Tests That Every Christian Pass (part 3) - [1 John]

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The Most Important Theological Lessons (part 4)

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Well, I love to see children who have little security blankets. You ever see those security blankets that some kids have?
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Maybe it's an animal even, some little stuffed animal. And when they want to fall asleep or they want to get some kind of encouragement or comfort, they want that little pinky, that little binky, that little blanket, that little boo -boo.
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They call it all kinds of things. And they want it close and they want to be comforted. It's familiar. It feels good.
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My sister had a blanket. And she loved to sleep with that blanket when she was a kid. And I was the older brother.
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And she called that little security blanket her ha -ha. And she would say, mine ha -ha.
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And so I would steal it and hide it. And she would run around and she would say, mine ha -ha, mine ha -ha.
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So then she got a great idea. And the great idea was this. She bore a hole in one of the corners.
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So she could get her thumb through the hole and then into her mouth. And then that ha -ha was securely fixed to herself.
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There's a book in the Bible that serves as kind of a security blanket, kind of a comfort blanket.
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And God wants his people to know through the pastor, John the Apostle, that they, the
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Christians, you if you're a Christian, can have assurance and comfort. And let's turn our
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Bibles to 1 John this morning. This is the third and I think the final installment of an overview of 1
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John focusing on the main themes in this epistle that all spiral out of this.
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If you're a Christian, God wants you to know that you're forgiven. It's a very, very important subject that you can know for sure that when you die, you'll stand before God and he will allow you, based on Christ's perfect work, allow you entrance into heaven.
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That's a very important thing. Assurance is not just a theoretical issue in Christian doctrine, but it is one of the most important issues in the
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Christian life. Why, Dr. Morey? Until a believer possesses true assurance,
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Morey says, can he really feel and worship God as his father with all his heart while doubting his salvation at the same time?
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How can you give everything to God with your worship, loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and then at the same time thinking, yeah, but I don't know if I'm going or not.
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That's a pretty big obstacle in true Christian worship. So John writes this epistle so that you might know that you have eternal life.
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If you're a Christian, God wants you to know it. I guess it could cut both ways. If you're not a Christian today,
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I hope you don't get true assurance. I hope you're driven to the cross saying, I don't know if I have this assurance or not.
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I might not be a Christian. But John, this loving pastor who used to be a son of thunder, now he's maturing and directed by the
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Spirit of God, he writes, and let's just look at the theme verse again. Look at chapter 5 with me, verse 13.
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He says, I've got a purpose for writing. Yes, in chapter 1 your joy might be complete. Yes, throughout the epistle that you believe that Jesus was the incarnate
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God and you don't go off the deep end believing some kind of false teachers. But he says towards the end,
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I've written to you for a purpose. And when you're a Bible student, you think, oh, I like this because I don't have to find the purpose implied.
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It's explicit. Why am I writing these things? Verse 13 of chapter 5 of 1 John. These things
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I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
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If you're a Christian, God knows you have eternal life and nothing can separate you from the Father's hand.
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It is done. But if you're a Christian, the way you feel about your assurance can ebb and can flow.
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And so John writes this book to make sure that you can know. I'm preaching this three -week series because before I left to go to California, I really pushed the envelope in Matthew 7, and that envelope is this.
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You call yourself a Christian? Prove it. And it creates angst in people and anxiety.
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And so now this is the flip side, pastorally. You can know that you can have eternal life.
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John wants to encourage. Therefore, I want to encourage. John wants to strengthen the faith of the readers.
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Therefore, I want to strengthen your faith, as you get to know 1 John 1 -5.
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There are five tests that keep coming to the surface in this book, and you know the tests. Five tests that if you're a
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Christian, you will pass. It will be your desire to do these things. Not perfectly, but in the right direction.
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You take a compass, and you can shake it all around and twist it and turn it and flip it upside down and spin it and put a magnet to it.
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But eventually, when you finally take it away from the magnet and set it there, it goes back to which direction? What does that needle do?
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It goes back to north. And so the Christian might weave in and out and have sin in their life and have all kinds of issues, but at the end of the day, it's pointing to the direction of,
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I want to honor God. And there are five tests in this book. Two are doctrinal tests, and three are ethical tests.
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Two tests have to do with what you believe, and three tests have to do with what you do. And so it's one of those typical, what you believe in creed and what you act with conduct.
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And for those of you that like Latin, I'll just throw in two Latin words, just for I don't know what reason. Credenda, what you believe, and agenda, what you do.
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And that's exactly what happens here. What do you believe? Christians have to believe the right thing. And how does that belief flesh itself out in your life?
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Because Christians do that as well. And so I want to make sure everyone understands, we're not talking about, if you do these, you get saved.
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Spurgeon said, although we are sure that men are not saved for the sake of their works, yet we are equally sure that no man will ever be saved without them.
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When God justifies you, sanctification begins. When God declares you righteous by the works of Christ Jesus, like with a law court and the gavel goes down and He declares, what?
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Not guilty. Simultaneously, He regenerates you. He makes you new and you don't live like you used to live.
