Ascension Presbyterian Lord's Day Worship

Well, good morning, my brothers and sisters in Christ. Grace and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome to the corporate worship of our God. Please stand and hear God call you to worship through his word.

Oh, give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples. Sing to him. Sing psalms to him. Talk of all his wondrous works. Glorify in his holy name. Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord.

Sing to the Lord all the earth. Proclaim the good news of his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised.

He is also to be feared above all gods, for all the gods of the peoples are idols. But the Lord made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before him. Strength and gladness are in his place. Give thanks to the Lord, oh families of the peoples.

Give the Lord glory and strength. Give the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come before him. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Let us pray. Oh Lord, you are the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God.

You are the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no name has seen or can see. To you be honor and eternal dominion.

We bless the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. We praise the glory of your grace that chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

We thank you that in love, you predestine us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ. We rejoice that we have been sealed in Christ with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance.

We worship and adore you, father, son, and Holy Spirit. Open the eyes of our hearts that we may know the hope of your calling, the riches of the glory of our inheritance and the surpassing greatness of your power toward us in Jesus Christ.

All of this you have brought about in Christ when you raised him from the dead and seated him at your right hand in the heavenly places. Receive our worship and praise to the glory of your grace. And we are bold to ask this, for we come not in our own names, but in that name of our only savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

Please kneel as you are able for the corporate confession of sin. Let us join to get together in confessing our sins. Almighty and merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you and one another in both our actions and our inactions.

We recognize that in Jesus our Lord, we choose to walk in your words, so to Christ's glory. Please stand and receive these words of comfort. From God's word and our assurance of pardon. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we have cause for great rejoicing. For if you indeed be in Christ, your sins are forgiven.

Amen.

Amen.

Please take up the hymnal and open to hymn 53. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, hymn 53.

Amen.

What a glorious hymn, what a glorious hymn. Well, please take up the insert and look for our Psalm of the week, which is on the inside of the insert. My voice to God aloud I plead. The tune that's listed at the bottom, we were going to use, he leadeth me, but our brother DJ has recommended sweet hour of prayer as a tune that we are more familiar with.

So we'll be singing Psalm 77, my voice to God aloud I plead to the tune of sweet hour of prayer.

Amen.

Please remain standing from the reading of God's word from Genesis chapter nine.

Genesis chapter nine. So God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth and on all the fish of the sea, they are given into your hand.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs, but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood. Surely for your lifeblood, I will demand a reckoning from the hand of every beast, I will require it.

And from the hand of man, from the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed for in the image of God, he made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it.

Then God spoke to Noah and his sons with him saying, and as for me, behold, I established my covenant with you and with your descendants after you. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth, with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.

Thus I established my covenant with you. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations.

I set my rainbow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. It shall be when I bring the cloud over the earth that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud. And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.

The water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

And God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And Ham was the father of Canaan. These were the sons of Noah. And from these, the whole world was populated. And Noah began to be a farmer and planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk and became uncovered in his tent.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned away and they did not see their father's nakedness. So Noah awoke from his wine and he knew what his younger son had done to him. Then he said to him, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, he shall be to his brethren.

And he said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth and may that he dwell in the tents of Shem and may Canaan be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood 350 years.

So all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Well, I was impressed as our brother was reading that, that we read this account providentially in the month of June. We know that the rainbow has been co-opted.

By the enemies of God,.

But thanks be to God we have his word that tells us what the rainbow really means. Well, let's continue our worship by confessing our ancient Christian faith and the singing of the Apostles' Creed.

I believe in God

Please take the hymnal up once more and open to hymn 693. Blessed assurance. Hymn 693. Please now make preparations for the prayers of the people. Let us pray together. Almighty and everlasting God, in whom we live and move as children of God, we offer to you our humble praises for having preserved us from the beginning of our lives to this day, especially do we praise you for having delivered us from the dangers and uncertainties.

Through these mercies, we bless and magnify your glorious name, humbly beseeching you to accept this our morning sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. For his sake, who laid down the grave.

And rose again for us,.

Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions.

That it may be best for us,.

Granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth and the world to come, life everlasting.

Amen.

I ask your prayers for God's people throughout the world, for our denomination, for this church, and for all ministers and missionaries. Pray for the church. I ask your prayers for the poor, the sick, the bereaved, the burdened, and for the widows, orphans, and prisoners.

