1 John 2:1-11 Knowing That You Know Him

Welcome to Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series called In the Light of the Book of 1st John by Pastor Don Filsack.

If you'd like more information about our church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

The World’s Brokenness and the Need for God’s Remedy

With that out of the way, I just want to start off by kind of introducing the message this morning and kind of getting our minds moving in that direction. The fact of the matter is there's a lot of different ways that people look at the world.

We could talk about having a worldview, the lens through which you take in the world around you. Some people think there's a God who created everything. I'm guessing that a majority of the people in this room believe that there is a God who created everything, and that's a way of understanding the world and a way of thinking about it.

Some people believe that we've evolved from a series of chance events over eons of time. That's a worldview. Many of you have encountered that. But regardless of how you think we got here, regardless of what you think our purpose is in life, nobody I have ever met reads the headlines of the newspaper and sees what's going on around the world and thinks this world is problem-free.

There are no troubles. There are no problems. You read about the events in Syria. You see what's going on regarding persecution of brothers and sisters in Christ all around the world. You see just headlines of evil being perpetrated right here in our own community in Kalamazoo and around the state of Michigan and throughout the United States and throughout the world.

Are you in agreement with me that it would be very difficult to say everything is okay with the world? Would you be in agreement with that? I think that that would be difficult. So any worldview, any way of looking at the world needs to somehow take into account this brokenness and these bad things that we see and the issues that we see in the culture and society around us and throughout the world and make sense of it to actually say why that things are the way that we see them.

And scripture gives an account for why the world is a mess. Scripture openly says that it has something to do with our human rebellion against our Creator. That in our rebellion we have caused a divide across the created order.

And that divide between God and creation cuts across everything. It cuts across the animal kingdom. It cuts across the natural order of things. It cuts across the way that the weather patterns work and hurricanes and earthquakes.

But it also cuts across every single human life. Every single human life, every single soul has a sense of division between them and their Creator God. And so therefore the entire message of scripture is that we have indeed broken it.

We've broken the world. We've broken ourselves and we've severed our relationship from God. And scripture points to a healing that God has provided for us. A way for us to be healed in our hearts. A way for us to be healed in our souls.

A way for us to be reconstructed and put back together again in relationship to God. The entirety of scripture, whether it's Old Testament, pointing forward to a healing that's coming. Or the New Testament identifying the healing.

And much of the New Testament pointing backwards to Christ and his sacrifice and making sense of that as the healing that has been given to us. And all of scripture points to that healing God has provided.

He has given us a remedy for our broken situation. We sing that song remedy from time to time here. Jesus Christ is the solution to a broken world. And this morning the disciple John is going to answer a fundamental question that every person on the face of this planet should answer.

They should be asking themselves this question. How do I know that the remedy has been applied to me? How do I know that the solution that God has provided, that Jesus Christ and his work on the cross actually is having an impact on my life and that I'm actually okay with God on the basis of what Christ has done?

How do I know in essence that me and God are okay and at peace with one another? Is that a fundamental question? Is that an important question we ought to ask? Is that valuable for you to be thinking in those terms?

Whether this is your first time stepping foot in a church or whether you were raised in a church from your childhood up. You should ask yourself that question. Am I in with God? The reality is when I became a Christian at eight years of age it's in a basement of the First Baptist Church in Middleville, Michigan.

Did any of you know where Middleville, Michigan is? It's a little town about the size of Matawan. It's funny, God calls a guy out of Middleville to a town about the same size, kind of like the one traffic light kind of town.

And I remember in that basement sitting in a chair with a leader in my AWANA program. Some of you are familiar with the AWANA program. And I was sitting there afterwards and I stayed after. My father had passed away recently and I was just kind of dealing with things of life as an eight-year-old, kind of processing things at a different level that I think a lot of eight-year-olds don't.

But I was thinking about things and I talked with my leader and they explained to me that I was a sinner and that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins. How much I understood, the depth of theology, pretty weak at the time.

