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Well, hey, everyone. I'm glad that you have joined us.
We are picking back up with where we left off on Sunday in 1 John chapter 4.
In just a moment, we'll start reading in verse 20.
Kind of explain to everybody what took place last Sunday.
When we are doing a partnership study with Right Now Media, which we do often, and that way our small groups and our Sunday morning messages can align and study the same passage of Scripture together,
what that creates oftentimes is—or not oftentimes, but every time—is I follow the outline or the way that Right Now Media approaches and breaks down the Scripture.
And so I'll do independent study of them.
I'll listen to messages, read books, study my Bible, do word studies, but I'll follow through, hey, begin at this verse and end at this verse.
And so last week as I was doing my prep work, it really felt like a lot.
It felt like a lot was there and didn't want to miss out on anything because there was so much richness in this passage, these passages of Scripture.
And so Sunday morning just made the decision to just focus on 4, 17 through 19.
But we don't want to fall behind as this Sunday we need to begin in 1 John 5, 13.
So what we decided to do was take a little different alternative to what we normally do and look at these verses in a little midweek video slash podcast, however you're choosing to join us.
And so I thank you for allowing us the opportunity to do this a little bit differently than how we normally would.
But I thank the Lord for the freedom to have the technology to be able to do these things.
And so if you are wondering where in the world are you, if you're watching this video, we have a recording room where Berger does all of his magic to create videos and do those things.
And so that's where I am over in building to getting this to you today.
So thank you for joining us.
We're going to look at 1 John 4, verse 20, all the way through 1 John 5, verse 12.
So let's get started.
Let's start reading in chapter 4, verse 20.
It says,
If anyone says,
And so what we're going to look at in this passage is testing your love.
Now, John has been on this pattern, this pastoral pattern as he pleads with people, and he desires for them to be able to stand firm, to stand confidently and not in fear of the return of Christ, which fills out to so many areas of our lives, right?
Like, if we're confident in the return of Christ, then we're going to be confident not only on that day, but in every day leading up to it.
And that's the hope of John, that we live these confident lives in who we are and saved in the Lord.
But in order to be confident, we need to be accurately confident.
We need to be securely confident.
We need to be assured in our salvation in Christ.
And so this is what he has been doing is to help us find assurance if we have it.
And if we don't have assurance in Christ, then what does that mean to have a relationship in Christ?
And that's what we're going to look at at the very end of our message this afternoon as I'm recording this.
And so what he starts off with is testing your love, and he gives us a test.
Now, this test isn't a test the way that we normally think of with tests.
This isn't a test like, well, answer these questions.
And John doesn't give us 10 questions and answer true or false, A or B, or anything like that.
Instead, this test is more of an examination to look at something, inspect it, and see what conclusion can come from that.
When I was little, I liked to collect baseball cards.
I collected football cards and basketball cards, but my true love was collecting baseball cards.
And I had thousands upon thousands of baseball cards.
My favorite baseball card was my Don Mattingly rookie card.
Don Mattingly was my favorite baseball player, first baseman for the New York Yankees.
And I had his rookie card, and that was my prized possession.
But I believe in the late 80s or early 90s, Donruss, who was a baseball card maker, came out with some cards
and they were extremely rare cards.
And so as a young boy, as a card collector, you wanted to go out and you wanted to buy Donruss packs of baseball cards in the hopes that you could get one of these very rare cards.
But also in these packs, Donruss put in these packs what was called replica cards.
And so they looked like the rare cards, but they weren't the rare cards.
And so if you got a replica card, that was pretty cool because the card looked cool and they all had popular and good players on them.
But they weren't valuable because they weren't the real card that you were looking for.
And the only way that you could tell the difference between a replica card and the real card was to move it from side to side.
And there was this hologram that you would see that would come from the card.
And if you had the hologram, then you had the real one.
But if you didn't have the hologram, then you had the replica or you had the fake card.
