On Which Team?

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service.

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This is a message from the series called In the Light out of the Book of 1 John by Pastor Don Filsek. If you'd like more information about our church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch

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.com. Here's Pastor Don. Yeah, I just ask you guys to be praying for the country of Syria at this time.

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We've had some opportunities that have crossed our desk as the leadership of the church, some missions opportunities, and we want to be doing a better job of communicating what missions opportunities that we have out there that you can be praying for them.

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And right now, through... How many of you know Scott and Lindsay Gustafson? They've come here and they've spoke a couple times. They're ministers in the country of Jordan for a period of time.

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They're actually working in Grand Rapids now with a ministry called Closed Doors Ministry, and they are particularly working in the

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Muslim world. And a lot of things have been going on in Syria. A lot of persecution of Christians as civil war has taken over that country right now.

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Martial law and a lot of difficulties. So be in prayer for that and just be in prayer for us as a leadership in terms of how we financially support and what we financially support in that area, but we're pretty sure that we're going to send some funds to help out, particularly with some who have been injured because of the war and Christians that are going through a hard time, particularly there's a

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Christian orphanage that's in a hard way right now because of the civil war and also finances.

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So just be in prayer for them. And then we're going to jump into 1 John here.

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I want to introduce this message before the band comes to lead us. Have you ever considered that life is like a practice?

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Think about it in this terms, every behavior, every action, every conversation that we have, every interaction we have with others is moving us in a direction.

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Would you agree with me on that? It's forming us. It's shaping us. In one sense, every day of our lives, we are practicing towards something.

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And this morning, the disciple John is going to suggest that we can tell what team we are on by what we are practicing.

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Now think about it. If we just use the illustration of sports, sports teams, a baseball team doesn't spend a lot of time practicing their bump, set, spike, right?

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Do baseball teams go out and work on that, you know, get that down pat and work through that? Is anybody awake?

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Do baseball teams practice bump, set, spike? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I was like, do you guys know sports for a minute?

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You thought it was a rhetorical question. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Basketball players don't work a lot on their slap shots.

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A soccer coach is not so concerned with his team's ability to shoot free throws, right? Is that a concern for your soccer coach, how good you are at free throws?

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Obviously, that doesn't make a lot of sense. How many of you, if you watch and you observe a team practicing, you probably think you have a pretty good handle on what sport they play by observing them.

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If you were to go to their practice and watch them, would you know what sport they play? Yes. Yeah. For the most part.

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Okay. There might be some obscure sports out there you're kind of like holding out, not answering that one, kind of like, I don't know all sports in the world, but you'd have a pretty good idea.

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Now, is that the skeleton or is that the luge or what? I don't know. In our text this morning,

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John is going to say that our lives reflect what team we are on by what we are practicing.

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Only this practicing in our lives is so much more important than any sport. The practice of our lives, our behaviors, our actions are showing whether or not we are on God's team or on the side of his enemy, the devil.

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And John, just like he's prone to do, suggests that you can't really play for both teams. You're not able to be a double sport kind of person when it comes to life.

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You're on one team or you're on the other. In our text, maybe you've come to realize that throughout the book of 1

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John, in his letter he provides these encouragements and then will couple an encouragement with a pretty significant stern warning and that's exactly what he's going to do to us this morning.

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He's going to move us to the heights of rejoicing in the gift of God's grace and his love towards us and then he's going to couple that with a pointed reminder that down in the trenches of real life, we're not talking about Sunday mornings, we're talking about Monday morning, we're talking about throughout the day, we're talking about difficult meetings, down in the trenches of our real lives, we are showing we have received the gift of God's grace by our actions and those captured by the grace and love of God will be continuing in his life transforming power.

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So I want you to open to 1 John chapter 2, we're going to take the last two verses, chapter 2, 28 through verse 10 of chapter 3.

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So you can turn over to page 878, pull the Bible out of the seat back in front of you, clear to the back, 878, and then you can follow along as I read and that, if you don't own a copy of the

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English Standard Version of the Bible or you don't own a Bible, then I'd ask that you please take that one with you, it's our gift to you and we want everybody to have a copy of the word of God, but follow along as I read 1

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John 2, 28 through 3, 10. And now little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

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If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

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See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God and so we are.

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The reason why the world doesn't know us is that it didn't know him. Beloved, we are

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God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

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Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins and in him there is no sin.

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No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

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Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous.

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Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the

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Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

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By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

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Let's pray as Josh and Lee come to lead us in worship. Father, there is the potential for this to be a pretty heavy subject, a pretty heavy message just as we contemplate and consider which team we're on.

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The evidence can be kind of scary to see whether we're practicing righteousness or practicing sin.

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It just seems like such a fine line that John offers us, but the place where he begins, I ask for that to be the place where we begin in rejoicing and delighting in what amazing love has been given to us, that we could be called your children, that we could be adopted into your family, and that that's the springboard for this entire discussion about evidences is that ultimately it all comes down to our relationship with you through your

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Son, Jesus Christ, and that's foundational, and then the discussion about the evidences is what comes after.

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So Father, I pray that you would help us by opening our eyes by the power of your Spirit to delight and rejoice in the salvation that has been given to us through your

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Son, that nothing can snatch that away, but that indeed our lives will show evidence if we are indeed your children.

