Walk As He Walked

We start in your Bibles to 1st John and chapter 2, we'll be reading the first 14 verses, 1st John chapter 2, 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. He who says he abides in Him ought to 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. 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.

I write to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His namesake. I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the wicked one.

I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.

This is God's holy and infallible word. Please pray with me. Oh, Lord, I pray that we would keep your word, that your love would be perfected in us, that we would know that we are in you. Oh, Lord, I pray that you would cause us, abiding in Christ, to walk as He has walked.

We ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated. Contrary to the bulletin, we will be only considering verses 5 and 6 today. The title of the message is, Walk as He Walked. Walk as He Walked. For those of you who are in need of an outline, it's very simple.

Keep His Word

In verse 5, it says, Keep His Word. That is point one to organize your thoughts. And second, it says, Walk as He Walks. It's found in the end of verse 6. Walk as He Walked. The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ must keep His word and walk as He walked.

The spirit of this age is aimless. It lacks direction and purpose. And of course, because we live in this world, that infiltrates the church. The world seeks its own immediate gratification. And it seems they have no sense of right and wrong.

But in reality, they are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. The world and its system and its adherents act without wisdom. The objective truth about who God is and what He has done in Christ is replaced with a malleable, subjective truth without anchor or mooring.

Brethren, the genuine believer has an aim, a direction, a purpose. You are called to keep His word and to walk as He walked. This way is the path of salvation, joy, thanksgiving, and meaning. The question to be answered today is how should I live?

John's problem was myriad. There were many difficulties that were facing the church. So we can tell from internal evidence, and that's what I've focused on to this point. But I want to give you some clues about the worldly wisdom of the time.

John's problem here that he's addressing is that people saw God as an intellectual exercise. Saying, I know God without being conscious of any ethical obligation to obey Him. Another group of people would say, I have had an emotional experience.

I am in God and He is in me. And you say, well, that sounds like today. And of course, there's nothing new under the sun. There's the intellectual ascent, a philosophical approach to God, and then an experiential one.

I am in God. God is in me. They, too, neglect His word. The only way that we can show that we have union with Christ is through imitation of Him. Intellect and experience must be combined with moral action and obedience.

As I told someone recently, when I'm preaching on obedience, I want you to think that man is a legalist. When I'm preaching on God's free grace, I want you to think that man's an antinomian. I want to push you to obedience from the backdrop of Christ and His grace.

I am not saying that we earn salvation in any sense. But because we possess salvation, it follows and it is necessary. It is part of John's argument. It seems this was James's argument as well, doesn't it?

That we must have a tendency toward obedience. We must have a yearning and a desire to walk with Him and walk in His ways. Now, if you are a Christian and you're not feeling that so much, I implore you and I urge you, I beseech you to go in this direction.

Obedience matters because it reflects the transformation that has occurred because of the grace of God in the person and work of Christ. In the fifth and sixth centuries before Christ, the Greeks were convinced that they could arrive at God through the sheer process of intellectual reasoning and argument to that classical Greek.

And of course, this mindset has thoroughly influenced the world by this point. Curiosity was not a fault, but a highly esteemed virtue. And in fact, in many respects, it could be said that curiosity was the highest virtue for the Greek mind.

For the Greeks, the way to God was through the intellect. But by the time and the writing of the New Testament letters, the Greeks in latter times here sought to find God in emotional experience. This is not so much knowing God as feeling God.

We have that in our time, too, today, don't we? I need to have a dramatic experience and encounter with God. I need a mountaintop experience. The philosophizers among us, they want to only stay in the realm of ideas.

And when we started First John, I pointed out to you that the truth is found not in some mystical or some intellectual realm. The truth is found in the person of Jesus Christ. The truth is corporeal. The truth is incarnate in Christ.

And of course, that figures into our message very strongly today. They sought a highly emotional experience. And as such, it was transient. What happened to the big revival in Kentucky? Just went away, it's transient.