Pray for those in any need or trouble. I ask your prayers for those who do not know Christ and for those who seek a deeper knowledge of him. Pray that they may find and be found by him. I ask your prayers for our children and future generations, which will be born to them.

Pray that the knowledge of the Lord will fill the earth through them. Pray that we may have grace to glorify Christ in our own day. Finding ourselves in agreement with all these things, we join our voices together and say, amen.

Please stand and take up the insert once again to our Psalm of the Month. From heaven, O praise the Lord. Psalm 148, our Psalm of the Month.

Amen.

Please turn in your Bibles to 1 John 2. This is God's holy and infallible word. My little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now by this, we know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He who says, I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this, we know that we are in him. And he who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked. Brethren, I write no new command to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning.

The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. And again, a new commandment I write to you which thing is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Please pray with me now. Oh Lord, I pray that you would cause these, your people to walk and abide in your light. Oh Lord, we know that this is manifested first in our love for you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But in a very tangible way, our love for you is reflected and revealed in our ordinary love for the brethren. Oh Lord, I pray that this virtue would abound more and more in us, that our orthodoxy would be matched with orthopraxy and we would be those who are known by their love for one another and ask all this in Jesus' name, amen.

Please be seated. I have three points of emphasis I'd like you to consider today. And the first, and you should be able to derive this just from the text itself, the old commandment made new. The old commandment made new.

Second, the darkness is passed and the true light shines. The darkness is passed and the true light shines. And third, the title of the message, abide in the light. Number one, the old commandment made new.

Number two, the darkness is passed and the true light shines. And number three, abide in the light. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. And for us to abide in the light, to walk in his ways, we must love as he has loved.

For us to hate our brother is to walk in darkness until now. What I was thinking about 1 John this week, one of the things I thought I would bring in at this point in our time is the person of John the author.

And the reason I want to bring up these two fuller descriptions of who John the apostle is is because I have always viewed John in a very idealistic way. He is the disciple whom Jesus loved. He's likely the youngest of the disciples.

He appears to have not been martyred for his faith and he was held in high regard and esteem in the life of the church. I'd like us to look at two quick texts about John. One of them is a little bit indirect and one is very much John.

The first I'd like us to look at is Matthew chapter 20. You please turn there. The reason I bring this up is because I think of Paul. I think Paul, prior to coming to Christ, loved being a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

I think he took some value in being one of the best scholars in Israel, advancing beyond his companions. I think that was satisfying to Paul. He was a part of the favored, some people think the most favored tribe in Israel, the tribe of Benjamins.

He has all of this pedigree. He has this tremendous natural ability and great diligence of character. He has honor. He can live in both worlds. He grows up in Tarsus. He understands the Greek world very well, but he himself is the Jew of Jews.

Paul counts it all as rubbish. He throws all that aside and says, I know Christ. So all these other things can be set aside. I think of Peter and his brashness and boldness and even arrogance. We get to him as an older man when he's writing his epistles and he is a much more humble and very understated man.

He's no longer exalting himself, but he lives to exalt Christ. So I want to give some backdrop like that for John here today. Let's look at Matthew chapter 20 and I'll begin reading in verse 20. Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from him.

I want to point out that the two sons of Thunder, James and John, John is likely the younger brother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Zebedee is apparently a fisherman of some note. He is probably one of the wealthier fishermen in the area in the Sea of Galilee.

He has a place of honor and significance in the computer. And our mothers and our fathers here can relate, we want good things for our children. We want them to have a place of honor. We want them to succeed in their lives.

We want to protect them from trouble. We want to groom them in the proper way to direct them on the path that they should go. So Jesus responds to John's mother, what do you wish? And she says to him, grant that these two sons of mine may sit one on your right hand and the other on the left in your kingdom.

Mrs. Zebedee was about honor for her family. You and I can be about the honor of our family. We can want good things for ourselves and our children. Sometimes it can be misplaced. Verse 22, Jesus responds to this request.

You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? And they said to him, no doubt, very eagerly, we are able, we want the position of the right and the left hand of you, oh God, when you come into your kingdom, oh Christ, when you come into your kingdom.

And he says to them, you will indeed drink my cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with. But to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my father.

Now, the sons of Zebedee, our author of this epistle, they're kind of put down, they're rebuked by Jesus. And it's interesting, now there's a bitterness that grows among the 10 that are left of the apostles.

Look at verse 24, when the 10 heard it, they were greatly displeased with the two brothers, but then Jesus called them to himself and said, I should pause here. When I preached this a number of years ago, I came to some conviction that part of the resentment of the 10 in this earlier stage of their discipleship is that they too wanted a place of honor.