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And so, Father, I pray that as we have an opportunity to express worship to you in song, that you would help us to lift up our voices rejoicing to see you as you really are, high and exalted, majestic, glorious, but merciful, forgiving, and loving.

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I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thanks a lot to Josh and Lee for leading us in worship this morning.

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Grateful for your ministry. I encourage you to have your Bibles open and get comfortable. I know we just took a break, but remember at any time you can get up and get more coffee, get more juice, stretch out in the back if you need to, and then have your

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Bibles open to 1 John chapter 2, 28 through chapter 3, verse 10. I think it's just helpful for you to have that open and be able to kind of follow through the flow.

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I don't hand you an outline because the text is my outline, so you have that in front of you and you can actually follow along.

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But let me catch us up to speed kind of where we're at in the book of 1 John. John introduced us last week to the reality that a large portion of his church had defected to the belief that Jesus was not the

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Messiah, that he was not the Christ, he was not the chosen one. Now, I mean, I find that mind -boggling to think of a church like us and having a large group kind of just kind of put their foot down and say,

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Jesus isn't the Christ, and leave. Would that be pretty traumatic in the life of a church to have that happen? What do you think?

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Pretty difficult. So John and his church has faced a pretty significant thing, and as I said before, error is very rare to just kind of rear its ugly head all at once.

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It kind of comes in subtlety. Have you noticed that in your life? It's probably not that somebody stood up and shouted down John and said,

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Jesus isn't the Messiah, but probably what ended up happening over time and over a period of time is a group of people started to rally people to their cause and say, you know, this whole business that Jesus is exclusive, that he's the way, he's the

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Messiah, you know, all roads lead to God, don't they? And that probably started to creep in in some subtle ways to the point where they were like, he's not the

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Christ, there are multiple Christ, there are multiple pathways to God.

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Or maybe it even just crept in in the notion that, or the thought that Jesus is a good teacher, he's a good man.

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He's not, he wasn't the representative of God sent down from heaven to us, but he is, you know, kind of like a type of Christ or something, because he's just a good man, and we ought to just follow his example or live like him.

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So John is set about to try to encourage his congregation, his people, who remained in the church to stand strong on the gospel, to let the gospel be rooted in them, that which they heard from the beginning, the reality that our relationship with God is based on a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that to know the

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Father is to know the Son, and to know the Son is to know the Father. And so there is only one way to the

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Father, only one way to a healed relationship, and that is through the gospel, the good news that Jesus has provided that.

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And then he also encourages them to trust the Holy Spirit, the anointing that they received when they came to faith in Christ.

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He says, trust that, that the Holy Spirit is alive in you, and that the Holy Spirit provides knowledge through the scriptures.

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So get into the scriptures and trust the Holy Spirit to lead you. And then finally, he said last week, go ahead and look at verse 27.

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Last week, he said, but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie, just as it, the anointing by the

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Spirit to the Word of God and knowledge, it has taught you, abide in him.

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And that's the last injunction that he left to the church, those who have remained. The last thing he said to them was abide in him.

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I mentioned last week that John has a tendency to write in kind of a stream of consciousness. It's like he's writing his thoughts down, like he's almost kind of like a journal, like as you're writing, you just kind of, whatever thought pops into your mind, you're going to write it down.

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And how many of you ever just have that, like you're writing a list of groceries and then that thing on the list brings something else to mind, and so you just kind of follow that tack?

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Well, he's going to expound on this last phrase, abide in him, and now he's going to take that and run with it.

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So now in our verse 28, we see, and now little children abide in him.

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He addresses his beloved church one more time as little children. How many times have we heard him say that to his church?

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That seems like his favorite title for them, his little children. I mentioned that that's not condescending, but it's a term of love and care and concern.

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He feels like, in a sense, he's like a father caring for his flock, caring for his children, and so he senses a sense of responsibility for them as well.

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In this, he's going to add a reason for them to remain in Christ. He says in verse 28, and now little children abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

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John has in his mind two potential responses to the return of Jesus Christ for his church.

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He says there are those who will stand in confidence, as if to say, come Lord Jesus, come now.

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Those who at his return will stand in confidence in him, and then there are those who will shrink back at his coming, as if even to maybe say, don't come so soon, don't come quickly.

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Right now I would guess that if we're honest, if we're all honest and we were to take a survey here in our church, an anonymous survey, and we were just to have you vote right now on how you feel, or will you stand in confidence at the return of Christ, or will you shrink back in shame, that we would have some varied responses.

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Would you agree with me on that? That right now in your own heart, you can kind of process that and think, how would I answer that question?

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How enthusiastic and excited am I about the return of Jesus Christ? Do I have a sense in which

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I'm going to stand before him in confidence, or do I have a sense in which I kind of shrink back even from the thought of his return?

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Like even some of us in our minds and in our hearts are right now kind of going, even just when you start talking about the return of Christ, I'm like,

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I hope he doesn't come back in the next month, because I've got some things I've got to take care of and some business to deal with, and I mean, you know, like a little bit more distance between me and that specific sin before Jesus returns, right?

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You getting what I'm saying? So it's an issue of confidence. If we were honest with ourselves, there would be a variety of different responses.

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Some of us in reality have been practicing, using that athletic term for our lives, some of us have been practicing things that have sapped our joy regarding the return of Christ.

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That we don't experience the notion of the return of Christ as a joyful thing, because sin has owned us in a way that we're kind of like that.