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And so we're not saying you do these and get saved. We're saying, if you are saved, you will what? Do these.
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And you go, we've got this book down. Get to the new stuff, Pastor. Well, I'm glad you have it down.
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But my job is to remind you what you already know. Right? I remember when I was a brand -new
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Christian, I used to gauge a sermon based on if I learned something new. Was that a good sermon?
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Well, no, I didn't really learn anything new. And I thought, well, that's not the way to go about it. It's not if I learned something new, it's a good sermon.
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But has the word been properly preached? And, Lord, there's a reason why my pastor is preaching these things to me now.
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And even if you have great assurance, then you should say, well, I want to love my other brethren in the church and cistern who don't have that assurance.
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And so if it's not good for me, it probably is good for those that I'm sitting by. Right? So 1 John, today's kind of a jet tour through 1
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John. Because we'll pick up the three or four tests in review, and then we'll go to the last one.
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The first test, just quickly, is found in verse 8 of chapter 1. Do you regularly confess your sins?
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The first doctrinal test is, do you recognize you're a sinner? After all, who needs a Savior if you know you're not a sinner?
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But Christians know they're sinners, and they have a Savior from that sin, from the wrath of God that they deserve.
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And 1 John 1 .8 says, If we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
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Verse 9, if we confess our sins, if we have the same attitude about our sins, if we're on the same page as God is about our sins,
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He is always faithful and He is always righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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We basically say, as Christians, don't we, that we are sinners, that these things we have done are sin.
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And we don't make excuses for them. We don't blame them on our background or our parents or anything else.
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We fall on the proverbial sword and say, I sinned against you, God. It might have been against another person, but ultimately it was against you.
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Genuine Christians do that. John Owen said, I do not understand how a man could be a true believer in whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow, and trouble.
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When you sin, you realize that burden, and your conscience says, I've got to get that off.
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There's a burden on my back, on my conscience, and I need relief. Life just isn't right.
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And so we say, God, forgive us. And He says, gladly, based on Christ's finished work, you are forgiven.
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Number two, second test. It's also a doctrinal test. It's a belief test. Not only do
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Christians confess their sins regularly, but Christians believe everything the
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Bible teaches about Christ Jesus. Test number two, do you regularly confess all the truths of Christ Jesus in 1
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John and in the rest of the Bible? Look with me, if you will, at chapter 5, verse 1.
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Chapter 5, verse 1. Typically, I'll go through a book of the Bible, verse by verse by verse. But today we're looking at an overview of 1
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John, and he doesn't really write like Paul does in Galatians. He doesn't write like Peter does in 1
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Peter. He writes in this very thematic way. If you'd like a good illustration of that thematic way, or a funny one, you listen to last week's message.
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I won't repeat that one here. 1 John 5, verse 1. Whoever believes that Jesus is the
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Messiah, the Christ, is born of God. And whoever loves the Father loves the child born of him.
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So basically, John is saying this. If you're a Christian, you'll be confessing Christ Jesus right now.
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You can't say, if you're looking at the language of 1 John, how do I know I'm a Christian? How do I have my conscience soothed that I have the security blanket of, when
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I die, I'll go to heaven? Well, I believed in 1976. I remember
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I got baptized shortly after that in 1977. I remember I did some missions work in 1979.
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I remember that I did X, Y, and Z in 1980. Those all may be true, but the way to get assurance according to 1
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John is this. Are you believing right now? Are you confessing sins right now, and are you believing right now?
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I mean, think about it. If you said, I believed in the claims of Christ Jesus in 1976, and I bowed my knee to him in honor and worship, but now
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I don't really believe, should that person be considered a Christian? No, because real belief starts, and since it's
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God -generated and it's a gift from God, the gift of faith given by God at salvation, although it may have its peaks and valleys, it will persevere till the end because it's a gift from God.
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It's like California real estate, that it goes up and down, but eventually goes up, at least
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I hope so, or it's going to fall off into the ocean, and Las Vegas will be beachfront property, but we can't carry these things too far.
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You will have growth and sanctification, and you can't say to yourself, well, I used to believe, but I'm not believing right now.
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The claims of Christianity that for a holy life in response to God's grace, and then by enablement of the
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Holy Spirit, those don't belong to me anymore. I'd like to live for myself today. I want hell insurance that I'm not going to hell, and I'll live as I please.
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Now, according to 1 John, should that person feel the comfort of the security blanket of assurance?
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No, and that's exactly what John is saying. Do you believe right now? Of course, there was a time in the past, there's a moment in time where God said, you used to be dead in sins, now you're alive in Christ.
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That happened, but for assurance, are you believing right now? You could say to yourself, well,
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I don't really know about the virgin birth, and how can there be a baby born without the
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Father's DNA, and how can there be a sinless Jesus come out of a sinful
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Mary's womb, and I just don't know if I get it all. It would be good for you not to have assurance as you work through those issues, because if you're a
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Christian, you believe the Word of God, because the Spirit bears witness to your spirit. These things are true.
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1 John 4, 2, if you back up a chapter, by this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
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We believe that as a Christian. We believe that Jesus is who He said He is, and we believe what the apostles said about Him.
