The Victorious Christian

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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You can also find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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Please enjoy the following sermon. From the very conception of the Christian faith, it has always been an ambition of the enemies of God's people to conquer

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Christ and to subjugate his followers. And we don't need to look very far to see this for ourselves.

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In the opening chapters of our New Testaments, we find the infant Jesus, his birth we know was celebrated by shepherds and angels and wise men from afar.

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The celestial bodies in the night sky aligned themselves, ordered themselves in such a way to proclaim his coming.

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And yet it was not long after his arrival that his parents had to flee into Egypt to escape the murderous intentions of King Herod the

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Great. When we look a little bit further in our New Testaments, we find at the beginning of his earthly ministry, that our

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Lord Jesus went into the wilderness where he was tempted and afflicted, not by man, not by the kings of men, but by Satan himself.

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So that he could bring about, to think about, the consequences of that action to bring

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Christ's eternal redemptive plan to ruin. Even later on in John chapter 7 and verse 1, we see our

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Lord Jesus avoiding Judea, knowing full well that the religious leaders of his day, if he was there, would seek to kill him.

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But when the time came, we know, for him to go to that city that kills the prophets and stones to death those who are sent to her, he set his face like flint, he went to Jerusalem and what became of him?

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But he suffered the pain of death on a cruel Roman cross. And it was not long after the death of our

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Christ that his disciples learned what it meant to suffer for the name, as they called it.

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Stephen was stoned, Peter was imprisoned, Paul we know was beaten, shipwrecked, and eventually beheaded.

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Tradition tells us that 11 of the 12 apostles died for no other reason than that they believed in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and sought to make his name known. By the mid -60s

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AD, the emperor Nero was burning Christians alive to light the streets of Rome.

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History tells us that on one particular evening, he strolled through his garden in full costume, while the bodies, the burning bodies of our brothers and sisters in Christ, lit the courtyard for him and his guests.

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20 years later, the emperor Domitian, seeking to promote the Roman imperial cult, ensured that every

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Christian who did not offer a pinch of incense in worship to him would be put to death.

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And this escalated more and more through the emperors Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, that in their words, enthusiasts and atheists.

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And all of this, at least as it relates to the Roman world, came to a head in the early 300s

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AD, when the emperor Diocletian and his successor

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Galerius decided that they were going to deal with the Christian problem once and for all.

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In the words of one historian, FF Bruce, maybe you recognize the name, he said, the rapid growth of Christianity meant that the opportunity to crush it was now or never.

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And so the time was now, with the time being ripe Roman soldiers ransacked the homes of Christians across the empire.

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Their property was seized and kept by Rome. The soldiers were ordered to find and to burn every

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Bible, so that the memory of Christ would be snuffed out. And then every

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Christian was faced with this ultimatum, worship Caesar or die.

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And in the 10 years that followed, those 4th century Christians experienced what was one of the, or what has been, one of the most pronounced periods of persecution in the history of the church.

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Thousands upon thousands died for their faith in Christ. Many watched as the

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Roman imperial army torched the few Bibles that their church had access to.

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They watched in agony as their children were murdered in front of them. And the last earthly memory that they had in this world, was the gleam of a

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Roman sword. And yet something very strange was happening in the midst of all of these trials faced by God's people.

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The more that God's enemies opposed the church and killed Christians, the more the church grew.

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And this phenomenon was vividly described in the words of one early theologian,

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Tertullian. He said this, speaking of their Roman opposition.

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He said, go on, rack, torture, grind our bones to powder.

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Our numbers increase in proportion as you mow us down. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

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And as all of this was happening, God's enemies were asking this question. Why? Why would anyone subject themselves to such tortures?

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Why would anyone sing hymns of praise to their God in the middle of the Roman Colosseum while wild beasts tore them limb from limb?

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Why, oh why, would so many go so resolutely to their grave, trusting a man who died a humiliating death on a cross?

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Maybe some of you might ask the question, why? We're almost at the end of our study here in 1st

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John. We're in chapter 5 now. And as we look at verses 1 through 5,

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I want to suggest to you that John tells us why. It is because even when we suffer great trials for our faith, even when the world comes after us with all of the opposition that it can muster, when people desert us, as John's audience had acutely experienced here, and our opponents say of us, like the psalmist describes, oh there is no salvation for you in God.