So in order to determine this, what did you have to do?
You had to inspect.
You had to test it by looking deep into who the card or what the card truly was.
And what John is calling us to is to bring that same type of inspection to be able to see if our love for God is real or not.
Look at what he says back in verse 20.
If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.
For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
And so John's saying, look, you can't love God if you don't love your brother or sister in Christ.
Now, this verse 20 is not an empty threat.
This is not an over-exaggeration of what John is trying to say.
This is a promise of Scripture.
John's saying, this is true.
You can't love God and hate your brother.
He says, you can't love, or I'm sorry, you can't love God whom you haven't seen,
but claim, but not love the person who you do see.
Like the two do not go hand in hand.
And he uses, I believe, some intentional language of family imagery here.
So it kind of impresses on the heart of the reader.
How can you say you love the parent when you don't love the child?
Right?
Like, you can't love me, but yet seek ill will and hatred of my children, of Emma and Grayson.
So you can't love the parent and hate the child is what John is pushing to in this.
So when we look at this, he then says, well, then here is how you are to love.
Here's this test.
Here is what love should look like and how you should love in this relationship.
So I'm going to get a sip of water real quick.
Verses two and three of chapter five.
By this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments.
For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.
All right, hopefully I can get this cough gone, right?
So in this book, we talked about this.
This is this recurring theme that are you confident in the return of the Lord?
Are you confident in your relationship with God?
Right?
Well, that answer is no.
Well, then how can I be confident?
How can I be confident in my relationship with God?
How can I be confident in the return of the Lord?
And the answer that keeps coming back to us is, do you love your fellow siblings in Christ?
Do you love the family of God?
Do you love your brothers and sisters of faith?
Right?
And it's not some, right?
It's easy to love some.
It's not most.
That's harder, but that's still not the standard of scripture.
It's do you love them all?
Well, now, 5 verse 2, as he explains what this looks like, there appears that John is giving us a reversal.
But what I want to see, it's not a reversal.
It's the continual statement of explaining the truth of what John gives is to love God is to love his children.
Let's look back at verse 2.
By this, we know that we love the children of God.
When we love God, we obey his commandments.
So, what we got was, well, do you love God?
Well, you can tell you love God if you love his children.
Well, then in verse 2, it's to explain what it means to love his children means that you love God,
but also that you obey his commandments.
And then what we'll see here in just a moment in verse 3, it's not that you just obey his commandments,
but that his commandments aren't burdensome, which it means that from God's commandments is great joy.
That it's not a burden to obey the Lord.
It's a joy.
It's an honor.
It's a privilege to obey him.
So, by this, we know that we love the children of God when we love God and we obey him.
So, two parts to this I want us to look at.
We love what John says when we obey his commandments.
So, love here is defined specifically.
And it's not defined by a feeling.
It's not defined by a particular set of circumstances or a cultural interaction.
Love here is defined by keeping the commandments of God.
Now, this isn't something that has not been said before.
John didn't come up with this on his own.
In fact, in the Gospel of John, chapter 14, when he is recording his gospel narrative that we see in verse 15,
Jesus himself says,
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
So, love of God, love for God, and love for God's people are both evident.
Both of these are evident in our lives as we seek to obey him.
So, how do we see the love of God in our life?
How do we see God's love or our love for others in our life?
Is that we obey him fully.
So, real love is then guided by, defined by, God's commandments.
So, just think about this.
A few weeks ago, we were talking about what it means to love someone.
And we were talking about and dealing very specifically with the sin that a person faces.
And so, how do I love someone when they are doing something that we know from God's word that is destructive for them?
It's destructive for their soul.
It's destructive for those around them.
And it's not God's best, and it's not God's plan for them.
What do we do?
Well, the world says, oftentimes, when we see things like that, that we ignore it, right?
We're not going to talk about it.
It's none of our business.
We've got to stay out of it.
Oftentimes, we hear and what's taught is that we maybe not ignore it, but instead, we embrace it, right?
