WWUTT 403 Because You Know Him?

You'll hear it said in our culture that hate takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of work to hate.

No, it doesn't. It's very easy to hate. It takes a lot of work to love and show grace and mercy.

And yet that is exactly what God has commanded us to do when we understand the text. This is when we understand the text studying

God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Find all our videos online at www .wutt

.com, as well as links to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here's your teacher,

Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. And greetings, everybody. We are continuing our study of 1

John 2 today. I'm going to begin reading once again in verse 7, and we'll go through verse 17.

John writes, 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 am 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.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever.

So I want to come back to where we left off yesterday, primarily verses 9, 10, and 11.

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Verse 11, whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness.

He doesn't know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. The context, as I mentioned to you yesterday, is specifically loving the brotherhood, our fellow saints, the brothers and sisters that we fellowship with in the body that we are a part of, in the church that we are members of.

And as I suggested to you at the end of the program yesterday, you must be in church.

The only way that you can exercise this is to be in a church where you regularly fellowship, learn in the word, grow in maturity in the way that you love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is how we continue to perfect this command that has been given to us, that we love our brothers.

Just as God showed us mercy and grace, though we did not deserve it, this is the very way you must love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Even in the church, they don't deserve it. Okay, I'm not even going to sugarcoat it. You are going to church with a bunch of sinners.

You sit in your pew on Sunday or your chair. I mean, whatever it is, people are put in churches anymore.

We have chairs, but they're all like interlinked. It's kind of a bench looking thing.

So we still call it a pew, even though they're probably not pews. They're individual chairs.

But anyway, if we had to, everybody could squinch together. But nonetheless, you can easily recognize that they're individual chairs.

So the person that you're sitting next to on Sunday, you look to your left and to your right in either direction.

You look in front of you. You look behind you. You're surrounded by a bunch of sinners, but you've got sinners who are being sanctified.

That's the difference between a person who is saved and a person who is not. They're both sinners.

They both still have the old man. They both are still descendant from Adam and still have a sin nature within them.

But the person who has been transformed in Christ is being sanctified. So there is a progression that is happening there.

The person who is unsaved is actually getting progressively worse. But the person who is saved is getting progressive.

They're progressing in holiness, being made more like Christ, growing in love, growing in an understanding of doctrine, growing in worship toward God, loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Okay, this is supposed to be the advancement for the Christian. And we are never going to be without sin as long as we continue to inhabit this flesh, which was descendant from Adam.

We will be warring between the righteousness of Christ and the sinfulness of the old self as long as we continue to inhabit this body.

Now, there are going to be ways where that war is easier, and there are also going to be ways in which that thing is tougher.

In Spurgeon's sermon on indwelling sin, he said about the only way that we don't get weaker when we get older is in our sin.

That old Adam is still in there waiting for a moment of vulnerability to take hold of you and seize your mind and draw you back into the worldliness that you were in before you came to Christ.

So we always have to be watchful. This is why Peter says in 1 Peter 5, always be watchful.

Your enemy, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion waiting for somebody to devour.

And so if we are watchful, we are mindful of that enemy and never letting our guard down.

And that enemy doesn't just exist outside of us. That enemy exists within us, the sinful nature that we have.

So, yes, we are being perfected. Yes, we are being sanctified. Yes, we are growing in holiness. But we still must be watchful because that old self is still there.

This is what John meant when in the first chapter he said, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

We deceive ourselves because we let our guard down and we make ourselves vulnerable again to that sinful self that is still inside us.

Now, it is it is definitely being suppressed. It's being held down by the justification in Christ that we have received and the sanctification that we are pursuing in.

So there's a suppression of that sinful self, but it's still there. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. So part of being watchful is recognizing and knowing that we still have that sinful self within us that we must constantly keep in check.

Paul, giving the instruction to the Corinthians, take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

So we must do that on a regular basis. Romans 12, 1 and 2 present your bodies as holy and living sacrifices unto the

Lord. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, renewing of your mind.

That's something that you have to do on a regular basis. It doesn't say since you have renewed your mind, Paul is giving an instruction that we continually renew our minds to be more like Christ, to have that work of the spirit that is constantly progressing in us to shape us more into the image of the son of God.

For we are his workmanship created for good works in Christ Jesus, which Paul talks about in Ephesians 2 .10.

So this is that continual shaping into the image, the holiness, the righteousness of Christ.

That's what we do as brothers and sisters in Christ within the same body. And so as God, I mentioned this, you know, what, like five minutes ago, now

I'm coming back to it, as God has shown us mercy and grace, though we did not deserve it, so you must show it to your brothers and sisters in Christ, though they don't deserve it.

They're sinners too. You're a sinner sitting in church, desiring to be more like your heavenly father.