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1 Peter 3, 18, For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God.
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And we believe that as a Christian church. We confess that together. We believe with Martin Lloyd -Jones, quote,
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Sin is so terrible, so foul, and so vile, that nothing could deal with it but the blood of Christ.
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And that is what happened on the cross. It is not a patching over, a covering over of sin.
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It is not God saying, don't worry, everything's well. It is God showing us sin as it is, really bringing it out to the light, and then dealing with it.
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We confess our sins, and we confess Jesus as the God man. Number three,
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Do you love God? We move to the ethical tests. Here's a test that every Christian passes. Is it your desire to love
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God by obedience? Let's look at chapter 5, verse 2. Again, this is in review, but I'm trying to bring in extra added information as we go through the review.
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Five tests that every Christian pass for assurance of salvation. One, confess their sins, confess
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Christ as Messiah and Lord, God in the flesh. Number three, is it your desire to love God?
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Verse 2 of chapter 5. We, excuse me, by this we know that we love the children of God, and John includes himself in this, we, when we love
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God and observe His commandments. Again, he didn't say, this is how you're saved.
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He said, if you're saved, you do this. You feel the obligation of love. You feel the duty that you have to love
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God. And it's not some kind of emoting. Somebody's standing over in the corner. What are you doing? I'm loving
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God. It's not that. It's by doing.
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Last night at the Red Sox game, I was with the Rathbuns and with Chuck and his wife, and all of a sudden, it's some kind of sixth inning stretch or something, not seventh, and then they have some
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Neil Diamond song. Reach out your hands and touch and warm and all these kind of things.
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I'm going, what are these people doing? But they're all putting their hands out, and I go, this is the largest charismatic service
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I've ever been to in my life, but I have no idea what they're doing, but I'm not going to do this.
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I'm not going to sing Neil Young. No offense, but I think that's probably for like, I don't know, 60 -year -old ladies who like these kind of romantic songs, but what am
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I going to do? I'm not going to do that. And I wouldn't have mentioned anything about it today except Dan looked over at me, and I kind of had this kind of perplexed look like, what are all these hardcore
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Bostonian New Englanders doing, raising their hands, you know, a 25 -year -old Red Sox fan after 18 beers, putting his hands up for Neil Diamond.
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This is weird. Dan goes, I can feel a sermon illustration coming on right now. Somehow trying to break the ice so pastor doesn't go apoplectic in the middle of the worship service.
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You can stand in a corner and put your hand out and sway all you want, and I'm not saying you shouldn't even do that, but I'm saying, if you love
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God, it's not going to be translated into how you feel, the reception of God, I'm getting led by the Spirit, I'm feeling good,
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I'm feeling like His child. Romans chapter 8, the Spirit's bearing witness to me internally that I'm a child of God. Those all may be true, but John is saying, do you want assurance?
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It's not going to be standing in the corner having a quiet time. It's going to be actively loving God by keeping
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His commandments. That's how you get assurance. If you look at verse 3 of the same chapter, verse 5, for this is the love of God, that we keep
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His commandments. And contrary to what you were like when you were an unbeliever and thought that God was just trying to drag you down, for Christians they've been changed and His commandments are not burdensome.
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They're not burdensome. You have the Pharisees and the Sadducees adding all those rules, hand washing for this, not even in the
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Bible, weighing people down. You have other people running around saying, oh,
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God is trying to steal your fun. Well, when you're a Christian, you realize these are the commandments that God has given me in the
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Bible, and I know they're for my good. I might not enjoy doing every one of them, but it is my pleasure to serve the
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King and say, I'm going to do what you ask me to do. This isn't work salvation.
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This is aggressing assurance. And so what we do, let's say you have assurance.
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Pastor, I have assurance. Well, then what I would say to you is, keep on doing what you're doing by loving God, by obeying, because then you'll keep what you have.
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Don't lose it. Thomas Watson, the great Puritan, said, if you have assurance, be careful you do not lose it.
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How do you lose assurance? By not doing these tests. One man said, someone who is not purposely seeking to conform his life to God's law, and he lives a life of abandonment to sin, in which he views the law, and he lives negatively, and he lives a life of abandonment to sin, this person has no right to call himself a
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Christian. Test number four. Confess sins.
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Confess all the truths of Christ. Do you love God? And now number four. Do you love fellow Christians? This is where we left off last time.
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Verse 10 of 1 John 2. Turn there with me if you would. Is it a longing that you have in your heart to love other
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Christians? Verse 10 of chapter 2 says, the one who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
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We looked last week at chapter 3 verse 16. You see these themes in this very
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Jewish way of writing, very circular versus linear style that John is using.
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We know love by this, 1 John 3 .16, that He laid down His life for us, not emoting, not feeling, feelings are fine in their place, but here you want to know what love is, agape love.
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He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. When it comes to God's glory and honor and fame to be promoted through the entire world, we should say,
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I'm willing to die for my fellow Christian. I'll risk my life for my fellow believer.