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Even when these things and a million other obstacles arise against us, what

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John tells us today is this, that the Christian life is a victorious life. The reason why

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Christians endured such hardship and not only continued on but rejoiced in the faithfulness of their

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God is because they had overcome the world. It is because the

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Christian lives on a different plane. We have, in the midst of a dark and evil world, we have a different identity.

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We have a different ethic. We have an altogether different source of strength.

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Now over the last number of weeks I've given you some complicated sermon structures. I have a gift for you today.

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It is a very simple structure. It is three points. All of them are about the same length.

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Praise the Lord. You can watch the clock. Maybe it'll be true. And these are the points that we'll consider.

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In verse one, we're going to look at the Christian's new birth. What it means that we have been born anew of God.

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In verses two and three, we're going to look at the Christian's new love and the consequences of that love.

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And then in verses four and five, we're going to examine the Christian's new hope. Now, to first deal then with the

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Christian's new birth. It's my first point. The Christian's new birth. We're going to read verse one together.

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Here John writes to us. He says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

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And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.

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As John continues his letter, now in verse one, he emphasizes the importance of the new birth in overcoming the world.

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And we have watched John over the last several months now. The way that he writes in flourishes.

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And here again, we see John's literary beauty. He frames all of this in a setting of literary beauty.

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Here, this paragraph has what's called a chiastic structure. You'll remember perhaps from previous months that a chiasm is a literary unit where the subject matter moves inward or is inward.

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It moves outward and then it returns. For my Greek students, think of the

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Greek letter chi. You were to cut that in half. It's like the English X.

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Cut that in half. It goes out and then back inward. And what John does here is he frames this as a chiasm.

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In verse one, he speaks of our belief or faith in the Lord Jesus. He moves outward.

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If you can picture this in your mind with me. Outward speaking of being born of God in the second half of verse one.

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Further outward still in verse two, speaking about Christian obedience. That is the peak of this chiasm.

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Verse three, he repeats that. And then verse four and five, he brings it back in with verse four, speaking about being born of God.

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And verse five, having our faith once again in Christ. And we might ask the question, why is

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John doing this? Is he trying to be artistic with his language alone? I think that what John is doing with this chiasm is he is tying our new birth and our regeneration, mentioned in verse one, and then again mentioned in verse five.

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He is tying it, this regeneration as theologians often call it, to this theme of the victorious

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Christian life. Of this theme of overcoming the world. And this is why you'll remember that as John writes to his audience, he is dealing with Christians who are in the midst of a great conflict.

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Almost every week, I have reminded you of this. Allow me to remind you at least once more.

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That these Christians were being afflicted by increasing numbers of divisions and apostasies and false teaching.

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And while it may not have been as bad as it would soon get under state -sponsored persecution, it was in fact very bad.

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I want you to think about this for a moment. Just picture with me for a moment what it would be like if there was such a sweeping influence of false teaching in our church that half of the brothers and sisters in this room, men and women and families whom you dearly love, got up, walked out that back door.

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And as they went out that back door, they looked back at the rest of us and said this, we have found something new.

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We have the real Christianity. We are the true Christians and you all have no part in Christ.

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Such a thing would rack us to the core. It would be utterly devastating to the life of this church.

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Many of us would sit here in stunned silence as it took place. And we would feel it for weeks and weeks and weeks to come as we feel the absence of half of the church as we meet together on the

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Lord's day. This is what John is dealing with right now. And what words of encouragement or counsel would you give to the remnant to comfort them and to exhort them to press on?

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If such a thing were to happen in this room, what would you say to the brothers or sisters remaining here with us?

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Here John reminds his audience that those who believe in this Christ that he has been describing all through his letter are not like those who have gone out the door.

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They are not like those who have gone out into the world because they are of the world. They are not like those who have claimed to have had a mind -blowing experience that has actually led them further afield from the gospel.

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But rather John reminds them and he reminds us that the secrets, one of the secrets of persevering faith, one of the secrets of overcoming the world is that we have been born anew.

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Or more specifically that we have been born of God. Born again by the power of God and that we have a new identity and a new power arising from this new birth.

