Contrasting Darkness with Gospel Indicatives | 1 John 2:12-14

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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Alright, before I get started, I wanted to draw your attention for a moment here to the

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Catechism question in the back of your bulletins, because it says, "...and

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even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it at all, out of sheer grace

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God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction of Christ." So, the main point to address here is,

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I am still inclined toward all evil. And this is something that we need to be careful to make a proper distinction between believers and unbelievers, because as believers we have been regenerated and born again, and therefore we have a new nature.

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Not in the sense that we're a different person, but we have received new desires and habits that now govern our walk with God, so our inner man is no longer evil.

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Our flesh is still a problem, our flesh is still bad, and by flesh I mean primarily our physical bodies, but we just have to be careful to make that distinction, because we are, as Christians, as believers, we are no longer evil, and we are no longer reckoned sinners before God.

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And then, you know, there were also, I was talking to Pastor David about this last week, about some of the hymns that we sing, and one of the hymns, which is,

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Take My Life and Let It Be, I noticed a phrase here, it says, Take my lips and let them be, filled with messages for thee.

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Take my silver and my gold, not on mine would I withhold. And this, of course, has very lordship salvation ring to it, which we would not agree with, and this is referring to the widow's might, the widow that gave everything she had, and that's a misinterpretation of the passage, because it's not that Jesus was celebrating that, he was actually condemning the

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Pharisees for allowing this kind of, who would extort widows, he condemned them for that, so just wanted to clarify that as well.

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And then Elder David had also pointed out in another hymn,

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This is My Father's World, where it says, This is my father's world, he shines and all that's fair.

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In the rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere. And so this sounds very, you know, pious and, you know, lovely,

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I guess, but again, we have to be careful to distinguish, God speaks to us primarily through his word, amen?

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He speaks to us through his word primarily, and through his church, he uses means, and, you know, creation and nature and all those things, yes, there's a psalm that says that the creation reveals knowledge, but only in the sense that it brings to remembrance what we know about God through his word.

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So that is how God speaks to us, primarily. All right, so that was the other set of public announcements for the day,

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I also wanted to thank you for your patience as we continue to work things out for the church, and just please continue to be patient with us, there's a lot of things to work through, and some of it is just a lot of stuff that we have to think through and work through.

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Now I wanted to bring attention now to the sermon title, which is Contrasting Darkness with Gospel Indicatives, Contrasting Darkness with Gospel Indicatives.

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So this is, I'm very excited and eager to preach about this, because it is really precisely what

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John is dealing with in these passages that I'm going to cover. And since it's been a few months since I last preached specifically on 1

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John, I more recently preached on church history and other stuff like that, but it's been a while, so I did want to recap some of the major points that I made in those previous sermons on 1

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John, and I want to do this to reestablish the context for us for today, and also to add some things that I had previously left out.

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So the last time I preached on 1 John was a reactionary sermon on types and shadows abiding in the light and the blinding darkness.

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And by reactionary, I mean that I was reacting and responding to issues that came up and needed to be addressed, and that we need to focus on dealing with and resolving issues.

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So this leads me now to our very first contrast. Speaking of darkness, many of you have heard of books like The Purpose -Driven

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Life and The Purpose -Driven Church, both of which are bestsellers.

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In The Purpose -Driven Church, Rick Warren tells us to ask their neighbors what they want in a church that will convince them to start attending church.

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Then, after you've interviewed everyone, you gather up all the feedback and implement it as much of it as you can in your church.

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And so, you know, it goes without saying, really, but what

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Rick Warren means by purpose -driven is a gross aberration, a distortion of what the

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Bible teaches us about the church. It is a blatant violation of the regulative principle of worship, because God takes

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His worship seriously. Now the acceptable way of worshiping the true

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God, says the 1689 Baptist Confession, is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, like Rick Warren, nor the suggestions of Satan, nor under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the sacred scriptures.

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That's from chapter 22 on the Sabbath and the worship of God. And the color commentary was mine.

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So, Warren also violates the regulative principle by ordaining women elders and allowing women to preach, which is why he was recently kicked out of the

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Southern Baptist Convention last year. And, by the way, John Piper publicly defended

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Rick Warren and his purpose -driven trash. You can look that up online.

