Well, good morning everyone. It is a beautiful day together.
I'm excited to see our visitors. We're happy to hear have the
people who are not normally among us here today to have the
common purpose, the best common purpose one could have with
another. And I'm excited to see our
usuals, the people who we are always so accustomed to seeing.
Thank you for being faithful and continuing to be here and
support of God's Word and in continuing to worship Him one
more day until we get closer to our final goal.
If you have not been here, I've been walking through the book of
first John, and so we'll do a quick intro to bring you up to
speed with the purpose of this book.
We are in lesson 6 and that puts us at the end of chapter 4.
Last time we covered the first half of chapter 4 and 1st John,
and this book was written. First of all, we need to make
sure we understand who it's written to.
This book was written to Christians, people who are
already faithful followers of God.
And that leads us to the message.
The message was that John said that I write these things to you
so that your joy may be full. This book is a book of joy and a
book of reminding us and strengthening us in our joy.
And secondly, so that we may not sin.
If we are to be Christians that are full of joy and full of
God's love and the messages of Christ, that means so that we
don't sin, we need to avoid those things.
The third purpose, he says that you may know, that you have
eternal life, that you may know, and we're getting to that verse
here pretty soon. It might be next study.
And the fourth purpose here that you may continue to believe in
the name of the Son of God. Remember, these Christians were
now starting to get some pressure and they were starting
to have these messages around them that that would detract
from what Jesus said he was and did and from what he claimed to
do. And they were starting to have
some detractors. We're talking within 100 years
of after Jesus came, this had started.
So don't be surprised 2000 years later that it is continued and
that there's pressure it's going to happen, but they knew about
it. And so there's a letter written
to help us in this. And the last purpose I think we
can clearly identify from his statement is that these things
I've written to you concerning those who tried to deceive you.
So related to the people who are providing that pressure, that
pressure was a pressure of the of deception, The devil's work
and the pressure he applies to our faith is one that tries to
twist and deceive. But we are going to counteract
that with truth. So let's get our momentum back
from what we did last time. And we started in verse one.
And it's a beloved do not believe every spirit, but test
the spirits, whether they are of God.
So we test things that are right or to test them against truth to
make sure we know that things we're hearing and practicing are
true. Because many false prophets have
gone out into the world. There is so much deception ready
to trick us if we're not ready by this.
You know, the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God.
And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has
come in the flesh is not of God. So that is the Gnostic teaching
that we remember. That's the people who
counteracted that, and this is the spirit of the Antichrist,
which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world.
You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because
he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
They are of the world, therefore they speak as of the world, and
the world hears them. We are of God.
He who knows God hears us, and he who is not of God does not
hear us. Beloved, let us love one
another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of
God and knows God. He who does not love does not
know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was
manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son
into the world, that we might live through him.
And this is love. Not that we love God, but that
He loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our
sins. And here we are.
We're getting right up to where we're going to cover today,
beloved, if God so loved us, we all love one another.
And we talked about last time how we want to be loved by God
in a way that is genuine and self sacrificing and true.
And so may we love each other. And when he says one another,
he's been talking about the context of our brethren.
So yes, we love everyone around us, but the specific context is
he's he's trying to get us to treat each other a certain way
that is radically different then maybe what we might intend to do
when we get closer with one another.
And when we see each other's warts and when we get frustrated
with one another, he's trying to challenge us to love one another
as God so loved. OK, here we go verse 12.
No one has seen God at any time. No one has ever seen God in the
flesh because God is spirit. If we love one another, God
abides in US and his love has been perfected in US.
So God's love is perfected in US and has grown to completeness in
US when we love. Now that word perfected if
you've done the done much Bible study, you know it is commonly
used as a word of completeness, not of complete perfection in
the sense that there is no sin you ever commit because that is
contrary to another teaching. We are going to sin, but it is a
love that is completed in US. In other words, it is mature and
fully developed. And that's important because we
want to give an accurate representation to the world of
God's love. We don't want to give some
counterfeit, cheap version of God's love to the world.
