality, just like laws are part of the earth. You can sincerely believe that you don't have to pay taxes because you're a libertarian. You can be sincerely wrong and sincerely spend time in prison.

You can get on route 90 and think you're going East, but you're actually going West and you go through all the tolls you end up in Albany, New York and all of a sudden you're sincerely wrong, you're going to turn around and the whole trip is going to cost you over $50 because we live in Taxachusetts. You're sincerely wrong. One of my daughters, she shall remain nameless. Yesterday when it was snowing, my wife and all my daughters, we have four daughters, so it's hard to watch all of them.

And they went outside and one of my daughters decided it's a good idea because she saw this in the cartoon to... she walks up with a fire hydrant and she sticks her tongue on it. And my other daughter saw that and she's like, "You're just joking around." She runs up to her and tackles her tongue. The top layer gone, blood everywhere. And I was like, "Why did you do that?" She said, "I saw that in a cartoon and I was experimenting to see if it were true." It's like, "Why not just ask me? I'll teach you in the ways of the truth of sticking your tongue on metal objects when it's cold."

There's consequences to folly, there's consequences to breaking spiritual realities. And that's why John is so categorical, it's clear cut. He's making these incredible statements that are so countered to our culture because we've been brainwashed with relativism and pluralism. John's saying theology, if you get it wrong about the person of God, it's not just defective, it's diabolical.

And what these antichrist came teaching, they said, "We have this new knowledge from God and we have the special anointing from God. And what God taught us is that Jesus was not God. Jesus was a human born as a human, died as a human, and there was some kind of spiritual, godly, divine emanation upon him for a little while during his ministry and then he was gone." And the reason why they pushed this narrative is because they couldn't believe that God cares about what we do with our bodies, about the physical realm.

So let's just focus on the spiritual realm. I'll pray, I'll sing to God, I'll read the scriptures. I'm going to live my physical life any way I want. I'll do whatever I want with my physical time, with my physical body, with my sexuality, with my finances, with my job, with my relationships, that has nothing to do with my faith. And that right there, that is a tempting, tempting worldview. And by the way he writes this.

If the apostle John showed up in Boston, Massachusetts today in 2020, over 90% of the churches in Boston he would go into and say, "These churches are run by antichrist. Not just an opposition of Christ, you're presenting a false Christ. It's a different Christ." Was he fully God? Was he fully man? Did he come as Lord, telling us what to do, not just with our spirits and our souls, but also with our bodies?

And as soon as you begin to redefine who Christ was, you begin to redefine the God had, now there is no Trinity. Now what Christ did on the cross wasn't just die for our sins, bearing the wrath of God to save us from eternal damnation, a place called hell, now Jesus just came to show us what love is, to show us how to live our lives, to teach us morality. As soon as you redefine who Jesus is, you invariably redefine what Jesus did and you change everything. You alter reality.

So at the heart of what John is saying is what do these teachers teach about Christ? And that's what we need to say. What are they appealing to? Are they appealing to the scriptures? Are they appealing to subjective philosophy, subjective experience? Point two is confess the truth of the Holy one. That's the way we beware. That's why we stay away. Our vigilant against counterfeit gospels as we stay true to the created gossip, God's gospel.

And he used the word anointing here in verse 20, 21, 26, 27, I'll read those, but he used the word anointed, which is an interesting word. In the Greek it's chrisma. Remember that as C-H-R-I-S, chrisma, anointing. And if you come from some denominations in Christianity, like Baptist church or Presbyterian churches, you probably never heard about anointing. You're like, "No. Anointing, that's strange."

If you come from other denominations like Pentecostal denominations or Charismatic denomination, they talk about anointing all the time. Every single day, you're being anointed, this anointing and that anointing. This might be new to you. The apostle talks about anointing. Well, what does he say about it? In verse 20 he says, but you have been anointed by the Holy one. You all have knowledge. 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. That's an interesting connection.

Christians had been anointed by the Holy one and that leads to truth, knowledge of the truth, confirmation in the truth. Verse 26, I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you, but the anointing that you received from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie and just as he has taught you, abide in him. Same connection.

Holy one, anoints and you know the truth. You're confirmed in the truth. What is this language of anointing? It comes from the old Testament where fine olive oil was rubbed, poured from a horn or vessel upon a thing or a person that was separated by God for special work. You're separated with this anointing. So the most common reference is that of kings, kings were anointed. Saul was anointed, King David is anointed, Solomon was anointed. The high priest was anointed.

Aaron and his sons were anointed, the prophets were anointed. Sometimes objects were anointed like Jacob anoints a pillar in Genesis 28. And the word is Chrisma. It's the same root word that's used in Christos, Jesus Christ. What does that mean? A lot of people think that Jesus is his first name, Christ is his last name. My daughter asked me recently, "What was Joseph's and Mary's last name?" I said, "Christ," and she's like, "That makes sense." I was like, "No. Bad theology."

That's what a lot of people think. Christos is a title for Messiah, and what Messiah means in the Hebrew is the anointed one. Jesus Christ is Jesus the anointed one. Was he anointed with olive oil? No. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit. In Luke he says, the spirit of the Lord has come upon me and because he has anointed me... In Acts the apostle say, God anointed Jesus Christ of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. Hebrew says that God anointed you with the oil of gladness talking about the Holy Spirit.

So when he says that you Christians have been anointed with the Holy one, you've been anointed with the Holy Spirit, in the same way that Jesus Christ was anointed by the Holy Spirit. In second Corinthians 1:21 through 22, and it is God who establishes us with you and Christ and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. Why are you telling me all this?

Because the false teachers came in and they said, "Stop listening to the apostles. We've got a special word. We got a word from God." How do we know you have a word from God? Because I am anointed. How do we know that you're anointed? Just listen to me. Don't read that book, listen to this book. Does this happen today? Yeah, all the time. There's plenty of false teachers out there, and I can give you names who espoused false gospels.

They have nothing to do with the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and then when people ask, "How do we know this is true?" I've been anointed. I've been anointed to preach this gospel, to espouse this gospel. So we as Christians, we need to be discerning. Okay, what are you appealing to by anointing? Now we've all been anointed. That's what John is saying. Every single Christian has been anointed by the Holy Spirit. We are Christoi, Jesus is Christus.

He's the anointed one, and we are anointed ones. The antichrist comes and he opposes the anointed one. The antichrists, plural, come and they oppose the anointed ones, us. And it has to do with seeing Christ for whom he is. You're anointed by the Holy Spirit to see and know the truth. There's a story about a blind man, a person who was blind, born blind, and Jesus heals him in the gospel of John chapter nine. And it says that Jesus anointed him, and now he saw.

And Revelation talks about spiritual anointing, that Jesus comes, anoints our eyes with the spiritual balm, and now we see true spiritual reality. So how do you know you've been anointed? John says, "You know that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Fully God, fully man. You believe that he has come in the flesh. You believe in what he taught, you believe that he died for your sins, was buried and rose for your forgiveness."

How do you know that's true? Because of the anointing. How do you know you've been anointed? Because you know it's true. This is the miracle of salvation. The miracle of salvation is that God comes down to save. John focuses on this, focuses on the gospel and he says, "This is what Satan wants to attack because this is the sum of the gospel. Who is Jesus? What did he come? God came to save. Jesus came to save. The son of man came to save and seek that which is lost."

And by the way, I don't know if you have ever thought about this. Why on all of our materials do we say that our values at the church are loved? Jesus, simple. Why don't we say love God, simple? Why don't we say love Trinity simple? We say love Jesus, simple. Because this right here is the test of true Christianity. If you move away from Boston and you're like, "I'm looking for a church," what does that church believe about Jesus Christ?

If you remove the truth about Jesus Christ, you talk about God in general, creator in general, the blesser in general, you get something that's far removed from Christianity. So John says, this is the sum. This is the total. This is what separates Christianity from everything else, from every other religion. Every other religion is our attempt to get to God, Islam and Buddhism and Judaism, all of them. This is what we do to get to God.

Christianity comes and says, "You can't do anything until you get the God. Only God can save us. God comes down." I had a roommate in college who was Jewish and we lived together for three years actually. So he kind of practiced. So he identified as not Jewish but Jew-ish. So there'll be some things that he would do, not other things. But one of the things that he was kind of pretty good at was eating kosher. And that's how he grew up eating.

He was kosher all the time, except for when we order pepperoni pizza. All of a sudden his kosher laws were out the window and kosher laws don't allow you to eat meat and dairy products. So pepperoni pizza, that's a big no-no. So he would devour his pepperoni pizza. And I was like, "Hey man, how do you reconcile this with your beliefs about kosher eating?" And he's like, "I don't think God's a stickler for the details." Much to be said there.

But there is hundreds of laws, are incredibly detailed. Unlike all the other kosher laws, I think he cares about the details. If you study biology, if you study the atom, if you study a cell, if you study DNA, there's detail, God is in the D... And I think that's the way a lot of people approach God. It's like, "I'm going to try really hard and then God's going to give me this fudge factor and get me into heaven and I'm good." Christianity says no.

And by the way, I totally, totally relate and sympathize with the slackers, the spiritual slackers. In every single one of us, we have a spiritual slacker streak where it's like, "You know what? I'll be good this day. Today I'm going to take it out." And Christianity says, "You know why? Because we are not good. We are not basically good. There is a sinful nature to every single one of us. We can't do anything to reach God."

Christopher Hitchens said, if God wanted man to live up to his standards, "he should have taken more care to invent a different species." I think that's how... How can God demand this from me? Love God with all my heart, soul, strength, mind, love my neighbor as myself, perfection, righteousness. How can God demand that from me when I can't do it in and of myself? Well, if you start wrestling with that question, you begin to understand the bad news.

The bad news is that we are sinners, that we cannot save ourselves. There's nothing that we can do to make ourselves righteous with God. We are helpless, we're spiritually bankrupt, morally bankrupt and we need the Holy Spirit to save us. We need God to save us. And this is what Christianity comes in and says, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you can't reach God. And even if you're Holy today, and righteous today, that's not enough to atone for past sins. So God had to become a man. God had to come down. God had to come to save us.

