Evidence of Faith Part 1 (1 John 2:5)

Evidence of Faith in 1 John 1:5-2:5

Right. Good morning, everyone. You can make your way in. We'll get started with Sunday school this morning. Good morning, everyone. Like our monsoon weather this morning. Walked in like 50 yards and got soaked.

We're gonna be in the book of 1 John. Before we get started, let's go to the Lord with a word of prayer. Father, we just praise your name. We just are so privileged to be able to come into a place and worship you and to open up the scriptures and just really get the pure truth of who you are.

And it's nice to be able to have a guiding light to be able to lead us in all of truth and how to live our lives for the glory of you and be able to encourage other people to do the same thing. It's just a blessing, Lord.

We thank you for the cross and the ability to come to you in faith and repentance. And by doing that, to be able to have eternal life in you. And that this world definitely is not our home, but that one day we're going to be with you in paradise.

And what a blessing that will be. Father, I just pray that you'll give us wisdom today as we look into the scriptures and that the word would be rightly divided and that everything that we say and do would glorify your name in Jesus name.

Amen. So we're going to read, start in 1 John 1. We'll just read down to chapter 2 verse 6. So if you've got your copy of God's word, just open it up to 1 John chapter 1, and we'll get going. John says this, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us.

What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing these things 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 those of the whole world.

By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. The one who says I have come to know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

By this we know that we are in him. The one who says he abides in him, ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. That's our passage for today. We're going to be looking specifically at verse 5 of chapter 2.

The Church in Asia Minor and the Reality of False Belief

Because when we left off last week, we were dealing with a variety of select verses to kind of show more of what the church was facing in Asia Minor. And we talked a little bit about the savage wolves, and Gnosticism, and those kinds of things that John was addressing in the book.

And Paul said that all who were in Asia Minor, if you remember, faded away from Paul and his teaching of Christ. And so it's kind of the flavor of it all. But I love how John starts the book. You know, he starts with Christ, doesn't he?

And I think that's a great place to start. Because if you were going to address the saints that were facing opposition in the church, opposition throughout, from within and without, you want to start with the reality of who Christ is.

He said that Christ is the one I have heard, I've seen, he said, and touched with my own hands, and that I proclaim. That's what he does. If you and I were ever going to address the church or anyone that, you know, is wayward in their faith, we might want to start with the basics, right?

Let's start with Christ. Because it begins and ends with him, doesn't it? It really does. There's no other wisdom, I think, that's greater than his, no words that could come greater than his. And so we start there.

John says that we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light. And that's kind of where we need to start. If we're truly saved, we're believers in Christ, we're in that light. It's the total revealed knowledge of the Word of God.

We should stay in that, John says. Can you imagine how those words fell on the saints, as this letter was read among them? Because that's what it was meant to do. Think about that. It's like reading this letter to our church today.

I think about how impacting those words would be. He gave direction, he gave clarity, and they were to focus on these things for their own personal walk. It's a knowledge, it's a guarding of our faith, it's an identifying of who is and who isn't a believer, but it's focused on stay close to the Lord himself.

If we stay close to him, we have less chance of falling, don't we? If I think about my own life, the times that I have drifted away is the times when I've struggled the most. I come back, all of a sudden, I see a little more clear, and I'm motivated more to follow Christ.

That was his message, was stay close. But this letter isn't just written to Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor. I was thinking about this this week, it was written for us as well. There's so many things for us that we can learn, reminded of how to live our lives in Christ.

That's what the scriptures do, it galvanizes us. When I think of Asia Minor, I think of just a few short years after 1 John. I mean, John was written in like 90 AD, and just like five or six years after that, he wrote the book of Revelation.

We've already talked about kind of the surroundings of Asia Minor, but think about these churches in Ephesus, for example. We talked about this, the Temple of Artemis was there. John says in Revelation that the church had left their first love.

They'd left their first love. And then he says about the church in Smyrna, which is just 35 miles north of Ephesus, he says that there were some who were saying that they are Jews and are not, and John says that they are the synagogue of Satan.

Man, that's pretty powerful. I mean, I wouldn't want any church to have that label, that you are the synagogue of Satan. That's terrible. Pergamum, John says that this is where Satan's throne is. Can you imagine that?

Doesn't get any worse than that, does it? And we also know that there was a giant size altar of Zeus in Pergamum. Might want to know who the true and false believers are in that church, because you might not have many allies.

Thyatira, John says that in the midst of their church, they are tolerating the presence of the false prophetess, Jezebel. False prophet Jezebel and her disciples. In Sardis, they were mixing true believers with false believers.

