Believers Assurance (1 John 4:13-21) | Adult Sunday School

Kootenai Church

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Good morning, everyone.

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Glad that you're here. Nice to see all your faces here. Love to be in the house of the

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Lord. It's a great place to be. Can't beat it. We're going to be in 1

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John chapter 4. We're going to be finishing up this chapter today. And we're going to be talking about the believer's assurance this morning.

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But before we get going, let's go to the Lord with a word of prayer. Father, we just thank you for your amazing love and grace towards us sinners that don't deserve grace.

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And we thank you for the cross, the ability to be saved.

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Your perfect sacrifice paid the price for our sins. And that by believing in you, we can have eternal life.

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What an amazing gift that you've given us. Just pray that you'll go before us this morning. In this lesson,

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Lord, help us to be open to the word of God, help it to penetrate our minds and our hearts and to want to have a strong desire to live our lives for your glory, to be able to change, or not change, but to be able to communicate that message to other people, to share the hope that we have within us and that other people might come to know you as well.

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Lord, we just give you all the praise and all the glory in Jesus name. Amen. In this chapter 4 that we're going to be in, we talked the last time

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I was here about the longest section in the book of 1

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John about love. It's from chapter 4, verse 7, all the way on down to verse 21.

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And so our passage this morning is going to be from chapter or from verse 13 on down to 21, but we'll start and we'll read from 7 on down, if you don't mind.

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So let's go there. Chapter 4, verse 7. Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows

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God. The one who does not love does not know God because God is love.

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By this, the love of God was manifested in us that God has sent his only begotten

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Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love.

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Not that we have loved 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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No one has beheld God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

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By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his Spirit.

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We have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

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Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

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And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

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By this, love has been perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in this world.

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There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

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We love because he first loved us. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

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For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

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In this commandment, we have from him that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

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So that takes us to the end of chapter 4 in this book and as I've gone through this book,

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I keep thinking to myself, if you want to know what a true Christian looks like, read the book of 1 John. When anyone ever says to you that their belief in Jesus, they believe in Jesus and you have doubts about that, take them to the book of 1

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John. Walk them through it. Look at their behavior and ask them a few questions. Do you have a passion and a desire to fellowship with Jesus?

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Is that one of the characteristics that you see in this person? That's a simple question. Either you do or you don't.

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There's no really in -betweens. If you do, you belong to him. That's what

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John tells us. If you don't, you're lost and that you need to find the Savior.

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Another question you could ask is look over your life. How much effort do you put into keeping his word and following his commandments?

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How much work do you put into those particular things? Do you read your

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Bible? Do you love God? Do you love people in the church? Do you have that desire to be there?

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It's not a complicated test that's being administered here in 1 John at all. It's very simple.

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True believers would give a hearty amen to those things. They would say, yes, we would want to do those things.

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Another question you might ask is how much of your life is spent loving the world instead of loving God? How much time do you spend in the word of God focusing on the things of him or do you spend more of your time focused on the things of the world?

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And the last thing I would say is do you follow the right Jesus? Do you follow the right Jesus? The Gnostics sure didn't in this book.

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We've seen that time and time again where they're trying to lead the saints astray.

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Jesus asked his disciples, but who do you say that I am? For those who answered like Peter, you are the

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Christ, the son of the living God. You answered correctly. You have the right Jesus, which is critical if you are to follow after him.

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You got to have the right Jesus. There are only two paths in life that we've seen in scripture.

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Enter through the narrow gate for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction. And there are many who enter through it for the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life.

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And there are few who find it. Only two ways that you can get there.

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If you have the wrong Jesus, you're going to be on the wrong path. That's what the scriptures tell us. And your end in life will be painful for you if you have the wrong

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Jesus and you're on the wrong path. See, the Gnostics had a wrong view of Jesus, didn't they?

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They believed that his physical body was evil. They didn't want to acknowledge that he was fully

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God and fully man, his deity. They rejected. They were deceived themselves and they were deceiving others too because that's what was happening in these churches in Asia Minor is that these

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Gnostics had entered in and caused disruption and they were trying to lead people astray. There are two paths and two fathers in this book.

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The father of lies, the devil, puts you on the broad road that leads to destruction. And the father who sent the son as the savior of the world, he's going to put you on that narrow path, isn't he?

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The one that leads to eternal life and a future and a hope that you're going to spend all of eternity with him.

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Everything in life flows out of a right relationship with Jesus.

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Everything comes out of that. If you're right with God, then everything else this way horizontally matters so much more.