And Jesus Christ came and he paid a debt that he did not owe because we owe a debt that we cannot pay. Jesus came to pay a debt that he did not owe because we owe a debt that we cannot pay and that's the debt of our sin. So Jesus comes, he pays it all and he offers us grace. C.S. Lewis said, Christ offers us something for nothing. He even offers everything for nothing. In a sense, the whole Christian life consisting accepting that very remarkable offer.

If you're not a Christian, what is keeping you from accepting forgiveness? What is keeping you today from accepting God's grace? Give him your sin, your guilt, your shame, and accept his grace. It's the only thing that can save us. And this is why John is so adamant about this. We can't budge on the gospel. By the way, this confession changes everything. It changes the way that we live our lives and it changes the way that we view death.

If you believe that Jesus Christ came and he lived and he died and he rose from the dead, if you really believe that Jesus Christ in his body, in his work defeated death, and the death of Christ was a death of death. If you believe it, it changes your perspective on death, the thing that haunts every single one of us. And I don't know if you think about death, you should. And we're not guaranteed another day. And this is the spirit of this text, he says, "We live in the last hour."

My wife and I, we talk about death actually pretty often because she's Ukrainian and there's a negative streak, like a dark... And she's like, "Are you afraid of death?" And we have this conversation. Honestly, the only thing when I think about death, the only thing I'm worried, I'd hate to leave. I'd hate to die before her, I'd hate to not see my daughters grow up and see there... I'd hate that part. But I know in my heart of hearts that the very moment I die, I don't die, I just pass from this life to the next.

And it absolutely changes the way that you live your life. I'll just give you one example, and this is true example by a guy named Jeff Struecker. He wrote this book called “Road to Unafraid,” and the movie Black Hawk Down is based on his life. And he's a believer and he was sent to Somalia. And in Somalia this guy comes to power named Mohamed Farrah Aidid. And he starts killing UN workers sent into Somalia to provide food for the starving population during the famine. And as he's killing those rangers are sent in to seize him, to arrest him.

And as the helicopters come in over his base, one of the soldiers who's repelling down, he slips on the rope and he falls 70 feet and the helicopter is getting shot at, so they fly away. And so this guy, Jeff Struecker is commanded to go in and save the soldier who fell. They go in and they're being shot at and they were ambushed and they finally get the guy, they bring them out, there's one casualty. And as they were leaving, the helicopters got shot down.

So he comes back to base and that base is told, "You got to go back again." And at that moment he says this, this is where he writes. He says, "God, I'm going to die tonight. That's what I thought." He said, "I didn't know what to do or say. And I did what many Christians do in this situation. I prayed to God. God saved me. I need your help. I'm in over my head." And then he said, "I pictured Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane praying, Lord, let this cup pass from me."

And then he says, "Then I remembered what Jesus said next. Not my will, but yours be done." And he says, "At that moment I realized something I had known since I'd become a Christian, as a Christian, no matter what happens to me in this life, if I live or die, I'm firmly in God's hands. My wife Donna just written to tell me that she was pregnant. I thought I'd never see her again or hold my child. If by some miracle of God I survived the situation, I would go home to my family. And as a Christian I also knew if I died, I'd go home to heaven and be with my savior.

So no matter what, no matter what happens to me tonight, I'm going home. I'm going to be safe, I thought." In the face of death, I don't know if you've ever been a situation in the face of death. This is where if you don't have a true foundation anchor for your soul, what do you do? And this is what John says. I want you to know that you have eternal life. I want you to know, and this is the first John 2:25, this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life.

It's promised. You don't earn it, he gives it to you. You just need to accept it. So Struecker goes back and he saves half of the troops and then they drive back and he goes the third time, packs 15 soldiers in the Humvee and comes back and live to write about it. So this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The true son of God came, he died for our sin, he rose on the third day and the forgiveness, the grace of God, his righteousness is imputed to you, given to you. You just need to accept it.

Point three is abide in the spirit, scripture, and church. So once you accept it, how do you protect yourself, guard yourself from believing the lies, from being pulled away by the evil one? Where there are three safeguards that he gives us in this text, the Holy Spirit, the Holy scriptures and the Holy church. First John 2:27 talks about the spirit, but the anointing that you received from him, from the spirit, abides in you. And you have no need that anyone should teach you, but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as he has taught you, abide in him.

He says, God has given you everything you need to know. He's not saying you don't need teachers, you don't need the scriptures. You don't need to study theology because that would defeat the purpose and contradict the purpose of this letter that would contradict Saint Paul who said that God sends teachers and pastors to equip the saints for the work of the ministry grow in maturity. What he's saying is you know the truth.

If you've been anointed by the Holy Spirit, you know the truth because you know the voice of God. You've heard the voice of God. You know the voice of the good shepherd. There's a self authenticating power. You know truth because the Holy Spirit in you confirms that truth. First Thessalonians 2:13 puts it like this, and we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of man, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in the believers.

So we don't need a special elite class of clergy or those who are specially anointed to know what's truth about the essential oils in the scripture, about the essentials of the gospel. Obviously we are to study the scriptures and study theology and have a good study Bible and we recommend the ESV study Bible and commentaries, things like that. But Jesus promised, I will send you the spirit and he will teach you all things. So the safeguard of the Holy Spirit, safeguard of the scriptures.

First John 2:24, let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you then you too will abide in the son and in the father. What you heard from the beginning, from whom? From the apostles. This is the gospel. The apostles were eyewitnesses. This is the primary documents about Christianity. Saint Paul had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, saw the risen Christ and received the gospel from him. So God gives us the scriptures to confirm teaching.

So when you hear teaching about Christianity, teaching about the faith, check with the scripture. John's not just writing to the pastors of the church, he's writing to Christians. Every Christian has the responsibility to confirm is what the teacher at church preaching, teaching, is it true? Is it in the scriptures? Is he appealing to the scriptures or is he appealing to some speculative, subjective philosophy?

And the beauty of the Holy scriptures is the Bible is the only book that you can read and you always have access to the author, always. You read and you say, "God, what did you mean? God, please elucidate, please illuminate." And it's important to have the Holy scriptures and the Holy Spirit together. Some churches are all about the Holy scriptures, never talk about the Holy Spirit. Some churches are all about the Holy Spirit, nothing about the Holy scriptures. They're together, Holy Spirit wrote them Holy scriptures. They're together. Don't pit them against one another.

So dear Christian, do you know scriptures? Do you love the scriptures? Do you safeguard your faith with the knowledge of the scriptures? My wife and I, we got on the show recently. Not only getting into shows because I have an addictive personality. The show is on the history channel called Alone and we're in season three, so good. And season three they're in Patagonia. So they take these 10 people and they give them a week of training of survival in the wilderness.

And you're given 10 objects that you can choose, like how to live in the wilderness, no electronics, nothing mechanic. You can take an ax or a knife, you can take some fishing hooks. And as I'm watching this, like you watched them build shelters and you watched them... As I'm watching I'm like, "I could do that better. I could fish better, I could do that. My shelter would have a door. I'd have a two story shelter. I'd build the tree house." That's number one.

Number two, that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that they are lonely. They're by themselves. Most of the people that quit, they quit because they just can't handle the loneliness. And I was like, "I know exactly how I'd take care of that. I would bring the Bible and I would just abide in God's word. I'd just read it all day and talk with the Holy Spirit. I'd just memorize books of the Bible." And I'm talking about all of this as my Bible is laying on the table and I'm like my fourth episode in binge watching the show and you know exactly what I'm talking about.

So love the scriptures and then the church. First John 2:19, they went from us, that's the false teachers, because they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. One of the things I want to point out here is when he's talking about us, it's clear. He knows exactly who the us are and it's not just the universal church.

This is a particular letter written by a particular apostle to a particular group of Christians, a church. And as they're reading out loud, they know exactly who's us, who's in. So if you are a member of the universal church, you are to be a member of a local church. We talk about this all the time because a lot of Christians do not have an ecclesiology, have not developed an ecclesiology. John says it's clear who the us are.

And I also want to point out that if you're a member of a local church, it does not mean that you are a member of the universal church. So a lot of churches have a list of members and many of them don't know the gospel, they're not saved. And this is why we have requirements. We have a whole process, we have a membership class coming up soon if you want to know more about membership. The other thing I want to point out is that if someone calls themselves a Christian and they start off gray, start off strong. That's not what matters.

When people tell us that they have received Jesus Christ, that they are now Christians, we rejoice in every profession of faith and then we cautiously wait. Is there fruit? Are they walking in the light? Are they walking in love? Are they growing? And we do everything we possibly can to help them with that. The parable of the sower talks about some people receive the word with joy and then when the spiritual trials come, when difficulties come, the cares of the world to see fullness of riches and those things draw the person away from the Lord.

True faith always, always passes the test of time. True believers can't fall away, false believers always do. And if you are a true Christian, you will abide. We don't believe in once saved, always saved. We believe in once saved, always persevering. This is the doctrine of perseverance of the saints that God will preserve in faith those whom he has chosen for salvation. God's love is immutable. When he loves you with a salvific love, a love that saves, he never removes that love.

There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. John 10:28 and 29, I give them eternal life, says Christ, 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 who was able to snatch them out of the father's hand, not even ourselves. If you are a Christian, you can't even snatch yourself out of the hand of God. God won't let you.

And one of the greatest examples of this in church history is a guy named Sheldon Vanauken, and I'll close with this story. He wrote this book called Severe Mercy. Vanauken was a spiritual skeptic who was searching his God truths, Christ's truth. Started reading C.S. Lewis, and he and his new wife, Davy, went from the US to England and C.S. Lewis discipled them. They became believers. On his return to the US, Sheldon's wife, Davy, dies unexpectedly, still a young woman.