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That's a difficult one because I think I'd risk my life for my kids and my wife, but for your kids?
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Your wife? Jesus laid down His life in an active way.
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He wasn't the sacrificial lamb that was tied up, forced to do the sacrifice. Jesus purposely, with action, with an attitude of aggression,
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I will lay down my life for these that the Father has given me. Chapter 4 verse 7, 1
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John 4 .7, we see again the same aim or the same idea popping back up again.
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1 John is one of those books that if you just read one chapter, I don't think you do yourself much good. You should read five chapters regularly all at once to see these themes just kind of pop up almost like with some kind of bold or italics or some kind of yellow font.
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They just kind of come out. What were those pictures called where you stare at the picture long enough, it looks like a big collage, nothing at all, and you stare long enough and a 3D image comes out?
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What? Magic Eye. Wow. I think there's a more technical name, but we'll use that.
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Thanks Becky. Magic Eye. When you look at 1
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John long enough, it's like these things start popping out. They start coming out and you go, I think that's...
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Christians confess their sins. Christians confess Christ as the Messiah and they start just kind of showing themselves.
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And here, it's the same thing. 1 John 4 .7 Beloved, you can just hear John, let us love one another.
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For love is from God. If God by nature is love, everything
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He does is loving. For love is from God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows
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God. Verse 8. The one who does not love does not know God.
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For God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us. Verse 9.
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That God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. You want the pinnacle of love, the apex of love,
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Mount Everest of love? It's Christ going by the Father's direction to lay down His life for sinners.
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Verse 10. Don't you love it? In this is love.
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Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
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That word propitiation has a good background. Some translations want to drive it into a word, maybe atonement or something else.
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The Bible says propitiation. Remember the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies where you would have inside the ark you might have
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Aaron's rod in there, you might have some manna, but you had something else in there, probably the most important thing in that golden box.
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And what was in that golden box that was the most important thing? The Ten Commandments. Good.
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If you would have said magic eye, you would have been in big trouble, but your Son redeemed you. The Ten Commandments.
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And the blood was like with a paintbrush, but not the kind of paintbrush that you kind of daub off the paint before you delicately touch the furniture.
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You dip it in and just slather it all over. There's blood all over. And what was the idea of putting the blood on top of the mercy seat?
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So the picture was this. God is looking down and He sees the law.
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And He realizes the people of God have all broken those laws. They have not loved God with their heart, soul, mind, and strength, to summarize the
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Ten Commandments. They have not loved their neighbors themselves. And God sees a law broken. He sees many laws broken.
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He sees, in fact, James 2, verse 10, every law is broken. The people are lawbreakers, but because someone has died in their place, in this particular case, some thing, some animal, an animal has died in their place,
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God says, I don't see the law broken because the blood prevents me from seeing those things.
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And it's just a figurative picture. Of course, God sees everything. God never has learned anything. God doesn't have some kind of kryptonite material that He can't see through.
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But it's the picture. God says, I see a sacrifice was given so I don't make you pay.
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You don't have to be slain. Everything an animal was. And so here, if you look back at the text, verse 10,
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He is the propitiation for our sins. He's the mercy seat.
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Jesus died a bloody death including, well, I guess that includes blood.
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He died a death, a vicious death that included bloodshed so that God would not see the laws that we had broken.
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Christ perfectly lived a life of law keeping and then He died for our law breaking.
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Verse 11, John just hammers this. Beloved, if God so loved us, and He sent
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His Son, we also ought to love one another. I mean, what's our response?
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Can you imagine if you met someone whose son rescued your child? There's a river and there's a current and your daughter's floating away and your son runs out there.
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He jumps into the water, swims, rescues your daughter, and then drowns in the process of rescuing her.
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And you go back to the father of that son that died for your daughter and you said, I don't know how
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I could ever repay you, but here's $10.
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Thank you. Who would talk like that?
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And here if God the Father sent His Son to die on our behalf, what's our response? Response is gratitude, yes.
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Thankfulness, yes. We could never do it, yes. But the response is not can I pay you something? The response is
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I think I'm going to do what you asked me to do. I think I'll love other Christians, even though half the time between us girls, they're unlovable.
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God died for those people while they were sinners. He died for the unlovable. And so basically,
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John says, you want to sleep well and say, if I die in the middle of the night, I'm going to heaven because I didn't love people before,
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I love Christians now. It's not a perfect love, but I desire to love them like Christ.
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Verse 12, no one has beheld God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.
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God is not... God is a spirit. You can't see Him. He's invisible. So how do you love
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Him? Well, you love His bride. You love the church. On the flip side, in chapter 2,
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He says, if you hate your brother, you're still in the darkness. Let me ask you some questions about this love and loving other
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Christians to help you. Here's the first question.
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Are Christians seemingly closer to me than my blood relatives? Are Christians seemingly closer to me than my blood relatives?
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Isn't that an amazing thing? You have blood relatives that you're not as close to. Why? Because God has saved you and He's given you a new love for other
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Christians. You go, these people that are saved are closer to me than my unsaved family members.
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That's a good sign. Or do you say, on the flip side, I can't wait.