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How many of you know that sin puts a damper on joy? Did you notice? Have you noticed that in your life? Go ahead and raise your hand.

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Have you noticed that? Okay. All right. We're on the same page with that. It does. It diminishes our joy.

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And so some even now are shrinking back from this notion of his returning, while others are saying, please, Lord, return today.

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Now I want to point out, hear me carefully. This is an issue of our confidence.

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Confidence is a feeling word about yourself, okay? It's about how you feel about an event, right?

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Shame is a feeling word, right? It's about how you feel in your heart. I want to point out that what we're talking about is your sense of thinking about the return of Christ, not how it's actually going to go down.

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So the question I want to ask is, is Jesus going to shame anyone who is his child at his return?

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But you're going to live your life fearing him. You're going to live your life feeling like that. Are you getting what

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I'm saying? Does our sin impact our confidence? Oh yeah, you better believe it does.

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And so it's about the way we feel about this, not as if to say that Jesus is going to shame you when he returns if you don't live in a certain way.

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How many of you have a tendency to think the worst case scenario, and then the worst case scenario rarely happens?

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Or how many of you have these blocks in your brain where it's kind of like you go, I know that in reality that's probably not the likely outcome, but, and then you still go on with anxiety over that issue?

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Anybody ever do that? Okay. How many of you can say this and you knew this before I even said it, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who aren't in Christ Jesus.

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Did you know that? It's a glorious truth. Cling to that. If you are in Christ, there will be no condemnation at his return.

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Beautiful thing. Glorious thing. But there's a difference between knowing that here and feeling that here.

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Would you agree with me? And so that's kind of the difference that I think John is driving for here. There's a way of life that leads itself towards confidence in the return of Christ.

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And there is a way of life and what we practice that can lead us to shrinking back in fear at the return of Christ.

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And that's what John is dealing with here. Now John sets up, our coach, coach

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John, the disciple, sets up the first practice schedule for us here and he says, those who have come to know

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Jesus, recognize his righteousness. If you are in Christ, if you're in a relationship with him and you've given your life over to him, then you are already beginning to recognize his righteousness and seeing him as holy and blameless.

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Now, we know Jesus as our standard and John's already mentioned earlier in the text that we seek as followers of Jesus to walk as he walked, improving in Christ -likeness day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, a progress of our lives of looking more like Christ.

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And John goes on to say, those who practice righteousness prove themselves to be born of him.

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They are proving in a sense by practicing righteousness, they are showing and demonstrating that ultimately they belong to him and they are in his family.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? They're on his team. By their practice, they're showing that, they're demonstrating it.

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Now, if you're anything like me, then something kind of troubles you when you read this in verse 29, if you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

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So am I supposed to assume that everybody who on the outside, external of their lives, looks righteous is reborn?

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That they're in with Christ? Is anybody's mind turned there too, with me? So you kind of go, wait a minute, is it possible to fake righteousness?

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How many of you think, how many, raise your hand if you think it's possible to fake righteousness? It is.

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You can pretty up the outside, beautify the behavior and try to act in a certain way. John isn't addressing that.

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I want him to, but he's not going to address that. And so here's I think the logic behind what

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John is saying. Do you want to live your life in a way that you're second -guessing everybody? I mean, look around right now.

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Why don't you just look around at each other? You want to live in a way in the church that you're second -guessing everybody around you and kind of going, well,

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I bet they're faking it. I bet they're faking the Christian life. I bet they're not in with Christ. If you see their behavior, do you think it's reasonable to assume that when you see righteous behavior in another person, that it's fair for you to say,

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I'm going to guess that they're born again. I'm going to guess that they've received a new life in Christ.

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Have any of you ever met somebody, maybe a waitress or somebody out in the community around society or a new coworker or something, and you kind of just were like,

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I think that they're a Christian. I think that they're a Christian. I see them. I'm observing them even just for a short period of time and I'm going, there's something about this person.

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And that's what he's getting at here is that there's going to be some evidence in a person's life that they are in with Christ, if they indeed are, have been born of him.

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But he's not addressing the fake righteousness that we know that Jesus addressed with the Pharisees. I mean, we got ample texts in scripture to deal with that, don't we?

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I mean, there's a lot of texts, but this isn't one of them, but there's a lot of texts that talk about faking righteousness and being only concerned with the minutia of the details of the law and trying to clean the outside of the cup without cleaning the inside.

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And we need a new birth. So it's reasonable when we see others practicing righteousness that we think, wow, there's somebody who's been born again.

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I want to suggest this to you. Practicing is, practicing righteousness is more than helping someone for personal gain.

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It is not practicing. And I think this is the big delineator between practicing righteousness versus faking righteousness is what is the goal?

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The goal of faking righteousness is to make who look good? Here, it is self -serving.

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The practicing righteousness that John is talking about, who gets the glory for that? God, Jesus, good answers.

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So I would say this, practicing righteousness is more than helping someone for any level of personal gain.

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Practicing righteousness looks like serving others like Jesus did at the cost of personal loss for the glory of Jesus.

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Jesus for the glory of Christ. It looks like forsaking sin and doing

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God's will and not my own for the glory of Jesus. And that is something that cannot be done by those who do not believe in Christ.

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Did you know it's impossible to practice this type of righteousness if you are not in Christ? Do you know why? Because you're not going to honor him who you don't believe in.