And so Sheldon now is wrestling with, "Is God loving?" How could a loving God allow this to happen? It seems so cruel. He found Christ and lost his wife in short order and then he decides to leave the faith. And he writes about this in Severe Mercy, he said, "I'm done with this. I can't follow God any more." And this is what happened. He says, "And then I found I could not reject God. I could not. I cannot explain. This one discovers one cannot move a boulder by trying with all one strength to do it. I discovered without any sudden influx of love or faith that I could not reject Christianity. Why? I don't know there it was, I could not." That was an end to it.

Salvation comes from God. Jesus saves. We don't start our salvation. We don't sustain our salvation and we don't secure our salvation. God does all of that. Our job is to accept the gift and abide in him and he's the one that gives us strength to do that as well. If you missed any of the points, beware of the lies of the antichrist: confess the truth of the Holy one, abide in spirit and scripture and church. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the gospel. We thank you for the Holy scriptures. We thank you Holy Spirit that you are with us today. If anyone is not yet a Christian, I pray today, regenerate them, draw them to yourself, anoint them with the Holy Spirit. And for those of us who are Christians I pray that you help us develop a spiritual discernment, give us a hunger for the Holy scriptures, a love for the Holy Spirit and a love for the Holy church. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript:

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Holy God, heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a noble God, a personal God in the sense that you want our person to relate to your person, to know who you are and you want us to know whose we are, that we are yours and we're bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. Lord, we confess even now that often we live as if we are our own. We live as if we are at the center of the universe. It's so tempting to feel like we are the center of our lives and we are not. Remind us that Lord you are the center. You are the point. You are the essence and the total of reality. And we thank you for sending your son, Jesus Christ to show us that, to show us what it means to live in obedience to you, to show us what it means to live a life of love toward you, love towards people.

And Jesus, you proved your love through sacrificial offering on the cross as the propitiation for our sins. And because of your sacrifice, your death, your burial, your resurrection, you now are an advocate before the father on our account and we thank you for that. Holy spirit come down and speak to every one of us wherever we are in our spiritual journey. If there's anyone here who is not yet a Christian, not yet a child of God, I pray today convert them, shine your light into their heart and transfer them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of your beloved son. For those who are baby Christians, I pray today Lord that you show that we are to grow in maturity. That in the beginning it feels like the father carries us in his arms, but then after a while, Lord, you want us to not just trust in our feelings of you but the trust in the truth of you and stop thinking that you exist for us, but that we are called to serve, serve you and serve others.

For those who are young men and women in the faith, I pray show us that there is a battle before us and that we are strong and strengthened when we abide in the word of God and when he abides in us. And for those who are more mature in the faith, I pray show us that you call us to be fathers and mothers to those who are younger in the faith, to care for their needs, to provide guidance in wisdom and discernment and encouragement and correction. I pray Holy spirit, bless our time, the Holy word, and we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

Wilbur Reese wrote a poem not too long ago about how often we come to God just to get something from him and then we leave. It goes like this. I would like to buy $3 worth of God please. Not enough to explode soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant worker, I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy three pounds of God please. And I start with that because often in our culture, when people think of the divine, they think of something that leads to excitement, that leads to some kind of spiritual experience, leads to some kind of enhancement. And when people hear that you go to church or that you're a Christian, they say, "Oh, that's nice." You get your spiritual fix at church. You get your enhancement for life there.

I get my spiritual fix at yoga or soul cycle or hiking or smoking weed or et cetera. You get your ecstasy there, I get my ecstasy here. And the assumption behind that that our culture has accepted wholesale is that the divine exists for us. Therefore, the divine does not obligate anything from us. And often people approach Christianity with that cultural lens and they think, yes, I'm going to come to Jesus, receive everything that he can offer me and he doesn't obligate anything of me. I can go and live as I want. But 1 John writes and he says, no, if you met Jesus, you can't but grow in him. You can't but become Christ like. You can't but submit to the father's will and serve others because that's exactly what Jesus did. We're in a series that we're calling meno. The word meno is the Greek word that's used over and over and over in 1 John, it means to abide, to remain in, to be connected to, rooted in.

And as we're rooted in Christ, dear Christian, what happens is that changes our lives, it can't not. That our profession of faith begins to shape our practice, that our beliefs begin to shape our behavior, that our saying needs to impact our doing. And what 1 John, the apostle John is, he has this question before us and he says, "Look, obviously there's a chasm between your belief and your behavior when you come to the Lord." But is that chasm getting shorter? Is that chasm being bridged? If not, if there is no growth, that's probably a sign that there was no life, that there was no regeneration. So we need to ask ourselves, are we truly in the faith? Why does he do this? Because globally and historically, most of confessing Christians were nominal only, in name only. Today if you look at the stats, over 2 billion people are Christians and saint John writes to us to make sure that we truly are, that we test our faith.

And Jesus talked about this often. In the greatest sermon ever preached a sermon on the mount, Jesus concludes that sermon with a warning and he said, "In the last day at the judgment, many will come to me stand before me." Jesus says, "And they will say, Lord, Lord, did we not do incredible things in your name?" And Jesus says, "Depart from me for I never knew you." He tells us parables of the 10 virgins, half of them are outside of the feast. The door shut in their face. They thought they were in the faith, they were not. Saint Paul writes and says, examine yourselves to ensure that you are in the faith. So perhaps you're a Christian. You're struggling with the assurance of your salvation. Am I a Christian? Well, this book is for you. Or perhaps you've always thought of yourself a Christian because that's your heritage, that's your family because the part of the country that you're from believes that or the country you're from.

And he says, "You need to test your faith to see that it's genuine because this is the most important question before us. Are you a Christian? Are you a child of God? Have you been reconciled with God?" This is the big idea of the text. One of the things I will say about this book is that saint John, the apostle John style is radically different than saint Paul's style of writing. Saint Paul is a philosopher. He thinks very linearly. You can write three point sermons from saint Paul's writings and it's all very clear cut. Yes, and a lot of us, that's how we think. So that's why we're drawn to saint Paul's writing. John does not write like a philosopher. John writes like a musician. He writes like a songwriter, like a lyricist. Therefore, so he gives you an idea and then he gives you another idea and it goes back to the first idea and then gives you a third idea.

And until you understand his style of writing, you're going to have a hard time understanding what it means. You understand the words, you don't understand what he's talking about. And like when you listen to a song and it's repetitive, you're not like, "Oh, we got to cut that out." Songs aren't AP English essays. Songs are meant to be sticky, to inspire the imagination center. That's how John writes. His style is called amplification, where he gives you a point and then he hits it louder and louder. And in order to make it more and more emphatic. And the big idea is, I want you to know that you are gods, that you belong to God. You do that by growing in Christ's likeness. And he gives us a triad of Christ's likeness. How do I know that I'm growing in Christ?

Do you know him doctrinally? Do you know the trues about him? About the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, what he taught, what he's about. Do you know him? Doctrinal? Do you obey him? That's the moral test. And then do you love him? That's the relational test. Do you know? Do you obey? Do you love doctrinal moral and relational and they're all interconnected. They're all tightly wound together. What does it mean to know Jesus? You obey Jesus. What does it mean to obey Jesus? You love Jesus. What does it mean to love Jesus? You know Jesus, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a word about his style. Today we are in 1 John 2:1-17. Here in the beginning, I'm going to read the first six verses and we'll get to the rest in the sermon. "

My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, 'I know him,' but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected. 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." This is the reading of God's Holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The question before is how do you know that you know God? And the four points are you obey, you love, you grow and you deny.

First you obey. We'll start with verse two and verse two saint John says that, "Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." He doesn't start with our obedience because that's not how we are made righteous before God. That's not how we are accepted with God. We don't earn our salvation. It's not. We follow the rules, we obey and therefore we accept that it's Jesus has obeyed, followed the rules, and because of his sacrifice, we can be accepted. That's where he starts. It's not about our obedience, it's about Christ. He uses the word propitiation in the Greek. It's hilasmos. It's a multidimensional word. The first dimension is a claim against you has been satisfied. A claim against you has been satisfied. That's propitiation. And what he's talking about is that there's a claim against us before God, that when God looks at us, he looks at us as sinners and there's evil in our hearts and God being a just God cannot but have a claim against our sin.

He says, "A claim has been satisfied." And you can understand this from a legal ... You get an accident, someone's got a claim against you. Recently this past August, I was in Philadelphia doing some doctoral studies. I went to visit a pastor at 10th Presbyterian church in downtown Philadelphia. And if you think the parking laws in Boston are terrible, so much worse than Philadelphia. You need, honestly, it's one of these signs where it's like 12 signs on one post and you need a law degree in contract law to exegete what's going on. So I parked my car. I went to a seminary, I studied exegesis, I exegeted that okay, I understand. Okay, I go to the station, I pay for two hours, $8 and I'd take the ticket and I bring it back to my car and then I go meet with the pastor. I come back to the car, orange ticket on my windshield. It's like, what is going on? No, not fair, injustice and I appealed.

So I sent them, I went online, I send them a picture of my little parking ticket and a picture of my car and I thought I was set. It's $51 right? If it was less than, maybe I wouldn't go. Finally like end of November, I get a letter from them. Your appeal has been denied. Legalists. And then they're like, "You got to go online. Here's your number, you type it in and we'll tell you why you got denied." And I go online and they have a picture of my card, not the picture that I sent in. They have a picture of my car that the person, the parking attendant took. And the picture showed that my bumper was in the loading zone. Six inches my bumper is in the loading zone. It was $51, $4 for the credit card fee, $55. And at that moment I'm like, "My goodness, I got 2007 Toyota Highlander. My bumper's not worth $55. Can I just send that in? Can we just trade it out?" And as I'm going through this, I'm fuming. My wife walks in and she's like, "What's that? And I was like, "It's the ticket."