Well, we may think it's destructive, but you don't.
And since you don't think it's destructive, then we want to affirm the decisions and the things that you make.
Or maybe even more than that is we excuse it, right?
Well, you're just doing this because, and it's not really your fault, so you shouldn't be called out on it.
You shouldn't have to deal with it because it's not your fault that you choose this seemingly destructive behavior.
But if someone is in sin, the Bible says there's a very specific way that we love them, right?
We taught this a couple weeks ago, right?
We obey God.
God gives us a very specific command of what we're to do, that we take the plank out of our eye.
So to love someone when they're in sin, first, we deal with our sin.
We come to grips with who we are.
We come to grips with our struggles.
We confess.
We repent.
We put areas of accountabilities.
We make intentional steps.
We confess.
We struggle through.
We find the burden of we're broken for our sin.
We do that first.
That's what God commands us.
Then, once the plank of sin has been removed from our eye, then we go to our brother or sister in Christ and we help them remove the speck of sin that's in their eye.
So we don't just say, well, that was our journey that we went on, but they're on their own journey and they've got to figure that out.
No, no, no, no, that's not it at all.
We go, we remove it from ours.
We celebrate.
We thank God for his grace and his kindness as he's done that in our lives.
And then we help them.
And that's obeying the Lord, right?
That's what he calls us to do.
But then not only in that, when we love God, we keep his commandments and we find this remarkable truth of Scripture that his commandments aren't burdensome.
It's a process that we begin to see in our lives.
Chapter 5, verse 3.
For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.
So that's interesting.
So as you listen to this, I want you to ask yourself this question.
How do you view the commands of God, right?
Do you view the commands of God?
Do you view God as this detached, away from us God who has just given us these lists of rules to make our lives miserable and to create these spiritual hoops that we need to jump through and do this and don't do that?
And it's just, oh, it's terrible.
Is that how we view?
I was thinking about following rules today as I was thinking through, walking through this with you guys.
And I thought about going to school, especially in elementary school.
It seemed like this was a big thing in elementary school.
And I'll never forget, like, the first day of school, the new school year, I went to North Augusta Elementary School.
We were the Knights, blue and gold.
And go to North Augusta Elementary School and you'd go into your teacher's class and you would go over the school rules, right?
The rules that you've heard over and over and over again.
I went there first through fifth grade and I knew all the school rules.
I'd accepted the structure of the school rules.
It was things like walk on the right hand side of the hallway.
It was follow these procedures as you walk through the cafeteria.
It was you can only go to the library during your library time, right?
This was the rules.
This was the rules that you knew.
These were the rules that everyone followed, whether you're in first grade or fifth grade or anywhere in between.
These were the rules that you all followed.
But then the teacher would give their classroom rules.
These were extra rules.
These were the rules that were there that you must also follow.
And it felt like these rules changed.
And it just seemed for me at the time of my, you know, seven-year-old through 11-year-old self that I was always placed in the most strict classroom, right?
So, and I know this wasn't the case, but it just felt like that at the time that these rules were just more than anybody else had to follow.
And why do I have to do these things?
And it doesn't seem like my best friend, Jesse, over in the other class, he doesn't have to do this, but I have to do this.
And it seemed unfair and unreasonable.
And obeying those rules was not a joy.
It felt burdensome.
I think sometimes as Christians, we approach God in the same way.
We've accepted this general moral set of guidelines and rules that are put out and accepted by our culture.
And these rules are good, right?
We need these rules.
We need order to society.
And so we obey those.
We want to be good, law-abiding citizens.
But now when I come to faith in Christ, I find out that there are, well, there are more commands.
There are more rules.
There's things that God says, if you're going to be of me, if you're going to be my children, then you're going to do things my way.
I'm going to call you to this.
And if we're not careful, those rules aren't a joy.
They're burdensome in our life.
Let me give you an example of this.