And it says their reputation because they projected to the people that they were alive, outward profession of faith, look at how great we are. But then John says, no, wait a minute, you're dead. On the inside, you're really dead.

You're projecting out, hey, we're alive and well, but no, on the inside that you're dead. And remember at Laodicea, the lukewarm church. So there was a lot of difficulties. The only church that seemed to really be falling was the church in Philadelphia, the faithful church.

That's the identification for us, right? We want to be the faithful church. Asia Minor, temples of pagan worship, synagogue of Satan, Satan's throne, spirit of Jezebel. Look around the religious landscape in our world right today and what do you see?

Sometimes I think we look at it and go, well, it can't be as bad as, you know, back then. It's not possible, is it? I mean, we're way more modern now or we're more sophisticated. That can't happen, right?

Do we have any temples of pagan gods in our cities across America today? What are they? What are they? The Mormon temple. Funny you should mention that because I have some notes on that. Go figure. Check this out.

Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. It's 35-acre campus, 35 acres, and it took 40 years to build, 40 years to build that temple. The temple alone is 250 ,000 square feet and it's on 10 acres. Yeah, I think we have some pagan temples in America.

That's definitely one of them. In Idaho Falls, there's a temple down there, a Mormon temple. It's 116 ,250 square feet and that also is on 10 acres. It's massive and they're all over America. You see these Mormon temples all over the place.

What other ones do we see in America? Joel Osteen groups? Yeah, we see that in Texas. Yeah. The Word of Faith, false teaching temples there, right? New Apostolic Reformation? Absolutely. You see that a lot.

What other kinds of temples are we seeing? Yes. Masonic temples all over the place. I mean, you see them. I mean, they say that the Masons are a dwindling group, but yet they're vibrant and they have a lot of influence in society, but they're all over the place.

Yeah, you see them everywhere. What else? Say that again. Stadiums? Yeah. Sports are temples of worship, right? Any church that doesn't preach the gospel, she says, is a pagan temple. Abortion clinics.

That's terrible. I just, yeah. That's tough to even talk about. What about mosques? See those all over the place, right? Largest in North America is 92 ,000 square feet. It's 14 million to build and it's located in Dearborn, Michigan.

Did you know if you were to go to Dearborn, Michigan today, it's a city unto itself. The police rarely, if ever, enter into it because it's just locked down by the Islamic culture. They're all over the place.

What about maybe Catholic Jewish temples? There's so many that we could name. I think of the evangelical churches though. What is happening inside of our evangelical churches today? Entertainment, as you were saying.

What do you see for worship in evangelical churches today? You're starting to see labyrinths in these evangelical churches where you walk this labyrinth. If you know the history of labyrinths, you know that's evil and mystical.

What about yoga? There's Christian yoga. We're bringing in all these kinds of false religious paganism into the church. Our days are not that much different than John's at all. There's much opposition to the faith.

Evidence of True Conversion and the Call to Keep His Word

John essentially says that there has to be evidence of our faith in the midst of what's going on all over the place. It has to be evidence because we talked a little bit last week. A false convert just doesn't have the same passion and zeal for Christ that we do.

If you look at verse 6, it says, if we say that we have fellowship with him, yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. Verse 8, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Verse 10, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Verse 4 of chapter 2, the one who does not keep his commandments is a liar. There is a different zeal inside of a believer than an unbeliever.

An unbeliever has no passion to serve Christ. Yes, that's what you're saying. Yeah, the lies, that's the biggest thing is that the lies in the body of the evangelical world is really the struggle, is getting to the pure truth of it all and being able to understand what the truth is.

That's what I think this church does so well, is it brings clarity to the Word of God so we can grasp onto it and go, okay, I can live that out now. But if it's mixed with truth and error, it's so much more different.

It's difficult to be able to say, okay, I understand with clarity how to live my life. So the evidence of a true convert, which is our focus today, what is the evidence of a true convert? We looked a little bit at this chapter 1 verse 7, but if we walk in the light, we stay in the revealed truth of God's Word as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

We stay in that. What happens when we leave that? What happens when we leave that true revealed Word of God and the truth? It can result in church discipline, which you see one in a million churches doing it nowadays.

It can lead to disfellowship. It can lead to a lot of different things. And sin in and of itself is destructive. Chapter 2 verse 3 says, but this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.

Not, oh, hey, I keep his commandments, and then we walk a different direction. No, it's if we actually do it, is what he's saying. And then verse 5, our verse for today, says, but whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

By this, we know that we are in him. That little word but, but whoever, right? But whoever, that opens it up to anyone. Whoever opens it up to anyone. Remember, the Gnostics it's not like the Gnostics, where they had that secret knowledge, right?