It found God in an abnormal experience. And its aim was to escape ordinary life. But there was another worldview. And it was the scriptural, Hebraic, Christian worldview. And it's a different way about thinking about God and knowing God.

Knowledge of God has come not by man's speculation or by some exotic experience of emotions, but by God's own revelation. Should be in Sunday school, you'd appreciate this a little bit more. We've been talking about these subjects.

The God who revealed himself was a holy God. And his holiness brought the obligation to the worshiper to be holy. Now, I want you to think for a moment. I think in our sinfulness, we tend to, one of these two, we have a connection to either the philosophical interest, which I think is the reformed people's struggle, or the experiential one, which may be the charismatic people's struggle.

Both are not illegitimate. I think you should really feel and experience the presence of God, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. I believe that the truth of God and his word should captivate every synapse and cell in your brain.

But it can never be divorced from the reality that John is calling us to, that to know God, to be united to Christ, to love him, means I want to walk in his ways. Obedience is very important. One author has said that John can conceive of no real knowledge of God.

Which does not, which does not issue in obedience. John can conceive of no real knowledge of God. Which does not issue in obedience. Knowledge of God can only be proved by obedience to him. To know God is to experience his love in Christ and to return that love in obedience.

Let's look at the text again. Whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. What does it mean to keep his word? Well, we study the language and its usage in scripture. It means to watch over or to guard, to keep intact.

So in order to have the love of God perfected in me, I have to keep his word. I have to maintain and preserve it. That doesn't mean I take the holy scrolls of scripture and lock them in a vault and say, okay, now they're not going to be destroyed.

It means I take every jot and tittle of God's most holy and excellent word and I apply it to my heart and life. I have to search out. I have to get many counselors. I have to know what it says. I have to know what it means.

And then I have to take that truth and I have to keep guard over it. I need to watch it. I need to maintain it. I need to preserve it. I need to keep it intact. So you can see that it's comprehensive.

In an age where we just talked about it today in Sunday school, where people have divergent ideas about creation and every other thing, it seems it is fitting for us as a lifelong pursuit that we would keep his word intact.

Every jot, every tittle, every horn of the Hebrew letter, every bit of it, parsing every verb, understanding every concept, laboring with great diligence and the sweat of our brows to know the mind and will of God and then to act upon it.

It's all very basic, isn't it? Whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. Now, the first application for you today, I want you to think if there be some want in your keeping of the word, do not be discouraged today.

You have a savior who is Christ the Lord. You have an indwelling spirit who is at work and finishing and completing and laboring to bring you to full maturity. But you and your own sensibility today, you need to say, oh, Lord, cry out to him in your heart.

Even in this moment, God, make me one who longs and desires to keep your word. And that requires you to spend time in and reading it and meditating upon it. The righteous man meditates on his law day and night.

Jesus Christ, the righteous man, meditated upon the word day and night. You and I and all of our vocations and callings, we need to be thinking and dwelling and meditating upon the word that we might keep the spirit of this imperative, that we might keep his commands.

Now, the second phraseology that I think needs some explanation is the next part that says truly the love of God is perfected in him. When I think of perfect, I think of. Absolute perfection, I think of no mistakes, everything with exacting precision is just as it should be, but that's not really the scriptural usage of perfect.

That we might be mature and complete, lacking nothing, we recently learned about. To be perfected, it's also where the root word of teleology comes from, it's to bring to its end. To bring to its completion, to consummate, to reach its end state, to reach the end and.

Aim.

God is at work and the Holy Spirit, particularly in the work of sanctification, employs the Christian himself to grow up to this full maturity that the love of God and its fullness might be manifested in him.

You and I are to be striving after this maturity, this completion. I think I'm only going to have you turn to one place today. Let's go to the book of Ephesians in chapter four. We're going to see just how central this is and this idea for the life of the church.

If you didn't know this, the doctrine of the church is largely found in the book of Ephesians. If you have a handle on Ephesians, you probably have a good doctrine of the church. Let's look at verse 11 and following of Ephesians four.