And she's like, "Why don't you tell me about it?" I was like, "It wasn't going to bless your soul. I didn't want to get into ..." So I paid that. Why claim against me and the claim would only grow. That's the word. The propitiation was I paid for this ticket. Now what he's saying is he's not talking about we can pay God, that we can supplicate God, mollify God, appease God, we can't do anything in and of ourselves because what is the penalty? What do we owe God? What's the claim that we have against God? Well, we sinned against an infinite God, an infinitely glorious God, an infinitely honorable God, and the penalty for that sin for dishonoring an infinite being is an infinite penalty. We can't pay that in and of ourselves. Now, a lot of people have a problem with God's wrath in that they say, "Well, is this making God out to be capricious or arbitrary? Does he lose his temper? No, this is anthropomorphic language.

From our perspective, we're using human language to talk about God. Obviously it doesn't communicate everything when you communicate. So when God has wrath toward our sin, it's not a sinful anger. It's a just anger. He's not irate, irritable or irascible. God's wrath is his holiness and his justice in action. He is righteously set against evil. Cruelty is immoral, justice is not. So when God has wrath against our sin it's because of his justice. And to get rid of God's wrath is to get rid of justice. And just a thought, just imagine this world without justice. We long for justice when we see the terrible injustices on a weekly basis that happen in the world, that happen in our world. What's shocking is not that God is a God who has wrath. He's angry about our sin. You've got to keep going to get the full view, to understand the full reality of the person of God. It's not shocking that he's angry at sin.

What's shocking is that God takes the initiative to placate that that wrath. God's not demanding that we somehow pay that price. He knows we can't, so God volunteers to satisfy God's wrath. God the son volunteers to satisfy the wrath of God, to absorb the wrath of God, to pay for the wrath of God with his sacrifice on the ... that's the most shocking part of Christianity. And why did he do it? What was he motivated by? He was motivated by his love for us. 1 John 4:10, "And this is love. Not that we have sinned, but that he loved us ... And this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins." So he doesn't look down on us and see how loving we are. It's he's motivated by our love when we wanted nothing to do with him. When we were living as if we were our own, when we're living as if God didn't exist, living lives of cosmic plagiarism thinking that everything we have is ours.

Nothing remotely like this exists in any other religion or any other philosophy. Yes, it's propitiation to be sure, but nothing like the world has ever seen before. Augustus Toplady he wrote this couplet to encapsulate this idea. He says be mindful of Jesus and me. My pardon he suffered to buy and what he procured on the tree, on the cross. For me he demands in the sky. He demands it and he procures it. He's just, and the justifier. This is the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The claim against you has been satisfied if you just ask for it. If you just ask for forgiveness and you repent of your sins and on that cross, every ounce of the penalty that we deserve for our sin was poured out in the wrath of God on Jesus Christ.

This is why the cross was so gruesome, so gross and so gory because that's our sin in the sight of God. The gospel requires that we believe two really difficult things at the same time. The first is that you are so bad that Jesus had to die for you, and that Jesus is so good that he was glad to do it because of his love. 1 John 2:2 he says, "Jesus is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." And just one comment here, because this verse has been misinterpreted to justify a lot of false theology including Unitarian theology. This does not mean that everyone's sin has been expunged at the cross. That's not what he's saying because in the same letter, the apostle John actually says that there are those who are still in their sin and they need to be saved from those sins.

What's he talking about? He says that anybody, anybody, no matter what you've done, no matter where you're from, no matter who you are, anybody, the moment you repent of your sins and you believe that you accept Jesus' propitiation for your sins, that you can be saved. His sacrifice is sufficient for all but efficient for those who believe and repent. Sufficient for all, efficient for some. 1 John 2:1, "My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous." And he uses the word advocate here. And in the Greek it's parakletos power clay toss. It's used of Jesus only in this text. It's a word that Jesus often uses.

John 14, 15 and 16 he describes the Holy spirit with this word. He said, "I will send you another parakletos, another advocate, the great comforter, the great helper, that's the Holy spirit. By another he means that he is the first advocate. In this context it means a helper, especially if you're guilty in court. So the image that John is giving us is God the father is a judge and we are guilty before him. Jesus comes in and he begins to advocate for he is our just lawyer. And what is the plea? It's not not guilty. That's not the plea that he offers, he enters a guilty plea. We are guilty. But then he says, "But father, you can't hold yon sin against him because I've already paid for it." This is how he's advocating. I've already paid for your sin. He's standing before the father and he's advocating, and how do we get Jesus to be our advocate?

First John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." That we are his because of the sacrifice of Christ and because of his advocacy for us we're with him. I was at a conference with pastor Shane and pastor Andy we went to this preachers conference, gospel coalition, held this conference in Indianapolis last year. And whenever you have these conferences, they give you a lanyard. In the beginning they're like, "Here's your lanyard, you register, you paid, now you have to wear this lanyard everywhere." And the lanyard is a little badge with your name on it. And I don't like legalism and I don't like manmade rules. And I was like, "That's dumb. I'm not wearing this."

So I intentionally forgot it in the hotel room. The next day we come in and it was the best session, the keynote speaker, I forgot already, it wasn't that memorable. So we go there and I forget the lanyard. So I'm with pastor Shane and pastor Andy, and we walk in and the security guard lets them through and says, "You can't go in." I was like, "What? This is a Christian conference. You don't believe in grace?" He was like, "No." And then he's like, "No, this is really important. We can't let you in." And I was like, "What do I do?""You need a lanyard." So I go to the front desk and the front desk I tell him the whole ... I explained the whole thing. They pull up my name. Yeah, you paid okay. I was like, "Can you help me?" They're like, "No." I'm like, "Why not? Do you need a lanyard?"

They said, "You need to buy a new lanyard." And I was like, "How much?" They said, "$5.""No, I'm not doing it." Why? Because I'd be a bad steward of God's money. Not doing it. Nickel, you Pharisees. Then I go back and I'm like, "I'm just going to sit by the door and livestream listen on my phone." And I'm sitting there and Andy Davis, Andrew Davis walks by. Andrew Davis is a great friend of the church. He's a pastor at FVC Durham. Incredible, incredible guy. Over 30 books of the Bible memorized, written a lot of books. He comes and he's like, "Young, what are you doing?" I was like, "They won't let me in.""How come?""No lanyard." Okay. He's like, "Don't worry about it. Come with me." Walks right up to the same security guard, the same person. And he just, "Hey, how are you?" And just keeps walking. And then the guy's like, "No, no, no. He can't come in."

And pastor Andy says, "Don't worry about it. He's with me." And I was like, "I told you, Ferris." It's all to say that's kind of like what it means to have Jesus Christ as your advocate. He's done everything. All you have to do is be with him. That's what meno means. And that's how we're reconciled with God. And he writes, why is John writing about propitiation? Why is he writing about advocacy? So that our sins are forgiven and that Jesus advocates for us, and then we can live any way that we want? No. If you truly understood grace, you won't pervert grace. It's not a cheap grace. You don't use the grace as a justification to continue sinning. So he says in 1 John 2:1, "My little children, why am I writing this? I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin." What's he saying? Obedience leads to grace. No, it's grace that leads to obedience.

If you've understood what Jesus Christ has done for you on the cross, what it cost him, how much it cost him, how much he loves you, you can't but want to delight him, live for him. That's why he says verse three, "And by this we know that we have come to know him. This is the test. If we keep his commandments, whoever says, 'I know him,' but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him." It doesn't matter what you say by your confession. What does your life say about your confession? That's what he's saying, "But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected, and 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."

As you grow in the faith, you walk with Christ, the chasm between belief and behavior is to be bridged, it can't but be bridged. You have a new heart, new desires, new affection, which leads to new fruit. One objection that arises here is, but if I sin, does that mean that I'm not a christian? And this is something that I wrestle with, this is something most likely you've wrestled with, every serious christian has. And I just want to point out the context says, "Yes, I'm writing so that you don't sin if you do sin, Jesus is a our propitiation. He is our advocate." Don't forget that one of the commandments that we are to keep is repent of your sins. On a daily basis the christian is to repent. And as we grow in the faith, we realize that we have more and more to repent of. It's a daily practice, confess and repent. And also obedience doesn't mean perfect obedience.

Saint Paul writes in Romans 7, "As a believer, the things I want to do, I can't do, the things I don't want to do, I do. It's always this battle between the true self and the shadow self. Scripture divides all of humanity into two categories. The righteous and the unrighteous. David was righteous and he was an adulterer and a murder. Moses was righteous. He was a murder and also disobeyed God and wasn't allowed in the promised land. Peter was righteous but betrayed the Lord at the worst possible moment. Paul was righteous but despaired of his continuing sinfulness. So righteousness biblically is position. We are in Christ by grace through faith. He robes us in his sanctified robes of purity, the clothing of holiness. And then what happens is the fundamental commitment of your life, the root direction of your life, the truest characteristic of your life is to grow in obedience.

Do we do it perfectly? No. When a Christian sins, you have remember the Holy spirit convicts so much so you beg God, please take this sinful desire away from me. Any true Christian, if you're awakened in the middle of the night by Jesus Christ and he says, "Do you want me to take away your ability to sin?" The true Christian says, "Yes Lord, please." That's how you know you want to obey, you long to obey. However, scripture teaches us we're still in a fallen world, in a fallen flesh. And our true self, our true identity is battling with our shadow identity. It's the fight between the spirit and the flesh. And when we sin, you're not just being untrue to God. You're being untrue to your real self dear Christian. Saint Paul says, "It wasn't I that sinned, it was the sin in me." And that's not just a cop out or an excuse, it's simply the truth that we have a new identity, new heart, new affections, and we are to grow in that.

And how do you do that? Particularly by growing in love. And this is point two, how do you know that you know that you're a Christian? You obey, you seek to grow in obedience, and you seek to grow in love. And he says in verse seven, "Beloved, I'm writing, you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have heard from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing you, which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he's in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness and whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But wherever 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."