Which was just for the select few. John's saying, but whoever, right? Opens it up to a broader spectrum. Any believer could experience the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he says this, right? But whoever keeps his word.

This is speaking about a present situation. And it's whoever continually, continually embraces and focuses on his word. That's what he's talking about. It's a habitual keeping of his word. It's not just, yeah, I kept it one day.

And then three days later, I walked down and just did whatever I wanted. And I just disregarded everything of the word of God. No, it's, it's a continual habitual keeping of his word. We keep on keeping on.

That's the saying, right? We've heard that. It's not like the apostates, though, because the apostates, you know, they fail to continually keep God's word, they hear it. And maybe they do it's, you know, outward experiences of it all.

But in the end, really, they have to go out from us. So we can know who they are. The apostates do not keep God's word. Another idea that keep brings is to attend very carefully. This is what the concept of it to attend to guard the God's word to watch it, to keep an eye on it to observe it.

It's like this in Song of Solomon. I'll read this verse Song of Solomon verses chapter eight, verses 11 and 12. Solomon had a vineyard at Balaam, Baal Haman. He trusted the vineyard to caretakers. Each one was to bring 1000 shekels of silver for its fruit.

My very own vineyard is at my disposal. The 1000 shekels are for you, Solomon, and 200 are for those who take care of its fruit. It's keeping God's word is like a caretaker. What does a caretaker do? What does a caretaker do?

Anybody? Farmers out here? Anybody? You know, any apple farmers, anything like, you know, what do they do? What does the caretaker do? They tend the orchards? Weed it? Water it? Yeah. Prune it? Yeah, they prune it, right?

Why do they prune the trees? And what do they prune off? They prune off the dead branches, don't they? And so that that tree or that vine grows much deeper and better, and produces better fruit. I mean, John 15 one says that they remove the bad branches and, and prune the good ones so that they bear much fruit.

And then what happens? Those bad branches are thrown into the fire. They're burned up is what John says to us. So they guard against animals. But that's the idea. You get the flavor that if you keep God's word, you're really protecting it.

You're guarding it with everything that you have. You're focused on it. You're attentive to it. You observe it. You watch it. All those things. Anyone who claims Christ as Savior. That's our mission is to keep God's word.

That's what we're supposed to do to guard it. So but how do we keep God's word? How do we defend it against wolves? Any thoughts on that? How do we keep God's word? What are we supposed to do? Just come to church?

Yes. We have to know God's word. That is definitely one of the biggest things of keeping God's word is we have to know God's word. What else? Yes. We have to walk in God's word. How do we walk in God's word though?

By obeying his commandments. Okay. What else? Because there's something here specific. Study it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we keep his doctrines. We keep his commandments. We live it out in our daily lives.

Yes. Sharing God's word. That's huge. You know, we can't keep it to ourselves, can we? I mean, I'm an introvert by nature. And so to get out is, you know, terrifying in and of itself. But sometimes I do shrink back because of that, you know, but I think we do need to share it.

Careful study, though, of the word is where we need to be. What does careful study of the Bible involve? You know, we come here on an hour or two every Sunday, but when we leave, we spend way more time, you know, away from here.

What kind of study do we do? You know, I like to, you know, have a couple commentaries maybe that you have by your bedside. You know, you can look at a verse and, you know, maybe get into a little bit of word study and understand what the Greek and Hebrew meanings of words mean.

And that, you know, it just opens up a whole different view of what Scripture is for you. You know, you learn the book themes and the purposes and, you know, just like this word study on keep, right? You know, just see how it fleshes out a bigger concept.

It's not just, oh, I just keep God's Word. Well, what is that? No, you observe it, you pay attention to it, you know. So in studying God's Word, that's what you're after is to dig deeper. And my pet peeve, honestly, one of the biggest ones I have probably is to keep it in context.

You know, social media is terrible for this. I mean, you got people quoting verses all over the place that have no idea what the context of that verse actually is talking about. And it's out of context.

And so I would say just, you know, read verses, you know, the rule of thumb is five or 10 verses, you know, before and after the verse that you want to quote, and make sure that you really do understand it, you know, because that's a way of keeping God's Word pure and true to anyone that would listen.

We have an obligation to rightly divide His Word to everyone that we quote a scripture to. Text without context is pretext. That's what Cornell said a week or so ago, wasn't it? Exactly. That's what we have to do.

We have to keep it in that context. So it is the true intent of what God meant and wanted us to have it to be, right? Not what we think it should be, but what it really means according to what God intended.

