There Is No Fear in Love

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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Please remain standing if you would for the reading of the word from 1st

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John in chapter 4. I'm going to begin reading in verse 12.

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I'm going to go to the end of the chapter. 1st John chapter 4 verse 12. This is

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God's holy and infallible Word. No one has seen

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God at any time. If we love one another,

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God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.

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By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.

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And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

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Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and He in God.

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And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

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And now the section we'll be exploring today. Love has been perfected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.

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Because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.

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But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us.

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If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love

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God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves

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God must love his brother also. Please pray with me.

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Oh, Lord, I pray that the fullness of your love for us would be enjoyed by your people.

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That we would have boldness and security in your love. And therefore, we would have boldness and security to be faithful and fruitful to you in a world that's hostile to you.

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Give us great courage and boldness, I pray. Give us a greater sense of our security in you.

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Help us to venture great things in your name. And we ask this all in Jesus' name.

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Amen. Please be seated. The title of the message today is,

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There Is No Fear in Love. I made the decision to continue through verse 21.

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I believe it says we're ending at verse 19 today. And I think it'd be better to go on through verse 21.

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My thesis statement or sermon in a sentence today is boldness and security in God's love.

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Boldness and security in God's love. First, we're going to consider love reaching its desired end.

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Love reaching its desired end. Second, we're going to see that Christ is the exemplar of love for God and love for man.

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Third, God's love initiates us into love. And fourth, therefore, be practitioners of love.

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This outline is found in the general channel on Slack if you need it. Let's consider the word beginning at verse 17.

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Love has been the grand subject of our letter.

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We have been convinced time and again of our condition of being loved by God, but also that we now, as those who have loved by God, love others, husbands.

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When you love deeply and appropriately your wife, she flourishes.

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And she will love you in return in ways that you cannot imagine the glories and blessings of.

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So, too, Christ has loved his bride, the church. And therefore, the church ought to flourish in the love that a husband, a divine husband has for his bride.

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And so we see here the argument from John now turns to the the idea of judgment, the idea of a day of reckoning before God and the people of God have a good standing.

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They're able to stand in that day. They're able to walk into the judgment of God with a great degree of boldness and confidence because of Christ and his security that he has blanketed us with.

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Let's look at the text again. Love has been perfected again, agape love, the highest form of love, a self -sacrificing type of love.

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The love that comes from God. This is the love that John speaks of and the appropriate form of love for Christians, one to another.

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How has this love been perfected? How does it reach its telos?

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That's where this word comes from, perfected. How does it reach the end stage? How does it achieve its aim?

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How does it bring it to an end, to complete, to perfect? The answer is found here in our text that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.

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Now, I think this is an interesting descriptor of a completed, a perfected love in the people of God.

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And I think the argument descends from the higher, the greater to the lesser.

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If the Christian can stand in the presence of God in the judgment, how can he stand everywhere else?

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If he stands in the holy presence of God and under the threat of divine justice and he stands there and he has a standing, a recognition, a place.

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If he's the one who's loved by God, he approaches the judgment with boldness and confidence because he's been loved by God.

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If this is true, how bold should we be elsewhere? The church needs greater courage in every sphere of life.

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If you have reached the end stage, the aim of God's love, withstanding a righteous judgment and being declared righteous, a future joint airship with Christ, the glories of heaven, how much more bold should you be in this world?

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If we can be bold there, should we not be courageous here? The idea of boldness, it may be translated best confidence, but it has this undercurrent, this thrust of a bold resolve.

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A free and fearful, fearless, I should say, confidence, a cheerful courage before the judge.

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This is an astounding thing to consider. Our God is holy, holy, holy, and here we're called to a cheerful courage in the presence of God.

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And why would we have that? Because of the sufficiency of Christ and his sacrifice.

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And if this be true, what can mere men do to us? What can bad circumstances do to us?

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We must have greater boldness and confidence in the lives that we live today because our love has been perfected.

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We can appear before the judge. Now, it should be pointed out that the day of judgment is a day of terror and dread, except for the

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Christian. It's a day of confidence. A day of bold resolve, a day of cheerful courage, because we stand before a righteous judge who loves us.

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Children, when you get into trouble, there's going to be a temptation in your heart to conceal your trouble.

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There's going to be a temptation in your heart to lie to your parents about the wrongs that you have done.