You know, sometimes I think this might be our depiction of God's
love to the world. We're trying, we're putting some
effort there, but there's not a lot of skill.
Maybe, maybe there's, there's some really rough details that
we're showing. We're getting some idea, but we
really kind of don't give the full picture that we're trying
to give and so on. My challenge and our challenge
from John the writer, is we need to be loving so that there is a
more complete and a more real picture of God's love.
Because at some point you become more developed and more complete
or more perfect. Now this is another drawing.
There are plenty of imperfections in it.
If you were to look at this drawing, you would find things
that are not perfect. That doesn't mean that there is
completely without spot. You and I are not going to be
completely without messed ups and wrongs and sins.
But we can do a whole lot better job of getting the picture and
of conveying the love of God and the developed picture of what
God's love is. So he says God abides in US and
His love has been perfected in US if we love one another,
That's the test if we love one another.
So this is the first statement he makes that he says God's love
is perfected on us by this or you by this.
You know that God's love is perfected in US number one, if
we love one another. Now remember this word love.
There are many Greek words for love.
They had more than we do. It was the, IT was the Greek
word agape. And an agape was a self
sacrificial love. There was a love for romantic
love, those arrows. There was the love for a good
feeling you had towards someone. That was Phileo.
And there are many others, but the one he's using here is
agape, a love that is self sacrificial and is willing to
lay down our life for another. That was what we read in the
last chapter, right? That we would lay down our lives
for the brethren. And this word is so important
because it is an indication of several things that we need to
convey to give an accurate representation of God's love.
And first of all, it is an indication of activity.
If someone years later says I'm going to show a remembrance of
my relative that makes me remember them and reflect their
memory in my mind, and they do absolutely nothing, you're like,
well, that's a worthless remembrance.
That's a worthless thing to say. You Remember Me.
And then just like, well, we think about it sometimes.
So it isn't this love takes an an idea and a remembrance of God
and a love of God and puts it into activity.
James says that faith without works is dead.
And so our love takes an active role that shows it's alive and
shows God's love is in US and real in US.
We studied a couple weeks ago about how that's how we know
that we are of Him if we follow Him.
And so that shows activity and it shows life in us.
If God looked down when he spiritual, when he sees
spiritual life in our habits or would he see death #2 it conveys
a quality of God's love. This is big because we know how
the world sometimes sees God and how the world wants to talk
about God and bad mouth God and we don't ever want to cheapen
the quality of God's love. And so we need to do a good job
and focus our efforts on the love because we don't want to
emulate or or give a message that God's love is cheap.
It is valuable what God offers and love speaks to the quality
of what is in US and it also speaks to longevity.
If you are going to follow the command to love one another, you
can't love incompleteness in a short period of time.
Because before you can love, you have to get to know someone.
You have to get to develop a relationship with them.
And then maybe you go through something where you work on
something together or and then you you develop a challenge in
that relationship. And then here comes an
opportunity when there's a challenge to do some self
sacrifice. And so if you don't have an
opportunity to self sacrifice, maybe you're not even in the
process enough to practice love. We have to be involved enough to
get to the point. We've had enough longevity that
now there's an opportunity to sacrifice for my brother and
show the love that I'm claiming. And so that longevity is an
indication that we have love, we have had hardships, maybe shown
face some backlash and that was opportunity.
And so our love, it's perfected in us.
That's why it's so important that God's God is abiding in us
through love. Verse 13.
By this we know that we abide in him and He in us because he has
given us of his Spirit. God's Spirit is living in US.
It teaches us, it lives in us. We have His deeds and we have
His heart and we have Him working in US.
How much more could you ask for from God to have His actions and
His motives in your own life? We have that we have, we have
these things inside of us. We have His strength working in
US. Verse 14 And we have seen and we
have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as
Savior of the world. Remember, this is an eyewitness.
We're reading people who were eyewitnesses of Jesus who didn't
want you to know, didn't want you to think that you've missed
out. They're eyewitnesses relaying to
you and I that we don't have to miss out.