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Now maybe some of you have to go early today, so let's not all stare and take pictures. But maybe you say to yourself,
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I can't wait to get out of this place because I can't stand to be around these people. The second that church thing is over, in Jesus' name, amen,
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I'm out of here. Now some maybe have to go to work and some have other reasons. So I'm not saying again that I want the parking lot ministry team to get names and numbers, although that might be good for next week.
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There's a love that is instilled in us because God is love and so we love other Christians. Doesn't mean they don't perplex us or perturb us or we're not disappointed in them, but we say, if God loved these people,
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I'm going to love these people. Number two, you could ask yourself, do
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I spend a lot of time around other Christians? It is a true saying that if you love someone, you'll make time for those people.
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People make time for those they love. John Wesley said, there is nothing more unchristian than a solitary
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Christian. Number three, do I serve others in this body? Do I use my spiritual gifts that were given to me, not for myself,
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I don't have the gift of teaching because it helps me, it's for you. So how am I going to use my spiritual gift for other people if I'm not around other people?
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That's a good sign that you're a Christian, that you want to serve other Christians. Paul said in Galatians 6, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
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I got a tangible love gift today just before the service started. John Arnold gave me this envelope,
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Pastor Mike from John Arnold. And then inside that envelope was another envelope, Pastor Mike, August 2009.
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In that envelope was another envelope, Pastor Mike and Kim, 2009. In that envelope was
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Pastor Mike. In that envelope was Pastor Mike and Kim. And in that envelope was the prize.
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You know how long it took to do all that? In here was the prize, Pastor Mike and Kim.
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I love you very much. Christians love.
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With actions. With deeds. It's not just lip service. This took a long time. Wow! Do you love other
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Christians? Is it your desire to love other Christians? And finally, test number five.
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Confess sins. Confess Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior and all the truths of the Bible, certainly.
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Do you love God by obeying? Do you love other Christians by obeying God to love them, self -sacrificially, laying down your life if necessary?
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And then number five. Do you avoid loving the world system? Is it your desire to not love the evil world system?
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That's a theme that you'll find in 1 John. Now frankly, I think as a church, evangelical church in America, our own church, we're fairly off kilter when it comes to resisting the pressures of the world.
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I could say it this way. I think the world influences us more than it should. When I say us,
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I mean all of us. I could ask you a question many different ways to see if you would go for what
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I say. Does this statement disturb you? If there's a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, one who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
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Does that rile you up? Does that make you kind of think, what kind of person would write that?
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Adultery and death? You can kill 200 people on an airplane and go scot -free. That's the kind of justice the world promotes.
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We recoil at something like Leviticus 20 verse 10 because we don't really understand the holiness of God.
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We don't understand how the holiness of God is never infected by the HIV virus of sin.
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We say sin's not as bad as the Bible says. God's not as holy as the Bible says
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He is. And we look at that and we go, that's archaic. That's a different language. You know what people do? That's the Old Testament God.
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We worship the New Testament God. Or I could maybe ask you this question.
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What disturbs you the most? A society that tramples on the name of Jesus Christ?
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Or Republicans losing seats in the Congress? What disturbs you most?
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The denigration of the word of God? Or the horrible thought that we could have universal health care in the system?
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Or maybe I could prove my point that the world is influencing us by a diary excerpt written by a girl, a teenage girl in 1892.
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Resolved. Not to talk about myself or my feelings. To think before speaking.
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To work seriously. To be self -restrained in conversation and actions.
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Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.
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Resolved. You think the world is affecting us? I think the world is, even if you want to say, well, one of these illustrations
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I don't agree with or I don't like. Spurgeon said, I believe the one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has had so much influence over the church.
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He says, you look at the church and the world has mossed itself over the church.
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And half the churches in America, nigh, maybe three quarters of them say this. You want people to attend your church?
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You become more worldly and you'll get them in. What do we do?
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It's amazing to think that John says it will help you with your assurance of salvation to know that you no longer go with the flow of the world.
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Let's go to chapter two. First John chapter two. I'm not a legalist. I'm not out to try to spoil people's fun.
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I'm not trying to say that cigarettes and alcohol and tattoos are the devil's workshop. Depends on what your motives are for all those things.
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I'm not going to say alcohol's bad when God calls it good. But I'm going to talk about what the heart has to do when it comes to the world and how when you say no to the world system, your assurance should go up.
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Conversely, when you say yes to the world system, what should happen to your assurance? You shouldn't feel as saved as you are.
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So what does John do? He says, verse 15 of chapter two,
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Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the
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Father is not in him. I'm not a very good gardener.
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And every time I come back from California, it seems like at least the grass is green, but it's all crabgrass.
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And then I think, well, maybe next year there'll be a little bit less crabgrass. And then there's more crabgrass.
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It's just kind of taking over my whole yard, strangling the regular grass. That's like the world system getting into the life of the church and individual
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Christian lives. It just strangles. And so John says, you know that word for loving God and that word for loving your neighbor?
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Let's use that so you don't love the world. How can you love the world and love
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God at the same time? You can't serve two opposing masters. How could a woman have two lovers at the same time and love them both the same?