What does he mean by new commandment old commandment? He's not talking about chronological. It's not time thing, old and new. It's a quality thing. It's the same commandment on old and new Testament that the essence of the law is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourself. He's saying it's new in the sense it's new to us. When you hear the gospel, which is a timeless gospel, it's an old gospel but it's a timeless gospel and you hear it for the first time, it's brand new. Everything is brand new. That's what he's saying, new heart, new affections, new desires. And he says, "The way that you know that you have true love for God is you have true love for your brothers and sisters in the faith." If God is your father, you can't love your Christian siblings, your brothers and sisters. And the reason why, why are you telling us this?

He's telling us this because it's hard. It's not natural. And particularly, he focuses on loving the brothers and like Christians close to you who know you best. He focuses on that because some of the hardest people in the world to love are your siblings. The people that know you, they know how to push all the buttons, they know exactly what to say, how to say in order to set you off. And he says, "Loving those people who are hard to love," particular people, not just Christians in general. Like Linus from peanuts, his famous line was, "I love mankind, but it's people I can't stand." And that's a lot of Christians are like, "I love the church. I love Christians worldwide." Okay, show me your community. Show me the Christians that you are walking with. Show me the Christians that are hard to love. That's what he's saying.

And by the way, this isn't like a temptation for us that like it's easy to love God. It's people that are hard to love. That's been the temptation all throughout church history. Like in the modern excuses, I'm an introvert. I can't stand people. No, get away from me. I just want go. This has always been an issue. Like the monastic movement started because people are like, "I can't stand people. I'm just going to go and live in a cloister with an Abbe and just pray to God all day." And one of the famous examples of this is Thomas à Kempis in the 15th century. He was a Dutch monk who wrote The Imitation Of Christ. And if you don't know The Imitation Of Christ, it's a phenomenal book that teaches you how to grow in your relationship with Christ. And it's second only to the Bible in its influence on Christian, on the church throughout history. It's been printed in 6,000 separate editions.

Love the book. Here's my only knock against it. Not one word about loving Christians or people in general. Actually, this is what he says, "Desire the fellowship of God alone and his Holy angels and shun the acquaintance of men." I'm going to force my daughters to memorize that and just that's our new motto. But he's saying, "All you need is a relationship with God. People, get away from me." He missed the whole point of 1 John. He missed the whole point of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He missed the point of love. The other thing I'll say here, not much on this point because this is a theme that John's going to get back to more. We got to define love biblically and not culturally. In our culture, to say that you love and that we are to be loving is to say that you are nice, that you never say anything that upsets anyone. You never do anything to confront someone. You don't talk about sin. Just be a nice person. That's what it means to love.

And if that's our definition of love, then we have no idea how to explain some of the things that Jesus did. Going to the Pharisees he says, "Woe to you Pharisees for you are like whitewashed tombs," calls them serpents, all kinds of names. Yeah. Talking to a crowd, he says, "You unbelieving and perverted generation. How long shall I put up with you?" Peter, when he was being selfish, Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan." Seemingly unloving, but actually he's telling them exactly what they need to get them awakened from the spiritual stupor. He's sacrificing comfort to do a very difficult thing because that's the best thing for that person. There's other examples of this in scriptures.

Paul in the book of acts talking to this guy named Elymas, he says, "You are full of deceit. You fraud the son of the devil, enemy of all righteousness." And then he strikes him with blindness. It seems unloving, but it's probably the most loving thing that he could do to awaken him from a spiritual blindness. So what I'm saying is we need to expand our definition of love. Our love is not just niceness, our love is sacrificing self and comfort to do the thing that's best for the beloved. And the great example of that is the cross. Point three is that we grow. So we are to obey, love and grow. Grow in what? Obedience and love and following Christ. And 1 John 2:12-14 he gives us three groups that he addresses twice. Each group for emphasis and this is the lyricism of John.

He says, "I'm writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I'm writing to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I'm writing to you young men because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you children because you know the father. I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one." First thing that he starts with is that we are children of God because of Christ name's sake, in his name's sake. So we're not forgiven of our sins because of our repentance or our faith or our actions, our good works. So repentance and faith in and of themselves have no power. Repentance and faith are like a key to a car. The key has no power in of itself, but the key accesses the power that's not within. It accesses doesn't create.

So the way that we access God's power, the way that we gain access to is through faith and repentance, but not for our namesakes, it for his. The other thing I want to point out here is he's talking about levels of spiritual growth in health and maturity. He's not talking to little children particularly, like physical little children. He's talking about to people who are new in the faith. So you can be 60 and if you have a just met Jesus, you are an infant in the faith. Or you could be 25 or 20 and if you've been walking with the Lord since you were a child, you can be a father or mother in the faith. So he's saying that the idea behind is that there needs to be growth and health and maturity. So dear Christian, are you stuck in a season with a lack of growth?

If so, you need to ask why. Children he's saying, "Children, you need to grow out of the state of thinking that everything exists for you. If you've been around kids, kids just have no idea that they're not at the center of the universe. They just assume this, mom and dad exist for me. My daughter's favorite, my youngest daughter, her favorite word is mine. She comes to me, papa is mine. She fights with my five-year-olds over, no, mine. But she thinks that literally we exist for her. And a lot of Christians assume that all the other Christians exist for you and then you come to a church with that mindset. It's fine for a season, but at some point you've got to trade your bib for an apron. And he says, "Another stage is young men and young women and that you fight the evil. You've overcome the evil one." Why? Because the word of God abides in you. This is when you realize the spiritual walk is a fight on a daily basis. You've got to fight.

You take responsibility for your own walk and you fight the good fight. And then as you do that, as you progress to get to a stage where you understand your spiritual father and mother, that it's our responsibility to care for those who are younger or those who are less mature, unhealthy. And so we serve and we guide and we care. And also that shows us that we got to be patient with people in different levels of the faith. And how does growth come? Growth comes through grace. That's all. That's what he focused on, propitiation and advocacy. We focus on Jesus. We focus on the grace that we received. We eat from the word of God on a daily basis and we get strengthened as we apply that word, and particularly through the rhythms of the spiritual life.

How did Jesus practice the spiritual life? Like if John's telling us we're going to walk with Jesus, become like Jesus, well, how did Jesus and walk on a daily basis? What were the rhythms of his life? And I'll give you a few. Silence, he would go and spend time with God in silence and solitude, sacrificial and simple living in the Holy scriptures. He would immerse himself in the scriptures, meditate on the scriptures so he truly knew who God was. He truly knew what mercy and justice and grace were. So all he did flowed from those practices of silence, solitude, sacrificial living and scripture. So we are to obey, love, grow in obedience and love. And we can't just focus on the positive things we've got to focus on there are some negative things that we got to cut out from our life.

So if you want to get healthy, it's not just about eating the right things and adding more supplements into your life. You've got to cut out the junk. And this is point four that we got to deny desires that pull us away from God. And this is point verse 15, "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever by world." It's the Greek word cosmos. He's talking about humanity that is united in rebellion against God. Humanity that is United against God and Jesus talking about the world.

It's not the physical world that God created, it's the sinful structures in the world. And Jesus said, "The world hates me." He said, "The devil is the prince of this world. The whole world is under the power of the evil one." Jesus said, "I pray for my disciples not in particular for the world." This is why Jesus came to save the world. So John 3:16, "For God so loved the world ..." A lot of people translate that to mean the world was so great that God loved us and the onus is put on us. It's not endorsement of the world. It's a testimony to the character of God. He didn't love us because we were lovely. He loved us because he was loving. What was shocking about that verse isn't that God's love is to be admired because the world is so big, that God's love is to be admired because we were so bad. That's the world that he saves us from.

So scripture says that, "When we repent and believe in Jesus Christ, we are transferred from the world, the domain of darkness into the kingdom of God's light." So in a sense, Christians are in the world, but not of it. In a sense no Christian actually lives in the world. No, the world contains no Christians because Jesus has chosen us out of the world. Everything that's antagonistic toward God. So if we've been taken out of the sinful structures, why in the world would we be pulled back in? And he's saying this because the allure is so powerful. This is the world, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes and the pride of life. Desire of the flesh, this is sensuality, the desires of the eyes, this is materialism and the pride of life, this is self glorification.

And once you have these three categories, you begin to see this everywhere. You see in marketing, you see this in social media. You see this all like half the economy is built up on the pride of life, desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes, and it's the same temptation over and over. This is the same pattern that Satan used attempt Eve. Eve looked at the fruit, that it was good for food, that it was pleasing to the eyes, and that it would make wise. Desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes, pride of life. Satan comes to Jesus when Jesus was fasting and he tempts him. Turn the stone into bread. Desire the flesh. Hey, I'm going to give you all these kingdoms. Desire of the eyes. Hey, jump off the top of the temple. Self-glorification. The allure is there. So dear Christian, where are your affections pulling you away from God and toward the world?

And the fight for faith is the fight for desire. And that desire, Jonathan Andover said, "True religion, consistent holy affections." We are to vivify our affections for God, give life to our affection and then kill our sinful desires. This is the mortification of the flesh. C. S. Lewis talked about the sweet poison of the false infinite, the sweet poison of the false infinite. It looks so sweet, but it's poisonous. It looks infinite. It looks like it'll last forever. This feeling, this relation, whatever this ends up pulling you, it looks infinite, but it's temporal. G. K. Chesterton said, "The acid test of any religion is what do you deny?" So dear Christian, as you follow Jesus, we can't but deny. He says, "Follow me and take up your cross daily." Where are you growing in self-denial? Where do you need to grow in self-denial?

So how do you know that you know God? You obey, love, grow and deny. I'll conclude with this. Robert Robinson lived in the 18th century in London. He lived a life of debauchery in his youth as part of a gang. Did all kinds of horrible things. At age 17 went to hear George Whitfield preach the gospel. He gets saved, radically goes into the ministry, becomes a pastor and an age 23 he writes, one of our most beloved hymns that we ever sing is come thou fount. Writes his incredible hymn, it's inspired like we still sing, it's so powerful. Then after a while, his love for the Lord began to cool off and he walks away from the faith, goes through a season of severe depression and sin. He was traveling and as he's traveling he meets a Christian young lady and they start conversing and she realizes that he is educated in the terminology of the faith and she says, "Okay, have you read this hymn? I just recently came across this hymn. It touched my soul powerfully. Maybe it'll bless you.