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With Jesus, you have fellowship and joy among the body of believers here when you have that sweet fellowship.

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With Jesus, you have a love for one another that is the deepest kind of love possible. We've been talking about agape love, which is that self -sacrificing love that we have for one another.

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It willingly gives of self to meet the needs of the body that is around us.

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That's agape love. And with Jesus, you can have that joy and peace that the world just can't know.

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They just can't know it because the God of peace lives in us. It's in our soul.

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It speaks to us. It calms us when we need to be calmed. It gives us a direction.

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And with Jesus, that peace is internal. It cannot be touched by anything going on external.

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That's the beauty of peace. When you have the spirit living inside of you, it doesn't matter what's going on externally, because you can't be shaken on the inside.

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Chaos might be happening all around you, but that peace is inside of you. So the believer's assurance is what we're going to talk about a little bit today.

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But how do you know that you abide in Jesus? That's really what it comes down to. 1

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John 5 .13 says, Knowing you have eternal life.

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What happens with that when you know that? Doesn't it breed confidence and strength in your life when you don't have to question whether you're going to heaven or not?

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It gives you the strength that you need to overcome any difficulty, any challenge in your life.

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It certainly provides strength for you. I believe that John wants to encourage the saints who have been scattered throughout

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Asia Minor to have the assurance that their faith is real. These Gnostics coming in, trying to disrupt them and shake their faith.

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John keeps coming back to the same thing. That circular argument. He keeps coming back.

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Your faith is real, and here's how you can know it. That they are, in fact, following the correct

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Jesus and not the Jesus of the Gnostics. How do you know? We're in chapter 4, and the love is the dominant theme throughout this chapter.

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Verses 7 through 21. The word love is used 26 times in those verses.

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Must be important. Must be important. Verse 7. Love is from God.

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Love's from God. Verse 8. God is love. Verse 9.

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His love is manifested in us because he sent his son into the world.

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Amen to that. Verse 10. And this is love. Not that we love God, but he loved us by sending his son to pay for our sins.

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Verse 11. Because God loved us, we should love others. Verse 12.

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God is invisible, but the world can know him through us.

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Excuse me. The world can know him through us and how we love one another. Our actions demonstrate our faith to the world, and that's how they can know

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God themselves. How do you know you abide in him? How do you know you have full assurance that your faith is real?

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It's found in verse 13. By this we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit.

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By this we know. John uses this language quite a bit in this book. By this we know.

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Sometimes he's referring to what was backwards, and sometimes he's referring to what's forward.

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He's making the application, and in this situation, he's looking forward.

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Excuse me. He's looking backward to verse 12. John tells us that if you love one another,

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God abides in you, and his love is perfected in you. That's how we know. You're experiencing

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God's love consistently in your life, and it's the basis for your confidence in him, that love that you have.

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But how do you know that he lives in you? There's the answer in the second half.

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Because he's given you the Holy Spirit. Amen to that. How do you know that? Spirit's inside of you.

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John 14, 16 says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper, an advocate, that he may be with you forever.

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That helper or advocate is one who comes alongside. It's a paraclete, one who comes alongside, helps you to live your life, encourages you.

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And all believers essentially have two paracletes, the Spirit of God within you and the

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Son of God in heaven. Because 1 John 2, 1 says, if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the

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Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. You should be thankful for that, that you don't have to live your life without the

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Spirit of God living inside of you, under your own power, under your own wisdom, trying to navigate these shark -infested waters in this world.

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We should all be thankful that the Holy Spirit gives us guidance and strength and a direction that the world just doesn't understand.

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What is the evidence you have received the Spirit? What's the evidence? In chapter 3, 24,

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John says, you know by the Spirit he gave us. It is through the work of the

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Holy Spirit that God pours out his love to you, and you pour that love out to others.

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That's what he says in 3, 24. It's a little different twist in verse 13. He says, you know because he has given us of his

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Spirit. He's given us of his Spirit. The Holy Spirit himself is God's gift to us.

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What an amazing gift that is, to have the third person of the

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Trinity living inside of you. That's amazing to me. It's not some impersonal force.

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It's not anything like that. He gives us share in his very own

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Spirit. That's amazing to me, to have that living inside of us, giving us guidance.

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But how do you know the Spirit lives in you? There has to be some kind of evidence, because without the evidence you don't really have the assurance that you belong to him.

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It's not like, is it like the TV preachers? You know, this is how you know you swing your jacket around and everybody falls over.

