We Should Love One Another

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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Please turn in your Bibles to 1st John in chapter 3, continue our sequential exposition and first epistle of John.

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I'm going to be reading verses 1 through 15. This is

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God's holy and infallible word. Behold what manner of love the

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Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us because it did not know him.

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Beloved, now we are children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be.

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But we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

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And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure.

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Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness and sin is lawlessness.

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And you know that he was manifested to take away our sins. And in him there is no sin.

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Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him.

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Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous.

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He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil.

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Whoever has been born of God does not sin for his seed remains in him.

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And he cannot sin because he has been born of God. Our children pay close attention now.

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This text will be what we're focusing on this morning. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.

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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. Nor is he who does not love his brother.

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For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

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Not as Cain, who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him?

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Because his works were evil and his brothers righteous. Do not marvel, my brethren, if the world hates you.

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We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother abides in death.

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Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

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May the Lord be pleased with our study of his most excellent word. Please pray with me.

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Oh, Lord, I pray that our love for you would increase.

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Increase. Dramatically, and that this would spill over into a practicing righteousness, we would love you in your ways so much that we would long to be righteous in a practical sense in every way in our lives and.

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And even more demonstrably, Lord, our love for the brethren would be a reflection of our increasing love for you.

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Oh, Lord, cause us to love your people with an appropriate love to love one another as Christ has loved us and given himself for us.

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We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Please be seated. The title of the message today, and it seems very repetitious and obviously by design, is we ought to love one another.

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It seems we have talked about this a few times in our study of First John.

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Today, the thesis that I hope to unfold is crown jewels adorning the children of God.

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Those six words crown jewels adorning the children of God.

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The first of those is the children of God practice righteousness and they love one another.

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This outline was put in Slack last evening. The children of God love righteousness.

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They practice righteousness and they love one another. The second point of emphasis, we'll probably spend most of the time on this one, is the love imperative, the command to love one another.

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And third, an illustration of the children of the devil, which should be repulsive to us, repugnant to us, the example of Cain.

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Children of the devil, the example of Cain.

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Today, we consider two crowning jewels which ought to adorn the children of God.

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We must be reminded of the context periodically, and I want to review to you some of the errors that were in view for John when he penned the letter.

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There are three core theological errors that threatened the church, the people that John was writing to.

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First, false teachers have come in. As they always do, it seems in every letter in the

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New Testament, there is some reference to false teacher. The gospel and the church and the truth is always under attack.

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We must be vigilant to defend the truth and to, when we hear teachings, to take them back like the

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Bereans and examine whether they are consistent with the whole counsel of God.

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The false teachers have come in, they denied that Jesus is the Christ and that he came in the flesh, a very basic Christological heresy.

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They do not believe that Jesus has come in the flesh as the second person of the

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Trinity. And they believe that it's possible to have a relationship with God the

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Father apart from his mediation. This would be very basic, essential

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Christian doctrine. And it was under attack, a plain attack of the gospel.

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These false teachers, John says, are antichrists themselves.

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The second one, and this hits a little bit closer to home for us. I don't believe anyone here is battling the

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Christological heresy within themselves. Please talk to me after if you are. But the second one hits a little bit closer to home, and I feel that there is remnants and residue and soil from this on each of us, and that is the love of the world.

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John says, love not the world, the things in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the

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Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the

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Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that does the will of God abides forever.

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I've reminded you of this time and again, if you are loving the world, you are in grave danger.

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Repent today of your love of the world, whatever it may be, whatever form it may take on, purge it, excise it, mortify it, put it to death.

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There is nothing for us as the blessed people of God to imbibe in the world and her pleasures.

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The man who's married to a beautiful, godly woman would never go and make company with harlots, right?

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The people of God are wed to one Christ. We should not go and visit the prostitutes on the streets of the world.

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Let us purge, oh Lord, give us grace that we might not love the world. Well, it seems to be the central theme, the central sin, and I think it's probably true for the church through all the ages is a want of love for the brethren.