So that's important. When we keep God's Word, it means that we're not relying on our own Gnostic knowledge. Because that's what John's addressing here is the Gnostic, the hidden knowledge that is only known to a select few.

But if we keep God's Word, our faith is based on His wisdom and knowledge and not some kind of a Gnostic knowledge. You know, many people rely on education or science. You see that a lot. They rely on their own educational or science knowledge to save them.

And it only leads to destruction in the end. That's what happens. Love is sovereign over knowledge. And we must understand that we should strive to attain that deeper understanding of it for our own edification, for the edification of everyone else that we can talk to it about.

Any other thoughts on keeping God's Word? I love that. I love keeping God's Word. Don't always do it, but I'm trying hard. Anything else? Yeah. Yeah, the true power of God is in knowing it and keeping it and it's not in other knowledge.

That's where the true power comes from, isn't it? I mean, the power to live our life is that. I love that. Anybody else have any other thoughts on keeping God's Word? Yeah. Yeah. Peter's comment was taking, obviously, God's Word and taking Jim's advice on reading through the Scriptures, through the whole book of the Bible in one year, taking through that.

And there's value and strength in that. And I applaud that 100%. That's the way to do it. So just on a verse, moving this along a little bit, verse five of chapter two, but whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

By this we know that we are in him. What kind of love is this? What kind of love is this? But whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has truly been perfected. What was that? Agape love. Okay. Yeah, that's what the word there, love, means.

It is agape love, which we'll talk about in just a second. This is our love for God, rather than necessarily a love of God. It's love for God. I mean, it can be both, but in this context, it can really be said a love for God.

In him, the love for God has truly been perfected. Why is it perfected in the person that does that? And how is it even possible for us to do that? Because of his saving grace in our own lives? Yeah. Yeah, Hebrews, Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith.

Yes, absolutely. That's our motivation, right? When you're saved, it propels us out to love, to carry out God's commandments, especially in the face of adversity. Especially in there. What motivates us to love is just that.

What motivates a wolf to love? Nothing. Nothing because they're bent on destruction. They don't have that in themselves to love. A love has one purpose in mind, and it's to tear down the flock. It's like the old man in Scripture, right?

It's like that. It represents our former way of life that is enslaved in sin, doing only what our fleshly desires dictate. That's the old man. And that nature is separated from God and bound for destruction.

But what about the new man? What about the new man? We're not a slave to sin anymore, are we? Not that we don't sin, but we're not a slave to it. Think back to when you're saved. I don't know about you, but sin just wasn't fun anymore.

I mean, yeah, right. When we accept God, yes, he gives us a new heart, a new desire, new passions. And so we're definitely not focused on those things. The new man keeps God's Word. I mean, think about before I was saved, I didn't even know what God's Word was, so how could I keep it?

But now that I do know it, the light bulb comes on. And my motivation, our motivation, should be to really pride ourselves on knowing it and keeping it pure and true. The new man's obligation is now to demonstrate the love of God.

And how do we do that? How do we demonstrate the love of God? I think someone said it earlier. It's to share the gospel. And we do it in loving our friends that don't know Christ. We share our faith with them to a lost and dying world.

Look at John chapter four, verse seven. If you'll flip over maybe a page or two. First John chapter four, verse seven. Just a couple of pages over. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

The new man is now motivated and characterized by their love of one another. Why? Because the love of God resides in them. And then look at the next verse down there. First John 4, 8. What does he say?

The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. That's pretty powerful. I mean, that's significant. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. We're to exhibit this love.

In verse five, read that again. In him, the love of God has truly been perfected. And then I think the lady over here said, yes, it's agape love. So I wanted to just touch on that briefly. The kind of love that John's talking about is agape love.

This is brotherly love. So if we're loving, as John said in this passage, we have a love for God. It's a love for the brothers. It's a love for people. It's a brotherly love. It's an affection. It's a goodwill kind of a love for one another that we should have.

It's benevolence towards others. I think it's serving people. That's not an easy thing to do. It carries the idea of the love feast mentioned in Scripture. And Jude says it in verse 12. He said, these are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feast.

Well, these love feasts were just a precursor to communion, essentially. You know, it's an intimate time of fellowship that they had. That's what a love feast is all about. It was an intimate fellowship.

But you get the idea, you get the sense of a love, right? It's really an evidence for our faith. It is a close bond for love for brothers and sisters in Christ. It's a deep affection for them to be giving towards them and to have goodwill towards them.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's a good point. If you look at the whole compendium of Scripture, he was saying is that, you know, we get a bad rap sometimes where people think we're not loving because we don't accept sin.