He's conveying it to us so that we can have this connection with
them. We learn from chapter 1 verse
15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is
the Son of God. God abides in him and he in God.
Now this word confess means to say the same thing as or to
agree with, but if we just say things, do we really think that
God abides in US or what does he really mean by confesses?
I believe this is talking about the confession of our life.
Because if, if let's say my relationship with Taylor, if I
were to go out around you guys around other people and say,
man, I love Taylor so much. She is the best thing that's
ever happened to me and I just want to love her everyday.
She's she's my she's my favorite.
She's the best and yet whenever, when I spend time with her or if
I were alone together and I want nothing to do with her, I don't
talk to her, I don't court her or show interest in her.
And really, when I have other opportunities to choose her or
something else, I always choose the other thing.
Does that really have any indication that that I love her
or that her love is abiding in me and I and her love means
nothing. That would mean absolutely
nothing to her if I said that. So our confession is important.
And so the other way around, though, if, if I only love
Taylor and never said it said to her or said to other people, she
might feel like well wonder. And so we by to love God have to
confess him with our life and we have to confess him with our
mouth because that is a true representation of God abiding in
US and and that he living US, us living in him and he living in
US and is mostly lived and spoken when given opportunity.
Verse 16 And we have known and believed the love that God has
for us. God is love and he who abides in
love abides in God and God in him.
I just want to ask you a question.
Do you believe the God, the love that God has for you?
Because sometimes it's harder for me to believe the love God
has for me than the believe the love God has for you for
whatever the reason. The might can work that way
sometimes. Sure, I understand how God can
love you, but he really loves me because I know me.
God really loves me, the writer says we have known and we
believe this and he has given us proof of real love that Jesus
died for us. And sometimes when I think about
the people who are unwilling to hear Jesus and how he port is
how to heart out to them. I like to read this in the
perspective of somebody who who does follow him.
Matthew 23 verse 33, verse 37. Jesus says, O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem. He's speaking to the Jews, the
one who kills the prophets and stones those who were sent to
her. How often I wanted to gather
your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings, but you are not willing. Another translation says you
wouldn't let me hearing how he talked to people who did not
want him makes you pretty, pretty excited to be those
chicks who were under his wings and he let come into him.
God loves you and God wants you. Verse 17 love has been perfected
among us in this. So here's the second thing.
He, he's used this phrase again. Now love has been perfected
among us in this thing that we may have boldness in the day of
judgement. God's love has been perfected
among us. And that when that day of
judgement comes, when all this said and done and that day
comes, we have boldness. Now that is a big deal because
sometimes it's in the back of our minds, you know, that that
impending day of judgement and it kind of feels like a big
deal. And so let's just put it out
front. Let's take this day of judgement
and let's put it to the forefront.
It's not in the back of our minds.
It is a heavy day. The day of judgement is a heavy
day because in, in this life, all of your big decisions, all
of your big days, it's, it's maybe a big day, but really life
goes back to normal after the big day, right?
You're moving along, you have to spike something big happens.
Maybe it's a good thing. Maybe it's a new career path.
Maybe it's a, a, a life decision, like you're getting
married to a spouse. Maybe it's a big financial
decision. You have a spike where something
big happens, but life tends to go back to how it normally was.
Everybody around you probably didn't experience the same
thing. And so life goes on about as
usual. But this day is different.
Judgement Day is going to be day worth after this moment.
Nothing else is the same for you.
Nothing else is the same for anybody else in the world.
If this day goes well for me, if Judgement Day goes well for me,
every good thing that I've ever experienced just became the
daily breath that I breathe in the presence of God himself.
Every good experience, it's like I lived my life and there were
always these good experiences tied into my life by the by the
grace of God, the Bible says every good and perfect gift is
from above and comes down from the Father of lights.
We have good gifts in our life everywhere.
It's like all those good things are then just my day.
It's my life in God's presence after that moment and I I don't
wake up anymore after that judgment day, if it goes well
for me, I don't wake up anymore tired.
I don't wake up anymore and feel sore.