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You cannot be done. Now, what's the world? is the first question that should be asked.
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John is not saying, I don't want anybody to be involved in Greenpeace here. Don't love the world.
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Don't be some tree huggers, eco people, all that. He's not saying that.
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I think we should take care of the earth. Frankly, I think we should subdue the earth. All kinds of things that Christians could do for the earth.
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We're not out for polluting everything. We're to take care of what God has given us. But we get a little hint when
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Jesus says this in John 17, I've given them my word. The world has hated them because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world.
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When Jesus said in John 18, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting that I might not be delivered up to the
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Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm. We aren't citizens of the
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United States or Zimbabwe or Kenya or Uganda or wherever you're from. We as Christians are ultimately citizens where?
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Philippians 3, verse 20. Our citizenship is in heaven. Our politics is in heaven.
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It's literally the word. So what is the world? The word world comes from the
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Greek word cosmos. Who's ever heard of the word cosmos? Or if you don't know how to pronounce the A in Greek, kosmos.
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I'll never forget the time when we're driving down to a skate park in Taunton and I'm with a couple of guys from the neighborhood and Luke and we always look at churches.
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Oh, Unitarian Universalism. What must that be? Unitarian. You know, I always quiz the kids. Uni means one.
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Tri means three. They don't believe in the Trinity. Universalism. Everybody goes to heaven. I mean, why bother to go to such a church?
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I guess maybe it's a good tax write -off. I don't know. But we drive by these churches and there was another one that we drove by and it was called
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Agape Fellowship. So I go, Oh, look at that church over there.
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I wonder what they teach. And Luke goes, It's Agape Fellowship. And Luke's friend, who's in the car, who's really, he was a pretty good kid in terms of society, he looked at Luke and he goes,
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It's a gape. You idiot. Oh, that was the best.
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And I turn around and he respects me and I've actually taught him a bunch about the Bible and I was glad to have him in the neighborhood and I looked at him and I said,
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It's Agape. Well, it doesn't matter how you pronounce cosmos or cosmos.
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It means to put in order or to arrange. Cosmetics is from the same root.
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You wake up in the morning, your face is out of order and you go get some things. Don't laugh at me, it's just the truth.
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Cosmetics. And you put your face back in order. And there's an order to the world, a way that it thinks and it says,
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Materialism is it. There's a way that it thinks and it says, The end cure for everything is education.
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There's a way that the world says, Here's how you do things. It's all about politics, striving for social change at the expense of the gospel.
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There's a way that the world thinks and the world says, You know what? Forget Christianity. Just be spiritual.
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Just be religious. Just have some kind of moralism. It's the way that the world thinks at the expense of the
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Word of God. That's a good way to describe worldliness. When Jesus says, Don't love the world,
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He says, Don't love their ideologies, the way that they think, the way that they do things. Don't buy into People Magazine and everything else and whatever they say, you go,
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Yeah, yeah, that's the way to think about life. Yeah, He with the most toys at the end wins. Yeah. Might is right.
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Yeah. Christianity is just one more religion. Yeah. He says,
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Don't think that way. He says, Besides, don't think that way. Look at verse 15 again.
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Don't love it. Present active indicative. Present ongoing. Don't ever, ever, ever think this way and if you are thinking this way, stop it.
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An imperative is a command. Don't do this. Pagans do this.
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Unbelievers do this. Gentiles do this. You used to do this.
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And if you're a Christian, then don't do this anymore. Notice it's an all or nothing.
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He's just saying, Well, don't really do it on Sundays, but other days it's okay. When you go back to work tomorrow, no problem.
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It's an all or nothing. No 50 -50, no every other, no straddling the fence.
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You either love God or frankly to use Jesus' words, you hate Him. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
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And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.
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Love for God, love for the neighbor, love for the world cannot all coexist in mutual harmony.
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You can't put them all together and go, Let's just take them all and call it the Baha 'i faith. There's something mutually exclusive about truth.
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Verse 16, Help us, John, figure out what's exactly in here. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life is not from the
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Father, but is from the world. It's as if you're going to bow down to those things, there's going to be a catastrophe for you and your assurance, for your maturity.
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Look at these three examples of worldliness. First, lust of the flesh. It just means desire.
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And it's a broad desire that includes covetousness, greediness, I want to have, and of course it includes the sexual connotation as well.
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Illicit sex, any sex outside of marriage, sexual desire and covetousness are these two horrible
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Siamese twins of lust of the flesh. Greedy licentiousness. Number two, lust of the eyes.
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And here's kind of almost an elaboration. Yes, the eyes tempt people to sexually immoral things,
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Jesus said, but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart,
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Matthew 5. But I think more importantly, John is trying to say this, when you only use your eyes to look at something and envy with the eyes and desire with the eyes, the eyes only see what's on the surface, they only show the temporal, they only show the external.
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God says this kind of looking robs us of our heavenly mindedness. Captivated and entangled by externals and show and temporal.
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And then number three, the pride of life, or as some translate it, boastful materialism.