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And this will be the focal point of the message today. This is the imperative of Christian love.

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How many times does John refer to this in staggering repetition?

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Look over at 1 John chapter four, which we will be preaching on this again in the weeks ahead.

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Beloved, this is verse seven. Let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows

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God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

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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.

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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.

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Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

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It continues, no one has seen God at any time. If we love one another,

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God abides in us and his love has been perfected in us.

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By this, we know that we abide in him and he and us because he has given us his spirit and we have seen and testified that the father has sent the son as savior of the world.

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Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God abides in him and he and God, and we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

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God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God and him. Love has been perfected among us in this.

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That we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in the world.

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There's no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.

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We love him because he first loved us. And almost the same kind of language at the end of chapter four that we'll be considering and have already considered.

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If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen.

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How can he love God whom he has not seen? This commandment we have from him that he who loves

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God must love his brother also. Throughout the pages of John, even in his gospel, there seems to be this central theme of love for one another, emphasizes

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Jesus' words in John 13 and elsewhere about this. There is an imperative.

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There is a command. It's not negotiable. We have to love one another in Christ.

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We cannot compromise. We cannot justify. We cannot rationalize our want of love.

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You and I are duty bound and obligated. Yeah, it's a privilege for us to love one another.

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We've been loved by Christ. We've been saved by him. God has poured his love upon us.

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We ought to love the brethren. First John 5 says whoever believes that Jesus is the

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Christ is born of God and everyone that loves him, loves him also that is begotten of him.

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By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments.

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First John 5. John is a man of repetition. We must need to hear it repeatedly.

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It must be drilled into us that we ought to love one another.

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Let's look again at the text. A description is given negatively.

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About who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. I shudder in terror.

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I do not want to be associated with the children of devil. You should not want to have any association with the children of the devil.

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This is what verse 10 says. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.

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Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. Nor is he who does not love his brother.

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Children, there is four words in the New Testament that refer to love.

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And there is one word, agape, love, which we've already featured in our study of First John that is more accurately describing this kind of love.

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But I want to remind you of the various types of love. And I want you to think about the world and the way the world loves.

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There is eros love, which is romantic love, and it's usually tied to sensuality.

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Our world is awash in sensuality. The rarest of the words is storge, and it's got a pretty good connotation.

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It's the love that would exist between family members. Storge love is a good kind of love.

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One of the more prominent usage of love, words translated love, in the New Testament is phileo, which is where the city of Philadelphia gets its name.

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It's brotherly love, phileo. But agape or agapaho love is something a little bit different in its

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New Testament usage. I can see a lot of self -interest in eros, romantic love, sensuality.

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I can see a lot of self -interest in storge and that love that exists between family members.

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I can see a lot of self -interest in brotherly love. But the love that is here described comes from the character of God himself.

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And this love is self -sacrificing love. This is the word that is used in the description in 1

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John 4, God is love. This is the highest form of love because it describes this attribute of God.

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It's the love that Jesus exemplifies and models.

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It is this self -sacrificing love that is the pervasive theme of John's epistle.

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This is the love that doesn't seek its own. And now we're confronted with it because most of our love, a good portion of our love, is self -seeking.

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This is the idol to be smashed. This is the source of our idolatry and our wickedness and our unbelief and our uncharitableness and our mistreatment of our friends and our family and our spouses, our parents.

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We are selfish. This is a love that gives itself away.

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Husbands, when you took your bride, what you did in effect was promise to give yourself away to her.

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We may have had some of our own ideas of all that she would provide for us. But this kind of love is self -sacrificing love.

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The highest form of love, the love that is reflected in the life of Christ.

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So you and I have to repent of our wants of love.

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We've not loved each other appropriately. We've loved each other with a whole host of self -interest.

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I'm thankful we have a God who forgives us and restores us and puts us on a better path.

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We must slay this dragon. This beast must have its head cut off.

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This idol must be smashed. We're to have true fellowship in the church, a lasting, abiding koinonia kind of fellowship.