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By contrast, however, the Bible is issue -driven and deals heavily with all the issues of life, especially sin.

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After all, God Himself has predetermined and decreed to resolve every issue, because He will render to each one according to His works.

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To those who by patience and well -doing and seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life.

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But for those who are self -seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

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There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the

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Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the

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Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality." Amen, that's

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Romans 2, 6 through 11. We must, therefore, rather live an issue -driven life and become an issue -driven church to seek to deal with and resolve issues.

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I also dealt with 1 John 2, 9 -11.

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If you turn with me there so we can review it and get the context of this passage, these passages.

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1 John 2, 9. Verse 9 says,

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Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.

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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.

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So, as I mentioned before, John the Apostle frequently contrasts light and darkness, this time with respect to obedience.

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The obedience of true believers and the disobedience of hypocritical unbelievers.

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And these are some of the most common themes that John uses in his writings, in all of his writings. Verse 11 vividly describes a darkness so dark that it blinds the eyes.

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The Apostle also uses darkness as a figure of speech called a diakope or diakope, for strong emphasis where a word or phrase is repeated with a small number of intervening words.

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And he throws in a literary paradox or an antithesis used to provoke the audience because we typically associate bright light as blinding rather than darkness.

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So he's really getting our attention about the darkness.

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And the time before that I also preached a sermon on the passing darkness of old and the shining light of the new and summarized the positive or the light that marks true believers, the lifestyle, or in Greek the peripateo, remember that word?

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Our habits, our lifestyle, by using the acronym known as COFS, C -A -W -F -S.

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C is for confessing our sin, A is for abstaining from sin,

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W is for walking in the light, F is for fellowshipping with God and his people,

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S is striving for obedience, that's COFS. Now before we get to the next verses here

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I also want to dig deeper into what John is showing us here so that we can compare and contrast and summarize

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John's teaching up to this point to connect all the textual dots and help us retain the message and to absorb all this light.

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So the scriptures in general emphasize light and darkness as I stated before that John has been elucidating up to this point.

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That means light by the way, elucidating. So as I've said before, it is one of the most prominent contrasts in all of scripture because God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

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Contrast. 1 John 1 .5, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.

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Contrast. And you have other passages like Psalm 119 .105 which says, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

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And similarly, we who believe the gospel in God's word are

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God's shining lights. Matthew 5 .14 -16 says, you are the light of the world.

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A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket in darkness, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house.

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In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

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Father who is in heaven. Now given that, let's take some time to contrast and summarize the opposite, the converse, the dark side of religious hypocrites and froward, not forward, froward, self -deceived sinners.

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There's lots of bad stuff that John is dealing with here, so let's cross over to the dark side for argument's sake, of course.

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To the darkness of willful ignorance, of disobedience, of separation from God, of suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

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And by the way, comparing and contrasting is one of the best ways to learn.

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The apostle John does it repeatedly, as do the rest of the apostles, as does

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Jesus, as does the rest of the scriptures. You can see this just from the verses that I've read so far.

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This is also why many of the Reformed confessions contain both affirmations and denials.

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They not only affirm the positive, or the right doctrine, but also deny the negative, the errors, the heresy.

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So comparing and contrasting is how we grow spiritually, because solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil,

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Hebrews 5 .14. So how do we distinguish good from evil? Contrast.

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Define the terms. Compare the similarities. Contrast the differences.

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This is what it means to discern, and we must exercise it constantly.

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Discernment is so unpopular in our time. It is so unpopular.

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You're being uncharitable. You're being unloving. Some might say, isn't that too extreme? Isn't this too hardcore?

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Am I overemphasizing or overapplying this? But regardless of what you or I think,

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God commands us. He commands us to examine all things, everything, and to hold fast to what is good.

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It's 1 Thessalonians 5 .21. I did not make that up. That's straight from God's Word. And the word examine here means to put to the test, to prove, to examine, to scrutinize, to distinguish or discern by testing, to recognize as genuine after examination.

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This we must do always with everything, including our teaching and preaching.

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Just like the Bereans did when even the apostles themselves came and brought the oral preaching of God's Word, and they submitted everything to the

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Scriptures. That is what we must do. It is a universal rule. The Bible makes no exceptions at all for this.

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Universal rule. So, now back to the point here.