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And we can begin to see that the powerful nature of this new birth just by the way that John frames it in verse 1.

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If you look with me again in verse 1, the first half, everyone who believes that Jesus is the

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Christ has been born of God. Now many of us maybe we don't think in these terms, but it's kind of a chicken and egg question.

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Only there is a biblical answer. What comes first? The new birth or faith?

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Do we believe? And then because we believe we are born again? Or we born again and then as a result of that new birth we believe?

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Here John tells us that if we believe in this Christ that he is speaking of, it is proof that we have already been regenerated by God.

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Notice John's logic as he speaks of being born of God in verse 1. It's not faith in Christ that brings about the new birth, but it is the new birth accomplished by God that enlivens faith in Christ.

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It is a passive, he's speaking of being born again in the passive.

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Regeneration logically precedes faith. And this regeneration that enlivens faith will also ensure a persevering faith.

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Brothers and sisters, one of the greatest marvels of the Christian faith, of our

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Christian lives. A marvel that frankly often escapes us. We don't think about this very often.

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We hear people talk about being born again Christians. And I think probably most of us at least inside kind of roll our eyes.

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Because we're like, it's like saying it's a born baby. If we have a baby here, it's born. If our sister in a month's time is holding a baby in our arms, we don't have to say, oh a born baby.

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We can say a beautiful baby that's here. I'm glad someone laughed at my joke.

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And we'll hear, we sometimes will hear that expression born again Christian. And we just wipe the idea out of our minds thinking, what a silly thing to say.

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But one of the great marvels that often escapes us is this. That if you are in Christ, if anyone asks you, you can say that you have been born again and created anew in Christ Jesus.

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That if you are in Christ, you are altogether new. You're not nearly a believer in Christ.

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But you are now, as Paul would say to the Ephesians, you are the workmanship of God, created anew in Christ Jesus for good works.

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You can say like so many others before you, that the old you is dead and gone.

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And that God himself by his own awesome and sovereign power has made you an altogether new creation in Christ.

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The Christian can say, not by my will, not by my might, but by the strong hand of a mighty

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God, I have been raised to newness of life. And he who made me anew will keep me also.

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And yet it is frankly a travesty that most Christians today have no idea what we are talking about when we make reference of this regeneration, this regenerative work of God in us.

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Just yesterday, I wasn't planning to use this, but the Lord provided a crystal clear illustration of this.

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I was out for breakfast with a brother at a restaurant downtown, and we were speaking to one another about our walks with the

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Lord. And it was a lovely time of fellowship. And as we were speaking, a man approached us.

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He'd obviously been listening in on the conversation. And he said that he would like to share a little bit of what he thought of Christ.

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And he came and we had him pull up a chair at the table. And for the next hour, we spoke about this.

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And this man who is very, very, very sincere, he really was. He was not mocking us.

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He was not patronizing us. He was very sincere. He spoke about how important it was that we believe the words of Jesus.

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He kept saying the words in red, the words in red. And he spoke about how this world is essentially going to H -E double hockey sticks in a handbasket.

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And we need to trust in, not trust in Christ, sorry. We need to obey Christ's Word.

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And as we spoke to him about the importance of believing in Christ, of having

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Christ as Savior, how you cannot separate Christ as Savior from Christ, the moral teacher.

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He would have nothing of it. For him, Christ was a fine moral teacher and that was all.

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He was an example to be followed. He had trustworthy and authoritative words, but that was it.

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And even though this man said that he was a Christian and said that he was a Protestant Christian at that, he was completely blind to his need for Christ as Savior.

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And no matter what my brother and I tried to do to convince him otherwise, he refused to have the whole

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Christ. He wanted Christ the moral teacher and that was all. He was completely blind to Christ.

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He had no category for him. And he had, as we went on, I noticed no category for the new birth.

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That when we believe on the Lord Jesus, we don't just muster up some kind of strength, some kind of internal resource within us, but God makes us anew with his power.

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And everything that we do in the Christian life arises from that power within us, from the desire, from the new nature that he alone has given us.

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And yet many Christians are completely, this is an alien thought to them. And sadly, that kind of Christianity is not any kind of Christianity that will overcome the world.