Jesus said it in the Sermon on the Mount, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect right at the end of Matthew chapter five.

And we desire to be like our savior, Jesus Christ. And so we're being made more like Christ.

To put it simply, Ephesians chapter five, verse one, be imitators of God. There you go.

That's what we're striving for. So we must love our brothers and sisters with a love that they don't deserve.

Just as we are loved by God with a love that we don't deserve. If you want to hate your brother or sister in the

Lord, I mean, this applies to anybody, but since we're talking about the context of brothers and sisters in Christ, let's keep it there.

If you want to hate your brother or sister in the Lord, there is no shortage of reasons for you to find to hate them.

Just take the person that is sitting next to you. I'm going to use this as a general exercise. I'm not going to encourage you to do this.

Okay, a general example, but you just take the brother or sister that's sitting next to you. You could rattle off the top of your head, five things in five seconds that this person is deplorable for.

And you should dislike them because of those five things that they are guilty of. You probably could think of five sins.

That person sitting next to you is guilty of, and so this is why I have cause or have reason to hate them.

But do you understand that exercising grace means that you completely ignore the reality of those sins that are in their life, and instead, you overlook them.

The word for this that's used in Romans is forbearance. So we are overlooking that person's sins and showing the grace and the love of God, recognizing that we have a brother or sister in Christ here that is growing in holiness, not that they are perfect, but they desire to be perfect as their

Savior is perfect, just as you have the same. So there are sins within yourself that the person sitting next to you could easily rattle off and say,

Hey, you're guilty of these things. I have cause to hate you. But instead, I'm overlooking those sins and recognizing that you are my brother in Christ, my sister in Christ, and we are growing together into the head who is

Christ Jesus. We're being nourished in the body. We're maturing, building up in love.

And so that's what I want to help you do. Not tear down a member of the body of Christ, a member that I am a part of with all of these lists of things that you are guilty of, but rather, how can

I help you? How can I build you up? And in that process, I'm building up the whole body of Christ because we are strengthening one another in love.

So that's the call upon us to show love to our brothers and sisters in Christ.

You could easily find a reason to hate your brother or sister, but you are being called to be gracious and forgiving and merciful and loving, which they don't deserve, just like you don't deserve, but you are being commanded to show them those things anyway.

So do you see how easy it is to hate or dislike or disregard or cut down or ignore?

It's easy to do those things. It's easy to show that side of ourselves to somebody else because they're sinners, because we're all sinners.

You can find cause to dislike another person, but what you are being told to do is instead be merciful, loving, gracious, kind, patient, all the other words that apply to love as perhaps

Paul gave them in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. That's significantly more work.

Hate is really easy. Love is a lot of work. And so you see how there is a lot of work that needs to be done when it comes to loving one another.

It's really easy to just turn around and walk away from somebody. Boy, you are a mess.

I just don't want to have anything to do with you. That's easy to do. But to say to a person, I see you're a mess.

I'm going to help you through that. I'm going to love you. I'm going to help you grow out of the sin that you once were in and pursuing the righteousness of Christ and hoping that you would do the same for me as well, encouraging and admonishing one another in the

Lord, as Paul talks about in Colossians chapter three. That's hard work. It's hard work. It is difficult work to have a church that loves one another and encourages one another and is growing each other and is disciplining each other and is forgiving one another and is apologizing and asking for forgiveness and showing grace.

All of that's hard. It's tough. I've been a pastor for seven years. It's never been easy.

What's easy is the person who gets frustrated with me and turns their back and walks out the door, which happens all the time.

I don't mean to say that there's like this exodus of people from the church, but every year there's going to be some kind of conflict or skirmish that a person has just decided, you know what?

I'm not going to love my brothers and sisters through this. You guys are on your own. And they just walk out the door because they were never of us to begin with.

And we're going to get to that next week when we get to 1 John chapter two, verse 19.

They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

But they went out that it might become plain that they are not of us. And we're reading about them here as well.

When it says, 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. We're not causing our brothers and sisters to stumble.

We're helping them. We're encouraging them. We're admonishing. We're growing. 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.

So he doesn't see the love and the grace of God that has been shown to us despite our sin.

Instead, he sees the sin and says, I don't want to have anything to do with it. And does not act as our savior does in that while we were yet sinners,

Christ died for us. Instead, they turn around and walk away and say, I don't want to mess with your sin. I don't want you noticing mine either saying anything about my sin.

So that's why I'm going to have nothing to do with you. This is this is the way that we show. This is the most common way we show hate toward one another.

You probably don't often see the finger pointing and the shouting and the name calling. You may not see that so often. But what you do see is the ignoring the disregard, the wearing masks, lying to one another, telling each other we're fine when there's really a problem.