The Church's Role in Growing to Maturity

It says, And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. Now, I want you to listen carefully because this part rolls off our tongue. But then the next part, the 13th verse, it has something that's very powerful for us.

Verse 12, For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. The duty of the pastors and elders in the church is to equip the saints that they might do the work of ministry. You might say, I wish we had more elders so we could get more work accomplished at Ascension.

Well, in actuality, you are actually the ones who are supposed to do the work. So congratulations, you have more to do. And it continues. It's a very incredible argumentation and a line of reasoning by Paul here under the inspiration of the spirit.

They do the work of the ministry after being equipped so that the body of Christ itself would be edified and built up. This is very beautiful picture. It's like the thriving and flourishing family, the husbands working in the fields.

He brings in the produce in the game. The wife prepares it. She cleans it. She cooks it really well, skillfully. She feeds it to those little children and they grow up like gigantic olive shoots around their table.

It's kind of a picture of what's happening in the life of the church. And this builds the church and the church is strengthened, that the people are engaged, they're laboring, their life has purpose and meaning in Christ, and they're serving and loving one another.

And it keeps going in verse 13, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, that perfect word is the same that we're using here in 1st John 2, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Paul, James, John, Peter, they're all calling us to grow up to full maturity. We don't want the little limpkies to stay little kids forever. We want them to grow up. Everybody says, oh, is it sad when someone leaves the house and gets married?

I love it when people leave my house and get married. I want them to leave and have a bunch of kids and have their own families. There's a very real sense that you and I need to labor and be diligent in this pursuit of growing up to full maturity.

And the way this is accomplished is by us keeping his word, knowing it, meditating upon it, being sure of its intention and purpose, and then acting upon it, appropriating, living according to it. There's another practical benefit of this maturity and strength.

This full knowledge, this mature knowledge of the Son of God, this perfect man, this growing into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, it leads to greater peace and unity in the church.

It says then we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. But speaking the truth and love may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by whatever joint supplies, according to the effective working by which each part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

These themes are found throughout the scripture. Now, let's go back to our text in 1 John 2. Whoever keeps his word, children, parents, people of ascension, let us be the ones who labor in the first instance here to keep his word that the love of God may reach its end.

And it seems that that sanctification is his aim. This is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus that you would be sanctified. Right. Let's look at verse six. It says, he who says he abides in him ought to himself also to walk just as he walked.

Walk as He Walked

Now, when I think about the holiness of God, I think about the the absolute purity and consecration of God and his holiness. But then there's that sticky command from Leviticus in 1 Peter, be holy as I am holy.

I cannot be as holy as God. He is other than me. I am not like him. But there's something here. Somehow now in Christ, I have as an objective and a life pattern, my scheme of living is holiness. And I was just thinking about this.

How do we reconcile the disconnect? And we've all kind of experienced this. We love the idea of God and his holiness, or so we say. But we don't love holiness for ourselves. Is our love for God perfected if we have a disconnect and an inconsistency, an irreconcilable difference between loving the holiness of God on the one hand, we're sitting in awe of his splendor and his majesty.

But on the other hand to say, I don't really love holiness. That's a big problem. There's a deficiency in our religion. So we were right to say in theology proper about the character and attributes of God.

God is holy, holy, holy. But what a disconnect to say holiness is not that important for me. I don't really love holiness. The things I really enjoy are worldly things. And again, 1st John, John in his first epistle is not kicking us out of the kingdom, but drawing us closer in.

He said you should love these things because these are the best things. We should love holiness because holiness is so much better than wickedness. Righteousness and purity is so much better than defilement.

But you see, we have to acknowledge in the church, in our own lives and homes, we esteem the positional place of God is holy, but we ourselves don't love holiness as we ought. There's room for us to repent, to lament and hope, but also to rejoice because we have an example to follow, the Lord Jesus Christ.