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But what does John say? In John chapter 3 and verse 3, Jesus answered

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Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Second Corinthians 5, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

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The old has passed away, behold, the new has come. Romans 6, 4, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the

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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Titus 3, 5, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.

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How? By washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Brethren, if you want to overcome the world, do you want to overcome the world?

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When this world with all the powers of hell march against you, you will not overcome because you have

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Jesus as a fine moral teacher. You will not overcome this world because you go to church from time to time and you like a little bit of religion in your life.

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You will only overcome because you have been born anew by the power of God, who numbers the stars and calls them by name.

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The one who overcomes the world is the one who can say with the Apostle Paul in Galatians 2, 20,

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I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life

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I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

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And I want to ask you, brothers and sisters, friends, visitors even, have you been born again?

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You believe in Christ. Have you been born again? A woman once came to George Whitfield.

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I know many of you know the story. It is one of my favorite stories from George Whitfield, at least humorous stories.

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And she said to him, Mr. Whitfield, why do you keep telling us you must be born again? And he said, dear madam, it is because you must be born again.

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We must know God on these terms. And when we know God on these terms, we will overcome this world.

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Now, John has a second point here in verses two and three. Not just the

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Christian's new birth, but the Christian's new love. This is what we see in verses two and three.

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John writes, by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments.

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For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

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Now, just to look over our shoulders at verse one for a second. In verse one,

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John mentioned that those who have been born of God will love God and will love those who have been born of him.

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And here John's logical flow takes us from this new birth to this new love.

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We've already dealt with love for the brethren at some length in the past. I'm not going to talk about that again today.

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I think three sermons is probably good for now. We're going to fix our gaze on what

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I'm calling love for God according to John. What does it mean to love

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God? This is what we see. The Christian who overcomes this world has not merely been born anew by God, but he loves

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God. And the Christian who truly loves God, loves God with an obedient affection.

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Verse two tells us that those who truly love God obey his commandments.

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Verse three is probably just as unpopular in some circles of larger

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Christianity. That this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.

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In both cases, he speaks of obeying and keeping in the present tense.

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It means that it is a continuous action. It is ongoing and persevering in its nature.

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And he goes so far as to define love for God as obedience to God. We must very carefully guard our hearts so as to never let anyone tell us that love for God consists only in warm fuzzy feelings.

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That is a definition of love for God that is of this world and not of the word of God.

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Love for God does not consist of supposed supernatural experiences like ecstatic utterances and personal prophecy.

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I know that I have been looked down on. Maybe you have too by some of our I trust brothers and sisters in Christ who say you've never spoken in tongues.

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You've never been able to prophesy. Are you even a mature Christian? Our love for God and our maturity is not measured by our being slain in the spirit, as modern charismatics would put it.

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John tells us that it's not even the elation that we feel. You'll remember a few months ago having our conference down the hall and I recall as this church we cleaned up the building together and the joy and the exuberance that we found.

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Perhaps one half at least having been fed by I think what was a wonderful conference and the joy of having completed it successfully without burning down the building or ruining the souls of our visitors.

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It is not the elation that we feel after a really impactful meeting with God's people that is the measure of our love for God.

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Love for God, yes, it must be deeply felt. It should include all of the emotional aspects that the

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Lord has created in us. But if it does not translate to reverence, obedience from the heart, it is simply empty emotionalism.

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And that is all sadly that many people around us have today.

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They claim to love God, but there's no fruit to the profession.

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The Christian who has been born of God, who loves God, necessarily obeys

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God. John Stott writes this. He says, love for God is not an emotional experience so much as a moral commitment.

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And I put the question to you. Have you made such a moral commitment before the Lord to keep

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God's commandments? This is what love for God looks like.

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I didn't write these words, but John inspired by the Holy Spirit of God wrote these words.

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You must be born again and you must love God not only in word but indeed and in truth.

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John Calvin would add, he says, he who loves God must necessarily have his heart prepared to render obedience to righteousness.

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The love of God then is not idle or inactive. Our hearts should be devoted to God in willing reverence and then our lives should be conformed according to the rule of the law.

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Here's John addresses his afflicted audience. He reminds them that they not only have a new identity, but as part of their new birth, as part of their love for God, they have a new ethic.