But I prayed and I said, Jesus, I need you. I need you to save me. In that moment, there were no audible choirs of angels singing. Nothing on the external of me changed. I didn't sprout wings. I did not gain any superpowers.

That would have been cool, but I didn't. Are you tracking with what I'm saying? There was no external thing to point to and say, I know I am okay with God now because this has happened. And he's demonstrated it to me in a physical way.

It took faith to say, I'm in with Christ. Now, raise your hand if your experience of salvation is similar to that. It's kind of like, yeah, I mean, I prayed, I asked Jesus to save me. No bells ringing, no amazing.

Now, by the way, it actually says in scripture, take this one on faith too, that when a person comes to faith in Christ and says, I'm all in with him, I need him to save me and to remedy this. There are choirs of angels singing.

There are. There's rejoicing in heaven when somebody gives their life to follow Jesus Christ and says, I recognize what you have done for me, and I want to be all in with you and I want you to save me.

They rejoice. Heaven throws a party when that happens, but I didn't get to hear it. I'll get to get to see it later and be a part of that celebration and that party at some point. But no way, no choirs of angels, no growing wings, no superpowers.

And I didn't even really become unselfish at that point. It didn't even take care of that for me completely. But John is going to give us two awesome things in this text. First, he's going to give us a vision of the work of Jesus Christ for those who belong to him.

It's like he's going to lay out a stake for somebody who loves steak and is starving. And he's going to lay it out there and he's going to say, this is what is available to you. This is what Christ does for you.

He's going to talk about Christ as advocate and about Christ as atonement, about Christ as propitiation. A big word. Don't worry, I'll define it for you. But he's going to talk about these theological concepts, but just say, wow, I mean, Christ has done these things for you.

And then he's going to say, and here's how you know that Christ is that for you. And he's going to give us three tests, three ways to diagnose whether or not we are indeed in relationship with Jesus Christ.

I find these three tests helpful, encouraging, convicting, and challenging. And I'm thinking that this is going to hit with you a combination of those things. For many of us, it's going to be a mixture of those, helpful, encouraging, convicting, and challenging.

So I want you to open your Bibles to 1 John chapter two. If you take out the Bible in the seat back in front of you, that paperback, you're going to go all the way near the back to page 877, and you're going to find 1 John chapter two there.

So 1 John two, one through 11. I'm going to read it in the English standard version. If you don't own a Bible or don't own an English standard version of the Bible, that's the one that I like to use. You can take that one home with you.

We've got boxes of those in the back room to replace any, but we do want everybody to have a copy of the word of God that they can just grab and read to put on their nightstand or whatever. 1 John two, one through 11 is where we're going to read for our text this morning.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And by this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected.

By this, we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning.

The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Let's pray as Josh and Heidi come to lead us in worship this morning. Father, I rejoice in the opportunity that we have to gather together in your name, to hear from your word, to think through the riches and depth of what it means to have an advocate, what it means to have an atoning sacrifice or a propitiation for our sins.

And even though that's a big word, just to know that your wrath is no longer being applied to the lives of those who belong to Jesus Christ. Father, that ought to move us to rejoice this morning. And as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you, would you please move in our hearts by your spirit, that we might worship you in spirit, with enthusiasm and with excitement and with moved emotions, but also to worship you in truth, to acknowledge who you are and that these words of these songs would drive us deeper into an understanding of who you are, what you have done for us.

And then Father, that as we have an opportunity to look at these tests, that you would allow your spirit to have his way in our hearts, that we might actually come to a correct assessment of where we stand in regard to our Savior and Lord.

And it's in his name that we pray. Amen. Be sure to have your Bibles open in front of you. I want you to have that text open. So 1 John 2, 1 through 11, as we walk through it, I want you to see it for yourself.