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In light of the contrast that John highlights about darkness, what are some of the distinguishing sins and evil habits that mark unbelievers, that keep them in darkness and condemn them, according to John's letter thus far?

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And there's four things that I listed here. The first one is false fellowship or claiming true fellowship with God while walking in darkness.

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1 John 1 .6 says, If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness in unbelief and unrepentant hypocritical disobedience, we lie and do not practice the truth.

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And this, of course, is in contrast to walking in the light of obedience, of law and gospel, rightly distinguished and applied.

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Okay, the second one. The second one is denying the sinfulness of your natural state with delusions of sinlessness and self -deceived righteousness.

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1 John 1 .8 says, If we say we have no sin, we delude ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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That means we are not saved. These are self -deceived sinners blinded by their sin, their ignorance, their unbelief, their hypocrisy.

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This is in contrast to confessing our sins in genuine repentance and reconciliation.

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The third one is hypocrisy. According to 1

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John 2 .4, Whoever says I have come to know him but does not habitually keep focused on his precepts and obey his commandments, his teachings is a liar and the truth of the divine word is not in him.

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That's from the Amplified Bible, by the way. It's a very useful translation for reading and studying scripture.

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And I highly recommend it to you again. Get the 2015 revised and expanded version, not the older one.

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The 2015 version is much better. Now, this verse is the same problem that James 2 also addresses and corrects.

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Where a mere profession of faith is not proven to be genuine because it is not regenerated and not evidenced, therefore, by good works.

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Good works follow from regeneration in faith. So now note here, this hypocrisy also goes beyond ignorance.

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In contrast to what Paul said. So when Paul said formally, he was a blasphemer, a persecutor and insolent opponent.

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But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our

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Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. That's 1 Timothy 1 .13

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-14. So the Bible makes a distinction there between willful ignorance and knowing the truth and denying it and ignorantly acting in unbelief.

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According to the late Lutheran pastor Richard C .H. Lenski, who is not to be confused with the evolutionary biologist by the same name.

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The man who claims I have known God and does not keep God's commandments is nothing but a plain liar.

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Not merely because his claim and his conduct disagree and contradict each other.

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His conduct giving the lie to his claim, nor because he just fails to see this and is thus only a sadly mistaken liar.

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No, far worse. He is a deliberate liar. In this one, the truth is not.

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And our society has an embarrassment of these bad apples. American politicians, especially

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Democrats, pretty much all Democrats. OK, but like like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris specifically because they claim to know

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God, but deny him by their works, by not keeping his word, his word, and instead encourage others to break his commandments.

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Such as the aggressive push to sanction the murder of unborn children and pushing Antichrist LGBT's agendas and transgenderism and perverting kids and drag queen story time and all this perverted stuff.

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John speaks very clearly to these kinds of individuals and pronounces unequivocal judgment.

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The truth is not in them. They are false believers, liars and hypocrites who walk in darkness and are categorically condemned.

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Black and white. Now, the fourth and final point brings everything together from the previous points.

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It is really a conclusion because such believers would therefore make God a liar. 1

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John 1 10 and the Amplified says, if we say that we have not sinned, refusing to admit acts of sin, we make him out to be a liar by contradicting him.

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And his word is not in us. This is the same God who cannot lie.

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He cannot lie, is ever truthful and without deceit, according to Titus 1 2.

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And because as Numbers 23 19 says, God is not a man that he should lie nor a son of man that he should repent.

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Has he said and will he not do it? Or has he spoken and will he not make it good and fulfill it?

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And because it is impossible for God to lie. Amen.

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Hebrews 6 18. This is why God detests sinners.

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Who claim to be sinless, who are hypocrites. It is an insult to God's very holiness and character.

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And mockery of his character. And note this verse doesn't just refer to those who claim to be perfectly sinless.

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OK. It also refers to those who acknowledge themselves to be sinners, but nevertheless still commit sin and refuse to repent and recognize it as sin.

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Very important to understand that. Both are an affront to God's perfect consuming fire of holiness.

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An affront to the necessity of Christ's perfect righteousness and propitiatory death.

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An affront to the necessity of the Holy Spirit's regeneration in order to enable us to do any good in the first place.

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And it is also the very popular sin of embracing a false reality.