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And let me ask you, dear Christians, do your heartfelt feelings for God, does your heartfelt love for God translate into a new ethic, into an obedient life lived in his service?

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Not a perfect life, but an obedient life. If your affections do not translate into obedience, you have serious cause to wonder if you truly love

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God. This is how God defines love. But if you love

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God and it is presently your great desire to keep and obey his commandments, then you can be sure that you not only love

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God, but that you have, you will overcome the world. Now what

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I have just said from verses, verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3, a lot of people, if they heard only this part of the sermon would say, that sounds like legalism.

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You're preaching the law. That is not the gospel. Well, John qualifies everything that I've just said at the end of verse 3 with these words.

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And his commandments are not burdensome. This is a truly remarkable statement.

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It's remarkable, I believe, because it speaks to the renewed nature of the

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Christian. If you're listening to me speaking on this, this theme of obedience rendered to God, and you think that I am telling you that what you need to do to love

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God is to reluctantly abstain from the sin that you love, to try dutifully to obey commandments that are burdensome to you, then your perspective is no different than the man that I spoke to yesterday at breakfast.

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Such a thing is nothing short of dead, loveless, and lifeless religion.

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Our Lord Jesus taught us about such religion in Matthew chapter 23 and verse 4, when he was speaking about the

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Pharisees, he said, 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.

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This is not what John has in mind for us today, to lay you down with heavy burdens.

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That is not how you overcome the world. But rather, because the

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Christian is born of God, he has a new relationship with the law of God. At one time, all that the law of God did for us was stop our mouths, increase our trespasses, and bring us the knowledge of our own sin.

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That is what the reformers called the first use of the law. That the law came only to us as a mirror to show us how bad we really were.

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And when we tried to keep this law apart from Christ, it only drove us deeper and deeper into our awareness that we needed a savior outside of ourselves.

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We needed an alien righteousness, as the reformers would have put it. But when we were born of God, brothers and sisters, and believed in Jesus Christ, our relationship to the law was instantaneously transformed.

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We no longer, we must no longer, we must not longer, I've lost my ability to speak

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English. We can no longer approach God's commandments as a system of works righteousness, but rather as a delightful guide for evangelical obedience.

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You've heard me say that that phrase a few times now, evangelical obedience. What is that?

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That we see all that God has written for us in his word. We see all of Christ's commandments, even the great commission our

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Lord told us to teach others, our disciples, to obey all that he commanded us.

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And we no longer see it as a system of works righteousness, but we see it as a wondrous guide by which we can obey our father, not to be saved, but because we are saved.

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It's a gospel obedience. It is a response to the gospel that we have become partakers of.

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This means that for those of us who have come to Christ, weary and heavy laden, he has removed the burdensome yoke of the law from our shoulders.

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But he has not left us unyoked, but he has given us his yoke that is now easy.

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And the burden in this is light. Sproul writes on this. He says, because Christians have been born of God and given new power, they are able to keep

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God's commandments joyfully. And I ask you, is it your desire to keep

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God's commandments? And when you do, is it met with joy? This is what

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John is speaking about when he says, we love him by keeping his commandments. We love him by keeping his commandments because we love to keep his commandments.

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Because it is our great joy. Because it is part and parcel of who we now are that we love our

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God and we love everything that pleases our God. This is what enables us to live the victorious

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Christian life. This is what enables us to overcome the world that we have been born anew.

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And we love God and we love his word. We love his commands. This is why our

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Christian ancestors were able to go to the gallows singing rather than compromising their moral commitment to God.

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Because they had been made anew and because they had a love for God in their hearts that made them willing slaves of righteousness rather than of evil.

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The ancient church father Augustine once told a story I think that speaks to what this looks like. One day after the

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Lord saved him, if you know anything about Augustine, he lived really a treacherous and debaucherous life.

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He would steal from gardens as he would walk past for no other reason than simply for the enjoyment of sinning.

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And when the Lord saved him, one day he was out and about walking and he met with one of his former girlfriends on the street.

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You can picture this in your mind sometime in the fourth century. A man runs into one of his ex -girlfriends, but he's now a

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Christian. And she cried out to him, Augustine, Augustine, it is

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I. No doubt hoping that he would enter into the same debaucherous patterns that he had once done with her in the past.