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Is that how we know that we have the Spirit of God living inside of us? Man, I hope not.

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I think there's a guy in a wheelchair that would say something about this. You know because you're being conformed into his image.

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You know your lives are changed. This is the evidence that we can point to in a person's life, is that you're not the same anymore.

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You know because you've been sealed with him. The Holy Spirit has sealed you for eternity.

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You know because you have a desire to read your Bible. And here's one thing that most unbelievers don't quite understand, is you can't really understand and know the

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Bible unless you have the Spirit of God living inside of you. You can read it all you want, but you're never going to understand the deeper things that the scriptures have to teach, because the

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Spirit is the one that opens up that, you know, avenue of light to us.

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That's the beauty of it. But you also love one another. It's evidence that you belong to him, the

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Holy Spirit inside of you. It causes us to love people, because God's love, the motivating factor in it all, is that he's propelling us to it.

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You have a desire to keep his commandments. You want to follow after him because of how much he's loved you, how the sacrifice on the cross saved you, and now the

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Spirit lives inside of you, motivating you to love. That's what it's all about, and that's how you can know the assurance that you have.

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Are you doing these things? Is it evidence in your own life?

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And you have wisdom that you learn from the Spirit and from the scriptures, and it helps you to make decisions.

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And all these evidences, you can look in your own life and see, yes, God has done this here.

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I learned this here. Yes, yes, yes. And all of these just point to the fact that you belong to him.

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This is how they can tell. God's blessings flow to you through the

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Holy Spirit, through the Holy Spirit. Romans 5 .5, the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit. Love of God poured out into our hearts through the

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Holy Spirit. Amen. I would say the second assurance in verse 14 is that you testify that Jesus is the

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Savior. Verse 14, we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the

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Son to be the Savior of the world. Can there be any more assurance of your faith than the

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Father sending the Son into the world and the Holy Spirit sealing you until the day of redemption?

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I mean, can there be any more assurance? Those things are amazing to me. Verse 13 and 14, you can see that the

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Trinity is in view. The Holy Spirit, the Father sending the Son. There's that relationship there.

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And the we, in this verse, are the apostles. Are the apostles. They were chosen by Christ, and they saw him up close and personal.

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What they saw, they can't stay silent about, so they tell the world. And it says they bear witness to Christ.

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And to bear witness is to testify. There's enough courtroom shows on TV these days for us all to understand that witnesses come into the courtroom and you testify about something.

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And here, the apostles are testifying about Christ, that he's real, that they've seen him, they've touched him, they've proclaimed him to the world, and they understand that he is the

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Savior of the world because he's demonstrated it to them. And now their apostles, John here is telling everyone about it.

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They testify of the gospel itself, for Christ is the gospel. The Father sending the

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Son to be the Savior of the world. It's not that, it's not, if that's not love, I don't know what is.

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God didn't have to send the Son, but he did because he loves us. He cares about us.

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He wants us to have a relationship with him, to be in fellowship with him. Jesus preached salvation to the

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Samaritans at Sychar, and they said this in John 4, 42, and they were saying to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe.

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We have heard for ourselves and know that this one is truly the

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Savior of the world. See, that's beautiful. Christ is the

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Savior of the world. A Savior, what does a Savior do? He's one that rescues.

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He's one that delivers. He's one that saves. What does he save us from?

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What do we have to worry about? What is he saving us from? He saves us from eternal damnation, from the blackness of darkness forever.

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That's what he saves us from. And for that, I'm eternally grateful. He is the

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Savior of the world, the cosmos. The world is all the people with our current world system, everything that we see today.

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There's only one world, and there's only one Savior. That's it. You cannot look to any other so -called

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Savior because they don't save anyone from anything. Any other Savior outside of Christ is no

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Savior at all. You can look to the climate change God of Gaia, won't save you.

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You can look to Mohammed, won't save you. You can look to the new age

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God, the force within, won't save you. None of those will save you.

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You can't climb up any other way to God. You can't get to heaven in any other way.

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Jesus is the only way. He's the Savior of the world. That's what he says. And when

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I say world, there's a lot of people in the world. Does he save everyone? No, he doesn't save everyone.

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He saves some, but not everyone. So the third assurance that I would say in verse 15 is whoever confesses

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Christ is the one you can know they belong to Jesus.

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The one who confesses him. Look at verse 15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

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And here's the reality of it all, that you know you have assurance of your faith is because you are not afraid to confess him.