And at that moment he started weeping. She takes out come thou fount. And he says, "I am the poor wretch that wrote that hymn many years ago and I'd do anything to experience again that joy that I knew." And she all she did, she pointed him to the lyrics and she said, "Look, the streams of God's mercy are still here. Just come and stand under his streams of mercy and he will cleanse you of sin." Robinson wrote in that third verse owed to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee. We need that. We need God's grace to bind our hearts to him, to terraform us into the image of Christ. And Robinson's own hymn was used to turn his wandering heart back to the Lord.

If you're not a Christian, accept God's grace. He is your propitiation, he is your advocate, accept it, repent it, listen and believe. If you're a Christian, you need to grow in obedience and love and growth and denial. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this time that you've given us in the Holy scriptures. What a powerful word you've left us. And we thank you for the Holy spirit. Holy spirit we thank you for continuing minister to us, continue to grow us and continue to grow us in maturity and health so that we can help others grow in maturity and help bring people to you to be introduced to you and be transformed by you. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.

Audio Transcript:

You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you, the God of all light did not leave us in the dark, did not leave us in our own darkness. Instead Lord, that you came and you exposed our darkness through the truth of your son, Jesus Christ. And we thank you Jesus that you didn't just expose our darkness with your light, but you also showed us your love, of how much you love us, that you are willing to die on the cross bearing the penalty for our darkness.

We thank you, Holy Spirit, that through you, we can have fellowship with the father and with the son and with one another because of the gospel. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the holy scriptures. I pray that you give us grace to confess our sins, reveal where we are still in darkness, the patterns in our life that are still pulling us away from you. I pray, expose those, and as you give us grace to confess those sins, I pray both forgive us and cleanse us. And we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So we're kicking off the year with a brand new sermon series that we are calling, Meno, Living in Light & Love. And it's a series through 1 John. The word meno is from the Greek, they coined a Greek, the original Greek that the New Testament is written in.

The M, you understand, the next letter, then E, then the V is an N sound in the Greek, and then the W is an O sound, meno. So that's your Greek lesson for the day. You're welcome. So why this word? This word means to abide, to remain, to be connected to. John uses this over 20 times in his very short epistle. And the idea is that we thrive, we flourish, we live life to the fullest when we are connected to God and we are connected to God through Jesus Christ. And we remain in him by walking in light and walking in love because God is light and God is love.

And this whole idea of walking comes from the very beginning of scripture where Adam, he walked with the Lord in the quiet and the cool of the garden. He had a personal relationship, an experiential relationship with God, which then was severed through sin. But then, we see glimpses of this relationship come up in the Old Testament where Enoch walked with God, Noah walked with God, Abraham walked with God.

Jesus Christ comes and he calls his disciples. He said, "Follow me. Walk with me," and this is what the Christian life is. It's not just about rituals and rules, it's about a personal relationship with the god of the universe. Who wrote this epistle? It was the Apostle John, the Disciple John, one of the closest apostles that Jesus had, one of the closest disciples, he had three in the inner circle. He had 12 disciples, but three in the inner circle, Peter, James and John.

And he knew Jesus, he walked with Jesus, he was an eyewitness to the miracles of Jesus and he was actually the one who reclined closest to Jesus at the last supper. He was the one to whom Jesus Christ entrusted his mother, Mary, from the cross. She is now your mother and you are her son. He's the one that actually outran Peter to the empty tomb.

And how do we know that he outran Peter to the empty tomb, and how do we know that he was Jesus' favorite disciple? We get that from the Gospel of John. John wrote that about himself. If I outran the first apostle, I'd write that too. And he's like, "Yeah, Jesus loved me more than anyone else." So John is the guy who he understood Jesus' heart.

Early on, he had anger issues along with his brother, James. They were called the sons of Zebedee. Jesus actually gave them a nickname, the sons of thunder. They would go into a village and the village wouldn't repent. And they're like, let's call down fire from heaven and incinerate everyone. Jesus like, "Hold on." And then actually, the love of Jesus Christ transforms him. And by the end of his life, he's called the apostle of love.

So he writes as a father. He's probably in his late 80s, perhaps early 90s and he's writing to these Christians who are second generation Christians. He calls them beloved. He calls them my little children in the faith. And he writes to them with the purpose of showing them that God's word is timeless, therefore, it's always timely.

They're second generation Christians and the false teachers are coming in and the world is pulling them away from the Lord by saying, "Hey, don't believe in that stuff. It's outdated, it's outlandish, it's outmoded, it's regressive, we're progressive, it's antiquated and we're modern, it's old school, we're new school."

And John says, "No. I'm not even having that argument. I want to show you that this isn't about progression, it's about being outside of time, that we are people in time and we need a word that is outside of us, outside of time. We need an eternal word," and that's how he begins his epistle. This is 1 John 1:1-10. Would you look at the text with me?

That which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and reclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest to us that which we have seen and heard.

We proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light. In him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

This is the reading of God's holy, inherent, infallible, authoritative word, meaning, write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First of all, you can know Christianity is true. Second, you can know that you're a true Christian. Third, you can show that you're a true Christian and you can show Christianity is true, and those three at the end are the doctrinal test, the moral tests and relational test and I'll explain what that means.

So first of all, you can know Christianity is true. John is writing as a person who has seen Jesus Christ, has heard his words, has actually touched him, has had fellowship with him on a physical level and on a spiritual level and he understands that this is true, like you and I are true, you and I are alive. This is as true as life and death and this is really important because here at Mosaic, and this is what historic Orthodox Christians believe, that Christianity isn't just true because we choose to say it's true.

It's true for everybody if you choose to believe or not, just like gravity is true for everybody, and this is exceptionally counter-cultural because we live in a day and age where the only thing you're allowed to be certain about is that we can't be certain about anything. The only thing that you're allowed to be sure about is that we can't be sure about anything. The only thing you can have true conviction about is that we can't have true conviction about anything. The only authority we're allowed to talk about is the authority that we question.

So John comes in and he's incredibly countercultural. He says that you can know that this is true. You can know that Christianity is the truth from God. And he uses these words over and over. Uses the word ginosko 15 times. The word ginosko in the Greek means to observe and to experience. You observe the truth, you observe Christians, you observe the church, you observe world history and church history and you got to experience it.

Oida is used 25 times, that you can know by reflection. When you take God's truth and you meditate upon it with an open heart, it comes inside your heart. Phaneroo means to make known. It's used nine times. Parrésia, confidence used four times in this epistle. And what he wants is he wants to leave us with certainty that this is true.

1 John 1:1-3, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, which we have … By the way, the first time I've ever read this, eyes glare, like what is he talking about? If you separate each one of the words, you're like, "Yeah, I understand those words." But when you bring them together, you're like, "Why in the world?"

And by the way, this is his introduction. I remember at homiletics class in seminary, I was told, whenever you give a speech, whenever you give a sermon, you got to give a very clear introduction that captures people attention, that shows them that you're worth listening to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. John does none of that. He begins this epistle with a word that, that which.

John, why are you doing that? Well, what he's doing is he's framing up the very central idea within a few sentences, and I'll explain exactly what he's doing, but what is the subject of this letter? What is the subject of this paragraph? He says, "That which was from the beginning," and use the word which, which we have seen, which we have looked upon, and then at the very center is a subject concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen and testify to the eternal life, which was with the father, verse three, that which we have seen and proclaimed to you, et cetera, et cetera. He said, "This is the subject. The subject of everything I'm talking about is life." It's at the very center of this paragraph. And by life, I mean eternal life and by life and eternal life, I mean Jesus Christ who is the source of all life.

Everything was created through him, flows through him. He sustains all of life. It's the message of life and the messenger of life and they're rooted in eternity. It's unchanging. It's fixed. He's saying this to show us that this truth is eternal. This isn't a truth that can be deemed progressive or regressive, this is a truth that's outside of time because God is outside of time.

There's a church in Coolidge Corner, a very nice building. They have a sign outside that says, putting the progressive back in Christianity. And John was saying, "No, no. Christianity isn't about regressive or progressive, it's actually outside of time because God is outside of time." 1 John 1:8 says, that which was from the beginning.

He's talking about the life, the life that which was from the beginning, Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father, but through me." Jesus has always existed. There was never a time when he was not. He had no beginning, will have no ending. The preexistence of Jesus Christ is the presupposition to the incarnation. He was before he was born.

John actually talks about this in John 1:1-3 in his gospel and there too, he doesn't have a very captivating introduction, but it's theologically sound. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In the beginning was the word. The logos in the beginning was Christ.

And what's fascinating is that in both our epistle, 1 John 1 and in the gospel of John, in the Greek, he doesn't use a definite article because in the Greek, there were no definite articles. And the definite article, by the way, this is English refresher from ninth grade. Definite articles are the, indefinite articles are a, and here where it says in the beginning, definite article, that's not in the Greek.

So in the Greek, what it says is in beginning was the word, in beginning was word. And in 1 John it says, that which was from beginning. I'm going somewhere with this. Hold on for just a little second. It doesn't make any sense in English because we need the definite articles to make sense of it. But if you speak another language, some other language don't have the definite articles. Russian for example, no definite articles, no indefinite articles.

So if you meet a Russian speaker and you're like, I have no idea what they're saying, now you know. They don't have definite articles. So if you read this text with the Russian accent, it makes all the sense in the world. That which was from beginning. Yeah, I get that. In beginning was word. Very good. If you wanted to develop the scariest accent that exists, the Russian accent, that's all you do. You just drop the definite and indefinite articles and just talk angry and there you got it.