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Of living a lie. And boy, do you see this everywhere now?

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Our society now openly embraces all kinds of false realities, even in the church.

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There's a lie of transgenderism. There's no such thing, folks. There's no such thing as a transgender male or female.

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No matter how hard you try. There's a lie of gay marriage. Again, there's no such thing as gay marriage.

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God defined marriage between a man and a woman. There's a lie of systemic racism and police brutality.

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It's not true. There's a lie of free and fair elections.

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Those who twist reality, those who are hypocrites, only worsen their sin and their guilt by also making

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God a liar. By also insulting God and His holiness. They will have to answer for that.

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You do not want to be these folks on judgment day. I got to say. And a friendly reminder, because this is obviously so relevant.

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Beware. Well, public service announcement, right? Beware of false pieties, false spiritualities, which are other forms of false reality that are plaguing churches today.

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Anything that emphasizes emotions, experiences, mystical encounters, over knowledge, truth and sound doctrine are false piety.

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Even if they don't explicitly say so or teach so. You can still deny by your works, by your fruit.

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We must scrutinize and judge them by their fruits because Jesus said to do that, which is their doctrine and their practice.

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These can be much more dangerous and hard to detect, however, because they sound so pious and are couched in religious language.

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And they're all about prayer and your prayer closet and, you know, all this stuff. But false pieties ultimately hinder our sanctification and true piety.

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They lead to imbalance, sin, laziness, disobedience, ignorance, spiritual stagnation, pride and unmanliness.

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They lead to the exact opposite of what they claim. Because if you don't know

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God and his word and his doctrine, his sound system of doctrine, which neither of those can be separated.

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You cannot separate God from his word and from his doctrine. Like you hear these pieties say, oh, there's there's trust.

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There's there's believing a creed versus trusting a person. That's that's a lie. You can't do that.

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The Bible does not. It says the opposite. God and his word and his doctrine are one in the same.

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You are in darkness if you do not hold and believe to God, his word and his doctrine.

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The problem is not knowledge because they say that knowledge leads to pride, especially knowledge of the truth that saves and sanctifies us.

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It's the solution to our problems. It is knowledge, truth and sound doctrine that give us light, sight, freedom and eternal life.

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Amen. OK, so turn with me now to 1 John 2, verse 12.

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When I read verses 12 to 14 and recall that in the previous verse that I read earlier,

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John warned us about the consuming darkness of hypocrisy that blinds the eye.

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OK, then notice he makes a transition. A sharp transition.

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And he says, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.

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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.

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

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

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Now, take note how John is addressing believers from every spiritual stage of life, not necessarily chronological age, but spiritual age.

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Age from your conversion. Everyone from little children to children to young men, including those in their cage stage, to fathers and elders in the faith.

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There's something in here for everybody except for maybe

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Jezebel and the feminists, of course. Now, remember, whenever you encounter a biblical text, any passage, no matter what it is, always ask yourself this question and respond accordingly.

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Does this passage have anything to do with law or gospel? Either, both, or none.

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There's all possible scenarios there. Think carefully with me here.

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What does this passage reveal to us? What does it reveal? What is it saying?

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Are there imperatives or indicatives or maybe both?

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But first, as always, we must define our terms, our theology, carefully and biblically.

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So I'm going to borrow from an article on a Reformation view of sanctification.

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Categories are essential for understanding Scripture. These are not categories that we impose on Scripture, like the ones

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Rick Warren uses, right? Known as eisegesis, but categories that rise out of Scripture, known as exegesis.

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Extracting the meaning from the text, not imposing it into the text, such as the distinctions between the indicative and the imperative.

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The imperative and indicative also refer to grammatical moods in language, including

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Greek and English. Now, Webster's 1828 Dictionary provides an excellent definition of imperative.

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It says, number one, commanding, expressive of command, containing positive command, as distinguished from advisory or discretionary.

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It's not a suggestion, right? It's a command. You must do it. The orders are imperative.

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Two, in grammar, the imperative mode of a verb is that which expresses command, entreaty, advice, or exhortation.

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The imperative, therefore, represents the law. It represents the law, commandments, duties, obligations, right?

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The indicative, on the other hand, is defined in the article as a declaration of what

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God has done already and of who we are in Christ as a result of what

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He has done. It defines us, defines us.

