Knowing That You Know Him

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Don Filcek, In the Light - 1 John; 1 John 2:1-11 Knowing That You Know Him

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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 of the Book of 1 John by Pastor Don Filsack. 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. With that out of the way,
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I just want to start off by kind of introducing the message this morning and kind of getting our minds moving in that direction.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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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
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Creator. That in our rebellion, we have caused a divide across the created order.
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And that divide between God and creation cuts across everything. It cuts across the animal kingdom.
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It cuts across the natural order of things. It cuts across the way that the weather patterns work and hurricanes and earthquakes.
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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
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Creator God. And so therefore the entire message of Scripture is that we have indeed broken it.
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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.
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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.
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The entirety of Scripture, whether it's Old Testament, pointing forward to a healing that's coming. Or the
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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.
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And all of Scripture points to that healing God has provided. He has given us a remedy for our broken situation.
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We sing that song, Remedy, from time to time here. Jesus Christ is the solution to a broken world.
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And this morning the disciple John is going to answer a fundamental question that every person on the face of this planet should answer.
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They should be asking themselves this question. How do I know that the remedy has been applied to me?
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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
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Christ has done? How do I know, in essence, that me and God are okay and at peace with one another?
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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?
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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.
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Am I in with God? The reality is, when I became a Christian at eight years of age,
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I was 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.
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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.
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And I remember in that basement sitting in a chair with a leader in my Awana program. Some of you are familiar with the
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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.
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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.
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How much I understood, how the depth of theology, pretty weak at the time, but I prayed and I said,
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Jesus, I need you. I need you to save me. In that moment, there were no audible choirs of angels singing.
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Nothing on the external of me changed. I didn't sprout wings. I did not gain any superpowers.
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Okay, that would've been cool, but I didn't. Are you tracking with what I'm saying? There was no external thing to point to and say,
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I know I am okay with God now because this has happened. And he's demonstrated it to me in a physical way.
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It took faith to say, I'm in with Christ. Now, raise your hand if your experience of salvation is similar to that.
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It's kind of like, yeah, I mean, I prayed. I asked Jesus to save me. No bells ringing. No amazing.
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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,
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I'm all in with him, I need him to save me and to remedy this. There are choirs of angels singing.
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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.
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They rejoice. Heaven throws a party when that happens. I didn't get to hear it. I'll get to get to see it later and be a part of that celebration in that party at some point.
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No way, no choirs of angels, no growing wings, no superpowers. And I didn't even really become unselfish at that point.
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It didn't even take care of that for me completely. But John is gonna give us two awesome things in this text.
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First, he's gonna give us a vision of the work of Jesus Christ for those who belong to him.
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He's gonna, he's gonna, it's like he's gonna lay out a steak for somebody who loves steak and is starving.
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Okay, and he's gonna lay it out there. He's gonna say, this is what is available to you. This is what
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Christ does for you. He's gonna talk about Christ as advocate and about Christ as atonement, about Christ as propitiation, a big word.
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We're gonna, don't worry, I'll define it for you. But he's gonna talk about these theological concepts, but just say, wow,
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I mean, Christ has done these things for you. And then he's gonna say, and here's how you know that Christ is that for you.
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And he's gonna give us three tests, three ways to diagnose whether or not we are indeed in relationship with Jesus Christ.
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I find these three tests helpful, encouraging, convicting, and challenging.
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And I'm thinking that this is gonna hit with you a combination of those things. For many of us, it's gonna be a mixture of those, helpful, encouraging, convicting, and challenging.
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So I want you to open your Bibles to 1st John, chapter 2. If you take out the Bible in the seat back in front of you, that paperback, you're gonna go all the way near the back to page 877, and you're gonna find 1st
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John, chapter 2 there. So 1st John 2, 1 through 11. I'm gonna read it in the
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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.
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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
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Word of God that they can just grab and read to put on their nightstand or whatever. 1st
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John 2, 1 through 11 is where we're gonna read for our text this morning. My little children,
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I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the
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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.
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And by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Whoever says,
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I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps
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His Word, in Him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 for our 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.
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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
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You in spirit, with enthusiasm, and with excitement, and with moved emotions, but also to worship
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You in truth, to acknowledge who You are, and that these words of these songs would drive us deeper into an understanding of who
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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
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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
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Savior and Lord. And it's in His name that we pray. Amen. Be sure to have your Bibles open in front of you.
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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,
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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
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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.
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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.
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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?
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A couple of you. And sometimes it feels academic, because I want to make sure we understand what God says to us, but is that enough?
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Is it enough if you walk out from here with just some knowledge in your brain? That is not sufficient.
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So we don't end there, but the goal is that we then take what we learn that God has said to us, we believe it's true, and true enough that we can base our lives on it, and we go out and we live it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So we start off here in 1 John, this letter that John has written, in chapter 2, verse 1.