That begs the question, what does it mean to abide? I think if you needed something to read on this glorious Sabbath afternoon, read John 15 and The Vine and the Branches, a very appropriate text. It's probably the locus classicus text of abiding in Christ.

To abide means to not depart. So in verse six, listen to what it says. He who says he abides, it's not the one who's abiding, the one who says he's abiding. It's like those errors I pointed out in the very beginning.

There are people who are saying I abide in God. I've experienced God. God is in me and I am in God, they might say. He counters that with his truth. He says he who says he abides in him also ought to walk just as he has walked.

To abide means to not depart. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and abiding means I don't depart from that truth. We recently talked about give me the old paths from Jeremiah. There's a path that Christ has trod ahead of us and we walk in that path.

We don't move to the right or the left. We do not depart. We continue to be present with him. We desire to maintain an unbroken fellowship with Christ. We want to stay and adhere to his party, his people, his purposes.

And Christians are said to be rooted in him, knit together to him by the spirit that they have received from him. So therefore, we cleave to him and hold fast to Christ. And maybe most strikingly and exciting to me when you kind of peer into this word and its usage in the New Testament, it is to abide in Christ is to have Christ exert his power in you.

That you would dwell in his presence and walk in his power. So it's not surface level. It's not superficial.

It's deep.

To abide is to go very deep with Christ and to be unshakable and unwavering in our devotion and our allegiance to him. The last word definition I need to give to you is the idea of walking. When I first became a Christian, I thought it was funny that people talked about the Christian walk.

I don't understand what that means. Kind of a strange kind of church jargon to the Hebrew mind, the scriptural mind, the way it's used in scripture. It is not the act of pedestrians. It's not just walking as we think of it.

To walk as he has walked, I want you to think about this, the righteous one, Jesus Christ, the righteous, walking in perfect obedience, submission to the father. To walk is the course and manner of life.

This makes sense because most people in the ancient world, their primary mode of transportation was walking. It's how they lived. It refers to conduct, how you conduct yourself. How do you regulate your life?

And for the Christian, it means to live a life that is conformed to the union that you have entered into with Christ. So how's your keeping? You're perfecting, you're abiding, you're walking. Some more material to help us understand the walking.

When you think about the Christian life as a walk, there's there's a path it's set forth in scripture. There's a purpose. It's to grow up into Christ's likeness. And there's a destination, which is complete sanctification and glorification at the end of things.

This walking as a Christian, and I'm asking you, imploring you to get out and walk as.

Christians.

This requires effort. Movement, action. The walking with God is not passive. We are passive in our salvation, but we are not passive in our sanctification.

We are active.

We must every day choose the path that we're going to walk on. There's a way in which to walk the path is a way of life, light, love, truth and righteousness. And I think the next one big part of why John is writing is we must continue on the path.

Repentance and new obedience gets us back on the path of righteousness. You say, I've blown it. I've not been walking with him. Well, today, start walking again. Using that, I was thinking about the Mahar girls and I was thinking about this and the idea of walking was fresh in my memory when a little baby girl was starting to walk.

She fell down on her little bottom and she got up again. She fell down and she got up again. The Christian life is an infant getting up and walking. They're stumbling, there's falling, but there is a resolve in that little child.

They don't even know it.

It's almost unconscious. They get up and they stand and they walk again. And so, too, we, as the Christians, as the followers of Christ, we must get up and walk. There's another thing, it's very important.

And DJ, you're going to find this disappointing. I say that only jokingly. You must have companions on the walk. We need to walk with God himself, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit, but we desperately need to walk with other believers.

We are to follow them as they follow Christ. Proverbs 13 says, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. Children, this is why, as parents, we tell you, be careful who you associate with and what material media you consume, because if you walk with the wise, you're going to be wise.

But the companion of fools will suffer harm. First, Peter, too, says for even here unto are you called because Christ also suffered for us. Leaving us an example that you should follow. And his steps abiding in Christ brings forth much fruit in us without him, we can do nothing.