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I want you to run to your dad and to your mom and I want you to confess your sins to them.

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And I think you should be delighted to do so because they love you. You have a standing in your family.

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There is no fear of torment for a child in his family. There is no fear of torment for a child of God.

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We come honestly with our sins to a righteous father who judges us.

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We say, oh, God, this is the burden of my heart. This is my sin. We bear our soul and he comforts us and reminds us of the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice, the forgiveness of sins.

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And he pushes us out into the world again with the blessing. Children, trust your parents, confess your sins to them, they love you, they want to disciple you, they want to train you, they want to encourage you in a better way.

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Don't conceal your sin. Confess it to them. What a lesson for us. We're so fearful.

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But we can approach our God and in fact, we're called to boldly approach the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and help in the time of need.

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Let us now really reconsider the way we approach God. Christ has come that we might be bold.

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Christ has come to be our righteous judge already suffering the just penalties of our condemnation for us in our place, in our stead.

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But there is a warning that we should consider.

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I'd like you to turn with me to Second Corinthians, chapter five. Some of you were here when

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I was preaching through Second Corinthians. Probably don't remember any of those sermons, but you may remember me saying,

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I found this section hard, difficult. Look at the beginning of verse nine of chapter five,

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Second Corinthians, five, nine. Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to him.

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Now, I want a little sobriety to wash over our confidence for a moment.

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Because we said that we should have boldness and security in God's love, but we should have terror and dread.

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If we've not experienced God's love, there's a big difference. If you be not in Christ, terror and dread for our

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God is a consuming fire. So we have to have a proper view of these things. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

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And listen to Paul's argument. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the

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Lord, we persuade men. Now, in our time, there is no recognition, really, of the terror of the

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Lord. There is no fear of judgment. Our lost friends and family members are under the terror and judgment of our

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God. There is a lack of an appropriate reverence and awe.

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You know, this word fear has two sides. There is a proper reverence and fear of God that should be had.

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But there's also terror and dread and fear. We shouldn't be irreverent toward God, for he is that consuming fire.

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There is a flippancy in our worship, in our prayer.

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And even in the way we converse about God, and these are third commandment violations, we have to be more reverent in our language, in our disposition, in our posture, in our attentiveness to God, all of us.

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So as I'm telling you, there's boldness and security in God's love. There's also we better have these things right in our minds.

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We better understand these things appropriately. There's a better way for us to live, and we're going to face a judgment.

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Now, I'd like you to go back to 1 John. We're all going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

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No sin will be concealed. But for the Christian, all sins will be covered.

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This is the greatest news, isn't it? So a little bit more reverence, a little bit more sobriety, a little more realization.

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There's an accounting for our lives. As we're reminded this morning, I'm going to have to give an account for this church, and it's dreadful to consider that I'm going to have to give an account for your soul.

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But you and I, in Christ, have boldness in the day of judgment.

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But it gives us the last half of verse 17, this peculiar statement.

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It says, because as he is, so are we in this world. Well, what does that mean?

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As he is, so are we in the world. And that's where the second point comes up for us.

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Christ is the exemplar of love for God and love for man. And it's really, if you think about it, it's really he gives us the greatest commandment and the second like it.

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Love the Lord, your God, with all of your heart and all of your mind and all of your soul and all of your strength and your neighbor as yourself.

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And if you think about it, he's commanded us to do what he has himself done.

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There is not one jot or tittle of the law that he has not upheld in its fullness.

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No one has exhibited greater love than this man who laid down his life as an atonement for his friends, who has loved

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God and loved his brethren like Christ. No one. So he is our exemplar.

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We have questions about this. We look to Christ because as he is, so are we in this world.

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Now, the grammar of a simple phrase like as he is seems like the most basic thing.

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But when you peer a little deeper into it, it's often used in antiquity and in the scriptures of a notorious or a good man as he is.

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A man of reputation, a man of some prominence here, the one of great reputation is the

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Lord Jesus Christ as he is.

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A man of notoriety, a man of reputation, a man who is the exemplar, so are we to be in this world.

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We are to bear Christ's likeness as those who exemplify a deep love for God and one another.

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There is really a declaration of our position again here. We are

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Christ's ambassadors in this world. We are the little Christ's, what the

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Christians were so derisively known as. But that's really who we are. We, by his essence and substance,

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Christ is loving, right? Christ himself is love. We don't have that essence and substance, but we have the reflection of his love, his life, his love shines on us, and we reflect the radiance of his glory in our lives in this world.