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You get it? Is it possible to bring honor and glory to Christ and seek to honor him when you don't even believe that he matters?

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No. But John had clearly spelled out, you can go back into his gospel to find him clearly spell out the concept of the new birth.

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Very early in his gospel, in chapter 3, a guy comes to him by night, a religious leader named

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Nicodemus. Any of you remember the story? Nicodemus sneaks in at night, talks with Jesus, like, what does it take to be okay with the

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Father? What does it take to have a, you know, and how good do I have to be to be okay with God?

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And he says, you need to be born again. That's where we, that's the first place we encounter this concept of a new birth, as at least that clearly explained.

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And I'd recommend that you go back maybe sometime this week and read that account in the gospel of John, chapter 3, and check it out and see if you're taking notes.

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Just jot that down and go over it later. But it's really cool to just see how Jesus explains that new birth to Nicodemus and the interaction that they have.

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But here in 1 John 3, 1, we are going to find that John explodes with joy in explaining this notion of the new birth.

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So he mentions it at the end of chapter 2, verse 29, he says, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

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Another way of saying born again, born of the spirit, born of the Lord, born into God's family, so to speak.

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And then he goes on in verse 1 of chapter 3, see what kind of love the

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Father has given to us that we should be called children of God. He's going on to expound a little bit on this and the translators of the

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ESV, they do a great job. I love the ESV, but certainly they don't, no translation is perfect in its expression, but they miss the exclamation point in this text.

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There needs to be two different exclamation points in the text. It reads like this, you know, see what kind of love, behold what kind of love, check out what kind of love the

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Father has given to us. It's an amazing kind of love. John is going over the top to express this.

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What kind of love? How much has he expressed this kind of love? That we should be called the children of God.

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Has he established that we're sinners? Has he established that we're broken and messed up people?

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And he says, by the way, if you're not willing to admit that, then you're lying, so that's messed up and broken too, right?

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And we have been called his children. He's adopted us into his family.

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He's admitted we all sin, we're broken, and he's spoken now in terms that what we need to do is we need to practice righteousness, but he wants to make sure that we're grounded fully in the gospel before we dive ahead into a deep discussion of sin.

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He wants to make sure that we're tethered firmly to the idea of God giving us a gift of love and adopting us into his family and that through Jesus Christ, we have salvation first and foremost, before we launch out into this discussion of evidences of whether or not we have that or not.

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So he starts off by telling us there's this new birth that's available. There is a new life that is available for all.

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It's a gift from God. The Father has given this love to us, a gift, and this love takes the form of adoption.

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It takes the form of the Father, God Almighty, creator of the universe, bringing us into his household.

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Amazing. And we are now heirs in the household of God.

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We are under the protection of his roof. We have been brought onto his team.

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Like when the teams were being divided up, he picked you. That takes me back to a place in middle school that's not comfortable for me.

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Okay? Some of you can relate. Others of you were good at catching and kicking when you were kids. I wasn't.

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Oh, I guess we'll take Don, last one. Well, there's a dog over here. We take him.

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He's probably better at kicking. Yeah, it was rough. And maybe two or three of you can relate to what

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I'm talking about. The rest of you are super awesome athletes. Divided up the teams, and he picked you.

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That's amazing. And we are not in this text, John goes, you know what, yeah, he loved us so much that he has called us his children, but you know what?

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He hasn't just called us his children, so you are, exclamation point.

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Not just that he's given you a title, but he has literally brought you into his family.

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You are his children. And here's the thing, is that John knew his audience. He knew who he was writing to, those faithful who had remained through the storms and the tempest of a church split and brokenness and all this stuff, and he writes to them with encouragement and says,

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I have confidence that you indeed are children of God. Confidence in that.

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But he goes on to say, as children of God, we run up against a problem with this world. The reason why the world doesn't know you, doesn't know us, is that it did not know him.

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Having become children of God, we begin to look more and more like our father. We begin to adopt more and more of his family values.

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We begin to roll more and more like Jesus. We begin to look strange to the world around us.

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The more we adopt God's values over the world's values, our practices don't look like their team's practices.

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The world doesn't know our father as revealed by his son, and neither then do they know us because we begin to look like him.

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A true follower of Jesus who loves him and practices for his team will look strange to the world.

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They will. Some of us, is that kind of an uncomfortable thought? Like how many of you, I like to be liked.

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I like people to think I'm a good guy. So let's take a quick application break on that.

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How many of you would just be honest and say, I like to fit in. I like to fit in.

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Not a rhetorical question. I like to fit in. Okay? I don't want to be offensive to others.

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Agree or disagree? Agree? Want to be kind to others and have them like me?

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I'm telling you that honestly as your pastor, I want to be liked. I do. And to be quite honest,

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John isn't saying here that a Christian is to have the stated goal of making others dislike them or be uncomfortable.

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I think that a lot of, I mean, in all honesty, I think that a lot of the way that churches have rolled down through the ages and the way that some churches act and behave, it's as if they set out with the goal of offending the world.

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Like that's the, I mean, if you're not offensive, then you're not getting it. Well, no, the thing that we're driving for is what?

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Practicing righteousness. That's the goal. Let the chips fall where they may on the way the world responds to that.

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And John here is giving us some indication of how the world's going to respond to practicing righteousness. They're not going to understand it.

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It's going to be confusing to them. What John is saying is that if you practice righteousness, if you shine out the family values that are consistent with being adopted in God's family, if you act like a child of God, you will be in some sense confusing to those engaged in the world's practices.