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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.
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Last week, John was clear that we all have sin. Now, many of us didn't need John to tell us that.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That we acknowledge that there's a way of living that is walking in the darkness, that's flitting from shadow to shadow, living with our sin, appeasing our sin, avoiding
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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?
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And then there's another way of walking that is admitting our sin, because if we say we have no sin, we're lying.
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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.
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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.
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Do you understand how that could impact our hearts and lives? Just like, well, we all sin, right? Did he say that last week? We all sin.
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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?
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And so if you just end there, you might think John is just okay with sin. And so he's going to 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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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And he's like, oh, my dear little children, people that I love, the ones that I care for. That's how he starts.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Don't walk in sin. Don't practice sin. There is a way of practicing darkness, a way of walking in the darkness that allows your pet sins.
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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.
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It is not okay. Expose these things. Confess these things. And he's going to 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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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?
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I despise my own behavior. There is something that hungers and thirsts and longs for righteousness, and I'm not there yet.
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Do you experience that? Is that real life? Is that where the rubber meets the road for you? Is that your real, genuine experience?
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John is here addressing that issue that we experience in our lives. He understands us.
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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.
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I have great joy knowing that Jesus died for me, but I experience this tension in my life just like you do.
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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.
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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.
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I can get impatient driving behind the slow guy on I -94. Have you ever noticed that the slow guy is always in the left lane?
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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?
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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
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I'm talking about, and you've struggled with it too. Yeah, stuck behind a semi, that's right, or whatever.
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Two semis side by side, neither one of them going over 50. I can state along with John clearly that I have sinned.
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He said that last week, but here's the reality. You can state it too,
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I have sinned. Or you can say it about me too. But John doesn't want us to be okay with our sin.
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You say it, admit it, confess it, but don't be okay with it.
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Don't come to peace with your sin. Stay engaged in the battle.
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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.
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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.
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It's not hurting anyone. How many times have you heard that in our culture? Well, it's not hurting anyone. Oh, it will.
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God says sin leads to death. Do you believe him? Do you believe him?
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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?
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What do we do? Well, in verse 9 it said, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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So we confess. But now John gives us something else. He's going to declare something else for us to do along with confessing.
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He's going to give us something to remember. And I want to tell you that when I come to this part of the text, what I kind of expect
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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.
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And what I expect John to do right here is to level guilt and shame in my direction.
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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.
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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
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I expect John to do is be like, you need to get your act together. You need to give more to the church.
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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.
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What do you do when you sin? Pull yourself up and do better. But is that what
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John's going to tell us to do? What he does, what he says next sounds like, whoa,
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John, you didn't even get to obedience in there. He's going to remind us of what
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Jesus Christ is doing for you and me right now. He's going to deal with the present ministry of Jesus.
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Rather than browbeat us over our sin and try to motivate us by guilt and shame, John declares a glorious truth.
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He says, if we sin as a believer in Jesus, we have, present tense, an advocate with the
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Father. We have an advocate. Father, His name is
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Jesus Christ the righteous. We have an advocate in the presence of God Almighty.
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John does what we should all do when we are mindful of our sins. You should confess it and turn your thoughts to Jesus.
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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.
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Turn your eyes to Jesus. When sin and temptation is plaguing you, fix your eyes on Him.
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But we've often been trained to only look backwards. I want to tell you that I think as often as you can contemplate and consider the cross and what
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Jesus Christ has done for you in your war against sin, that's power and there's strength in that.
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Thinking about how Jesus paid for my sin. He died on the cross that I might walk with Him in newness of life.
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Something about that that's beautiful. But it's not just a backwards look that John wants us to deal with here.
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But John says, look in faith to the present what
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Jesus is doing right now for you. Did you know Jesus Christ is doing something for you right now? Right this second,
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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,
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I need you for salvation, then He is doing something in the presence of the Father. Right now as I speak,
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Jesus Christ is at the right hand of His Father acting as our righteous advocate.
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It's not only what Jesus did for us, but what He is currently doing for us as well.
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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.
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To call Jesus our defense attorney might not translate well into our culture, depends on your experience with defense attorneys.
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But it works. It works. That's the illustration, advocate or defense attorney.
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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.
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He's our advocate. Anybody go, yes? Can I? Anybody excited about that?
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Anybody excited to have an advocate? Someone who stands before the Holy One and says, mine purchased.
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The word translated advocate comes out of that courtroom setting. But we need to move on to verse 2 to find out on what grounds can one who is declared righteous, which is
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Jesus, it's declared of Him to be righteous, and what grounds can He go for dismissal of you and I, for acquittal?
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How can He look at me and say, not guilty? Does that sound righteous to you? If I'm guilty, if I'm unclean, if I've sinned, and then
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Jesus stands before His Father and says, not guilty, does that sound a little bit dicey?