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Just got to have everything. I want it all. Why want it all? Verse 17, and the world is what?
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Passing away. And also it's lust, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.
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Friends, I believe in global warming. I believe in global warming.
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If you turn back just to 2 Peter 3, I'll show you the kind of global warming that I believe in. And I won't call it climate change.
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You know, if it gets too cold, it's climate change. If it gets too hot, it's global warming. Friends, the idea even of spending your time worshiping
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Mother Earth, as it were, is a worldly idea. It's not going to last.
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The earth isn't going to last. Here's global warming day, right here. The ultimate global warming.
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2 Peter 3, verse 10. Oh, it'll be hot, and it'll be global. But the day of the
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Lord will come like a thief, which the heavens will pass away with a what? The Greek word is roar.
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It just sounds, it's got an onomatopoetic feel. Will roar. You ever have a fire so hot you can hear the thing just rumbling?
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That's exactly what that is. And the elements will be what? Recycled. Oh, sorry.
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Will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
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The outside is so sinful and bad, God's going to just melt away the outside crust. It should make us live a certain way, don't you think?
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Verse 11. Since all these things are going to be destroyed in this way, devote yourself to causes that won't last.
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What sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for, verse 12, and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat.
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But according to His promise, we, on the other hand, are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
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Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless.
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Why worship the ideologies of the world and everything that's in the world when they're going to all be destroyed?
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Everything is going to be destroyed. Back to 1 John 2. Oh, you know what?
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Let's not go there. We're about out of time. Go to James 4 with me, if you would. Say, well, you know, it's kind of harsh language, and I don't know if I really like that.
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John gives you the kind grandpa version. James gives you the young bazooka version.
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Which one do you like? I don't know. I'm in the mood for bazooka today, so let's go. James 4.
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I don't want to love the world. Do you? And the system? I mean, that rooted out of me.
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And Pastor Dave said, you know, God uses His word like a hammer to make sure that you don't live that way anymore. And mark it well if you haven't heard it once.
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You'll probably hear it 50 times as long as I'm the pastor here. Doug Wilson is right. Soft -hearted people in the congregation want hard words from the pulpit because they want their heart to be chipped away and to be made more like Christ.
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But hard -hearted people in the pulpit, excuse me, in the pews, what kind of pastor? What kind of preacher? Soft. Best life now.
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You're good. I'm okay. You're okay. You're all wonderful. God's crazy about you.
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Let's all go be Amish. I mean, I don't know what he says. I want to have this heart. This heart is stony.
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I want to say, God, I don't want to have some kind of love for the world. You saved me and redeemed me. I want to act like a
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Christian. And I would prefer to have more assurance as I say no to this locomotive train called the world and its system.
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I want to be like John Owen who says we need not to have living affections for dying things.
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And here comes bulldozer James. John, kind. Don't love the world this way.
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We're all going to do it this way. And then now here comes James. The same topic, but a different way of saying it.
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Both biblical. James 4 .4. You know the passage. You adulteresses.
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And just stop and let that sink in. Can you imagine? We think James was a sermon. Can you imagine him looking at the congregation and saying, you're a bunch of adulteresses.
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Well, that's fairly shocking, stinging, wouldn't you say? Blunt, you would say. Shaking you up.
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Intended to do that. You adulteresses. This is spiritual adultery by the way. Do you not know that friendship with the world is what?
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You know the verse. Hostility towards God. Psalm 73 talks about those who whore away from God.
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I don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. And here we have Israel like the bride of God, of Yahweh.
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And they go off and instead of giving all their focus and all their attention to God, their creator and their husband, they run after other idols.
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And then God says to Israel, you're spiritually committing adultery. Now he says the same thing to people in the church.
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It's been said of Israel. Jesus said it to the false teachers and evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign.
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But now he's saying church, you're the bride. Don't go running around on your husband
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Christ Jesus. Side note, this is not master -slave language.
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This is husband and wife intimate relationship language. And he says, look at how he asks the question, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God?
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And this is implying the affirmative. You know it. Everybody knows it. Come on, fess up, you know it.
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Demas, love the present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica, 2 Timothy 4 .10.
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What a tragic example. This is not the worldliness that says, don't touch that, don't taste that.
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It's saying, I don't want to live my life being accountable to God. I don't want to take any actions that I have to live underneath His rule.
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And then he says in verse 4, therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself.
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Here's the logical consequence. It's not about the family, not about the church, but individually. Individual logical consequence of loving the world and spiritual harlotry makes himself an enemy.
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Say you aren't. Act like you aren't. But if you do that, you are.
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It's insane to do that. Who'd want to do that? You say, I don't even go for that. Verse 5.
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Want more proof? Here's chapter and verse from the Bible summarizing a lot of the Old Testament.
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Do you not think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose? Literally, the spirit which dwells in you yearns to envy.
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You have a natural propensity to worship. Do you know God made you a worshiper? Do you know that if you won't find
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God to worship, you'll find something else? And you might bow down to a little Indian god or you might bow down to the sophistication of politics and education, but you'll bow.