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You will. You getting it? There'll be a sense of confusion about you, at least mystery.

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If there's nobody who finds you confusing, if there is nobody who has ever contradicted your values in the world, if you never find anybody put out by your thoughts and opinions regarding truth, you might offend people on things that you ought not to be offending them on, but I'm talking about when it comes to truth, then

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John is going to suggest that you consider which team you're on. Which team am I on? If everything in my life regarding the world and unbelievers around me is all just peachy keen and everything is fine and fun, is that a logical question to ask?

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Which family am I in? Because I fit really well in this family, there's no problems there.

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There are going to be problems with the world if you are genuinely adopting and practicing righteousness.

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In verse 2, John reminds us that we are children of God now.

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This is currently true of us. If you are in Christ, if you've asked

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Him to save you, then you are God's child now, but even now we are not fully what we will become.

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We are not what we will become, and so there's this tension in our lives between what we know to be true of us, child of God, adopted into His family, but not fully in my inheritance yet.

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Not righteous as He is righteous, but shooting for it, aiming for it, desiring it, hungering for that righteousness.

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But when will we be what we are to become? When will we be in our inheritance?

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When will we have finally the righteousness that we're seeking? The text tells us when

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Jesus appears, we will be transformed into His likeness. John here is building a sense of anticipation into his message.

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There is a glorious day coming when those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied.

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Is anybody looking forward to that glorious day when the longing of your heart to be right with God and righteous and walk with Him in purity and in truth is actually real and true and accurate, and the inheritance is yours.

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There's a day coming, a glorious day, when practice will be done. We will no longer practice righteousness, but we will be righteous.

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We'll be righteous as He is righteous. And everyone who has placed their hope in Him, placed their hope where?

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In Him, in Christ, purifies Himself as He is pure.

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The purifying here is synonymous with practicing righteousness that was mentioned earlier. That process of purifying is the process of practicing righteousness.

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And everyone who has their hope in Jesus recognizes that Jesus is the standard.

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Not the world as our standard. Not just a little bit better than the world as our standard.

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Not better than our neighbors as the standard. Not just better than others in the church as our standard.

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But using the illustration that I've used for a couple of weeks now, the bow and the arrow and shooting towards a target, what is the bullseye of the

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Christian life? The purity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Are we going to achieve that? Has John already said, we all have sin, we all fall? He used the word fall short, which is like shooting the arrow we're aiming for.

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But does what you're aiming for matter? It does. It does. That you're aiming for the righteousness of God matters.

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I mean, falling short is another issue altogether. But God forbid that we should, every arrow falls short so we just move the bullseye.

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Right? We just lower the standard a little bit. So boy, I'm a really good shot now. I can hit anything five yards this side of the target.

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So we'll just paint the bullseye on the ground where most of my arrows are. As a matter of fact, we'll just leave the arrows that I've already shot there and just paint it around so it looks like I did a really good job.

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But isn't that what we often do? I mean, we laugh, but it's like we shift the standard. Well, compared to other people,

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I'm doing okay. Isn't that what that looks like? What is it that we're aiming for? In our sights should be the holiness of God, and we ought to keep it there.

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Not growing cynical because we don't achieve it, but keep the standard high. Keep it out there, the righteousness and purity of Jesus Christ.

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Everyone who has placed their hope in him purifies himself as he is pure.

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He is the standard. If you're his child, your goal in your heart will be the desire of the purity of Jesus Christ.

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But everyone then, he goes on to say, everyone who makes a practice of sinning is also practicing lawlessness or rebellion.

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I like the word rebellion better than the translation lawlessness. The word lawlessness in our translation sounds to our ears more like a legal term.

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So as if John wants to say that when you sin, you're breaking the law. That's, I don't think, the heart of what he's trying to get at.

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The word would be better translated rebellion. That gets to the heart of the matter of what's going on. This word lawlessness or rebellion is most often associated with two key characters.

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Matter of fact, almost any context that you find this word, either the Antichrist is mentioned or Satan is mentioned.

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And here in our context, both are. So we've already talked about Antichrist last week, and he's already brought him into the picture.

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And then now he talks about Satan or the devil in this text. Paul, the apostle, one of his favorite terms for the

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Antichrist, he calls him this in 1 Thessalonians, he calls him the man of lawlessness. And he uses this very same

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Greek word, anomia. The rebellious one. One who is coming at the end of times who is rebellious.

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And then Satan receives that title also. The lawless one. The rebellious one.

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I think that what John is getting at here, because he speaks of Antichrist and the devil in this immediate context, is that when you make a practice of sinning, you are showing what team you're on.

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You are showing yourself to be on team rebellion. You are showing yourself to be on team lawless.

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That's your team. The one who makes a practice of sinning is showing what team they're on.

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And he even states it explicitly. So look down at verse 8 with me for a second. He goes on and what he's stating implicitly here, he says explicitly, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the, what's the text say?

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Is of the devil. That's right. So we have here in our text a contrast between practicing righteousness and practicing sin.

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John has already said that we all have sin, right? Has he made that abundantly clear? So how many of you kind of want to know, like you're kind of at this point where you're like, can we hurry up and define what practicing sin looks like?

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Because I know that I have sin, but how do I know when I've crossed the line to actually practicing sin? Because when you sin, do you sin because you really hate it, but you just drug into it and boy, kicking and screaming, you just go sin?