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Bearing his likeness, being his witnesses, pursuing righteousness and holiness, loving as he loved.

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You and I have to be truthful and honest about who Christ is by our conduct.

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We are his ambassadors, emissaries, his little ones, the ones who reflect his glory.

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We can't conceal his light. We must be salty. We must possess all of those virtues of Christian integrity and love.

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Oh, Lord, grant us, we, your people, that we would be as you are in this world, that they would see

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Christ in us as a result. Well, I must get moving now.

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Let's look at verse 18. There is no fear and love.

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This word in Greek is phobos. Does that sound familiar to anyone? It's where we get the idea of phobia.

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And this fear is probably a little bit stronger than what we might think of.

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It's fear, terror, alarm, dread.

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And it's attached often to the object or cause of fear. In positive parlance, it is reverence and respect, the fear of the

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Lord. The other side of the coin is terror and dread, fear of punishment.

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And more often, it's used negatively from the

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Lord, and it has to do with his will. Its etymology is traced back to the idea of to be put to flight.

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Do you remember our first parents were put to flight and hiding in the bushes? Rebellious Israel is put to flight in exile because of their disobedience.

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When we fear, we withdraw. We separate from, we flee.

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We remove ourselves and avoid because of this dread. Children, back to that example

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I gave you earlier. When you disobey your parents, there's a tendency to withdraw, to pull away from your parents out of fear.

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You want to avoid the consequences. But here, perfect love casts out fear.

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And this idea of casting out is, imagine a person on the shore of the

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East Coast fishing and he has a really big fishing rod and you see him with all of his might throw his bait out in his lure out into the ocean.

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Perfect love jettisons and pushes out fear because fear involves torment.

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Love throws out fear with great force. Torment is correction, punishment and penalty.

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You and I will suffer a chastening from the Lord in our sin, but we need not fear an eternal torment because we've been loved by God.

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Christ is our Savior. This is a fear, a torment.

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That is a punishment that fits the crime, but in Christ, perfective love casts out tormenting fear.

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Christ's love for us has expelled that fear. The fearing one has not yet enjoyed being made perfect in love.

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Now, in context, all of this is dealing with judgment, but I believe the greater to the lesser applies.

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What are you fearful about? Take it to the Lord. What is it that what consequences are you hoping to avoid?

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Take it to the Lord. We fear because we do not trust.

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We fear because we don't believe that God has a good plan for us. But we've been perfected in love, so he does.

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So we walk in confidence. Does that make sense? So if I stand in the judgment, surely

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I can face the Monday morning meeting. It's going to be hard. That makes sense, because I can stand in the judgment.

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Surely, when bad circumstances come, I can face those. If we have a catastrophic hurricane blow through our area because I can stand in God's presence and judgment,

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I can withstand the smaller things of life and I can operate with boldness and courage and confidence because I'm walking with the

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Lord by faith. If you fear and you're paralyzed by fear, you have not yet been made perfect in love.

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And I think, of course, the first instance here is a person who has a dread, a terror of eternal judgment that may be a conviction that they do not know

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Christ. If you're a Christian and you have this fear, you need to turn away from it because you've been loved by God.

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You need not fear anymore. Well, it takes us to verse 19 and then verse 19.

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We learn that God's love initiates us into love for God and others.

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We love him because he first loved us.

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While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

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God's love initiates us into the love of God and others.

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He is powerfully transforming us through his love.

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People of God, the believer in Christ is God's object of affection.

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You are the apple of his eye.

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What security you have, what boldness and courage you should have.

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Can you imagine a prince with an army surrounding him, rolling up with his soldiers and his shield and all of his accoutrements and showing up into the town?

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How much confidence the prince would have walking into the tavern, walking into the public square.

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So, too, should the Christian be bold and secure, walking into the square that hates our

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God because of our place as those who are loved by God, those who are secure in the father's love.

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Let's give thanks to him today for the love that he has for us. His love alone is the the ultimate causality of our salvation.

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As we've said so many times, his love alone is the ultimate cause of our sanctification.

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His love alone will be our resurrection and our glorification.

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It's because he's loved us. Therefore, we love and that brings us to our last point.

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We've been hit with this a number of times and we need to ask ourselves, why is John repeating it?