We read it just a few weeks ago in Genesis 5, Enoch walked with God, Enoch walked with God and was no more for God took him. Colossians 2, therefore, just as you receive Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in him.

Rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving, walking in Christ in his manner after his way is nothing short or less than submitting to his lordship and his kingly office.

We love Christ. We love the idea of Christ conquering the nations. We say we love the kingship of Christ. We love postmillennial eschatology. It must accord if we believe that then we have to walk in his ways.

You see the disconnect. I love the holiness of God. Oh, it's what's so beautiful about him. I don't care so much about holiness. I love the kingship of Christ. I love his authority, his power. I have to walk in his way, some of the ways which Christ has walked as he's walked in wisdom.

He's walked in suffering, he's walked in the complete obedience to the law of God. He's walked in mercy toward the hurting. He walked rebuking the self-righteous Pharisees and the prideful. He walked with complete thanksgiving and complete joy.

He lived for the good of others, denying his own comfort. He walked in the light, a theme in our book. He taught others that they might teach others still. He reconciled men to God. He walked in humility.

He embodied in his person the fruit of the spirit. How many more things could we say about Christ? Do we love Christ? If we love him, we'll keep his word and we'll walk in his ways. The last thing I'd like to do is connect something to today.

The Existential Questions of Christian Living

I want to ask you a question. And I want you, these are rhetorical questions. I want you to think about it. Who am I? I'm a Christian. That's a cause of great rejoicing, thanksgiving. But the next question is really the thrust of our time today.

What should I do, therefore, that I'm a Christian? I should keep his word. I should walk in his ways. And if a Christian has kept his word and walks in his ways, what will his life be like? It'll be blessed.

It'll be joy filled. There will be rewards. He will have a purpose. He will have an aim. He'll have fulfillment. The love of God and its completion will be realized. And this way of living transforms our life on the path to glory.

In fact, there is a glory yet to be revealed in its fullness. But even now, for the people of God, it breaks through. Think about how useful we could be in the king's service, in our work, in our vocation, in our calling, if we keep his word and walk in his ways.

What about our marriages, our families, our relationships? How useful is this idea and application in those realms? And what about accomplishing a mission and setting forth a vision for ourselves and our families in the church?

What if a wonderful legacy? What if your children engraved on your headstone? He kept his word. He walked in his ways. These are existential questions. In philosophical inquiry, in particular, I'm going to think about the practical realm for us because of the pop psychology world in which we live in, in psychotherapy.

This idea of existential thought is found, of course, in philosophy and rhetoric and logic and psychology. I want you to think about there are four major fears in existentialism in relation to psychotherapy.

And I want you to think it's so amazing how there's a Christian answer clear to all of them. The first is death. Huge fear, apparently, in the psychotherapy realm, a fear of death. Is this a trouble for the Christian?

No, the Christian knows that Christ has come and he's brought life in that abundant and full. And not only that, he's brought resurrection and glorification. So what a different world we live in versus those who are in that world.

These are existential questions. The idea of what is my existence? What is the meaning of life? They're out there pondering these things in the church. The people of God have the answer, meaninglessness.

We have great purpose. These are the great fears of the world, a loss of freedom. The people of God have entered into the glorious liberty of Christ. And the last one, isolation. The Christian knows nothing of isolation.

We know communion with God and his people. How should I live? Who am I? What should I do? Keep his word. Walk as he walked. And enjoy the limitless blessing of communion with God and his people. Something to ponder as we approach the table now.

Please pray with me. Oh, Lord, we come to you and we see a lot of defect and shortcoming in our own performance. I pray that now in the power of your spirit, we'd see the glory of Christ, that we would see the perfection, the glory, the wonder of Christ.

And this would spur us on to love and good deeds. And because we love you and your holiness, we want to be holy. And because we love your word, we want to keep it. And because we love you, Lord Jesus, we ask that you would cause us to walk in your ways that our love and our devotion, our profession would not be duplicitous or hypocritical.

We ask all this in Jesus name.

Amen.