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Or do you sin because there's something in it that's appealing to you? There's something that's appealing about sin to the human heart, isn't there?

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And so when have I crossed that line to where I'm actually practicing sin versus just committing a sin from time to time?

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What's the difference? Like I said, John has already said that we have sin and he included believers and even himself in the statement that we have, present tense, sin.

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And if we say we do not have sin, we're lying. We're lying. But John did not say that we all practice sinning.

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And he never says that. He doesn't hold out this, you know, we all have this practice of sin going on.

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John is pretty clear that for the believer there is not a practicing of and perfecting of sin. And here's the issue.

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Bottom line, we as followers of Jesus Christ, we as the family of God, we as those who have been born of God through Jesus cannot ever be okay with sin.

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We can't be okay with it. We can't make peace with it. The one who makes peace with their sin has a serious question in front of them.

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Which team am I on? Nobody who is born of God puts sin on their calendar.

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Okay, it's not an appointment for next Tuesday. I'm going to go do this. Making provision for it and planning for it and perfecting it and practicing it like an athlete perfects their skill.

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Like a runner who's going to do a marathon, what do they do? They go out and they practice running, right?

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They spend time out on the street running or out at the track doing speed work. But they're honing their skills.

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That kind of practice is not possible. We're going to see that by the time we get down to verse 9.

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It is not possible for the one who is born of God. They don't make a practice of it.

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We don't make a practice of it. Why? Because Jesus came to destroy sins, to take them out like the garbage.

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There is no peace with sin in Jesus. He is pure and in Him there is no sin.

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And as I'm talking, does this sermon feel kind of hot like the flames are close?

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Does it? Honestly? This is tight.

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It doesn't feel like there's a lot of wiggle room that John is providing us here. Would you agree with me on that? There's a potential for some significant conviction.

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I want you to let the Holy Spirit have His way in your heart as we're talking about these things. These are some heavy things.

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And I recognize that there's all level of conscience in this room. I struggled for years with assurance of my salvation.

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And then I'd hear a sermon like this and I'd be like, oh, I'm going to hell. You know what

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I'm saying? And so some of you are just kind of like, I mean, if you have a more sensitive conscience, you're just kind of like, oh man, I'm going to go get saved again.

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Okay? I hope you can understand that I'm trying to be faithful to preaching this text.

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It's not an easy text. This is not easy. So John says, nobody who remains in Jesus keeps on sinning.

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In context, it's not a stretch to say that John is both clear that those who remain in Christ do have sin, but they do not remain in that sin.

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They don't keep it. They don't practice it. And as nuanced as that is, I'm trying to be faithful to John's message here.

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I can't soften it and say, hey, everyone has pet sins. You have a pet sin.

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I have a pet sin. We all have pet sins. John's not giving us any room for that. He's saying no. The follower of Christ does not feed pet sins.

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They don't have that. The one who has been born of God does not practice and feed it and keep it and harbor it and nourish it and put it on their schedule and make time for it and make provision for it.

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But I also cannot say that everyone who's committed a sin this morning is a child of the devil. It doesn't say that, right?

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It doesn't necessarily resolve the tension very well for us. Here's where I think is the safest place for us to land in what

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John is trying to communicate to us. John is pouring on heavy and hot a hatred for sin.

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That's what he wants us to highlight. If you are in Christ, if you are born in his family, if you have been adopted into those family values and into that lifestyle and you are growing in Christ -likeness,

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Christ who came to do away with the works of the devil, Christ who came to take out sin like the garbage, if you're really in his family, then you are going to be dealing with sin with a hot and heavy hatred for it.

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When you see it in your life, you are going to want to deal with it immediately. If you're practicing sin like an athlete practices their sport, and you are showing which team you're on, you don't know the coach, he says at the end of verse 6, and you haven't even ever seen him.

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Look at verse 6, no one who abides in him keeps on sinning, no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

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Pretty heavy statements. In verse 6, I want to point out that the solution to sin is remaining in Christ.

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It is not making one more promise to never sin. The solution is not going to a seminar. The solution is not an internet filter.

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Although those things could be helpful, right? In the battle against sin, could those things be helpful? Yes. But so often

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I've found in my life that when I'm trying to battle sin, I find myself focusing on the sin.

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But when I lift my eyes up from my own battle and I look to Jesus, it's in Him that I find what my heart has been searching for.

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It's in Him that I find fulfillment. It's in Him that I find forgiveness. It's in Him that I find peace.

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It's in Him that I find victory. I would dare say that all sin is a result of seeking satisfaction in something that cannot satisfy the human heart.

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Seeking for satisfaction in that which will never satisfy us. It's futile and just frankly stupid.

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Isn't it? So in that sense, all sin is a case of misplaced passions and desires.

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It's not the desire or the passion that's the problem. I think the church has gotten that wrong over the years and it's tried to subdue passion and it's tried to subdue desire and try to get us just kind of like even keeled and all just like robots and that's not the solution.

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It's the way that we seek to fulfill those desires and those passions that are the issue and the problem.

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And turning to Jesus is the only way to really ultimately fulfill our heart's desire. It's only as we remain in Him that joy will really be ours.