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Love is the basis of law. Did you know that? The law summarily comprehended in the

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Ten Commandments is divided into two tables. The first is love for God and the second is love for our neighbor.

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Comprehensively, exhaustively, all that you are with all of your strength in a self -sacrificing way, you should love

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God. There's some want in my love.

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There's some want in your love. We don't love in this way. But the second table is just as difficult.

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We have to love each other comprehensively, exhaustively, self -sacrificially. We don't love each other in this way.

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And John is used of God to compel us to change and to love each other in an appropriate way.

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The imperative command to love in our section, the revelation of the children of God, those who love as Christ has loved, are contrasted with those who are the children of the devil.

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The second element of verse 10 that I'd like us to consider is the idea of practicing righteousness.

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The Christian religion is not a religion of works, but it is when it has genuine faith.

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It is a faith that does work. You and I must be practitioners of righteousness.

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Not only must we hunger and thirst for it. As Mitch prayed, I was singing, do we hunger?

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Do I hunger and thirst for righteousness? That's not even enough. I have to be a practitioner of righteousness.

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I have to take it and put boots on the ground and get to work practicing my genuine faith in religion and Christ.

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In actuality, personal holiness, if you think about it, and corporate holiness in its essence is actionable love.

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Love for God, love for my neighbor with action items attached.

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We are the people of ideas in the Reformed Church. We like to talk about it. We like to wax eloquently about our theological positions, but we need to be the people whose rubber meets the road.

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Our loving must be tangible. Our service to one another, our self -sacrificing must be tangible and real, discernible.

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You and I are commanded to love even our enemies. How much more for those who,

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Galatians 6 would say, belong to the household of faith.

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Let us do good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of faith.

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You and I must be possessors of twin crowning jewels.

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We must be lovers of God and his people and our enemies, and we have to be practitioners of righteousness.

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Let's continue this theme in verse 11. I'm going to focus on the crown jewel, the precious gemstone of Christian love.

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Talk is cheap. The watermark for genuine faith in Christ is love.

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The Christian must love as Christ has loved.

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And how did Christ love? He sacrificed himself. This is so counterintuitive.

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This goes against everything that you hear in the culture. After all, you need to do you.

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You need to find your own way in this world. You need to have some kind of self -actualization.

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Christ commands us to lay our lives down, to give ourselves away, to sacrifice our interest for the interest of others.

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We must be crucified with Christ and lay down our lives in service to God and love for the brethren.

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This is the message that you have heard from the beginning. Chapter two says, if anyone loves the world, the love of the

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Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the

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Father, but of the world. And oh, by the way, the love of the world challenge, sin, temptation is cut off when we love

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God and love our brethren. It becomes obvious.

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I tell people, read your Bibles in the morning before you go to work, because somehow it causes you to discern the times.

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It might not even be what you're reading. But when you're in the word of God and you're praying and you come to prayer meeting, you come to church, you do all the things of the

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Christian life, your senses are aroused, you know right from wrong.

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You can discern it. You can diagnose it in yourself. Most righteous among us.

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The self -seeking. We're commanded here to be self -sacrificing.

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Husbands, sacrifice your interest for your wives and wives say, oh,

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I like that. Wives sacrifice your interest for your husband.

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Husbands say, I like that. Children. Oh, children, you're so selfish.

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We have to divest you of yourself. You have to put self to death. You're so selfish.

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Teenagers, you're so selfish. Self -sacrifice for the good of others and your family, the church.

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The kind of love that John is here admonishing us to is not strategic.

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It's not to give to get. It's not a quid pro quo. It's just to give.

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Do you love in this way? Do you love your wives in this way to give to her to get nothing in return?

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Wives, do you love your husband in this way to give and to receive nothing in response?

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I have an illustration that I used in May and I preached in Tennessee. I'd like to use it now to illustrate this point.

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It was used for a section later in 1 John, but I want to use it today. I was a very young man and I was diamond shopping.