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Is He lying in the presence of the Father? There's something else that's going on here.
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Verse 2 is going to play that out. How can the righteous one, Jesus, go for acquittal for those of us who know we are guilty and unclean?
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How can we possibly be righteous? How can
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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.
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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
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NIV? You're going to see that it translates that atoning sacrifice, the ESV, uses the word propitiation.
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How many of you used the word propitiation this past week? You use that word regularly? You probably, yep, all the time.
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In your reports at work and stuff, it comes up? The translators of the NIV said, you are not going to be able to handle the word propitiation, so we're going to dumb it down for you and give you the words atoning sacrifice.
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I'm not sure that solves the problem, because how many of you used the word atoning this past week? You use that word all the time too?
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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.
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Atoning sacrifice says, my sins are dealt with. Did Jesus deal with your sins at the cross? If you're in Him, absolutely.
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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.
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Is that true? Did Jesus die in that process of atonement? Yes. So He is an atoning sacrifice.
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But the height on the word propitiation that's missing from the phrase atoning sacrifice is this, to turn away the wrath of God.
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That's what propitiation means. That's a little bit different than dealing with our sins. It's showing us how
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He dealt with our sins. He took the wrath of God on Himself that you and I deserved.
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And that is how God can look at us and say, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
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Why? The price has already been paid. The sentence has already been meted out and fulfilled by Jesus.
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And that's how Jesus can be our righteous advocate and say, they are okay.
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They are okay. That healing that every soul needs only comes through the propitiation of the wrath of God.
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That His wrath would be turned away from us and poured out on His Son. And He took that for us.
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You guys understanding what propitiation means? He is both our advocate before the
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Father and our atoning sacrifice, or better word, propitiation. He's not merely our advocate, but He's turned away the wrath of the
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Father towards us. What amazing glory is found in this truth. It's an amazing, beautiful thing.
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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.
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His presence with the Father in heaven now is a key ongoing ministry and continually turning away the wrath of the
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Father by advocating for us. He exists as our eternal advocate and the eternal propitiation towards God.
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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.
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But then, I don't want you to get the impression that God the Father is sitting on His throne,
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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?
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Do you sin? Haven't we already established that? So when you sin, the Father is sitting there going, I'm getting angry, Jesus, I'm getting upset,
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I'm getting, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, and Jesus is like, now calm down. Calm down, Father, it's gonna be okay.
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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
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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,
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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.
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And I believe they're there as an eternal reminder, purchased by my sacrifice.
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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.
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Do you get what I'm saying? He's there forever and ever. And as long as Jesus is there, you're covered.
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As long as Jesus is there in the presence of His Father, as long as He is there with the Father, you're good.
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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.
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And where did that happen? Where was His propitiation fulfilled? On the cross.
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On the cross. I think sometimes I've had a shabby view of what
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Jesus is doing in heaven. Has that ever been mystical to you? How many of you knew that Jesus was an intercessor for you?
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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.
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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,
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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
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I mean? That kind of, the mule between you. And he unfortunately had to sit in that seat, so you're passing notes to him, and he's kind of the go -between.
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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
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Father, and so that's what intercession looks like. No, His intercession looks more like this, stating to the
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Father, That one is mine. That one belongs to me. Warts and all.
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Sin and all. They are mine. That one was purchased by my pain. That one is covered by my sacrifice.
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I carried that sin to the cross and put it to death, that it might be remembered no more.
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And there is therefore now no condemnation for that one, because they are mine. Glory.
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That is stated of anyone who is in Jesus Christ. Mine. Purchased by my blood.
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Sealed for eternity in me. That is what the intercession of Jesus Christ looks like.
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That is what it means that He is our advocate. I'm about to get turned up in here.
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I love Him, He says. I love Her. That one is with me. The cross is an amazing thing to motivate us.
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It should be. To understand the great sacrifice for us is indeed central. We're going to remember that here at the end of this service by taking communion together.
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But to realize that Jesus is not done. Certainly He said it is finished and everything that was required to purchase us was done at the cross.
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He uttered it is finished. And yet we go on and move forward to the ministry, ongoing ministry of Jesus Christ, including
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His resurrection. Did you know that the resurrection happened after He said it is finished? Well, it was finished.
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But He's not. And He's still working. And His advocacy for us is an ongoing thing that Jesus is currently ministering for you and I.
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It's an awesome thing. And at the end of verse 2, we require a little bit of a brief academic explanation that could really cause some questions for some of you.
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At the end of verse 2, there's something that's stated there that when it's all said and done, you need to understand what it means.
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And we live in West Michigan. How many of you ever heard the phrase Calvinism?
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You live in West Michigan. You've heard of Reformed doctrine, Calvin College, Christian Reformed churches, a lot of that in our community and in our area.