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Everybody worships. We have a tendency to do that. And if our hearts are full of evil because of the fall, we're going to worship evil things.
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So the remedy is, of course, focus on who Christ is. John Owen said, Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin.
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I could ask you questions to kind of determine if you're infected by worldliness. Let me give you a few as time allows.
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Does the world love me? Does the world love me? Because if you're not of the world, like Jesus, they will do what to you?
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They will hate you. Let me ask you another question. Do I count my worldly achievements as valueless compared to knowing
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Christ? That's a good idea. That'll help you analyze yourself.
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Next question, number three. Do the philosophies and religions of the world that once interested me, do they now appear foolish and ungodly?
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I used to love to study comparative religions and all that, and now I go, well, there's only two religions in the world.
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The religion that God does it all for us because we can't do anything. He accomplishes salvation, confirms it by Christ's resurrection, and then every other religion fits in the other category.
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You've got to work to get to heaven, do something to get to heaven. And now I have no desire to study those things because I have the right thing.
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The world says the opposite. How about this one, number four. Am I careful in guarding against the world's influences?
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Now hear me well. I am not after TV burning. Electronic circuits are not sinful.
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But friends, if you were like the average family in the United States, you will have your TV on for seven hours a day.
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Four hours a day an average person watches TV. So when Kierkegaard said 150 years ago, suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube, which say it could be heard over the whole land.
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I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used.
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Wow. TV isn't sinful. But when you start buying everything the
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TV says and you just are like everyone else, hey, I do everything that I used to do.
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There's cause for warning. Number five, I think we're done. Well, maybe not. Last week
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I was chided actually, confronted for not preaching long enough. And they said when
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Charlie and the others who help us with additional worship for singing isn't here, that means the people back in the nursery have about 10 more minutes that they have ready and planned to teach and you've cut in on their time and not given us enough preaching from the pulpit.
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So I was chastened for the first time for not preaching long enough. Reminds me back in the old days when
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I would get a raise, they would say, you got an 8 % raise and we expect you to preach 8 % longer. So there you have it.
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Number five, do you think quality of life is based on accumulating things? Do you think quality of life is based on accumulating things?
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I mean, after all, J. Paul Getty said the best thing in life are things. I thought it was very interesting.
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Workers at a Panama assembly plant years ago couldn't get the laborers to keep working because they had nothing and then now they get something and after they get something after a week or two, they say,
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I've got more money than I've ever had in my entire life. Who wants to keep working? I'm going to quit. I've got everything.
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So you know what they did? They gave them all free Sears catalogs and no one ever quit again.
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Good thinking. There's things in there they didn't even know they wanted and now they've got to have. Joel Beeky said the problem with things is they make us move and live horizontally, not vertically.
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Calvin said the evil in our desires often lies not in what we want, but in the fact we want it too much. Number six, do
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I deny heaven as a compelling reality? In other words, do I long for heaven? This isn't heaven.
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Some have it so good, they think, well, this is it, but this isn't it. For me to live is
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Christ and to die is gain. C .S. Lewis said, aim at heaven and you'll get earth thrown in. Aim for earth and you get neither.
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Number seven, do I remember that in the Old and New Testaments, the people that had the greatest impact in the world were never those in which the people of God became indistinguishable from those in their world?
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David Wells. In other words, you want to make a great impact for Christ? It won't be when you're exactly like the world.
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So how'd you do? Do you confess your sins? Do you confess Jesus as Lord? Do you love
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God? Do you love your fellow Christians? Do you not love the world? You say, well, yeah, but I struggle sometimes with my feelings.
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The real ground of assurance for salvation is not necessarily how we do things, 1
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John, but we have to always go back to the work of Christ Jesus. A man came to D .L.
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Moody and said he was worried because he didn't feel saved. Moody asked, was Noah safe in the ark?
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Well, certainly he was. Well, what made him safe? His feeling or the ark?
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The inquirer said, how foolish I've been. It's not my feeling. It's Christ who saves. Do you think those people in the homes when the
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Passover death angel came and they had blood over their doors felt secure?
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Maybe they did, but I'm sure some of them might have said, I just committed some sin today against my husband or my wife or my kids, and it's painted up there.
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There's blood all over. I can hear the people dying. I can hear the death angel outside, but I'm feeling like maybe one of my sins have kept me from God.
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Security has to be in what God says is the security, and that is there was blood shed. The only security blanket
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God gives us is the death of Christ and the Spirit of God as we minister to other people and to him.
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Let's close in prayer. Thank you, Father, for this time today. Thank you that your gifts and your calling are revocable.
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I pray for this dear congregation with the psalmist that you would draw near to us and say to our soul,
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I am your salvation. And Father, we are thankful that it ultimately doesn't depend on any of our good works, the way we live.
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It all depends on Christ. And because of what he's done, we ask that you would help us respond with duty sometimes, with thankfulness, yes, with praise, and with power by the
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Spirit of God that we live a life commensurate with our high calling, that we would be worthy to bear the name
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Christian. And then, Lord, would you flood us with assurance and security and love greater than any child could have in some security blanket.