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That we're free to go out and live a life with joy, battling sin certainly, a heavy battle ahead of us, but with joy recognizing

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His salvation. In verse 7, John corrects an extremely contemporary issue for the American church. In verse 7, he says this,

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Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practice righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. If you think about this, on a spectrum from holiness on one side and then sinful living for yourself on the other, where is the

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American church in general on that scale? This is rhetorical.

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I do this all the time. I ask you some rhetorical questions and you're like, do I raise my hand?

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Do I not raise my hand? I'm sorry, it just happens to me while I'm up here. On a spectrum, holiness on one side, sinful on the other, where is the church and probably your upbringing has some impact on where you'd put that on the scale and all of this, but let me suggest to you that I think we swing the pendulum between those two.

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It often runs along generational lines. We have one generation with a lot of rules, don't smoke, don't drink, don't dance, and by the way, don't have any fun.

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And so kids who grow up in that environment, the handful that still have some semblance of faith at the end of that, swing the pendulum the other way towards grace at the expense of practicing righteousness.

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And then those kids are raised up to go, you know what? I don't know, my parents believed anything. They swing the pendulum back here.

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I feel much more comfortable with rules and regulations than back over here. You see how generationally we swing the pendulum back and forth?

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And John here, I see balance in his text. He's balancing some things for us.

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He says, behold, what manner of love the Father has given to us. What's he talking about there? Grace, grace, a gift from God, his love and adoption.

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But then he doesn't leave us alone with that, but he goes on to say whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous.

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You see that? Grace first, and then the walk, then the practice.

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Think of grace like the signing on the team, right?

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You can try to fake practice like I made the soccer team, but if I didn't make the soccer team, I'm practicing, but I'm not really practicing for the team.

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I'm not going to get to play. Are you getting what I'm saying? So grace and the adoption and the faith is the initiation to the team.

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Hey, the coach says, I'm on the team. And then you get to work practicing, right?

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He goes on to say, as a matter of fact, if someone says that they are in with God but continue to practice sin as if to get better at it, it's giving evidence that they are children of the devil.

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And Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and to do away with sin. And so how can anybody say, I'm on team

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Jesus and keep practicing the sin which he came to destroy? How can anyone remain in rebellion and in league with Satan and continue to suggest that they are in with Jesus?

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Those who are reborn have the seed of the Spirit alive in them. They cannot keep advancing in their sin because the

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Spirit will convict you. The Spirit will hold you and will provide a way out.

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Verse 9 is possibly the most direct statement of the relationship of the believer to sin in the entire Bible.

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Read it with me. Look down at it. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed, his word, his

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Spirit abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.

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That phrase, cannot keep sinning, has been highly debated.

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It took me a significant portion of my week studying just that phrase to try to get down to the bottom of what do we have going on here.

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And I believe that I'm on firm ground when I say that the life of one who is truly a child of God is one of dealing seriously, directly, and dramatically with sin in your life wherever you find it.

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I'm talking about you. I'm talking about your response now. Now, will the child of God have a revulsion to other people's sin as well?

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Yeah, but that's not what we're talking about. So no elbows, jabbing the person next to you, none of that business.

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Okay, it is about doing business with your own heart and your own soul. So once again, we want to run out from here.

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I think this is our tendency. We're a busy culture. We're like, God, just give me three things that I could do to run out from here and immediately do to deal with my sin.

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We may be tempted to leave here and come up with a seven -step plan to get rid of sin, and certainly Jesus would be pleased if we wanted to practice righteousness.

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Would you agree with me on that? But we as a culture are so busy that we're just looking for the quickest, shortest way to get this done.

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Can you give me, Don, the pathway to the quickest, simplest way to assurance of my salvation, and we could just go on from there?

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I was reading something in a book this week called Surfing for God, and the chapter was kind of talking in a sense about how much we hate to spend time with ourselves, that the

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American culture and psychologically, we do not like silent time. We're scared of it.

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Can any of you relate to that? I'm alone for 30 seconds. The radio is on.

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I'm playing Candy Crush. I'm waiting in line for something. It's like I'm doing something because you know what?

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If I am silent for a moment, I have to have a conversation with myself, and some of us don't like to talk to ourselves very much.

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We don't like what we see. We don't like to see how much we disagree with ourselves. You know what

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I'm talking about. I think you can relate. Some of you are like, yeah, Don, you've got issues, and that would be true too.

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Scripture says that, so we're right, but I would suggest to you that we use this passage in the way that John wanted us to.

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He's not saying go out and practice righteousness. That is not his application. This is about diagnosing your heart.

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That requires some introspection. That requires some silence.

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That requires some process in your mind to have a discussion with yourself and to linger on this before we rush out to action.

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That we genuinely deal with what John is saying. Diagnosis. He uses terms like evidence that show that he is wanting us to reflect on what is true of us.

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What evidence do you see in your life for which team you are on? He says you're going to be practicing righteousness, working at it and honing it because it comes quite natural to you because the

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Spirit is alive in you, pressing you in that direction. Or you're going to be practicing sin, and that's going to come quite easy to you, and that's going to be on your schedule and on your calendar, and you're going to be improving at it and finding better ways to hide it and better ways to deal with it and better ways to keep it as your pet and feed it, but nobody will.

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Are you getting what I'm saying? What is true of you?

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And this is fundamental. If you're hearing this text makes you nervous, maybe you hear the phrase practicing sin and you go that sounds more like me, and the phrase practicing righteousness seems far away from you.