They didn't think of it. Their mama didn't come lobbying for their position. So the resentment is not this virtuous anger in my view, it is the 10 were thinking, I would like to have this place of honor.

This ending fits with our message and it's gonna help us get into it. Verse 25 says, Jesus called them to himself and said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and those who are great exercise authority over them.

Yet it shall not be so among you. Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave. Just as the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

Now you can turn optionally, if you're gonna be distracted and don't have the discipline, don't do it, but turn to Luke chapter nine. Again, I wanna give you more information about John. I don't know if he said to his mom, it's not a good idea to go talk to Jesus or did they conspire and say, hey, maybe Jesus likes you, maybe if you go and talk to him, maybe James and I can have a higher place.

We think about the idyllic life of John and but we also forget that his brother James, the son of Zebedee, the other one was probably the first of the apostles to be martyred. You see that in the book of Acts.

So John himself is acquainted with sorrows and grief like his savior and like you and I are. The last part of chapter nine, I'm gonna begin reading in verse 51. The dispute I should say in verse 46, it's a section again, who's gonna be greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Jesus responds to them, whoever receives this little child in my name receives me and whoever receives me receives him who sent me for he who is least among you all will be great. The Christian ethic is upside down from the world.

We strategize and we maneuver and we labor for greatness and honor and prominence. If you don't recognize that in yourself, you are in self denial. This is something that has to be mortified in our flesh.

And I often think of John being the apostle of love, read gospels, read the epistles, he's the love apostle. Verse 51, now it came to pass when the time had come for him to be received up that he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Jesus is now on the path to the cross, to the resurrection, to the ascension. He's laser focused now, he's moving in the direction his public ministry is out and he's going to now do all of the work of the Messiah.

And he sent messengers before his face and as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for him. You remember in the story from the woman on the well, there is an expedient way to travel from Galilee to Jerusalem and you go through Samaria.

Samarians are half breeds, they're not really Orthodox, they have strange doctrines. They are part of that rebellious Northern 10 tribes that were dispersed in the time of Solomon. Verse 53, the Samaritans did not receive him because his face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.

And when his disciples, James and John, the sons of Zebedee saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them just as Elijah did? I don't think John is yet the apostle of love.

And this gives me some encouragement because the gospel transforms the lives of Christians. We are not yet what we are going to be because of this great work of the Holy Spirit in us. And so when we think and see our lack, maybe we should consider the future with some optimism and recognize that God is at work in us.

And we may be people who want to call down fire from heaven. And I gotta tell you, part of me and my natural man, I love that. I wanna see the Samaritans smoked. I wanna see them burnt up to a crisp because they reject our God.

But Jesus corrects John and he corrects me. He says in verse 55, he turned and rebuked them and said, you do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the son of man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

And they went to another village. Let's go ahead and turn back to our text in verse 55. First John, if you were with me, John was a man like us, a sin nature like ours. And God was able to use him in a very mighty way.

And I believe John's chastening by Christ is part of the backdrop. This is, I believe, how in some ways, John becomes the man that we know him to be. Well, let's look at the text again. We're gonna be looking at verses seven through 11.

The language for us in English is a little bit awkward and there's some redundancy. And what we should know about the Hebraic mind, much like our own languages and traditions in the West, there's something powerful in repetition.

John says some of the same things multiple times with slightly different tones, but there's kind of a simple message that he is grinding out for us here in the first epistle. Look again at verse seven.

Brethren, the Delphoi, those brotherly loved ones, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning.

I have to establish this foundation, I believe, in John's gospel. And again, turn with me if you're able or just listen. John chapter 13. This is an essential Christian text. Parents, have your children memorize a couple of verses in this little section.

Adults, you too would do well to know this text very intimately. The language, the words you'll know once I begin reading them is very clear to us. John chapter 13. This is part of the explanation of how the old commandment is made new.

My first point, which I believe John is drawing out in our text, beginning at verse 31. So when he had gone out, Jesus said, now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him immediately.

We beheld his glory. This is something that's very important to John. This is something that's in his first chapter in the epistle and very big in his gospel. Verse 33. Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer.

You will see me and as I said to the Jews, where I am going, you cannot come. So now I say to you, and here it is, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. I can go throughout the Old Testament law and show you how this command to love one another is embedded in the very law of God.