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But Augustine replied, yes, but it is not I. You are no longer the person that you once were.

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And because you are no longer the person that you once were, you love God and you keep his commandments.

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And in so doing, you overcome the world. Now lastly,

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John gives us his final secret to the Christians overcoming the world.

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And it is this, the Christian's new hope. So we have been given a new birth.

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We have been given a new love. And now we've been given a new hope. In verses four and five, this is what we read.

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For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

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Who is it? That overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God.

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Here we're coming back now to John's, we'll call it the home base of his chiasm.

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We've spoken of being born of God, of loving God. We see born of God again in verse four.

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And now back to this hope or this new faith of the Christian.

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And here we find the ultimate mechanism that gives us victory over the world, our faith.

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Up until this point, we have operated with an assumed definition of victory.

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What is victory? You could have filled in the blank with almost anything. But here,

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John, now that we've encountered the word in our text, we will get a definition for ourselves.

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It's very interesting that John loves this theme. The word, the Greek word for overcomer or conqueror or victor appears in our

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Bibles 24 times. John uses the word 21 of those 24 times.

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He loves, loves, loves this theme. And it's the Greek word.

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I don't normally say the Greek words because you never remember them, but I think you will remember this one. It's the

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Greek word, nikao, nikao. It's a verb for, again, my

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Greek students, I'm sorry, I have to address you. You have to see how this is relevant to your learning. It's a verb.

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We have that long omega at the end. And it's where the athletic brand

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Nike got its name, nikao, Nike. It's a military term.

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It implies a battle. And it describes one who overcomes, one who has victory, who vanquishes, who subdues, who reigns victorious.

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In the words of one commentator, the word reflects a genuine superiority that leads to overwhelming success.

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The victory is demonstrable. It involves overthrowing an enemy so that the victory is seen by all.

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And so as John is speaking about overcoming, he is not speaking about a piddly little thing.

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It is more than winning a foot race with a pair of sneakers with a white check mark on the side of it.

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It is more than standing on the podium and receiving a medal or a wreath.

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It is to stand in triumph over your enemies.

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And to be as emphatic as possible, John repeats this word not once, not twice, but three different times.

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Twice in the present tense, one in the eras tense. Meaning that this victory, this conquering, this overcoming is something that we are engaged in, in the present, in the now.

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And it is something that is, if you can believe it, already complete. It is the already and the not yet of our overcoming.

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And we should not get this confused. This victorious

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Christian living, this overcoming, this conquering with something as foolish and as minute as owning a

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Rolex. I'm sure some of you have seen people online, men who purport to be preachers of the gospel who spend 10 minutes of their sermon talking about how

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God gave them a new watch. It's not acquiring something as puny and as insignificant and as cheap as the most expensive private jet that you can buy.

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It is not perfect health. It is not circumstantial happiness. What does it mean then to be an overcomer?

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To have victory in the Christian life? It is living the Christian life day by day, knowing that in Jesus Christ there is nothing in all of creation, under heaven or above heaven, that can separate you from the love of God.

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And that even now you are in a very real sense already seated with Christ in victory over every principality and power in this dark world.

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That's what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2. And we are seated with him in the heavenly places.

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This is the victory. This is the overcoming. To live the victorious

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Christian life, if I can bring it down to this plane for a moment, is to be a mom at home, caring for your children, changing diapers what feels like all day, and yet knowing with certainty that you have been adopted by the

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Father, that you are His daughter, that you are a member of the household of divine royalty, and every victory of His is yours also.

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Brothers, it is to go to work each day knowing that you are not working for man any longer.

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Oh once you did, you worked for man's pleasure. You worked for man's praise. You worked for man's approval.

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You have been freed from that because you have overcome this world. And you no longer work for the applause of man, but you work for him, the

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Lord Jesus Christ who loved you and gave himself for you, that you might reign with him also.

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It is to be, to put ourselves back in the world of first John, to put us back in those first 300 years of the early

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Christian church. It is to be despised and rejected by men, mocked and flogged and fed to wild beasts, knowing that the worst that man can do to you is kill your body, while at the same time having certainty that your soul is untouchably safe in the possession of Christ your

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Lord. And where He is, you will be also. It is to know that one day the cherubim and the seraphim and the elders around the throne of God will fall down and they will cast their golden crowns before him who is invisible.