We don't expect accept certain kinds of sin. Yeah. It is. Yeah, exactly. There's no love. It's a false truth. If you're not really giving them the truth, the true truth of the Word of God. It's harmful.

Yeah, it's harmful if we don't share the truth with God. Because if we share the truth with people, it gives them an opportunity to make changes. Then they recognize. I mean, that's what happens. That's the beauty of it all.

Paul had some things to say about love. He said this in 1 Corinthians 13, 13. He said, but now faith, hope, love, abide these three. But the greatest he said of these is love. Why is love the greatest gift?

Why not all the other ones? Shows a heart. Love covers a multitude of sins. Absolutely. I'm thankful for that. I think, you know, go ahead. It would just be works, it would just be, you know, things that we do wouldn't necessarily be true.

You know, that brotherly agape love. That's true. I think, you know, love could be the greatest gift. You know, I don't know all the answers to it. But because it love is the very nature of God. It's the very nature of God.

God is love. 1 John 4 .8, the one who does not love does not know God for God is love. You know, that that's our baseline. We reflect back God's love to others because of his love for us. That's what we do.

We kick it back out. Because he has loved us. If you look at 1 John 4 .19, we love because he first loved us. That's why we do it. That's our motivation. And, and we should be focused on it at all times.

I know it's, it's challenging, it can be to do that. The evidence of our faith is love, as I mentioned. Anything short of that is death. If you look at 1 John 3 .14, I wanted to touch on this first, just briefly.

1 John 3 .14. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Are you the one that has passed out of death into life? What example?

What example are you? Think about this. You got two examples, the one that, you know, has embraced the scriptures, passed out of death into life. Or are you the other one? If you're the example of the other one, then, then you have no love for the saints.

You don't have a love for the things that God loves, coming in and singing and hearing sermons. And, you know, I don't know about you, but when I have conversations with people, I can talk about sports, I can talk about politics for a while.

But man, after a while, I gotta start talking about the Lord. Like, what does this mean? What is, you know, what did you read here? And you know, I got to be talking about things of the scriptures. So that's just me.

But the result of that is death if you don't have that love for the saints. And that's what he's talking about. You know, he says, our love needs to be truly perfected. Look at verse five, but whoever keeps his word in him, the love of God has truly been perfected.

It means really. It means that word truly is really put their love to God in action. You've truly done that. And it reaches true and real perfection. The idea here is that not just in words, but in actions, because those other unconverted people we looked at in verses, I can't remember now, but you know, if we say, and then don't do it, you can say a lot of things.

And, you know, I've always told my own kids, you know, talk is cheap. Talk is cheap. You got to actually do something. If you're gonna talk the talk, you better. Yeah, if you talk the talk, you better walk the walk.

And that's, that's, but that's one way we can tell and, you know, evidence for our faith. If someone says it, and then doesn't do it, you wonder, right? Like, are they really saved? And the scriptures say, hey, you have to have evidence for your faith, there's got to be something that you're doing for the Lord, not as a requirement for salvation, but honestly, as a, you know, as a desire.

You know, I don't know about you, but I desire to do these things. I don't, I don't do it, because someone's forcing me to do it. I'm motivated to follow Christ, because man, look at what he saved me from.

Wow. Shouldn't I be motivated to, you know, spend every waking moment focused on him? I think so. And that's where we try to keep. I know we got all these other, you know, struggles coming in with life in general.

But, you know, it's that John says that in him, we're truly perfected. This word perfected brings the idea of wholeness and completeness, or accomplished is the idea of a mature, full grown individual.

Your love for the saints has truly been completed. It's a process, right, that you're getting to. I try to perfect this message, but yeah, I'm not there yet. But it's not whole or complete in my mind.

It won't be until I go home. That is true. But a perfect love that casts out fear is complete. A perfect love that casts out fear is complete. And that's in verse 18. God's power is made perfect in weakness.

Second Corinthians 12 .9 says, God's power is made perfect in weakness. How does that happen? How does God's power, how is God's power made perfect in our weakness? It's when we give up our own selves.

We give up our own control, and we let God work through our lives into our situations. That's how. The Old Testament idea is associated with a person. Job was considered blameless. And that word just means complete, perfect, morally innocent, is what it means.

It describes also in the Old Testament as a completeness and a perfection in the hearts of men. First Chronicles 29 .19, give to my son Solomon a perfect heart to keep your commandments, your testimonies, and your statutes, and to do them all and to build the temple for which I have made.