I want you to see the pages of scripture there. We're going to run through the flow of the text. And we do that every week, but I just wanted to draw attention to what it is that I'm trying to accomplish when I preach each week.

I want you to hear that straightforwardly. We're going to walk through the text and then draw some applications from it. I want to make sure that you understand what the text says first. And I believe that it's only once we understand the text with our minds that we can apply it to our lives.

So sometimes I think, I'm going to be just being honest, it feels a little bit academic at times here. Would you be honest about that? A couple of you.

Okay.

And sometimes it feels academic because I want to make sure we understand what God says to us,.

But is that enough?

Is it enough if you walk out from here with just some knowledge in your brain? That is not sufficient.

Okay.

So we don't end there, but the goal is that we then take what we learned that God has said to us. We believe it's true and true enough that we can base our lives on it. We go out and we live it, right?

We go out and obey it, but we need to understand what it is first that God is saying to us in order to apply it. I want you to know that if we get the wrong point and we don't do our study ahead of time, then we go out and misapply it or do something wrong with it.

And so it's important that we understand it first. And that's what I try to do. That's my goal in preaching. That's my goal all week long in preparing a sermon. That's why I put the time and the energy into it is that I might understand this and then share it with you and bring it into our lives so that we can understand where we're going.

Confessing Sin Without Making Peace With It

So we start off here in 1 John, this letter that John has written in chapter 2, verse 1. And we start off in the first verse addressing some things that he said to us last week. So some of you were here last week, but let me summarize.

Last week, John was clear that we all have sin. Now, many of us didn't need John to tell us that. You already knew that ahead of time, but he's going to drive that home and let us remember that if we say we have no sin, we are liars.

We are lying.

We're not telling the truth if we say we're perfect and we are without sin. And so he gets that out right away in the start of his letter here. We talked last week about walking in the light as a way of saying that we allow our lives to be exposed to the eyes of God, that we acknowledge that there's a way of living that is walking in the darkness, that's flipping from shadow to shadow, living with our sin, appeasing our sin, avoiding God so that he doesn't see us or we think he doesn't see us and we try to hide from him at times, right?

And then there's another way of walking that is admitting our sin because if we say we have no sin, we're lying. So admitting that, confessing it and coming to him for forgiveness. There's a way of life that is running from him and then there's a way that is running to him even when we sin, to run to him for confession and forgiveness and the cleansing that he provided to us.

So by the end of last week, if we were to take just that and that only from John and that's all that he said and we ended there, we could end up being guilty of taking sin lightly. Do you understand how that could impact our hearts and lives?

Well, we all sin, right? Did he say that last week? Oh, we all sin and all you have to do is run to God, confess it, ask him to forgive you. You're cleansed, you're righteous, you're forgiven and on you go, right?

And so if you just end there, you might think John is just okay with sin. And so he's gonna start off by correcting the notion here at the beginning of this next section saying, well, wait a minute, but I'm not okay with your sin.

And he starts off by saying, my little children. Now, if I stood up every sermon and got ready to talk to you and I said, oh, my little children, would that sound a little condescending to you? Would you think that was kind of condescending?

Well, I don't think that's the spirit or the heart of John here. I think it translates well in his day and age to an understanding. He says, my beloved, the ones that I love, the ones that I care for, he's writing to a specific church, people that he has genuine relationship to.

And he's like, oh, my dear little children, people that I love, the ones that I care for. That's how he starts. And he cares about them enough to not let them think of grace as cheap, to not let them think of sin as just, oh, that's okay, you just sin once in a while and you're okay with that.

But he tells them that the purpose of his writing is that they avoid sin, that they might not sin. And I would say the same to you, people that I love, recast, you. I'm preaching this sermon just like John wrote this letter to say, don't sin, don't walk in sin, don't practice sin.

There's a way of practicing darkness, a way of walking in the darkness that allows your pet sins. You keep it in the darkness, you think you've got it contained in a closet and it will break out on you.