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And they will say as it says in Revelation 5, weep no more. Behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David who has conquered.

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He is able to break the seals. And every knee on that day will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God. I've said this before. There are going to be days, there's going to be a day when every man who whipped and flogged and mocked a

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Christian will meet the God, will meet the Christ who he was ultimately persecuting.

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And on that day, though we do not gloat in it, though we do not boast in it, the

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Christian and his Christ will be vindicated. Christ will get the glory and his people will get the triumph.

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But how can we be sure that this victory will be ours? How can we know that we too shall conquer?

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What does John say? What is the victory of the Christian? He says in verse 4, our faith.

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In verse 5, the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

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Our victory is this, that we believe in Jesus Christ. It is faith in Christ and faith alone.

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We must believe in Christ who was lifted up on Calvary's hill and suffered that ultimate humiliation on that hideous cross.

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We must look to Jesus who, through faith alone in him, took our punishments upon himself in exchange for his spotless righteousness.

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We must look with the eyes of faith upon him who said, in this world you will have tribulation, but take heart,

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I have overcome this world. The Puritan Stephen Charnock, he said this.

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Maybe just close your eyes because it's Puritan language. Focus for a moment. He says, let us look upon the crucified

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Christ, the remedy of all our miseries. His cross hath procured a crown.

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His passion hath expiated our transgression. His death hath disarmed the law.

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His blood hath washed a believer's soul. His death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, and the eternal testimony of divine love.

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Believe in Jesus Christ and you shall overcome. You shall conquer this world.

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And it does not matter what the world, or hell, or any enemy will throw at you.

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It does not matter. As I laid out earlier in the sermon, if half of the room leaves for another

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Christ, we will say that we have been born anew, that we love

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God, we will keep his word. And this is our victory, our faith in Christ, our faith, our confidence, our hope, our trust in him.

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Believe in Jesus Christ and you shall conquer this world. I want to ask you, do you know what the very first piece of property is or was that the church owned?

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Many of you probably know that the church could not purchase, I say the church or the churches, could not purchase property for the better part of two centuries, perhaps well into the third century.

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And the first piece of property that the church owned was this. It was not a cathedral.

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It was not like the mega churches that we see today with the beautiful glass fronts, and the plush seats, and the stages, and the lights, and the fog machines, and the video screens.

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It was not a golden edifice. It was nothing that the world would be drawn to, but it was something that tells us everything about what it means to be a conqueror in Christ Jesus.

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The very first thing that the church owned, that any of the churches owned by way of property, was a cemetery.

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And why was it a cemetery? Because they lived by faith, trusting that as they buried one another in the ground, they would not remain there forever, but God was preparing a place for them, a place of triumph, a city whose builder and founder is

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God. That they had a home and a future that was sure, and that though they might die an agonizing death, or an uncelebrated death, or really nothing that anyone would notice at all, to be forgotten by everyone from their generation to ours, that Christ would remember them, and that He would raise their lowly bodies just as God the

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Father raised Christ's body, and transformed it into that glorious body. Revelation 21 6, they believed.

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It is done, our Lord said. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of water of life without payment.

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The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son.

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This is what it means to be more than conquerors, that we are his, that we belong to him, and where he is we will be also.

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And so I'll close with these words. We'll conclude with the words from Isaac Watts. He asks us this question.

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Is Christ the captain of your salvation? Is Christ the captain of your salvation?

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See what a blessed army he has listed under his banner of love, and they have followed him through all dangers of life and time under his conduct.

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They are the chosen, the called, the faithful. They have sustained many a sharp conflict, many a dreadful battle, and they are at last made more than conquerors through him who loved them.

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They have sustained, sorry, they attribute all their victories to the wisdom, the goodness, and the power of their divine leader, and even stand amazed at their own success against such mighty adversaries.

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But they fought under the banner, conduct, and influence of the prince of life, the king of righteousness, who is always victorious and has a crown in his hand for every conqueror.

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If you are in Christ, there is a crown there for you also. Let's pray.

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Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church. If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our

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Instagram at Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.