In Matthew 18, Jesus commands to forgive.
It's a great conversation that happens between Jesus and Peter, and Jesus goes into telling a parable about forgiveness.
But it's a command to forgive.
And Jesus does this numerous times throughout the gospel.
He doesn't say forgiveness is a good idea.
He doesn't say, hey, you know, your life will be better if you choose to do this.
And so weigh it out, consider it, but you might want to, but, you know, see how you feel about it.
No, Jesus commands us.
He commands us to forgive.
The apostle Paul even commands in Ephesians 4, and I want to be careful when I say the apostle Paul.
Paul commands, it's the writing of the apostle Paul and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in which he commands us to forgive.
And Paul says in Ephesians 4, 32, forgive one another as God has forgiven you.
And so we see this command that God places on us.
Well, John says that back to 1 John 5, that when we love God, when we obey his commandments, that we shouldn't do it burdensome, but that we should do it with joy.
So we should not be like I was in elementary school, thinking, well, why do I have to follow these?
But we should go, oh, God's got a plan.
God's got a purpose.
God's got a desire.
And I get to.
But it's difficult to do that, right?
It's hard sometimes.
But God gives us the power to do it.
Look at 1 John, let's look at verses 4 through 5.
So here's why in this world, God's commands that are for our good, that God's commands that are for our betterment,
that God's commands that are for his glory, that God's commands that bring great joy in our life.
This is why, though, God's commands oftentimes feel burdensome, because the world tempts us to believe that disobedience to God is more satisfying and more joy-filled than obeying God.
And so when you've experienced that, what you're feeling is the temptation, the draw on this world to go, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I know God says this, this, this, this, and this.
And God tells you that you experience joy when you obey him.
But what the world is tempting you to do is that actually satisfaction, that actual joy is found when you disobey God.
And so we're convinced to believe that being sexually pure is not a source of joy, but is a source of burden.
That the world convinces us that cheating on our taxes and taking what's not ours, that's joyous, not being honest.
That's a burden.
The world teaches us that when we hear gossip, that joy is found in and engaging in that conversation so that we can find out more about others to their detriment, but to our sinful benefit.
And that's not joy at all.
God teaches us that we, through our faith, can overcome the world because we can overcome this draw of temptation because of the Holy Spirit that God gives us in salvation that causes us to live as victors who have overcome the world.
And in this, we see, this is when we see the spiritual maturity, that being obedient to the Lord, it's not a punishment, that being obedient to the Lord is not burdensome, but being obedient to the Lord is where we find such a great renewal of our spirit, where we find joy, where we find contentment, and where we find satisfaction.
I want to share a story where God really taught me this in my life.
Several years ago, there was a person who goes, who went then to Willow Ridge Church and attends Willow Ridge Church now.
And not to get into the details specifically, because they don't matter, but to say this individual and I had a moment of conflict.
We had a pretty bad disagreement with one another.
And I don't want to speak for them, so I'll just speak for myself.
The disagreement on my part was not handled well.
It wasn't handled with the right heart.
This disagreement wasn't handled in the right manner.
And when I left, what consumed me was anger and bitterness.
Now, I knew that I needed to forgive.
And I knew that I needed to ask for forgiveness.
But I didn't want to do either one of them.
It felt like a burden to do that.
I said things like, well, why should I have to?
But what they did to me was worse than what I did to them.
But God, in His grace, as I didn't deserve it, was better to me, way better to me than I deserved, wouldn't leave me alone with this.
And wouldn't leave the other individual alone for this.
And so they asked if we could meet.
And so we did, and we sat down and we talked.
We talked for a couple hours.
And here's what was remarkable.
When we got done with our conversation, we still disagreed.
We didn't come to this magical agreement that I now agreed that they were right or they then agreed that I was right.
We disagreed.
But what we had put aside was our anger, our bitterness.
And we forgave one another.
And we loved one another.