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So there's this battle back and forth, in case you weren't aware, between Calvinism and Arminianism, free will and God's choice, and there's all kinds of things that happen in there.
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And the end of verse 2 says He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
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We also happen to have here in West Michigan a former pastor who ran a very large church in West Michigan, wrote a little book called
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Loved Wins. Any of you hear that? And ultimately, the end result of that book was his declaration that everyone gets to heaven.
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Everyone gets in. And if you read this at face value, you might go, well, did Rob Bell read this and get that from this?
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He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
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You see how you might kind of go, wait a minute, has the wrath of God been turned away from the entire world?
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But I am positive. I am positive from reading John, studying John, that John did not believe that everyone was in with Christ.
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He's going to draw some pretty hard and fast distinctions between being in the light and being in the darkness. In other words, he believes it's possible for someone to be in darkness.
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He's going to draw a distinction between knowing Him and not knowing Him, abiding in Him and not abiding in Him.
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And he's going to say it's possible for somebody to be outside of the fellowship. So he is not by any means declaring that propitiation is applied to everyone, but it is available for everyone.
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This propitiation is not just for a tight -knit group of fellowship and Christians here in America.
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It is, in John's words, for the world. In the same way
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I might say to you, Recast Church, the gospel is not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.
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Now, that doesn't mean that everybody's saved, but what am I trying to accomplish when I say that? The gospel isn't for your sins only, but it's for the sins of the world.
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I'm trying to motivate you to get out from here and go out and share it with others and say that that gospel, that propitiation, applies to the globe.
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Are you getting what John is trying to say in this? He's trying to motivate his church to not just think internally and say, propitiation, awesome, we were so good that Jesus paid for us and he appeased the wrath of God for us.
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No, he says this is the message that we have to bring to the whole world. Get outside of your bubble and share it with the world.
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A major point from this then is that there is one advocate, there is one propitiation, there is one atoning sacrifice.
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It is Jesus and his message is global, not local. It is for everyone.
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If a person lives in Japan, how is the wrath of God going to be appeased from them?
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Jesus. If a person lives in Saudi Arabia, how is the wrath of God going to be appeased from them?
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Jesus. If a person lives in Liberia, how is the wrath of God going to be appeased from them?
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Jesus. If a person lives in Boston, Massachusetts, how is the wrath of God going to be appeased from them?
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Peru, Indonesia, South Africa, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Mongolia, Ukraine, France, Sweden, Iceland, Alaska.
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How is the wrath of God? Who is the advocate for those people? Their only hope is that Jesus would be their advocate.
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Their only hope is that their sins would be washed away and that the wrath of God would be diverted from them to Jesus on their behalf.
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I want to warn you, church. God has been moving in my heart to pray a very specific prayer for us as a congregation.
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I've been praying and being moved more and more to pray that God would raise up one of us. We've been going for almost five years now and nobody has been sent from our congregation.
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And I'm praying that God would move in someone's heart to the place where they would say, okay, it is not enough for me to minister in my circle of friends.
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It is not enough just for me to stay here. But God is burning in my heart to take this message where it is not heard, where they do not know that they have an advocate, where they do not know that an atonement has been made, where they don't understand propitiation.
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They don't even know they are under the wrath of God. And I'm praying that God would raise up somebody from among us that would have that vision and that passion for the nations, maybe even a specific nation.
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So be warned and be thinking. Could God be calling you? Could God be planting that thought in your heart that you might be able to use the gifts and skills and talents and abilities?
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Now granted, do we need to be taking it to Matawan? Do we need to be taking it to our coworkers?
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Do we need to be taking it to our neighborhoods? Yes. And so the reality is if everybody is called to go, who is going to stay and minister here?
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But some are going to be called to go. I saw that finger.
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And no, it can't be all on me. We are all called to minister, whatever context we're in, but being sensitive to the
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Spirit and to His guidance and recognizing that this message is not just for us, but it's for the whole world.
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So we've spent the bulk of our time in just the first two verses, right? Are you guys ready? Are you ready for this?
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Those first two verses describe the glory of a relationship with Jesus Christ. John shows us that if we know
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Christ and are in a relationship with Him based on faith, then He is our advocate and He is our atoning sacrifice.
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But how do we know that we're in with Jesus? Is that a fundamental question? How do you know that He is indeed your advocate?
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How do you know that you have been atoned for, that the wrath of God no longer rests on you? Good question?
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How many of you just like rock -solid evidence? It's like that choir of angels that sings when you pray or the sprouting wings or something.
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They just be definitive, like, I know I'm in with Christ. Well, John is going to give us some questions to ask ourselves, some diagnostic tools, if you will, to figure this out.
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He says those who know Him, there are those who know Him and those who don't. And knowing the ministry of Jesus as advocate and atonement, just described, do you want
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Him to be your friend? Do you want Him to be your advocate? Do you want Him to be your propitiation?