It is for love that John says, don't keep sin and think that you've got it locked away and kept tight and in a vault and boy, you're okay. It is not okay. Expose these things, confess these things and he's gonna give us some other solutions to this as well.

Not just confession, but there's something else we need to bear in mind if we sin. He's speaking to Christians who understand a relationship with God and he's trying to communicate in this text, last week's and this week's, the tension we all feel between being sinners and being forgiven.

Have you experienced that tension in your own life? Where you recognize, I want, how many of you would raise your hand right now and testify that your desire is righteousness, that you hunger and thirst for righteousness?

Raise your hand, raise it high if that's you. I hunger and thirst for righteousness. Now, keep your hand up if your life mirrors righteousness, if you are righteous. All the hands went down, good. Okay, theologically, you guys are rock solid.

But to say, I hunger and thirst. So is there a tension in the human heart? Is there a tension? Is there a divide in you? Is there some kind of a war like we just sang about, about what's going on inside me?

I despise my own behavior. There is something that hungers and thirsts and longs for righteousness, and I'm not there yet. Do you experience that? Is that real life? Is that where the rubber meets the road for you?

Is that your real genuine experience? John is here addressing that issue that we experience in our lives. He understands us. The Bible understands and pays attention to the way, and makes sense of the way that we live our lives and our understanding of it.

I have great joy knowing that Jesus died for me, but I experience this tension in my life just like you do. I believe that he's washed away my sins. I can just be having times of rejoicing, and then lose my temper with my wife and kids.

Have you ever experienced that? Josh was testifying a little bit of that earlier. I think all of us struggle with that to some degree. I can get impatient driving behind the slow guy on I -94. And have you ever noticed that the slow guy is always in the left lane?

You know exactly what I'm talking about. You're getting on the highway heading westbound, getting ready to go eastbound. And what do you face right away when you get on the highway? You're merging and there's a hill, right?

And the guy in the left lane is always doing 50, 55. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And you've struggled with it too. Yeah, stuck behind a semi, that's right, or whatever. Two semis side by side, neither one of them going over 50.

I can state along with John clearly that I have sinned. He said that last week, but here's the reality. You can state it too, I have sinned. Or you can say it about me too. But John doesn't want us to be okay with our sin.

You say it, admit it, confess it, but don't be okay with it. Don't come to peace with your sin. Stay engaged in the battle. Like I said, don't keep your pet sin in a closet or think that you've got it locked up.

And boy, I'll just feed it from time to time and it won't affect me. It won't break out. It won't affect my relationships. Look, it's just between me and whatever. It has nothing to do with other people.

It's not hurting anyone. How many times have you heard that in our culture? Well, it's not hurting anyone.

Oh, it will.

God says sin leads to death. Do you believe him? Do you believe him? Sin leads to death. Don't be okay with your sin. And so what does a believer do when the light of God shines and exposes sin.

That is real, that really is there?

What do we do? Well, in verse nine, it said, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we confess, but now John gives us something else.

He's gonna declare something else for us to do along with confessing. He's gonna give us something to remember. I wanna tell you that when I come to this part of the text, what I kind of expect John to do is to begin to browbeat me.

What I expect right now, I mean, you were raised in a different context than me, most likely, some of you similarly with some legalism and some laws and some rules and some regulations. And what I expect John to do right here is to level guilt and shame in my direction.

That's from my upbringing and my past and the way that I process my past. I'm not sure that any church that I ever attended to would have had their goal that I was guilted and shamed. I'm not sure that that would have been their intention and yet that was my experience of it.

Some of you can relate to what I'm talking about. And so what I expect John to do is be like, you need to get your acts together. You need to give more to the church. You need to attend more Bible studies.

You need to do this and that and this and that. And then you will be okay with God. What do you do when you sin? Pull yourself up and do better. But is that what John's gonna tell us to do? What he does, what he says next sounds like, whoa, John, I mean, you totally, you didn't even get to obedience in there.