I don't wake up anymore and feel this sense of responsibility and
heaviness that all good things take a lot of work.
If you want to do good things for your family, for your
health, for your job, that's a heavy thing.
Because if you're going to let you take physical exercise, for
example, if you want to fit it in every day, you got to get up
early and it takes pain. No pain, no gain.
They say you got to get up and you got to grind, and there are
days where you don't want to do it.
And so you wake up every day kind of with that heaviness.
Once Judgment Day happens, you don't feel that heaviness
anymore because your body doesn't regress anymore.
Your body doesn't have pain anymore.
It doesn't have soreness, it doesn't have pain.
You don't wake up foggy or you don't, you don't have mental
fatigue. And I'm not saying that you, you
wake up, I don't know what rest is going to look like over
there, but we know God rested. So and then you go about your
day or whatever it looks like in God's presence.
And we know that in the garden it was a place of paradise and
they had work to do. It didn't hurt.
It felt great. It was a peaceful labor, but
there was a service to be done. And in God's presence, I imagine
a service to be done based on somewhat of that model.
Sometimes people think about heaven.
They think boring and sitting in church and singing well, serving
God's presence. I don't know what it's going to
look like, but I know it's going to be great.
And you go about that work for for that day or that service to
God. And it is the most meaningful,
the most satisfying, the most fulfilling work you've ever done
in your life. Think about the projects you did
in your life that felt good when you did it because you had an
ability and you used it and you were successful in God's
presence. You were doing the thing you
were very much created to do. You were created to worship God
and in God's presence, after that judgement day, if it goes
well for you, you're doing that all the time.
You were satisfied. The work doesn't hurt.
You were completely happy with where you're working, with what
you're doing, with who you're working with, and with who
you're working for. Can you imagine how good it's
going to be? And when you're done, there's
not an ache, there's not a pain, there's no mental fatigue.
There's no dreading what's going to happen the next time you have
to go to work because the work you did today might not have
gone super good and it might set you up bad for Monday.
There's no dread of getting up on Monday and dragging yourself
to work on Monday morning. There's none of that because in
God's presence you have complete rest and you have complete joy
and complete peace. There's nothing pulling you back
that used to pull you back. And when you're done with your
work, you just get to be in his presence.
You just get to be with him. And we will see him as he is,
and we will know him as we're done.
But if Judgement Day doesn't go well for me, every good thing I
ever experienced in this world is zapped right out of my life
because the one source that gives every good and perfect
gift from above is now not in my life anymore.
God gives good things to people who aren't good.
The rain falls on the good and the bad, but it's still good
things from God in this life. But now I chose a life.
I said, God, I don't want you in my eternity because I don't want
you in my present life. And so all of a sudden on
Judgment Day, if it doesn't go well for me, I now do not have
any of that in my life. And all the good things that
made-up this life are zapped out and all I'm left with with is
the pain. The Bible describes hell as a
place of outer darkness where you can't see your hand in front
of your face because darkness is not anything.
Darkness is the absence of light.
And the Bible says that one source of light is in the
presence of God. He is the light.
And so you take that away and what are you left with?
Complete darkness, you're left with complete separation, you're
left with complete loneliness. And I don't know if we really
get that feeling as adults. I'm really distant from the
feeling of being lost or alone. And then when I was little,
between maybe 5 and and 10 or 12, when I was out in the woods,
if I was camping or backpacking and I got out in the trees by
myself before all the forest fires burned down, you couldn't
see anything. When I got on the trees and I
was off away and I didn't know which direction was which.
I felt lost and not left. I feel a pit in my stomach.
I remember that feeling. I haven't felt it in a long
time. That is our present reality.
If Judgement Day does not go well, that's all you feel and
the pain in life. I believe God provides
thresholds that keep us from certain pains.
When you break a bone, your body has natural pain relievers.
There are certain extents that you don't hit in life for most
people that you've been protected from.
But in heaven, that's gone because there's no source of
comfort. Our source of light is gone.
Our only source of comfort is gone.