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It represents the gospel. In other words, the passage that we just read, given this understanding, is it imperatives or indicatives?

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The passage that we just read is, in fact, an entire series of symmetrical gospel -saturated indicatives.

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Now, okay, we need to back up here a moment. Something's just like, okay, how is this adding up now?

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Because I just finished contrasting the light and darkness all throughout John's letter. It is very severe at times with several warnings and commands and categorical judgments and condemnations.

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I just read some of them. And you'll often hear lordship salvation preachers say that 1

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John is a checklist. It's a checklist, right, of do's and don'ts.

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If you don't meet all the checks, then if you don't do all the do's and don't do all the don'ts, then you are not saved.

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That's how it typically goes. I bring to mind one of the sermons that I critiqued before called

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Examine Yourself by a very popular preacher by the name of Paul Washer.

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So, and sadly, I hate to admit, but sadly,

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I used to explain 1 John this way, too, until I began maturing in scripture and the systematic reform doctrines of the

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Reformed faith. But we have a dilemma here.

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How do we make sense of this? How do we make sense of these judgments and condemnations with this gospel saturated indicatives?

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And how do we make sense of that? But do not despair and have no fear.

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The law gospel distinction is here. Amen. So even though the

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Apostle John is contrasting good and bad behavior, and he is giving us law to consider and to obey, he is, we cannot lose sight and balance, lose the balance of the indicatives.

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Because John's entire letter both assumes and explicitly declares the indicatives of the gospel, of the gospel, just like this very passage does.

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Okay? This is so important for us to understand. If you don't understand this, you do not, you will not understand the

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Bible. You will not understand the gospel properly, and you will not be able to distinguish the law from the gospel properly.

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So, our good friend, William Perkins, whom we've met before, the

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Puritan who wrote The Art of Prophesying, explains simply yet profoundly that the gospel not only teaches us what is to be done, it also has the power of the

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Holy Spirit joined to it. When we are regenerated by Him, we receive the strength we need both to believe the gospel and to do what it commands.

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Both to believe it and to do what it commands. Amen to that.

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That is just fantastic. That is good news, folks. That is good news.

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This is the key to true peace, which keeps us from losing our balance and from despairing of our sins and failures and shortcomings.

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This is how we as believers must remember to read the imperatives, the commands of Scripture.

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We must apply them correctly to us. Why? Because the

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Bible tells us to. In 1 Timothy 1 .8, we read, in fact, how

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God... You know what? Let's turn there. Let's go ahead and turn to 1 Timothy 1 .8, because this is very important to bear in mind.

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In 1 Timothy 1 .8, and I had also preached on this text in the

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Law and Gospel sermon series that I did earlier, but it is very important to tie it together to what we are discussing here.

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It is just so important because this is the glue. This is how we understand how to apply these things. 1

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Timothy 1 .8.

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Now we know that the law is good. The law is good if and only if one uses it lawfully.

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Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

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God with which I have been entrusted. So this, folks, is the key. This, beloved, is the key to understanding the

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Scriptures. The law, when you read the law, we have to understand that we are no longer under the law as a condemning force.

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The law no longer condemns us. It does.

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It convicts us and it guides us and it sanctifies us, but it does not condemn us.

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Remember this. The law does not condemn us.

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There is no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because Christ himself satisfied the full extent and demands of the law on our behalf.

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Amen? That's the gospel, and we need to live and understand the

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Scriptures and apply them accordingly as believers. This is how we must also use the analogies of faith and of Scripture to systematize our understanding of these doctrines and rightly relate them to each other and to apply them to us in light of our union with Christ.

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We cannot read the Bible in isolation from itself. We cannot read it in isolation from other

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Scriptures, from the rest of the Scriptures, and from the rest of the doctrines that the Bible teaches.

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We have to keep all of them in harmony because God does not lie and God does not contradict himself.

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God is a God of peace, love, and a sound mind that is consistent with truth of his

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Word. So, therefore, beloved, in Christ, God is now your loving

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Father. He is not your condemning judge. You are his sons and daughters.

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You are no longer guilty criminals. Christ and the

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Holy Spirit are now our paracletes, our advocates, our intercessors.

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Christ is our mediator, our perfect righteousness. He is our everything.