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You don't have a fear and anxiety about talking about Jesus to anyone that will listen.

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Jesus had something to say about confessing him in Luke 12 8. He said, and I say to you, everyone who confesses me before men, the son of man will confess him also before the angels of God mutually.

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So what does confess mean? If you're going to confess, what does that mean? It's to say the same thing as God says about Jesus Christ.

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You're saying the same thing. If you're confessing, you're saying exactly what God says about Christ. Amen to that.

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What are you confessing about Jesus when you talk to other people? That's the question. What answers do you give them when they ask you, who is

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Jesus? What do you say? I hope you tell them about the cross and why he had to die.

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I hope that's one of your answers. Like he's the best savior in the world. He's the only savior. He went to the cross to pay the penalty for your sins and mine.

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And by believing in him, you can have eternal life. I hope you share that message. That he is the only way to salvation.

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There's no other way. You can't look to any other gods and many people want to point to all these different ways and you can't find another way that's going to get you there.

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And I hope that you tell them he is fully God and fully man. Not like the Gnostics who denied his deity.

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Christ is fully human and fully God. And I hope that you let them know how to be born again.

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Because that's the whole point of it. He came to the cross to save us from our sins. And we have a way now to get to salvation, to get to him, to have that relationship for all of eternity.

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It's the only important question that you could ever ask someone. Do you know

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Jesus? That's one question you really don't want to put off.

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You don't want to say, you know what? Later. Later. I'll think about that. Give me a thought.

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Because you might not be there tomorrow. There might not be another chance to come to him.

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Because if anyone is afraid to confess Jesus before men, here's what happens. Matthew 10 .33.

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But whoever denies me before men, I also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Confessing Christ is a sign that you have full assurance.

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That you're not afraid to embrace that and to talk about it. If you're willing to confess openly what the

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Lord has done in your life and who he really is, you belong to him.

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You belong to him. Speaking boldly about him proves your faith. I don't know about you, but I'm excited to talk about Jesus.

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If you talk about, I can talk about sports, I can talk about politics, but I run out of things after a while.

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But you know what? I never run out of things to talk about with Jesus. I just keep going. There's just never ending.

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The well is never at the bottom. And that's exciting. Because we always have something to talk about.

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Verse 16. And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us.

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God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. The reason we can confess these amazing truths about Jesus is because you've come to know and believe him.

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You went to the Bible and read it for yourself. You believed it. You were saved.

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And here's the thing. You're never going to testify to the truth about Jesus if you weren't absolutely sold out that that was the truth.

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You have to be sold out. You do that. You're not afraid because you have come to know him.

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And it says we have come to know. Know is gnosko here and it means by experience. You got saved at some point in your lives and when the

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Holy Spirit came into your life, it changed you, didn't it? You weren't the same anymore. The things that you loved before you hate now.

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You're not the same. You can't see the Spirit in your life, right? You can't see it, but you know he's there because your lives are not the same.

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You're following after different passions, different desires. All these things that you love conform to the

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Bible. What God has to say about it. The desires of the world have faded into the background.

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I don't know about you, but that happened for me and I hope it's happened for you as well. And it is

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Christ that has become your passion. I hope it really has. The Bible is so amazing and so deep and I hope it's your passion to study it and to learn every inch of it as much as you possibly can.

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It says you have believed the love which God has in us. What does that mean? You have believed the love which

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God has in us. To believe is to have faith. To have faith or to put your trust in.

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It means you have to put your full faith and trust that the gospel message is real. It's true.

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It's something that you can bank on. You can put your whole life and soul into it. It's real.

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And also that the Holy Spirit resides in you. You know these truths because you've experienced them in various ways in your life.

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You can see God working at different points in time in your life. Because of that belief and knowledge, the second half of verse 16 becomes very relevant.

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God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. When you confess

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Christ as Lord, the proof and assurance is that there is a mutual abiding that takes place.

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It's not just a one -way abiding. God abides in you and then you don't abide in him or vice versa.

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The abiding is mutual. You abide because you know and believe that he is God. There's a desire for you to stay close to him, to want to come to church, to sing hymns and to be among the saints.

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There's that desire. The intimate relationship that believers have with God and because of his love is important.

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In verse 13 through 16, there are three things to remember about your assurance. It comes through the

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Holy Spirit through a changed life. It comes through a proper understanding and a confession of Jesus Christ to the world that you're not ashamed of him.

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That you bring forth his truth to anyone that will listen and there is a mutual abiding in him.