Our only source of peace is gone because we rejected him on
earth. And so if Judgement Day doesn't
go well for us or for me, that's a big day for the good or for
the bad. So it is reasonable to have
angst and fear. All right.
I'm not saying we should stay there, but it's reasonable to
look at this if it's sitting in the back of your mind, kind of
kind of marinating there. It's reasonable for that.
But John has something good for us, he says, but we may have
boldness in the day of judgment. Does boldness imply you are
living in fear? No, Boldness implies that you
are ready and you are welcoming that day, He says.
God's love is perfecting us because we have boldness and
judgement. That is a heavy day for all the
reasons we just took the time to talk about and bring to the
front. But it's OK because when I open
my eyes and I see my judge, I'm not looking at somebody, some
random judge who I've never, who I don't know.
I'm looking at my best friend when I open my eyes and see my
judge, and they give me over to the hands of my judge.
I'm not being given into the hands of a stranger.
I'm being given into the hands of the one who bought me and the
one who's been waiting for me the whole time.
And I've been waiting for him so I can have boldness and I can
have as a secondary note of this comment, is boldness in his
presence because judgement is the presence of God.
And that's scary for the reason we have already discussed.
But that's kind of a separate issue itself.
Are you afraid to be in the presence of God on that day?
It's OK because we've been together the whole time.
You remember back to earlier in the John's letter, he said
you've known him from the beginning.
I'm not afraid and I cannot be afraid of that judgement day.
And I can do with boldness because I've already been with
him. This isn't new.
I'm not seeing somebody new. I can have boldness in his
presence and not be afraid of everything that we just talked
about. And so love is perfected in US.
Why? Because as he is, so are we in
this world. This is a little bit of a tough
phrase to kind of piece of heart.
I think there's two key ways you can interpret this.
That both are true is that as he is full of love, so are we full
of love. And as that love grows in US,
you can have a sense of love in your heart that is grounding
that you don't fear because he says there's No Fear in love.
Perfect love casts out fear. Let me back up real quick.
The second way I think this could be true is our standing.
It is the same in him as him in this world.
So we can trust that we are tied to him.
We are tied to Jesus. So in that judgement day, we
don't have to fear the drop off because we're tied to him.
I think those are both true, but the key here is I think the
whole picture is love. There is No Fear in love, but
perfect love casts out fear. You might say, I thought we're
supposed to fear God and and and reverence him.
There's a good thing and healthy fear, but if our love and our
relationship with God is defined by fear, he says, love has not
been perfected in you. You are not a developed person
in love. You are undeveloped in love, he
says. Because fear involves torment.
Reverence does not involve torment.
Fear involves torment. There's a difference if I have a
view on my dad that I am all of a sudden for some reason afraid
of him. My dad has given me no reason to
fear him or to be tormented by a fear of him.
And if I were to somehow have that out of my childhood, I
would need to go get counselling for that because it's not
something I need to work out with him.
It's something that I need to be counselled out of because I've
got something going wrong in my mind.
Some of us need to be counselled out of an unhealthy fear of God,
and you may need one-on-one help with that.
I'm not saying you go to a therapist.
There are a lot of people who could counsel you out of that
irrational fear. How devastated would you be if
your child felt this way about you?
If you're truly a child of God, God doesn't want you to feel
that way. Because if you felt that, if you
knew your child felt that way about you, you would be
devastated. That is the worst thing that can
happen out of a child parent relationship.
God doesn't want that for you. But he who fears verse 18 has
not been made perfect or made complete in love.
There is a process of working out of that.
That's what's evident here. If you are not actively working
out of that process, it's a process we should probably get
started because life gets really significantly better once we do
Second Timothy one verse 7 says for God has not given us a
spirit of fear, but of power and of a love and of a sound mind.