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Amen? We, therefore, obey

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God, our Father, in gratitude as beloved adopted sons and daughters, as heirs who are privileged members of his family.

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This is the ultimate privilege, folks. This is the only kind of privilege that ultimately matters.

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God privilege. Forget about white privilege and all that nonsense you hear.

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This is the only privilege that ultimately matters. If you do not have

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God privilege, you are not saved and you don't have the truth. God privilege is what matters.

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So, instead of seeing 1 John, then, as a mere checklist, let's use the more biblical and balanced law and gospel distinction by looking at the letter as a series of indicators as well.

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There's both in there, right? There is imperatives. There's also indicatives. It's both.

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This is not to say that 1 John contains no law, as I've stated before, because all unbelievers, whether hypocrites, the spiritually blind, those who walk in darkness, all of them are still condemned, categorically condemned, because their lifestyles merely indicate what they are already, sinners lost in darkness.

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They have no hope outside of God's gospel of grace, outside of God's privilege. But remember that we who have been regenerated and have the gifts of repentance and faith in the gospel, we who accept, receive, and rest upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, as our confession says, will therefore naturally, consequently, and increasingly indicate, indicate the lifestyle of repentance and holiness that 1

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John describes. Because a statement of the gospel, says our good friend

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Perkins, speaks of Christ and his benefits, and of faith being therefore fruitful and good works, because the gospel empowers.

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The gospel energizes. The gospel sanctifies us and gives us the

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Spirit of God to work out our salvation in fear and trembling.

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Amen? And do not forget, never forget, that we are not without help.

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Our great God and Savior says, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

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Never. That's God privilege. That all comes with the package.

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As believers, we should desire these things and strive to practice them and make them habits, peripateo, in our lives.

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But this is possible only by God's grace, power, and means.

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Because we who are united to Christ, again according to our confession, effectually called and regenerated, having a new heart and a new spirit created in them, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, are also further sanctified.

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Really and personally. It's a reality. Through the same virtue, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them, by His means, the dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed.

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And the several lusts of it are more and more weakened and mortified.

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And they more and more quickened or brought to life and strengthened in all saving graces.

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All those benefits and God privileges that we have to the practice of all true holiness.

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Now, as we wrap up here, let's go through these indicatives in 1

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John 2, verse 12 -14 again. I want to go through it more carefully, line by line, with law and gospel lenses applied.

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Now, I'm going to reread the passage in the amplified version with some of my own color commentary.

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So it's going back to 1 John 2, starting in verse 12. We read,

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I am writing to you, little children, believers, dear ones, and those young in the faith, because your sins have been, have been, have been, past tense, forgiven, for His name's sake.

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You have been pardoned and released from spiritual debt through His name, because you have confessed

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His name, believing in Him as Savior. It is done. I am writing to you, fathers, those believers who are spiritually mature, because you know

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Him already, who has existed from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, those believers who are growing in spiritual maturity, and those who are in their cage stage, right?

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That's a joke. But anyway, because you have been victorious, you have been, past tense, and have overcome the evil one already.

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I have written to you, children, those who are new believers, those spiritually immature, because you have come to know the

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Father already and eternally. I have written to you, fathers, because you know

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Him who has existed from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and vigorous, and the

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Word of God remains always in you, and you have been victorious over the evil one by accepting

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Jesus as Savior. Amen. Now, to tie that all together, let's tie that all together with some other amazing passages, starting with Philippians 4 .13

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from the Amplified Bible, which says, I can do all things which

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He has called me to do through Christ, who strengthens and empowers me to fulfill

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His purpose. I am self -sufficient in Christ's sufficiency.

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I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses me with inner strength and confident peace.

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That is a beautiful rendering of that text. Amen to that. Yet in all these things, we are more than conquerors and gain an overwhelming victory through Him who loved us, so much so that He died for us.

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Romans 8 .37. Amen. Now that, beloved, is bona fide gospel indicative right there.

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That is the God privilege that we all have already in Christ.

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And never forget that. Never forget to rightly understand law and gospel in our lives, when we look at the law especially.

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Let us now go ahead and close out in prayer. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety has applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be

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Biblical, Reformed, Historic, Confessional, Loving, Discerning Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the

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Christian faith. If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.