He's gonna remind us of what Jesus Christ is doing for you and me right now. He's gonna deal with the present rather than the present ministry of Jesus. Rather than browbeat us over our sin and try to motivate us by guilt and shame.

John declares a glorious truth. He says, if we sin as a believer in Jesus, we have, present tense, an advocate with the Father. We have an advocate. Father, his name is Jesus Christ the righteous. We have an advocate in the presence of God almighty.

John does what we should all do when we are mindful of our sins. You should confess it and turn your thoughts to Jesus. So often, I think we attempt to defeat sin by thinking a lot about sin. We focus so much on the sin that we're trying to overcome that it's constantly on our mind and we're constantly wrestling with it because guess what, it's there.

Turn your eyes to Jesus when sin and temptation is plaguing you. Fix your eyes on him. But we've often been trained to only look at sin and only look backwards. I wanna tell you that I think as often as you can contemplate and consider the cross and what Jesus Christ has done for you in your war against sin, that's power and there's strength in that.

Thinking about how Jesus paid for my sin. He died on the cross that I might walk with him in newness of life. Something about that that's beautiful. But it's not just a backwards look that John wants us to deal with here.

But John says, look in faith to the present what Jesus is doing right now for you. Did you know Jesus Christ is doing something.

For you right now?

Right this second, Jesus is working on behalf of you. If you are in him, if you are his child, if you have accepted him by faith and said, I need you for salvation, then he is doing something in the presence of the father.

Right now, as I speak, Jesus Christ is at the right hand of his father acting as our righteous advocate. It's not only what Jesus did for us, but what he is currently doing for us as well. The word translated advocate was used throughout the Greek speaking world as a courtroom term.

It's about something that's going on in a legal sense, like as if there's a courtroom and there is one who speaks on behalf of the accused in a court of law that is an advocate. To call Jesus our defense attorney might not translate well into our culture, depends on your experience with defense attorneys, right?

But it works, it works. That's the illustration, advocate or defense attorney. The picture we should have in our minds is that when we sin, Jesus stands in for us before his father and pleads our case for us.

He's our advocate. Anybody go, yes, can I? And anybody excited about that? Anybody excited to have an advocate, someone who stands before the Holy One and says, mine purchased. The word translated, oh, I already said that.

The word translated advocate comes out of that courtroom setting. But we need to move on to verse two to find out on what grounds can one who is declared righteous, Jesus, it's declared of him to be righteous and what grounds can he go for dismissal of you and I,.

For acquittal?

How can he look at me and say not guilty? Okay, does that sound righteous to you? If I'm guilty, if I'm unclean, if I've sinned, and then Jesus stands before his father and says not guilty, that sound a little bit dicey?

Is he lying in the presence of the father? There's something else that's going on here in verse two is gonna play that out. How can the righteous one, Jesus, go for acquittal for those of us who know we are guilty and unclean?

How can we possibly be righteous? How can he plead the case of guilty and filthy sinners like you and me? Jesus is not merely our advocate, but he is also our atoning sacrifice. He is our propitiation, as the English Standard Version says.

Now, how many of you have the NIV? Anybody in here reading out of the NIV? You're gonna see that it translates that atoning sacrifice, the ESV, uses the word propitiation. How many of you use the word propitiation this past week?

You use that word regularly? You probably, yep, all the time. In your reports at work and stuff, it comes up. So the translators of the NIV said, you are not going to be able to handle the word propitiation, so we're gonna dumb it down for you and give you the words atoning sacrifice.

But I mean, I'm not sure that solves the problem because how many of you use the word atoning this past week? Use that word all the time too? So all of it needs to be defined, but the fact of the matter is atoning sacrifice does not quite reach the height of the word propitiation.

So atoning sacrifice says my sins are dealt with. Did Jesus deal with your sins at the cross? If you're in Him, absolutely. They were dealt with, they were covered, they were washed by His blood, atoned for.