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And I was astonished at how much diamonds cost in 1993. And I reckon they cost a lot more now.

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It was my first exposure to particulars about gemstones.

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We are here focusing on crown jewels, gemstones of the

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Christian life, love and the pursuit and practice of righteousness. The first thing that I learned about was cut.

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Do you want a princess cut, an emerald cut? I don't know what those are.

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The solitaire, I know what that is, the round one. The first thing you learn about is the cut.

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And what's interesting in gemstones and diamonds and rubies and all of those, whenever they cut stones, those little cuts and those little flat spaces become places that light passes through.

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You and I as Christians are ourselves precious gemstones.

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And so we have characteristics of precious jewels.

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A gemstone that is free from defects, it's called inclusions, are even observable up to 10 times magnification.

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So I ask you, if we looked at you as the gemstone and we put you under some light, would there be a want of love?

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Is Christ's light passing through you and being emitted through all the facets or their occlusions in your stone?

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Are you free from those defects? Does your self -sacrificing love stand up to a 10x scrutiny?

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Would you acknowledge there might be to the naked eye some defect in your love?

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I would say I would acknowledge there are defects in my love. And of course, this cutting and clarity also shows us something of the depth of it.

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Part of the stone's clarity is the brilliance that it displays. It's related mostly to that way that the stone is cut, but it has to be of some substance.

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The Christian begins as an uncut and unpolished stone.

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Every believer possesses the precious gem of Christ's self -sacrificing love.

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We are then given the tools through the ordinary means of grace to cut and polish the raw stone that is our lives.

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To make it more bright and brilliant, that we would might more radiantly reflect

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Christ's love. The light of Christ should shine into his people and they, through the sanctification of the

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Holy Spirit, should increasingly, in a more radiant way, display

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Christ's love. As every part of them is cut and polished in this great work of sanctification.

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So how's your gemstone today? Another element of gemstones, and Christians are gemstones, and they are adorning themselves in Christ's righteousness.

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What is the color? There should be no gray in our stone.

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No wishy -washiness. Rubies should be red. Sapphires should be blue.

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Emeralds should be green. Diamonds should be clear. I know there are other colors, but I don't know all the things.

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There should be a vividness to our self -sacrificing love.

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The Christian reflects the color of Christ's love.

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The second level of our color is the tone. How much color, how much of Christ is seen in us?

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Are we dark green emeralds? Are we deep red rubies?

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Are we clear diamonds? Or do we possess a little gray, a little black?

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The second or third element of this color is saturation. I love this in relation to the idea of love because I can't have color just on the surface.

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I can't have a modicum of Christian love. I need to be, to the core, a person who loves like Christ loves.

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How strongly does the gemstone show the color?

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You and I need to be saturated with the love of Christ. It needs to be clear in us.

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We need to be seen as a diamond, as a ruby, as a precious gemstone. And we must reflect these twin jewels of righteousness and love.

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Look again at our text. It says we should love one another.

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We should practice righteousness because Christ is righteous.

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Well, the third point is bad news. And we take it up in verse 12.

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We're given a negative example, an illustration in the life of Cain. Cain, who was of the wicked one, a child of the devil, according to John, his writings, murdered his brother.

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And why did he murder him? Well, I think for two reasons. He didn't love his brother as he ought and his works were unrighteous.

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He was a wicked man. Unloving, unchecked wickedness leads you to places you don't want to go.

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You and I must be on guard because Cain grew up with Adam as his father and Eve as his mother.

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Cain knew about redemption. Cain knew about sacrifice. And he decided to rebel.

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You and I, growing up in Christian homes, children, you are being raised to walk in covenant faithfulness, but you have to persevere in it.

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You have to walk in the path that your parents are setting forth for you.

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What a contrast. Like Christ, pursuing righteousness, loving as Christ is love, we're called to that.

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And then Cain, the antithesis of this. He murdered his brother because his works were evil.

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If you start becoming passive in love for the brethren, it will ultimately lead to hatred.