And now, some years later, our relationship is stronger now than it's ever been.
And I would say that my relationship with this individual was one of the strongest relationships that God has blessed me with in the history of my ministry.
And, folks, that's how God works.
When we decide to keep His commands.
And joy was found in forgiveness.
You see, joy wasn't found because I was proven right.
And joy was not found because this individual was proven right.
Joy was found because we forgave one another.
And in that, we love the Lord.
And in that, we love one another.
You see, that's what God longs for in us.
The desire, the change to be able to see in the heart of His children that we obey Him, not because we're afraid that we'll get caught, but that we'll obey Him because that's what glorifies and honors Him.
And we get to.
And when we follow the commandments, when we do as God has instructed, that's where we experience a lot of the tangible joy of our salvation.
I want to keep reading and look at the last parts of 1 John 5, 6 through 13.
It says,
This is He who came by water and blood.
Jesus Christ, not by the water only, but by the water and the blood.
And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is truth.
For there are three that testify, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree.
If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.
For this is the testimony of God that He has borne concerning His Son.
Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in Himself.
Whoever does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning His Son.
And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life.
And this life is in His Son.
Whoever has the Son has life.
And whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
And so in closing, what I want us to talk about is this, is believing in the Son.
Believing in the Son, because that is the means by which eternal life will be given.
Life and hope with Christ and Christ alone.
Verse 12 says that.
Whoever has the Son has life.
Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
You see, so many times we want to think that there's more to this or less to this, and there's not.
It's the truth of this sentence.
Whoever has the Son, whoever has Jesus, has life.
And then so if you have Him, so you have life, then the opposite of both of those must be true as well.
Then if you do not have the Son, then you do not have life.
There isn't another option.
This isn't 1A, 1B, where's 1C?
This isn't where's 1, there's 1 and 2, and where's 3, 4 and 5.
There isn't multi-parts of this.
It's the truth of either you're found in Christ or you're not.
And so that's the question that we are drawn to.
Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have the Son does not.
So what does that mean?
I have eternal life when I have Christ.
What does it mean to have Jesus?
Now, that's maybe a common phrase in the church.
I would say that's a phrase that we use a lot.
And if you go to churches or you've been to church or you were raised in church, you may have heard that phrase before.
Well, do you have Jesus?
Well, yes, I have Jesus.
And if you just hear that, like if I walk up to somebody on the street and I say,
do you know I have something, they will say, well, can I see it?
Like, show me that.
You say you have Jesus, then show me Jesus.
So what does it mean to say that we have Jesus?
Well, to have something is to imply that an action can also exist.
And here's what I mean by that.
I'm going to give you three examples from three different things.
One is a personality thing, so you can't touch it.
One's a physical object explanation, and one's a relationship explanation.
All three ring true about having something.
So if I say that I have a particular sense of humor, I have a sarcastic sense of humor.
So for better or for worse, I can be sarcastic.
For better or for worse, I find sarcasm funny.
Now, some people don't.
Some people don't find that type of comedy or that sense of humor funny.
But that's the type of personality, the sense of humor that I have.
This is the particular sense of humor.
So because of that, there's an action, which means that I find certain things funny.
So something sarcastic, you'll probably see me laugh.
You'll probably see me chuckle.
You might even hear me say those things from time to time.
So there's an action because I have something, something as simple as when we have an object.
So if I say to you, and I've got one sitting right here with me with my notes, that I have a pen.
Well, that pen can do something for me, right?
That pen can point to things.
That pen can very intentionally write things when I pick it up and use it.
Because I have something, I then therefore have an action that comes along with having that particular instrument.
But not only do I have a personality or sense of humor, not only do I have this pen, but I have a marriage.
I have a marriage to a particular individual.
I have a marriage to my wife, Erin.
And so since I have this relationship with her, this marriage, I then have a particular relationship
that is marked by actions and things and behaviors and conversations that I don't have with other
individuals, but is special and unique because I have this relationship.