And then the word sacrifice implies that that which paid the price died in the process. Is that true? Did Jesus die in that process of atonement?

Yes.

So He is an atoning sacrifice. But the height on the word propitiation that's missing from the phrase atoning sacrifice is this, to turn away the wrath of God. That's what propitiation means. That's a little bit different than dealing with our sins.

It's showing us how He dealt with our sins. He took the wrath of God on Himself that you and I deserved, and that is how God can look at us and say, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

Why?

The price has already been paid. The sentence has already been meted out and fulfilled by Jesus. And that's why, that's how Jesus can be our righteous advocate and say, they are okay. They are okay. That healing that every soul needs only comes through the propitiation of the wrath of God.

That His wrath would be turned away from us and poured out on His Son. And He took that for us. You guys understanding what propitiation means? He is both our advocate before the Father and our atoning sacrifice, or better word, propitiation.

He's not merely our advocate, but He's turned away the wrath of the Father towards us. What amazing glory is found in this truth. It's an amazing, beautiful thing. Jesus stands in our defense on the ground that His presence with the Father is a constant reminder that the wrath of God has been satisfied.

His presence with the Father in heaven now is a key ongoing ministry and continually turning away the wrath of the Father by advocating for us. He exists as our eternal advocate and the eternal propitiation towards God.

Now, I don't want you to get, we could get a little bit confused because, I mean, trying to picture the throne room of God is kind of mind-bending to begin with. But then I don't want you to get the impression that God the Father is sitting on His throne, Jesus at His right hand on another throne, and the two of them are reigning and ruling the universe together.

And then occasionally you sin, right?

Do you sin?

We already established that. So when you sin, the Father is sitting there going, I'm getting angry. Jesus, I'm getting upset. I'm getting, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, and Jesus is like, now, calm down. Calm down, Father.

It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay, see? And then it goes through this cycle of like, I'm getting angry again, I'm getting angry again. And He's gotta keep reminding the Father, remember, I went to the cross.

Remember, I did that. Now, what we have is an eternal reminder, an eternal presence, an eternal symbol in heaven.

Jesus really is there.

It's not just merely symbolic, but His presence there with the holes in His hands and the hole in His side that after He was raised still were there for the disciples to see. And I believe they're there as an eternal reminder purchased by my sacrifice.

And He stands in the presence of the Father in heaven as an eternal reminder of the eternal removal of God's wrath from those who are in with Christ. Do you get what I'm saying? He's there forever and ever.

And as long as Jesus is there, you're covered. As long as Jesus is there in the presence of His Father, as long as He is there with the Father, you're good. And that's awesome because it's really good to know that He is God, always and eternally there as your advocate.

And His advocacy looks like His propitiation of the wrath of God from you and I. And where did that happen? Where was His propitiation fulfilled? On the cross, on the cross. I think sometimes I've had a shabby view of what Jesus is doing in heaven.

Has that ever been mystical to you? How many of you knew that Jesus was an intercessor for you? You've heard that word that He's there in heaven. He rose again to the Father's right hand where He intercedes for us.

So you had some notion of that. You maybe even had some notion of Him being an advocate. And sometimes I've actually, in my very fallen, finite mind, I've thought of Him kind of like the guy who passes the love note between you and the girl in sixth grade.

Do you know what I mean? That kind of, the mule between you. I unfortunately had to sit in that seat. So you're passing notes to Him and He's kind of the go-between. Are you guys getting what I'm saying?

And so it's like, I pray to Jesus and then Jesus translates my prayer to the Father. And so that's what intercession looks like. No, His intercession looks more like this, stating to the Father, that one is mine.

That one belongs to me. Warts and all, sin and all, they are mine. That one was purchased by my pain. That one is covered by my sacrifice. I carried that sin to the cross and put it to death, that it might be remembered no more.