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You and him and he and you. There's a desire to stay close. Verse 17, by this love has been perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment because as he is, so also are we in the world.

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By this refers back to God's love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

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That love God has given you is to be perfected in you. What does that mean?

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How do you perfect God's love in you? Well, the word perfected means

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God's love has matured in you. It's matured in you.

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It is to bring it to an end. That's what it means. Like someone finishing a marathon.

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The race has come to an end and also it's used of the maturity of fruit.

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As you see the process of a fruit growing and maturing and ripening.

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It's being fully perfected as it becomes ripe. That's the idea that it's talking about here.

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Only when he comes back will you be fully perfected, right? We're just in the process of being perfected right now.

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We're not fully there yet, but when he comes back, we will be. How can you tell a full, tell a mature

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Christian that will be marked by the love they have for God and for the people of God?

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That's how we're going to know. You can see mature Christians, how much they treat their relationship with God, how much effort they put into it, how much effort they put into the relationship with the saints.

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That's how you know. The more you grow and deepen your faith, the more confidence that you have that God is who he says he is.

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The more mature you become, the more confident in the strength that you have within yourself to overcome any situation is present in your life.

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John has talked about this confidence already. In 1 John 2 .28, he says, And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he is manifested, we may have confidence and not shrink away from him in shame at his coming.

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Abide in him, so that we may have confidence in him. So when he comes back, we don't have to worry about doing something wrong, being ashamed at seeing him at that point.

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The confidence is necessary, and it provides you the assurance you need to not worry about the day of judgment.

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In that verse, it says, so that you may have confidence in the day of judgment. To have confidence is to have a boldness, a boldness to face the coming judgment without fear.

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Those that are in Christ do not fear this judgment. Many people do fear, though, the day of Christ, when he will judge the world.

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Why? Because the love of Christ is absent in their lives.

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Love of Christ is absent in their lives. They have no assurance that they will hear, well done, thou good and faithful servant.

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Rather, they are fearing God's wrath. John's assurance to the believer is that they can have confidence because it says, as he is, so also are we in the world.

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What does that mean? Because as he is, so also are we in the world. What does that mean? It means you are like Jesus in the world.

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Jesus was in this world and yet accepted by God. You have that same acceptance as Jesus did, and that brings with it a confidence that you need not fear judgment day.

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The confidence that you have doesn't come from yourselves, though, does it? How can you be confident just of yourselves in your own work?

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It doesn't happen. Confidence comes through the Holy Spirit living in your lives, manifesting himself every day.

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When you abide in him, there is no fear on judgment day. Verse 18, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

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So continuing from verse 17, you are protected from fear because of your confidence and assurance of your faith.

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Four times the word fear is used in this verse. There are two kinds of fear present in the

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Bible. Healthy fear, which is, you know, your reverence and respectful approach to God, you know, healthy fear of him.

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But then there's sinful fear. It means alarm and fright, and that's the kind of fear that's talked about here, alarm and fright.

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Sinful fear shows its face in insecurity, not trusting

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God for the things that you need to trust him for. Sinful fear worries about what man thinks rather than what

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God thinks. Sinful fear worries about the unknown. The word fear itself, the

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Greek is phobos, where we get our English word phobia. Americans have many fears and anxieties today, don't they?

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You see a little bit of this going on. Counseling rooms have no shortage of patients struggling to overcome fear and anxiety.

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Fear and anxiety related issues are being treated to the tune of over 20 billion dollars a year.

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That's a lot. Big pharma keeps churning out the drugs to treat symptoms but not the cause.

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What's leading to all the fear? Well, look around. World turmoil is leading to great deal of fear because people worry about the future.

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They worry about their families and how to put food on the table. Constant crisis after crisis can cause even believers to worry about life.

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What's the answer? To combat fear, you need a greater love of God in your life.

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If you have anxiety, what's the thing to do? Is you put off those thoughts that are unhealthy and you put on the thoughts of Christ and his confidence and his strength and how he's the amazing

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God in your life and there's nothing that you have to fear about. You put off anxiety by going to the scriptures and saying he's the

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God that overcomes anxiety because he says in 1st Peter 5 7, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

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Why do you hang on to it? It's basically the idea. There's no reason for anxiety and fear when you have the

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Holy Spirit living inside of you giving you that strength and confidence that said no matter what happens God's going to take care of me.

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And this is why counseling rooms are filled because secular counselors don't have the answer.

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They don't have the answer. We do though and we share that with anybody that will listen.