Now the context he's talking about is so that Timothy would
have the courage to go out and spread the gospel, but it's a
very true thing that God does not give us things that are
negative. Now, if I, when I started my
Christian walk and started caring about spiritual things,
developed a mindset of fear, that is different than God
giving me a spirit of fear. Once I stepped into this whole
life, I could develop bad habits, bad mental habits, but
it doesn't mean it's from God, because God does not give us a
spirit of fear, whether in spreading the gospel or in his
own perspective of us, but He gives us a spirit of power and
of love and of a sound mind. So maybe you should read it like
this. But he who fears has not yet
been made perfect in love. That could be a good thing.
If you are living fearful of judgement, you can look at it
like the best is yet to come. I can get to the point where I'm
not afraid anymore, where I have confidence and boldness in the
day of judgement. The best is ahead.
Verse 19, we love him because he first loved us.
So as we developed this love that is self sacrificial, as we
learned in previous weeks, that will lay down our lives for the
people around us because we know them and we're ready to serve
them. There could be a tendency or a
chance that we would look at ourselves and think, wow, all
right, I'm doing pretty good. But he says, no, we love him
because he first loved us. We are not the model, we're not
the originator. It came from him first.
So let's give glory where it belongs.
Verse 20. If someone says I love God and
hates his brother, he's a liar for he does not love God, he for
he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he
love God whom he has not seen? Now, what that implies is that
in some way it might be easier to love your brother than God,
because when you see people, you can empathize with them.
We don't even, we haven't seen God to be able to see enough
about him to maybe empathize in the same way that we could with
someone around us. Because once you really start to
see people, you notice things about them.
You're like, wow, you're going through something, right?
I feel for you. But with God, we haven't even
seen him. How could we develop that kind
of connection? I can be in a mindset that is so
off track that if I could see God, I wouldn't love him.
I never thought about that before until I studied this.
I could be in a mindset that is so off track that if I saw God,
I wouldn't love him. And so that may seem wrong and
like how far off? That is not necessarily
uncommon, but that may seem wrong.
But it is possible to miss the mark that far with our
perspective. What makes me think my mindset
would even love God if I don't learn to learn to love and serve
my brethren? That's the question.
Basically John is trying to get us to ask ourselves, how could I
possibly think my mindset would love God if I saw Him if I don't
love my brethren and serve them? Maybe we should phrase it this
way. What makes me think my mindset
would even love God with my everything?
Because that's what He calls us to do.
If I don't learn to love and serve my brethren with my
everything, that's a challenging statement John has for us.
How can he love God whom he has not even seen verse 21.
And this is the command that we have from him, that he who loves
God must love his brother also. We need to be prepared for agape
love. Prepare prepared for a self
sacrificing love. And instead of going to chapter
5, I'm going to cut it off there and we will continue that one
and maybe finish that up next time.
My question to you is, do you have boldness and judgement?
I think by now at the end of that conversation, you can see
why it's a pretty big deal to have boldness and judgement.
And it could be today, it could be tomorrow.
We want to be in His presence today, not just so that we could
do it in heaven, but so we could do it now.
And how does peace that passes understanding and if you don't
have that boldness and judgment, the the gospel gives us a
message that will give us a clear path.
How do I know I'm in him? Yes, once you're a Christian,
he's talking to people who are already Christians.
But how do they become Christians?
In Romans 10 verse 17, it says by faith.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
And that produces belief or faith that has a response to
act. In Mark 16 and 16 it says he who
believes and is baptized will be saved and we're called to repent
of our past life. When the people on the day of
Pentecost were presented with the reality of Jesus death and
how they were part of it, they said what are we going to do?
And he said, men and brethren, they said repent and be baptized
for their mission of your sins. They said what do we do?
And that was the call on the day of Pentecost when the gospel was
first preached. And we were to confess him in
Romans 10/9. And 10 tells us that we were to
confess Jesus Christ. And you cannot be saved without,
like we said today, confessing him both in in Word and in life
and to be baptized, as we already quoted from Mark 16,
verse 16. And you can be added to the one
who's came here to die and see if you haven't done that, you
can do that today. But if you have done that and
you need the prayers of the brethren, we'll be happy to to
take care of that. We are family here.
We can pray for you together while we stand and while we sing
this song.