And this is all to say which beginning, which beginning, which beginning is he talking about? The beginning for us. The beginning for us was not the beginning for the word because Jesus was outside of the word. He has always existed and he comes into the world to bring the light of God. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory as the gospel of John says.

So in 1 John 1b and 2b, John says, "This word, which was from the beginning, before the beginning, we have heard, we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon, have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest and we have seen and testify to and proclaim to you the eternal life, which is what the father was made manifest to us, that which was eternal became temporal. The infinite became finite for a while, the spiritual becomes physical and we have seen the manifestation of this word in Jesus Christ. He is life itself."

Verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, this word that became flesh was spiritual and becomes the flesh and now, I proclaim to you that same spiritual word through the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he says three times in the first three verses, we saw the incarnate son of God. John is saying, "Why should you listen to me? What are my credentials? On which authority am I standing? Why listen to me? Is it because I have theological degree? No. Is it because I have studied the Greek? No, it's because I was with Jesus. I was with him. I've spent time with him."

John said, "I've heard his voice. I know the tone, the tenor, the cadence of his voice. I know what Jesus smells like. I've seen his miracles. We feasted together. I've seen him in a mountain of transfiguration. I saw his glory. I saw him and the crucifixion on Golgotha. I saw him bleeding for us. The eternal was dying," he said.

And by the way, he's not just saying this so that you can know factually that it's true, you can, because of the historical evidence, because these are true historic events, because the apostolic witness, you could know those things objectively. But John says, "No, it's deeper than that. I don't want you to just know the good news of Jesus Christ in your mind. It's not just cerebral." He says, "I want you to know it in your heart."

And here he talks about the subjective evidence, which is actually objective, and when you think about, but the subjective evidence is you know deep in your heart that it's true. There's nothing more true than the fact that Jesus Christ, the son of God, died for your sins and rose on the third day for your forgiveness.

He said, "I know it's true because the illumination of the Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit allowed John not just to hear Jesus' voice, but to have it still ringing in his ears and in his heart. He saw Jesus, but now, he sees Jesus on a deeper level and hear what he's talking about is that Jesus Christ, the life, the reality underneath all of reality is the one who makes sense of all reality. The life underneath all of life is the one that makes sense of life.

He says, "I met him and I found meaning for my life through him. I know my purpose through him. I know where I came from. I know who I am and I know where I will spend eternity because of him. The life Jesus Christ." C.S. Lewis has this quote where he talks about Christianity and he says, "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else. I believe in Christianity like I believe in the sun, not because I've seen it, but because by it, I see everything else."

This is what Jesus does. Jesus makes sense of every single part of our life, every single part of reality, and Jesus Christ is the only one who can truly satisfy our minds and our hearts. Why do I say that? Because we have these moments in life that you experience this moment and you're like, this is what life is all about, and they're so fleeting.

These little fleeting moments when you feel alive, you've had those moments. Perhaps it's graduating from a program, perhaps victory in something. Perhaps you're on vacation, you're traveling, this is life. I want this to always be, and then like three days later, you're like, I want to go home. They're fleeting. Like the first time you experienced romance or falling in love, you're like, God, this is life. I am pulsating. I'm fully alive.

The first time you get a job, you're like, this is my dream job. And then like a week later, it's just work. That's why they pay you, because you wouldn't do it for free. But it's like a thrill of victory. You won the Super Bowl last year and then every single year, everyone expects you to win every single game. Come on, let someone else win.

And he's saying Christianity is true because historical evidence, the apostolic evidence, you can know all that, but it's true in your heart. When the Holy Spirit illuminates your heart, regenerates your heart, you're given a knowledge, a certainty, a conviction and you don't need physical eyes to see it, to know that it's true.

Lots of people saw the historic Christ. Lots of people saw Jesus Christ come back from the dead. Not everybody believed. 1 Peter 1:8, though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. He fills your heart with this joy in a spiritual level, it's inexpressible, and you see with the truest eyes that you can see the eyes of your soul.

So you can know that Christianity is true. We don't stop there. John doesn't stop there because some people say knows that Christianity is true, the demons believe and they're in trepidation at the fact of God, but there's no love for God. So John says, "You can know that it's true, but then also, you need to know that you're a Christian, that it's transformed you." And this is 0.2, you can know that you're a true Christian, and this is the doctrinal test.

And John does this all throughout the book, and I'll just give you these points here. But for him, the doctrinal test is that you cannot believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died on the cross for your sins and rose on the third day unless the Holy Spirit has quickened your heart, regenerated your heart, unless the Holy Spirit lets the lights go on, the illumination of your mind by the Holy Spirit, this illumination, you didn't invent, you didn't cause it to happen and you cannot undo it.

The Holy Spirit has shown this light in your soul and you can't turn it off if you tried. And this illumination, perhaps doesn't prove that Christianity is true. Objectively, that's a historic evidence, the apostolic evidence, but it proves to you that you are a Christian. The most important question that every single one of us needs to answer in this life today is, are you saved?

Are you saved from the wrath to come? Have you been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred in the kingdom of God's light, the kingdom of his son? Are you saved? Are you a Christian? And if the answer is maybe, this book is for you. If you're not sure of your salvation, if you're not assured that you are a child of God, this book is for you. John wants you to have this assurance.

This is why he's written the book 1 John 5:13. 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. Do you know? Can you say with full conviction, full assurance? Yes. If I die right now, I will spend eternity with God. I will spend eternity with Christ. When it comes to Christianity, how you know that you're a Christian isn't because of the works that you've done or the works that you will do, we're saved by grace through faith.

The moment that you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God who died on the cross for your sins and you repent of your sins, that very moment, you are a Christian because that repentance and that faith is a gift from the Holy Spirit. And if you're like, I'm not sure. This is what I recommend. I recommend you take the gospel of John and that you sit down with an open heart and you ask God, God, please reveal yourself to me. God, is this true? Is this true? Help my unbelief? Is this true?

And I promise you, he will reveal himself to you because the very fact that you would do that with an open heart and desire to be saved, desire to be a Christian is already a sign that he is working in your heart. That's already a gift. And to bolster our assurance, he gives us three tests in this book and we'll deal with this sequentially over the course of the next eight weeks in this series.

The doctrinal test is, do you believe this? Do you believe in the teachings, the word of God concerning Jesus Christ, the God-man and saving work? And then there's also the moral test. Now, if you are in the kingdom of light, if God has shown his light in your life, are you walking in the light? And that's a 0.3 and then 0.4 will be the relational test, so doctrinal, moral, relational.

Three is you can show that you're a true Christian. You can know that Christianity is true. You can know that you're a true Christian and you can show that you're a true Christian through the moral test. Does your life show it? 1 John 1:3, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ.

And then he uses that same word fellowship two more times on this text in verse six, if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So for him, light and truth are synonymous, darkness and lies are synonymous. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

Jesus is reality. The word fellowship in the Greek is koinonia. What the word fellowship means is a personal experience of sharing something that's significant. You share something that's significant. Fellowship is the deepest level of friendship. You make it faster. I remember in college one time, I went to a concert with a friend of mine, kind of a friend, he lived down the hall. And we went to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. And after that, we were in the mosh pit together. And after that, he's like, "Man, I feel like we bonded." And then I never spoke to him again. Very superficial.

The deeper the thing that unites us, the deeper the thing that you share, the deeper your friendship. And the deepest thing that we can share with someone is God. Faith in God, love God, delight in God, desire to obey God. And he says, "We have fellowship with the father and with the son by the power of the Holy Spirit."

And Christianity is a relationship. It's a fellowship with God. It's not just about what you do for God or what God has done, it's about you walking together with God on a daily basis. The fellowship with God, he's saying, is a relationship. And every single relationship takes effort. We're saved by grace through faith. So our relationship with God is without earning, you can't earn it, but it's not without effort.

Every thriving, enduring, flourishing relationship, it takes work. And marriage, it takes work, with your children, it takes work, at friendship, it takes work, our relationship with God takes effort, and that effort is are you pursuing the light? Are you pursuing the light of God? Are you pursuing the truth of God? Are you pursuing to walk in the holiness of God?

And this 1 John 1:5, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light, in him is no darkness at all. And this is really fascinating because he could have started with God is love. That's true, but he doesn't start with that. Although that's more inviting. Why not just start with God is love? God loves you, Jesus loves you, he starts with God is light.

And the reason why he starts with God is light is because that's how God reveals himself. God reveals himself first of all through his holiness, through his light and then through his love. This is the revelation of God. And John starts with the person of God, not us. And the reason why he does that is because our deepest problem, every single one of us, is that we're self-centered. We are so self-focused, we're selfish.

And I catch myself with this once in a while. How many times today this morning did you think of yourself? In December, I only preached one time here in Mosaic. And I got to listen to the sermons and I came to worship service and I came to every single one of the worship service and I love it. I love being here. But as I'm sitting here, I was just analyzing myself. I'm listening to a sermon and I'm worshiping and I worship for a little bit and then all of a sudden, I'm thinking about I'm hungry or it's too cold or it's too hot. What am I doing after church? Am I going to Los Amigos today?

The music is not as good as usual, or this, or that. And then as I'm sitting, I'm in the presence of God. I am here to focus on God. I'm here to encounter God. I'm just focusing on myself and I'm a professional Christian. And if I do this, you definitely do this. Every single one of us, we're focused on ourselves. Before I got married, I thought I was the most selfless person. I actually told my wife early on. I was like, "You have won the husband lottery. You're welcome. You are so lucky."

She has needs, but I have needs. And then we got through that by the grace of God and then we have a kid and my goodness, they are so selfish. It's all about their needs. What about mine? And here's the thing, a lot of people come to God like that and a lot of churches cater to people and allow people to come to God from a very self-centered place. You approach God and you say, what can God do for me? Why should I follow God? Why should I obey God? Why should I sacrifice for God?