The second table of the law is love your brother. How is this new? How is the commandment, the old commandment that John speaks of in the epistle, how is it made new? He says, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

The scholars could debate about who their neighbor is. They could argue with Jesus about loving enemies outside the covenant community. But now with precision and clarity, Christ himself says the law of love, the commandment to love is now amplified magnified, fully teased out and revealed in my love for you.

To love one another, that can be done maybe at a surface level that could be satisfying to the church, the community. But now the standards have been raised. You and I are called to love each other in the way that Christ loves.

Not about you, but I feel some conviction. I don't love in this way. I look more like James and John in their bad state than I do Jesus in his perfection. So walking in his ways, abiding in the light, Jesus really narrows it down and John focuses on that both in his gospel and in our epistle that this in its refined state is loving one another as Christ has loved.

So you and I have some room for growth and improvement. Now let's go back to our text in 1 John. Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, verse seven, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning.

The old commandment is the word which you have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment, I write to you that thing which is true and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

When you think about redemptive history, there have been some dark days in the life of the church. There is a 400 plus period of time before the arrival of John the Baptist preparing the way. There's really in many ways a prophetic silence.

And if we look at the world in which Jesus arrives in the incarnation, we see a compromise, corrupt Judaism and the wickedness of the Romans and the Greeks are legendary. It's almost like a Genesis nine kind of thing.

We read their letters, there's great sexual immorality, there's horrible things going on. Sacrifice of children, corruption at the temple, there's a great darkness. But now at the arrival of Jesus Christ, and this is what we should be thinking of every Advent season, we think about the arrival of Christ.

The light of Christ now shines in the darkness. Christ has come and he cannot contain the brightness and the light of his glory and he comes. Now, the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

As Mark was talking about the importance this morning of thinking about the cross in light of the resurrection, I was thinking to myself in light of my text, it's important to think of the cross in the light of the resurrection and the ascension of Christ.

The light has come into the world, the king has retaken ownership and possession of his creatures and his created order. He lives and reigns today. The light is shining in this dark world. This gospel cannot be thwarted, the kingdom cannot be restrained, it's going to touch the ends of the earth.

And John wants to get this message out and he says, but there's an ethic, there's a morality that goes with it. The darkness has passed and the true light shines. We get this in a cosmic sense and maybe a categorical sense, we can posit it theologically.

But we can also see it in a very practical way. Don't turn there, but I think a linchpin verse for this idea if you're taking notes is found in 2 Corinthians chapter four. This is Pauline doctrine, which you see some great synergy between Paul and John here.

2 Corinthians four, five and six say this. For we preach not ourselves, I can tell you, I have nothing to say as a preacher. I've only got Christ and his word. If you hear me preaching my stuff, tell me to get out.

Paul says, I'm not relying on my Pharisee of Pharisees and tribe of Benjamin stuff here, I preach Christ and him crucified. We're not preaching ourselves, there's a lot of preaching of ourselves going on in the world today, but true biblical preaching is to preach Christ.

And here's this very strong link. And we preach Christ and ourselves, your servants for Jesus's sake. So you and I should be tripping and stumbling over each other, trying to outdo one another in our love and service to each other.

Now, here it is, for God creation, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts. After the darkness, there's light. The earth is dark and void, and then there's light. There's dead and sins and trespasses.

There is no communion with God. And then the light of the world and the power of his spirit shines in the heart of his people. The light switch goes on to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Brethren, I want to appeal to your reasonable, rational, logical minds. We who have Christ and are filled with his spirit, that the light has shined, not only round about us, but in our dark recesses of our hearts.

If that be true of us, then how can we tolerate sin in ourselves? As I've mentioned a couple of times in recent weeks, we are very capable of seeing the sins of the culture and the sins of others, but we must see the sin in ourselves and put it to death.

If the light has shined, I don't know if you've noticed, since the creation of all things, that sun rises every morning. The birds chirp in the trees, the plants grow, the crops come in, there's a harvest.

It seems to me, if that be true of the created order, how much more so for the new creation? If the light of Christ shines in us, his people, it would seem that the darkness would be completely and repeatedly overtaken.

And as I've argued already in recent months, we feel as though we can't have victory over sin and it's just not true. We're not going to be sinlessly perfect, but the light always overtakes the darkness.

So in the grand theological, the biblical theological stage, think about the progression of the church from a place of darkness into light. We have been conveyed from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

We have been set free from the bondage of sin and made to walk in Christ's righteousness. The darkness is passing away. The true light is already shining. I'm not going to have time to get into this. I don't think with greater depth, I may be able to work it in at another time.