You know, covering over our faults so nobody sees the deep, dark parts of us that need to be exposed by the light so that we can be made pure and wash clean of our sins the way that we need to be, you know, and Paul said to the

Colossians, don't lie to one another anymore, seeing that you have put off the old self. That means that we can't be wearing those facades with one another when we attend church.

We have to be open and honest within the body of Christ. The only way we're going to grow. It's the only way that we can show love and receive forgiveness in a proper way is when we are open and honest with one another.

Asking forgiveness for our sins and confessing our sins to one another is James instructs in James chapter five.

So this is the way that we continue in this love and progression of maturity, holiness, righteousness, growing one another, helping each other in this process within the body of Christ in the church.

Okay, from there, we, we kind of close out the section that we've been reading this week in verses 12 through 14.

I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake. Now there's a lot of different interpretations for what is what's being said here.

A little children, fathers, children, young men. Those are the four main addresses that are being given here in these three verses.

Some will say that the little children pertain to the less mature. The fathers are the more mature.

The young men are kind of the middle, middle of the road mature. Here's what I think the best explanation is for these three passages.

This applies to every single Christian. You are a little child. You are also a father.

You are also a young man. And you are also the children that's described there again in verse 13, though it's not little children, but it's just the word children.

All four of those apply to you and apply to me. Let's explain that as we go through.

Okay, so verse 12, pertaining to what we just read in verse 11, I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.

This is all to the glory of God. It's not to the glory of us. It is definitely not cause for boasting unless we're boasting in the

Lord. It's for his namesake. Psalm 23, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake.

God has saved us to the praise of his glorious grace. Ephesians chapter one, I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

So we already know that all of us who have been adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ, we're his children.

So little children, that applies to all of us. How does fathers apply to all of us? I'm writing to you, fathers.

Here's how this applies to you. And women, it even applies to you. Okay, masculine adjective, but it still applies even to women.

How is that? Because you have the gospel that has now been given to you so that you can give it to somebody else.

And in so doing, when they turn from their sin and come to the faith, you have become their father and they have become your child in the faith because you led them to the faith by the declaration of the gospel that they heard and received.

And so that is a way that all of us as Christian become fathers, just as God is the father of us all who gave us the gospel through his son,

Jesus Christ. We become fathers whenever we share the gospel with others and they get saved because you know him who is from the beginning.

You know the gospel. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him, Jesus Christ, who is even from the beginning.

In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Okay, just as we read it in John chapter one applies here in first John as well.

Continuing on still verse 13. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

Now that one's a little bit more complicated. Little children make sense. Fathers. Okay, we got that one. So how does young men apply?

Well, you have overcome the evil one, but there is still much growth that you have to accomplish yet as as a

Christian. So in that way, we are more than conquerors for those who are in Christ Jesus.

But there's still more for us to accomplish more strength that we need to gain more maturity and experience that we have yet to acquire.

So that's how the address young men applies. I'm writing to you, young men, because you've overcome the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the father. Once again, the title of us as children, because we're all children of God adopted through Jesus Christ.

I write to you, fathers, the address again as fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

And that's the same way that's addressed at the beginning of verse 13. I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

All of this is very encouraging, and it's also something that John is saying in order to instill confidence in his readers in knowing that they have conquered, that they have

God as their father, that they will conquer still, that they will grow up more, that they are in Christ part of God's heavenly kingdom.

These are assurances that John is giving to his readers and the spirit is giving them to us.

It's okay for you, believer, to read these passages, verses 12, 13, and 14, and see that they are directly being spoken to you.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

That's you, dear listener, dear Christian. That's me. And then after this comes warning.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father whom we were just talking about in the previous three passages, or yeah, three verses, whoever loves the world, the love of the father is not in him.

And that's where we'll pick up next week. That section, verses 15 through 17, as we come back to our study of 1

John on Monday. Tomorrow, we will conclude our study of 2

Samuel, and we'll finish up with that Old Testament book in our Thursday broadcast.

Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for the salvation that has been given to us in Jesus Christ, that through him we might be called your children.

We are your little children and our sins are forgiven for your name's sake.

At the same time, we have become like fathers because the gospel has been given to us and we now share the gospel with those who are saved and those who are needing to be saved.

We share the gospel with those who are saved to be reminded of the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.

And we share the gospel with those who are not yet saved so that they would turn from their sin and know

Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. And even though we have been saved, we are still young in this faith.

There is still much for us to accomplish, much for us to learn and grow in.

So lead us in these truths and help us to overcome the evil one. Remind us that when we are weak, you are strong.

The word of God abides in us, gives us our strength, gives light to our path.

And we overcome the evil one by the power of the word of God which we heard and believed.

We thank you in the name of Christ. Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.