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We have to actively love each other in Christ. Well, running a little short on time, so I'm going to start my conclusion now.

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You and I, if we're not loving, I've said this a couple of times in different ways in recent months, if we are not loving and if we're not practicing righteousness, we're lying about Christ and his transformative work.

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You and I can't have a want of love for our brethren because we've been loved by God.

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And what does the want of love look like? Think of the cruelty of cold indifference.

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You can take it or leave it. Fellowship with each other, you can take it or leave it.

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That's cruel. That kind of cold indifference is cruel. If you can take it or leave it, you are a cruel saint for the brethren.

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What about a lukewarmness? Same idea. What about letting unresolved conflict with your brother continue?

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And a root of bitterness growing up, never dealt with. And suddenly,

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I don't like them. I don't like their family. I don't want to go to church with them.

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At the end, brethren who come to the table together, who feast on Christ and his righteousness, who enjoy the worship of God and all that it entails, and fellowship in the end could become filled with hate for one another.

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Is there any unresolved conflict in your marriage? Do not let today pass. Go home after church.

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Be reconciled to one another. Repent. Turn from sin. Acknowledge your faults.

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Ask each other for forgiveness. Forgive each other. Be reconciled. Be restored.

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What a powerful gospel. What a life that we get to live. Be unburdened by our sin in this very profound way.

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Don't let today pass. There be any conflict between brethren. Be reconciled.

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Show genuine love to them. Be restored to them.

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In closing, today is an ordinary Sunday, but let us be reminded that this is, in fact, our

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Father's world. Every square inch, every plot, every land, every nation belongs to our

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Lord Jesus Christ. In this, we rejoice. Today, he has triumphed over sin.

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He has ascended, and he's reigning and ruling, waiting for his

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Father to make all of his enemies a footstool. That's true.

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I can be reconciled to my brother. And we studied some months ago now the book of Zechariah in chapter nine.

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You'll remember the prophecy of the triumphal entry. This passage comes from that section.

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People of God, you are the precious gemstones of Christ. You are those who possess those twin jewels of righteousness and the love of God.

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Listen to what Zechariah says. The Lord, their God, will save them in that day as the flock of his people.

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For they shall be like the jewels of a crown, lifted like a banner over his land.

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For how great is his goodness and how great its beauty.

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Grain shall make the young men thrive and the new wine the women. I love that in light of the

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Lord's Supper, the bounty of the fields, the cultivation of the vineyards, all leads us to the table.

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The grain offering, the wine offering, all parallels of the Lord's Supper. God's loving provision for his people.

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Your lives, your faith, your obedience, your fruit bearing become the crown jewels that adorn the crown of Christ.

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That's what we are, the jewels in his crown. May the light of Christ be so radiated in this and emanate from this place that the believer would say, oh, see how they love each other because of the love of Christ.

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And may John's aim be ours to them. We declare to you that eternal life, which is with the father and was manifested to us, which we have seen and heard and declare to you that you may have fellowship with us.

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Our fellowship is with the father and with the son, Jesus. We write and declare these things to you that your joy may be full.

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Oh, people of God. You are the precious jewels in the crown of Christ.

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May the light of Christ and his love shine in and through us. And may all the people around us say, surely the love of God is in that place.

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Oh, see how they love one another. Let's pray together.

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Oh, Lord, we thank you for your servant John and the way he's unashamed to to call us back to a truth he's already expounded, spurring us on to greater heights of obedience.

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Oh, Lord, I pray that your people would remember the beginning of this chapter.

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What manner of love you have shown us that we are called children. And now the responsibilities we bear to reflect your likeness.

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Oh, Lord, I pray the imperative of love would be true in us. That we would be those who practice righteousness.

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That there would be no contrary way in us, that we would not be like the children of the devil, but we would be very much bearing the family resemblance as children of God.

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We ask for the powerful working of your Holy Spirit in us to accomplish this. We ask this all in Jesus name.