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I know I do. And so we see these three tests that authenticate that Jesus is our personal advocate and atonement.
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The first is, if we know Him, we will keep His commandments. Kyle, if you can run that up there for me, that'd be great.
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If we know Him, we will keep His commandments. The second, if we abide in Him, we will walk as He walked.
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The third, if we are in the light, we will love our fellow Christians. Three tests that John gives us, and we're going to walk through these one at a time.
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The first one, if we know Him, we will keep His commandments. John says, if we say we know
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Jesus, but do not keep His commandments, and you ever get the impression that John likes to call people a liar?
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He says, you're lying. You are lying if you say, I know Him, but you don't keep
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His commandments. We don't really know Him. He is not really our advocate.
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He is not truly our atonement if we are not keeping His commandments. How many of you kind of are thinking, boy, it'd be nice to know what keeping
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His commandments means about right now? Because it sounds like my relationship with Jesus has something to do with that.
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How many of you, if you're honest, it sounds a little bit scary? It sounds a little bit scary because you're going over a list of commandments that you have broken right now.
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If your mind is anything like mine, it starts to spin, and you're kind of like, okay, am I okay with Jesus? Is He my advocate?
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Is He genuinely my atonement? Because my wheels are spinning. I don't want to soften this too much, but I want to remind us all here at the beginning of these tests that John has already identified that we all have sin.
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He's pretty open about that. So he's not talking. Does it make sense to you that we're lying if we say we are perfect, so keeping
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His commandments cannot be synonymous with being perfect? This is not about perfection, but the phrase keeping
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His commandments is a phrase that certainly includes a level of obedience. Would you agree with me on that? The idea of keeping
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His commandments has a notion of obedience in it, but it goes far above and beyond that to loving the
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Word of God. Look at me in verses 4 and 5 for just a second. I'm going to read them both in conjunction, and you'll see something in parallel here in the verse.
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Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps
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His what? Word. Now, we expect to see the word commandments in there, but it's actually showing us that the idea of the
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Word and the commandments are synonymous in John's thinking. So he's saying if you love His Word, if you keep
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His Word, and by the way, the word keep has a notion of zealous enthusiasm towards something, a zealous enthusiasm towards His commandments, a zealous enthusiasm towards His Word.
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I truly believe that I can accurately summarize what John is saying in his first test by simply stating this. If you know
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Jesus in a saving way, you will want to please Him. You will hunger to know what pleases
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Him, and you will actively pursue those things that He delights in.
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Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be...
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Can anybody finish that? They shall be satisfied. That's one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture, because at times when
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I know I'm not meeting the righteousness of God, I'm still hungering for it. How many of you are just honest?
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You said earlier, I think I asked you to raise your hand, didn't I? You hunger and thirst for righteousness. You hunger and thirst for it.
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You're going to be satisfied. That hunger and that thirst and that desire to please God is something the
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Spirit is giving to you. That you want it is a great sign of life in you.
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Hungering and thirsting for it is a major part of this. But how are you going to...
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If you hunger and thirst for righteousness, how many of you know that this is going to become a big part of your life? If you're hungering and thirsting for righteousness, then the next step is to kind of go, well, what does righteousness look like?
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Oh, it's in here. Oh, I ought to get to know this Word. I ought to feast off this
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Word. I ought to saturate my life with this, because guess what? I want to delight my
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Lord and Savior. And I have yet to find any other way than digging in here and finding out what
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He wants, believing it by faith and applying it to my life. That's what growing in faith looks like. If you are in with Christ, the
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Word, you are going to be zealous about this. You are going to delight in this. You are going to rejoice in this. You are going to want to know more of it.
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You are going to hunger and thirst for it. I've seen that, by the way, here at Recast. I've seen people who didn't have a life with Christ and actually were far away from Him, and they prayed and they asked
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Jesus to save them, and they meant it. They were like, I really need salvation from you, Jesus. And I've seen a hunger for this develop.
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One of the men who came to faith in Christ early on in Recast. How many of you, well, I don't want to give this the reverse, but many of us in the room maybe have never read the entire
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Scripture. A man who came to faith in Christ, here at Recast, within the first three months had read the entire thing.
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Hunger and thirst for the Word of God. He had read it, Genesis to Revelation, in three months.
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Some of us are on the aggressive path of reading it in five years, if we're honest, and we might miss a day or so in there.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? There's a passion and an enthusiasm for the Word of God that is implied in this first one.
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The one who knows Him, and therefore lives with keeping His Word as a high priority, the text goes on to say, is a walking example of the completed love of God.
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The love of God is not some esoteric theological concept towards humanity, some kind of pie in the sky, but when it really comes down to it, the love of God is enfleshed and perfected in you and me.
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It is demonstrated and shown in our love for others, and the way that we abide in Him, and the way that we walk in His Word.