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Let me say this to you and make sure that you're clear on this, that practicing righteousness even incorporates the way we handle sin, so again we're not talking about sinless perfection here in this concept of practicing righteousness is not the idea of having arrived or being perfect.

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He said already we are not that which we will become. Is he acknowledging that we haven't arrived, that we're not perfect yet?

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He sees that here. So practicing righteousness even has a way like in the

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Old Testament law, there were laws about what to do when you sin, right? How to make a sacrifice and how to do all that.

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Well there are ways that as believers we deal with sin. What did he say in 1 John 1, 9? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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So he's made a provision. He's saying practicing righteousness even looks like the way you deal with sin.

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When it comes to your mind, do you know what your first thought is if you're a child of God? It's not hide, it's confess before my

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Father. Expose my heart to the light and say, God help me, forgive me, cleanse me, purify me, change my mind, transform me, give me your heart

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Jesus. Let me walk more like you tomorrow than I have today. That's the heart of one who's on team

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Jesus. That's one who is in his family and then born of him. Short accounts with our sins.

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The solution to this problem though is receiving the love of the Father. If you're here and you're kind of questioning and going,

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I don't know if I passed this test. The solution is not then go out and make yourself look more righteous.

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The answer is come to the love of the Father, known through Jesus Christ. Find your hope and rest and peace in Christ and then remain there.

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Stay there. It's all about relationship. This is not about the absence of sin in our lives, but it's more about the presence of a life transforming relationship with our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If you're here and you're recognizing, welling up within you a reasonable fearfulness, and it's possible.

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You're sitting here and you're going, I'm sweating right now. I mean this is real and we're dealing with this and we're saying, which team am

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I on? I'm confused. I'm confused if you're there and you're saying that.

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Maybe you're here and you even this morning have uncovered an unconfessed sin in your life. The Holy Spirit is speaking to you and identifying.

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You know what? You haven't dealt with that. You haven't confessed that. You haven't had a short account with me.

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You have been nurturing things that you ought not to nurture. I'm going to ask you to take a step this morning.

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Now I originally, even as I was writing this, I was kind of like, you know what I think I'm going to do? I think

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I'm going to have an altar call. Have we ever had an altar call here before? No, not really. And I thought about that and then

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I thought about the logistics of that. And I thought about trying to pass out communion if anybody comes forward. And then

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I thought about the nature of the potential confessions that could come out of this. And I thought about someone standing here talking to me about sin while everybody else is right here.

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And I thought, you know what I think I'm going to do? I think I'm just going to invite people to come to my office after communion.

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So we're going to get a chance to take communion. And I do. I want you to take a step. If you're sitting here and you're struggling and you're wrestling and you go,

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I don't know which team I'm on, but I'm telling you what, my life looks a lot more like practicing sin than it looks like practicing righteousness.

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And this whole new birth thing, I'm not sure that that's true of me. Then please, I'm pleading with you to come and talk with me.

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Or maybe you're here and you're going, you know what? I have not kept a short account with God regarding my sins.

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And there are things that I've started to give myself over to. I'm confident that I'm a child of God, but you know what?

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I recognize that I have held on to things and for my own sake just tried to make myself look better than I am.

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And in humility, you would come and I'll pray with you. What I'm going to do is after communion,

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I'm going to go sit in my office. I'm just going to sit there and pray. And anybody who would like to come and talk with me, the door is going to be open.

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You can come in, talk with me. And if it's one, that's great. We'll sit and talk.

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If it ends up being two, three, four or more, then we'll just set up some appointments and we'll get together and we'll talk about things.

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And I recognize that some things may be private, but I'll pray with each one of you if you're willing to come and talk.

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That's going to be open to you this morning. Sin is a serious issue.

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And knowing which team you're on is, I think, fair to say the most important thing about you, knowing where you stand in regard to Jesus Christ.

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Sin is a serious issue and we cannot take it lightly. It's such a serious issue that nothing less than the crucifixion of the

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Son of God could provide a way of forgiveness and cleansing for us. And so we come to communion to remember that forgiveness.

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And again, I encourage you that after communion, my office door will be open, I'll be in there, ready to pray with anybody, talk with you, talk about a relationship with Jesus Christ.

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But let's not be a people who kid gloves sin, but equally let's remember to rejoice in the great love that has been shown to us.

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The love of God and the hope of God is not dependent upon our ability to practice righteousness, but practicing righteousness is a gift to those who are on his team.

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Let's pray. Father, thank you for the immense love that you've poured out on your people.

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Such crazy, awesome, glorious love that has given us the title, your child of God.

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That we've been adopted into your family, that we've been brought in, that we are under the protection of your roof and that those who are in faith with you are practicing righteousness.

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Father, if there are any here who are just riding that fence and are unsure and they're just not quite solid on the relationship with you and being born into your family,

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Father, I ask that you'd move in their hearts to take the very bold step of coming and talking with me. Father, I pray that by your spirit you would help us to even rejoice as we have an opportunity to take communion together to reflect on the method by which we've been adopted through the blood of Jesus Christ and through his cleansing and forgiveness and his substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf, that he has covered our sins by his blood and that his penalty, that our penalty, he took on himself.

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He who knew no sin and deserved no death, deserved no punishment, took our death for us. So, Father, I ask that you would help our hearts to rejoice and for those who need to do business with you this morning, that they would have the boldness to come and speak with me.