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And is this repetition needful for us? Do we need to ask ourselves, is there a deficiency in our love?

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He says in verse 20, if someone says, I love God and hates his brother.

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These things almost don't work together because this love is the highest form of love.

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And hating is the opposite of strength, the detestation, the denouncement of his brother.

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How can one say, I love God and yet hate my brother? The answer, the conclusion is you do not love

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God. These are mutually exclusive.

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You are a liar. And this idea of one who's a liar is a person who falsifies.

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Misrepresents, distorts and misleads. But ultimately, it is one who breaks faith, a false or faithless man.

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Parents purge the lives of your children, stress truth and honesty and integrity with them, because liars break faith and break covenant.

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They're faithless. We don't want to be those who falsify.

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We don't want to be those who are true hypocrites who say we love God, but actually hate our brothers who look good on Sundays, but don't reveal the truth on Wednesdays.

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Maybe there's a warning. Maybe someone here today is duplicitous in this.

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We can't be duplicitous. Love for God demands a love for brethren.

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And in fact, it's a test of seeing how can we love

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God whom he has not seen if he does not love his brother whom he has seen?

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My brother is in front of me. My brother is someone I can minister to. My brother in front of me is really the test for me that shows whether I love

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God or not. So I pose the question to you, do you really and sincerely and earnestly love the brethren?

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If you've got to take it or leave it approach to the people of the church, you might have a problem. We really have to love one another with this highest form of love.

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Otherwise, we have to question the sincerity of our love for God. But let's return to confidence.

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Love has been perfected among us. We have boldness and security to approach

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God in judgment. If that be true, may we be bold and secure and facing every man.

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May we be bold and secure and facing every circumstance of this life because we are secure in the love of God and that love of God is proven to be true because of the love we have for one another.

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I understand why John has repeated himself, I think a few words of application now and we'll close.

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God has initiated and started a work of love in us and he will bring it to completion.

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It sounds like that sanctification, I've adopted the sanctification idea for this love principle.

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I'm thankful that I'm going to love God and the people of God more because I God has loved me.

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That's wonderful to me. You and I can have great boldness and confidence in that great day of judgment because God has loved us.

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He sent Christ into the world to save us. You and I need to be bold and courageous through faith in Christ.

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Secondly, you and I need to demonstrate a growing likeness to Christ by exhibiting a great love for God by doing his will and exemplifying his love.

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Christ is the lover par excellence of God and the brethren.

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We, too, must be as he is in this world. Thirdly, God has really loved us lavishly and we forget it.

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We talked about it last week, but we've already forgotten. Be constantly meditating upon the love of God for a sinner, you, that he's demonstrated.

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Where would you be today without the love of God? He has initiated us into the love for himself and the brethren.

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We should walk in that glorious light of his love. We must remember that we are his representatives in this world.

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Are you properly representing Christ? Is your speech seasoned with salt and full of grace?

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When you're in the supermarket, is it abundantly clear as though there was a golden white glow around you that you're a

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Christian? Because of your love and the way you handle yourself, the way you conduct yourself in the world, we should be those kinds of people.

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We have to communicate that reality through true words and what's often neglected, our example.

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And finally, I can say this about everything in our lives.

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The Reformed community, we are philosophizers. We're theorists.

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We must be practitioners. We must give hands and feet and sweat and grind and toil to all of these things, or it's just mere empty talk.

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Are you with me? Boldness and security and the love of God and the person of Jesus Christ.

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Much to give thanks for today. Let's pray together. Oh, Lord, you're so merciful to us.

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We thank you that your love is so strong. It carries us through a day of judgment.

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We thank you for a love so strong that we get to reflect the the essence and substance of Christ and his love for you and the world.

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Oh, Lord, I pray that we would be no longer fearful, knowing that your love casts out fear.

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We have no fear of torment because Christ has come and he has died and he's raised and reigning today.

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Oh, Lord, help us to have that boldness and confidence. Oh, Lord, warn us if we have not been made perfect in love, that there would be dread and terror for us lest we repent or turn us,

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I should say, to repentance. Oh, Lord, help us to be thankful and filled with joy that you have loved us first.

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And may our faith and our love be tested with a conscientious, sincere and earnest love for the brethren, reflecting our love for you.

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Oh, Lord, we pray that you would make it so in us. We ask this all in Jesus' name, amen.