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Isn't that a glorious thing, that He has chosen you and I to reflect His love, to show the world how
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His love looks? It's perfected in His Son, and His Son has shared it with us.
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The second test, verse six, is that if we truly abide in Him, we will walk in the same way
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He walked. This is something like the WWJD. Does anybody remember that from the 90s?
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What would Jesus do? There were the bracelets, and there was the bumper stickers, and there were probably even a couple songs about it, and there were the t -shirts that now you're using to dry your car when you wash it and stuff.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? I mean, how many of you know what I'm talking about when I say WWJD? Things got a little whack with that.
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Would you agree with me? Things get a little out of hand pretty fast. Christians run with fads, and pretty soon every single book on the shelves at family
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Christian stores had WWJD in the title somewhere. Without getting crazy about it, the one who truly abides in Jesus will follow
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Jesus as our example. We will be walking as He walked.
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I would suggest to you that where things get carried away in the Christian community, often on things like this, is not thinking in proper categories about it.
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So to ask the question, what would Jesus do? Should a follower of Jesus, someone who says they abide in Him and really truly abides in Him, will that affect their ethics?
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Let's take that as a category. That is, what is right and wrong and the way you handle that in the workplace and whether you steal pens from your employer or not or the way that you really sell the product without overselling the product.
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Do you know what I'm saying? All different kinds of ways that you can do things that are ethically inappropriate.
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Will following Jesus, walking as He walked, affect your ethics? What about your love?
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The way that you love. Will following Jesus, abiding in Him, affect the way that you love others?
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Will it affect who you love? Yeah, like all people. Right? It's going to have an impact on us.
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What about our ministry? The way that we discharge the gifts and talents and abilities that God has given us.
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Will knowing Jesus affect our ministry and the way that we roll in that? Absolutely. So, asking what would
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Jesus do makes sense in the care for the broken or ethics or our love or our ministry.
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It's not about what we wear today, though. That's where we kind of got a little bit crazy. You know, I mean, standing in front of the closet asking,
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Jesus, what would you wear today? And so I'm going to go with the sandals, the white robe, the sash, brown contact lenses, and long flowing dark hair.
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I'm going to go with the wig today because I want to be like Jesus. Is that what... You can kind of mix up the categories a little bit and that's where we get a little bit strange.
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Now, granted, let me back up and backtrack just a second and say, does Jesus care what you wear?
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Well, to some degree, yes. And you've got to process that. You know, the question got a little bit strange when people were standing at the pump going, which gas would
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Jesus buy? You know, the premium or the mid -grade or the lower one. Or what would
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Jesus drive? Did you ever hear that one? You know, well, does that matter? Yeah, I mean, kind of, like in one sense, right?
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Like we could say it matters in the sense of being good stewards and things like that. But for the most part, get a car that runs and be okay with that.
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But when it comes to ethics, when it comes to all of these other areas of ministry and love, the one who abides in Christ is going to look more and more like him.
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Anybody feel a little conviction when you hear that? Thinking about my life and how
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I look like Jesus and in what ways I do. A good practical way to apply this test would be to pick a gospel,
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, read the life of Jesus and get to know him from it. Read it to know
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Jesus, not read it to check off a box, but maybe you take a few verses a day. Maybe that's what you've got there.
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Or maybe you take a chapter at a time and work your way through a gospel, finding out who Jesus is and how he ministered.
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And then here comes the hard part. Then consider, in what ways do you look like him? What ways do you act like him?
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What ways do you walk like him? And what ways do you not walk like him?
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Once again, we're not going to peg this. So if the standard is perfection, then you would be the savior, right?
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I mean, if you walk exactly like Jesus walked, guess what? You're Jesus. Okay, so are we going to get that?
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Are we going to nail that 100 %? But what we're talking about is more and more Christ -likeness every day, every month, every year.
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We're growing in him. If we abide in him, we will be growing and looking more and more like him.
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His priorities becoming our priorities. His passions becoming our passions.
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Believing the truth that he shared and taught and proclaiming that to others. Conforming to the life of Christ is the reality for one who is abiding in him.
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The last test is in Verain. And it's that if we are in the light, we will love our brothers.
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Brothers being another word, another term for Christians. Actually, I said verse nine, but does it? Yeah, it's there.
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Whoever says he's in the light and hates his brother is still in the darkness, but whoever loves his brother, verse 10, abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling.
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But I don't want to completely skip verses seven and eight. There's this little confusing monologue by John here, and he says, what
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I'm offering to you is an old commandment. It's not new, but it's kind of sort of new and not only old.
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And I'm going to be kind of, he lost you somewhere in there. You're like, I've had this conversation before and it felt like an argument. Like he's saying it's old, then it's new, and then it's not old, but it's new and all that.
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And so you're kind of like, what is he getting at? He's going to say, this command has been around for a while.