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You want to know how there is no fear in love? When the love of God is active in your life, there isn't any fear of judgment day.

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When you are loving him and those in the church, you can live in peace knowing that there is no need for you to fear the judge.

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You are at peace with life and with your God and there is a quiet confidence in you that will not be moved.

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Perfect love casts out fear. So we talked about perfection. Perfect love is a mature love.

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It's that kind of love is what casts out fear in a person's life. This is what it is.

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To cast out fear is to expel it from your life. Get it out of there.

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You expel it to drive fear completely out of your life by how much you love, how much you engage in the

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Savior. That kind of love is maturing in Christ and it expels out any kind of fear.

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This is what secular counselors can't do for you people. They can't show you how to expel out fear with a holy

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God and the scriptures that are truth. Mature love provides confidence and it provides strength and because of that fear and worry, all that's been expelled.

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Amen to that. Because fear involves punishment. That's another reason why we don't want to fear.

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There's a reason why John says that fear involves punishment. It's kind of unclear as to exactly what the punishment is here, but when sin enters in, then there's fear, isn't there?

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When sin enters into a person's life, there's consequences for that sin and there could be fear from that.

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And also, what about the correction of God, his discipline in our lives? Do you fear that for the sin?

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He's correcting you coming back. What does that look like? Paul gives us encouragement here.

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He says, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8 .1. Even though we sin, even though we struggle at times, we still are not condemned.

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The one who fears is not perfected in love. When someone is terrified of God, the reason is that the love of God has no place in them.

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When love is absent in a person's life, there is no fear of God because love has not expelled the fear.

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Love has not expelled the fear in their lives. They will fear the judge and the day of judgment.

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That's what happens. This doesn't mean that a believer can't experience some of the fear associated with perfect love, right?

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But here's the answer in all of it. More reliance on God. Matthew 10 .26

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-33. Therefore, do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known.

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What I tell you in the light and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops and do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell.

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Are not two sparrows sold for an Assyrian? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

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So do not fear you are more valuable than many sparrows. Therefore, everyone who confesses me before man,

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I will also confess him before my father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before man,

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I will also deny him before my father who is in heaven. You see, when your faith is anchored in Christ, there should be no fear.

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God's love is stronger than fear and it expels that fear out of your life.

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Key text here is in verse 19, we love because he first loved us. God's love for us always comes first and then we react accordingly.

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We don't engage him first, he engages us first. When the

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Holy Spirit resides in you, he causes you to deepen your relationship with God and with other people.

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That's what happens, that spirit inside of you, it works and it deepens it day by day.

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Unless God initiates that relationship, you will never choose him. It should humble every one of us that he saved some.

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That's the only reason you can say you love him, it's because he first loved you. Otherwise, we would be out of this church and talking somewhere else.

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Verse 20, if someone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love

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God whom he has seen. Many say they love God, don't they? But if they fail to love the brethren, they are children of the devil.

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Many people are sitting in the churches all over the world who only say they love Jesus. You probably know some of those people.

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I love Jesus, but I have no love for the church. I have no love for the saints.

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That's not the assurance of salvation at all. John could be addressing the apostates here in Asia Minor when he says these things.

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They were not loving the brethren because they were leading them away from Christ. These Gnostics were leading them away.

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The lack of love for your brother is a clear indicator you don't love God either. You can't say I love

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God and then the other, I hate my brother, because true believers are the ones who make God visible by their love for one another.

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That's how we demonstrate it to everyone that is looking. And then in verse 21, in this commandment we have from him that the one who loves

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God should love his brother also. This is the command to love and it comes directly from God.

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This important reminder is to call the people to remember their duty in life. To remember it.

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1 John 3 .23, and this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he gave us, gave a commandment to us.

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We have two laws to follow. We have two laws to follow. It kind of makes it simple for us, right?

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I need simple. Love God, love people. It sounds simple, but it's not easy, is it?

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It's challenging. We see these laws in Deuteronomy 6 .5.

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You shall love Yahweh, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Leviticus 19 .18.

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You shall not take vengeance and you shall not keep your anger against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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I am Yahweh. The command is to love. Love your wives.

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Love your children. Love your friends. Share the gospel.

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Share it with anyone that will listen. That's the end of verse 4 and that's the end of our time.

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So let's pray. Father, we thank you for loving us the way that you do, for watching over us, for giving us your strength and confidence day by day.

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We serve an amazing God and help us all to serve you more and more every day of our lives.