Yeah. If he gives a little joy, I could have a little more happiness. Can God make me happy? Yeah, I want something. Could God give it to me? Or I've got so many problems, can God solve them? And when you approach faith from a very self-centered place, it only deepens your self-centeredness and never fixes it. So John starts here and he starts with, God is light. He's absolutely holy and there's darkness within us and something needs to be done about the darkness in our hearts, about the selfish and the self-centeredness in our hearts. We need to be delivered from it.

And here, the reason primarily why he does that is because we'll never understand God's love until we understand God's light. We'll never understand that when God's light shines into our hearts and exposes the sin and the vile darkness within, until we see who we are before God, we'll never understand his love. We'll never understand the cross, that the cross is the path of salvation. Why can't God just forgive me? He created everything with a word. Why can't he just say, I forgive you? Because he's holy. That's why.

We'll think of the cross as meaningless or unnecessary. And also, starting with God's holiness and God's light, exposes any false claims of fellowship with God. Yeah, I love God. Yeah. I pray in my spare time. I'm a spiritual person. To whom do you pray? Do you pray to a God who is love? Do you pray to a God who sees the sin in your life?

And also, starting with a God who is light allows us to understand what we truly deserve. And this is really important I think because we go through these moments in life when we suffer perhaps or we don't get the things that we expect that we deserve to get. An entitlement begins to creep in and you get something in life.

You're like, I deserve so much better. I expected that I'm going to be in a different place than I am now. God's light, God's holiness shows you know what we deserve? We deserve eternity in hell apart from God experiencing the conscious wrath of God. That's what we deserve. Everything else is grace and it gives us spiritual fortitude to go through the suffering, go through trials, understanding that God is sovereign and also starting with God's holiness.

When we understand this is what we deserve, but this is what God offers because the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, he offers us eternal life, he offers us forgiveness, he offers us cleansing of all of our sins, fills your heart with incredible light and love and joy and we deepen our fellowship with God by pursuing our walk in light, not in darkness. 1 John 1:6, one six I'm going to give you these three verses and just look at the parallelism.

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness. If you say, yeah, I'm a Christian, yeah, my sins are forgiven, but you're pursuing darkness. He says, "We lie and do not practice the truth." Verse eight, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 10, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

And John here is writing against the false teachers who came into this community. And one of the things that they said was, you know what, it doesn't matter how you live in the flesh, in the body, all that matters is what you believe. All that matters is what you do in your spirit. And by bifurcating the spirit from the body, from the flesh, they said nothing that you do in the flesh matters. You can live any way you want.

And then at some point, if you want, come to God, he'll forgive you of your sins and then you keep going to live any way you want. So your spirit is in the light. It doesn't matter what your flesh is. And John says, "That's not how it works. God doesn't just care about our souls. He cares about our bodies because we are embodied spirits. We're spiritual bodies. It's all interconnected." So God does care. And this is why Jesus comes into the flesh. And this is why we can't excuse sin by saying it was done in the flesh.

And here, he says, "Walking in light and walking in darkness." What is he talking about? What does he mean by darkness? He's talking about that sinful part in our hearts that we're deathly afraid to look into. You know it's there. Everybody knows it's there. We know that there's evil, a darkness inside. Movies and books have been written, songs have been written. There's a dark passenger inside.

My high school football coach, Coach Ogletree, great guy, kind of an alcoholic, and he would come to practice drunk. And I remember one time, sophomore year, I was in the varsity team and I was hanging out with some of the older students. So my coach comes to me, he takes me inside, he said, "Jan, do not go over to the dark side."

And I knew exactly what he meant. Just like, you know exactly what I mean. You know exactly what I'm talking to. There's a darkness deep inside. There's things inside that we are deeply ashamed of. It's in every single one of us. So the first thing that we need to do, and what it means to walk in the light, it means to approach God and say, God, you're light. There's darkness in me, but because of the grace of Jesus Christ, because of the blood of Christ, there is cleansing. There is forgiveness.

I'm going to take steps toward you as I do. I see more of my darkness because there's more of the light. I'm not running. I'm not turning away from the sin. I'm not ignoring. I'm not denying my sins. I'm not customizing truth to my life. I'm customizing life to the truth. I'm adapting my life. I'm approaching the light, not running from it.

1 John 1:7, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. I love this verse because this verse shows us that despite how much darkness there is and despite how many times I fall, and despite how many times I dishonor God with thoughts and inclinations of the heart and desires that are far from God's will, when I approach him and I desire to walk in the light, there's always cleansing. There's always forgiveness.

And what's fascinating is, what he's saying is that there's cleansing not just for people who are in the dark. He's not saying the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin when we're walking in the dark because we need cleansing, he's saying, even when you're walking in the light, meaning, even if you are walking with Christ every single day of your life from now on until you die, you still need cleansing.

The closer you come to the light, the more exposed, the more you realize that you need cleansing. And verse nine, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What's fascinating is he doesn't just say that Jesus forgives us of our sins. He doesn't just say that Jesus forgives us of our unrighteousness, he says that Jesus cleanses us from our sins.

I like that. Do you know why this is important? Because I feel this in my own heart, that as you're walking with the Lord, there are seasons where it's like, yeah, I know my sins are forgiven. I know I'm not under the condemnation of God, but I also feel like my soul is gunked up.

If you think about cleansing, perhaps it's after the holidays, you just ate so much junk and you're like, I need a cleanse. I need to fast. I need to become a vegan. I need to do something. I need a cleanse. Something like that happens on our souls. The best shower that I ever experienced of cleansing is from a long trip. You take a long trip, like you're traveling back from Europe, couple of planes, and you go home, that first shower.

Airlines know this. If you've ever flown Lufthansa, they give you that little warm towel. You're like, thank you. I had no idea how much I need it. I'm disgusting. We need cleansing. What he's saying is, yes, our sins are forgiven, but dear Christian, you still need cleansing. So where in your life do you need cleansing? Where in your life is there a darkness? Where in your life are you mired in sin? Perhaps a pattern or habitual sin that's pulling you away from God? Perhaps strongholds, secret sins, dark secrets.

And he says, come to God. Come to God, confess your sins and he is faithful and just to cleanse you and to forgive you. Christ didn't die to make us comfortable sinners. And 0.4 is you can show Christianity is true. And this is verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. And that's fascinating.

John with you? Yeah, he's talking about himself. He's talking about the apostolic witness. You can have fellowship with the apostles. What does he mean? Where's John right now? Well, he's dead, but his body would turn into a corpse. But where's John right now? He is in the presence of God. He is already experiencing eternity with God, but he's saying you could have fellowship with God the father and God the son, vertical fellowship.

And as you do, you can have a horizontal fellowship with Christians from before you and Christians that come after through this faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's a fellowship with the father, son and the Holy Spirit by the power of the Holy Spirit. Verse seven, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another as well. So we don't just have fellowship with God, we don't just have fellowship with Christians before us, the Christians after us, we have fellowship with Christians who are here now.

Do you have fellowship with Christians? Do you have fellowship with brothers and sisters? Because God is your father. Not just friendship, but a fellowship. Now I'll say, look at the connection in verse seven. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. What's the connection there? The more we pursue God's light, the more we pursue to walk with God. The more we want to spend time with God's children.

The farther we walk away from God's light, the less of a desire we have to spend time with God's children. I've seen this over and over and over where the first sign that someone is walking in the dark, is walking away from the Lord, is they walk away from community with other brothers and sisters who have the Holy Spirit.

So we are to pursue fellowship. We do that in Mosaic through our worship services and our community groups. We pursue fellowship with one another, fellowship that's deeper than friendship. Can you be friends with unbelievers? Yes. Can you have fellowship with unbelievers? No. You can't have the deepest form of connection, intimacy, spiritually speaking.

2 Corinthians says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, but what fellowship has light with darkness? And what we try to develop is light in terms of sharing what's going on in our lives and sharing our failures and our fears and our flaws and our faults. Sin is like mushrooms. It grows in the dark. So we expose those areas to our brothers and sisters and we repent to God and we also confess to one another.

James 5:16, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed and the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. So John says, "The eternal life has come. We proclaim it to you and as we proclaim it to you by grace through faith, you believe in it. You have fellowship with God and we have fellowship with one another and it leads to joy."

And that's verse four 1 John 1, we're writing these things so our joy together may be complete, may be full, may be satisfying so you can know that Christianity is true, you can know that you are a true Christian, you can show that you are a true Christian by walking in the light and you can show the world that you are a Christian, that Christianity is true through your love for other Christians. That's what Jesus said. The world will know that you are my disciples because of your love for one another.

This time, we're going to transition to holy communion. Three things in the holy scripture are called the body of Christ Jesus' physical body, the church which is the body of Christ and also the bread at communion, the bread and the wine are called the body of Christ.

The reason why we celebrate communion is because Jesus told us, "Do this in remembrance of me." We come to holy communion with contrite repentant hearts. Who's the welcome to take part in communion? Anyone who repents of sin. If you are a Christian who is unrepentant, we ask that you refrain. If you are not a Christian and you haven't repented of sin, if you have not believed in Jesus Christ, we ask that you refrain, but even if today, you repent of your sins, say, "Jesus, I confess my sins, there's so much darkness inside. Please forgive me," he forgives you instantaneously and you're welcome to partake.

The usher is going to hand out the elements. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ that's broken for us. The cup symbolizes the blood of Christ that was shed for us to cleanse us from sin. Once you receive the elements, please hold onto them until everyone has received them and then we'll partake together. Would you please pray with me?

Jesus, we thank you for the gospel and we thank you that you didn't just give us words of light and words of love, but you brought both together and both your love and your mercy and your justice and your holiness come together on the cross where, Jesus, you connect us with God, the father. By grace, through faith we can have fellowship with you, fellowship with the father and fellowship with the Holy Spirit.

We want to take some time now to confess our sins. They are many. All too often, we do not love you as you ought to be loved. We don't love neighbor as self, we're too self-focused. Lord, right now, we ask that you ensconce us in your presence, clothe us in your presence so that we focus on you and turn our gaze to you and to the cross of Jesus. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.