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Going all the way back to the Old Testament, the idea of loving others goes all the way back to the
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Old Testament. But now it's kind of like a new command in that it's actually being completed in Jesus and his people.
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It's actually being fulfilled. There's a newness to this command because it's realized in Jesus.
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It's realized in his people. In other words, to summarize verses 7 and 8 for us, John says, I'm not coming up with this on my own.
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This isn't something I just, you know, I thought up off the top of my head. Boy, we ought to love one another. He says, you should have known this by now.
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You should have been aware of it. But it's new in that this commandment has now been made true in the love that Jesus has shown to you and then in turn, your love for one another.
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It's now becoming real. John sees this as a sign that an old era is passing away and a new one is coming.
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It's like the early morning when the sun is rising and there's still pockets of shadow but the light is coming on and the sun is coming up over the horizon.
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There's nothing like a good run in the morning as the sun is coming up. I just love that. The rays of sunrise are pushing back the darkness.
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And what does that look like? Our love. Our love. God's love being filtered through us towards others.
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But if we say we are in the light but hate our brothers, which again is a term for Christians, John is sharing a narrow scope.
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Did Jesus tell us to love a little bit more broadly than just our brothers and sisters in Christ? He said even love your enemies. Jesus here is just saying, let's start at an easy spot.
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Soft pitch. Jesus brings the 103 mile per hour fastball right down the heart of the plate to blow us away because he says, love your enemies.
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How many of you know that's a hard pitch? So John kind of says, well let me toss you up a can of corn here.
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This is love those in your fellowship. Love brothers and sisters in Christ.
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Which might be the fast pitch if we're being honest. Sometimes it's hardest to love those that are closest to us.
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Would you agree with me on that? But regardless of how difficult this task is, he's saying that something about whether we are in the light or in the darkness has to do with our love for brothers and sisters in Christ within the church.
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And the reality is, this shows that the possible outcome of church relationships in the early church was not all gumdrops and butterflies and roses.
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John is addressing his own church and he has to talk about Christians hating each other. Pretty heavy.
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Talking about Christians actually hating one another here. But hatred he says is incompatible with the light.
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Now some of us know people and if we're honest about the relationship with them, the best that we can say about them is we don't hate them.
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Some of us who are just being honest, we have those kinds of relationships and I think, well, I don't hate them. Do I get any credit for that?
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You know what I'm saying? Well, the reality is John is having none of that. He's not going to let us off on the hook on this. He says, if you hate someone else in the church, you are proving yourself to be in darkness.
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If the best you can say about them is I don't hate them, still in the darkness.
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Look at verse 10. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light.
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That's where the line is drawn here. I love them. I do kindness towards them.
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I want their blessing. I want their benefit and I will inconvenience myself for their benefit.
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Pretty high calling. Not enough to just say I don't.
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Well, God, come on. You know this person. You know my personality. You know their personality. Let's just cut our losses here,
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God. I love them. And I think sometimes, how many of you have actually encountered that situation where you started off like this with somebody and then through the
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Spirit, you actually connected with them? But it's taken time.
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It's taken effort. Doesn't always work out beautifully. There's conflict and there's problems, but it's processing that together.
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God brings people into the church to sharpen us. Did you know that? Maybe. Have you ever contemplated that you are here to sharpen someone else?
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That you actually aggravate someone? No. No, that couldn't be.
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Loving is a test. There's certainly a general call for us to love all people, but we are to especially love those within the body of Christ.
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I appreciate the love I see across this body of believers. Since we started five years ago, four and a half years ago, there's been an amazing sense of unity.
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I have not seen hatred. Now, maybe there is some here. It's possible. I haven't seen it.
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I haven't experienced it. I have sensed love and care. People take meals to each other.
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They pray over each other, offering to help with projects, lending stuff, doing life together.
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I've seen a beautiful thing here at Recast. But I do not think that we're immune to the possibility that hatred between brothers and sisters could arise in our congregation.
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John concludes here by saying that hatred is a sign of blindness, and anyone who hates is still in the darkness.
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And so the third test for your relationship with your advocate is your love for others in the church.
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If you do not love, then you should ask yourself, am I in the light? Am I in the light?
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We spoke earlier about the advocate and the atonement. His name is Jesus. And we have three fundamental questions to ask this morning in regard to Him.
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If He is indeed our advocate, is He indeed our propitiation? The first question is, do you know
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Him? Do you know Him? Don't be quick with your answer because John is suggesting you can't answer it.
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It's a little bit of a trick question. He says, I can put this question out to you, but you need to answer another question, and your answer to this question is going to answer that one.
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He's being a little bit tricky. He says, do you know Him? Well, then tell me this. Do you love
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His word? Do you keep His commandments? Do you have a zeal for pleasing
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Him? Do you have a hunger and a thirst for pleasing Him? The answer to that question answers this for you.
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Do you know Him? Well, how is your relationship to Him and pleasing Him and loving Him and obeying
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Him and walking with Him? That'll be your answer. The second question, do you abide in Him?
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Well, once again, you can't answer that directly. The way to answer that is by telling me if you are striving to live like the
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Lord. Are you seeing more and more of Him in your life? Is your behavior conforming more and more to His way of ministry, to His passions, to His delight and to the things that He did in ministry to others?
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Are you sensing more sacrifice in your life? The third question, are you in the light?
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You answer that question by telling me where you stand in regard to hating or loving brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.
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Serving others, ministering to them, putting them before yourself.
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If the truth is not in you, if you are in the darkness, if you are not abiding in Him, if you fail the test and do not know
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Him, then it's possible that we fail the test. The solution is not hurry up and start loving others.
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Did you hear me? The solution is not hurry up and start walking as He walked.
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It is not hurry up and obey His commands. How many of you know that that's the tendency in the human heart?
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Oh no, I'm looking at these tests. I'm starting to get scared. I'm starting to get nervous. Am I really into it? Do I really have an advocate? I better hurry up and start loving others.
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I better get my life in order. The answer is to go back to square one and ask
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Him to be your advocate and your atoning sacrifice. If you look at these tests and there's fear, then go back to the starting point and say,
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Jesus, save me. Be my atonement. Be my advocate. If you fail the test, and what you're saying if you fail the test is
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I don't know Him, then the answer is to meet Him. That's the answer.
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Meet Him. The application is not obey commandments. The application is not walk as He walked.
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The application is not love Christians. The application is know
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Him, abide in Him, walk in the truth or walk in the light. And our only hope for that is our connection to Jesus Christ.
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You hearing me? What we could walk away from here is a list of rules. I'm gonna do this,
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I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna be okay. And the last thing I want is a body of people who are trying to fake it, are trying to convince themselves that they're in when they're really not.
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I'd rather go back to square one and say, Jesus, be my advocate. Be my savior. And bring these things into my life by the power of your spirit.
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I want more of that in me. If you're here and you're in with Jesus Christ, you've asked
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Him to save you, you're seeking to relate to Him based on His sacrifice, you hunger and thirst for righteousness, then let these tests be a help to guide you deeper into Him.
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Dig into His Word to know Him so that you can better obey Him because you know Him. Walk as He walked because you abide in Him.
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Love your fellow Christians because you are in the light. We celebrate
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His atoning sacrifice each week. He suffered for us. He died in our place. He rose again three days later.
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He ascended into heaven so that now He sits at the right hand of God Almighty as our eternal advocate.
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It's as if His role in heaven is the eternal plug preventing the wrath of God from flowing to us.
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He stopped up that gap. And because of Jesus, the
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Father's righteous wrath is appeased and satisfied. Before we take communion,
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I would encourage each one of us to consider these questions. Do I know Him? Do I keep
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His commands? Do I abide in Him? Do I walk as He walked? Am I in the light?
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Do I love my fellow Christians? John is not speaking in terms of perfection and if he were, none of us would be worthy of taking communion together today.
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But a life characterized by zeal for His word, reflection of the life of Christ, and love for fellow
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Christians is a life that shows that it belongs to Him. If you're in Christ, rejoice that you have an advocate and an atonement as we come to communion together this morning.
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Let's pray. Father, there's the potential for this to be pretty heavy on people.
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I recognize that some people that are even sitting here have a pretty sensitive conscience and I could have said boo and they would have thought, oh no, am
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I saved? And then there are others who here have a cold and hard, callous heart that maybe something that's been said this morning has broken and chipped away a little bit of that hardness in recognizing that they need a
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Savior, they need an advocate, they need an atoning sacrifice that they can't do it on their own. And Father, whichever camp we are in,
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I ask that You would speak to our hearts by Your Spirit. That You would give us the application that we genuinely need, that You would not allow us to play games with our heart and act like we're in if we're not.
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That if there's anyone here who is genuinely wrestling in their heart kind of saying, I haven't seen any fruit, I haven't seen any growth,
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I haven't seen anything in Christ -likeness in my life, I hate others in the church and I despise this and I despise that.
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Father, that You would bring them back to square one and bring us back to an introduction of Jesus Christ.
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Father, for those of us that are genuinely in You, I pray that Your Spirit would make that clear to us as we come to this communion table, as we reflect on the death of our
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Lord and Savior, His propitiation and His turning away the wrath from us that we deserved.
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Father, that You would bring us to a place of being moved, rejoicing and delighting in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf.
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Father, I thank You for His blood. I thank You for His body that was broken in my place. Father, I pray that You would help us to move out from this week, loving others, being
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Your hands and feet, walking as You walked, keeping Your commandments and having a zeal for Your Word.