To say that you have Jesus implies an action from Jesus.
I have him.
So then the question is, well, then what do you have?
What do you have as a result of having Jesus?
What does verse 12 mean?
That if you have the son, then you have life.
Well, Jesus talks about this in John 10, 10.
Jesus describes life with him.
And what does that mean?
And he says, I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
And so Jesus talks about this.
But what does it mean to have Jesus?
Well, he talks about that you have life, but you have life in two different ways.
He says that you have life before the grave, right?
Jesus says, I've come that you may have life right here in the now, in the tangible ways
that your life is marked differently.
Your life is marked with joy.
Your life is marked with love.
Your life is marked with obedience.
Why?
Because you have Jesus.
But then also your life after the grave.
The eternal life that you're promised in Jesus.
Because you've put your faith, your hope, your trust, because you believe in him, as John tells
us in 1 John 5, verse 10, that we've believed in this testimony of Christ.
So as we talk about what does it mean to have Jesus, I also want to raise the question of
what does it mean to say that I believe in Jesus?
Now, to say I believe in Jesus, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing to say that I believe in Jesus, right?
We hear that expression a lot.
But if what we mean when we say we believe in Jesus is I believe in a historical Jesus,
or even more so, I believe in theological facts about Jesus, or theological truths, I'm sorry,
I believe in theological truths about Jesus, then our statement of belief in Jesus is good.
It's a good statement.
We believe historically who Jesus is.
We believe theologically who Jesus is.
But our statement of belief is incomplete if it just rests in historical and theological.
It's got to be a practical sense to it as well.
Here's what I mean.
Do you believe that Jesus Christ came to earth as God in human form?
I hope your answer is yes.
And if you said yes, the answer to that question is correct.
I'm glad that that's what you believe.
Do you believe Jesus Christ was born of a virgin,
and while he lived on this earth, lived a sinless life?
I hope your answer is yes.
And if you answered yes again, you're two for two.
That's the correct answer.
Do you believe that Jesus Christ stood trial, was convicted, and sentenced to death on a cross?
And on that cross, he died as a payment for sin.
If you believe that again, three for three, you're doing wonderful.
Great job, right?
We need to believe these things.
This is important.
Well, let's keep going.
Do you believe that Jesus was buried in a tomb, was there for three days?
He was not asleep.
He was not unconscious, and he was dead.
And on the third day, he rose again.
Do you believe that?
And again, yes.
If you believe all those things, and there are many, many more from Scripture that we could draw.
But if you believe those things and all the others, right, that's good.
That's a good thing.
But if your belief is simply believing in historical facts, which all of those are,
or if your belief is added to that theological truths, which all of those are,
it's good, but it's incomplete.
Because biblical belief doesn't just say that I agree that these things are true.
That biblical belief calls for a response and a trust of him.
So because we believe all of these things, we trust Jesus.
And we trust that his death is a payment for our sins.
It's not just a fact, but it's a truth that we cling to and that we trust.
That I can't make atonement for my sins.
That I can't make a payment for my sins.
That that can only be found through the life and death of Christ and Christ alone.
We not only believe in his resurrection, we believe historically that it happened.
We believe the theological truths that Scripture teach us of the resurrection.
But we also trust his resurrection as a promise that just as Christ was raised,
that we too will be raised for eternal life.
You see, believing in Jesus requires more than an acknowledgement of the mind,
more than an agreement to a list of facts.
Believing in Jesus is trusting and placing our faith and our hope in him and him alone.
Acknowledging that we can't save ourselves.
We can't mend our relationship with the Father, but it could only be done through the Son
and through the Son alone.
And when we begin to understand this, that it requires a trust in who Jesus is and a surrender
to him, then we move from a belief of facts to a belief and trust of faith in Christ.
I want to thank you for joining us as we do this little different way to wrap up this section of Scripture.
And I pray that within your life and within mine as well, that God is drawing us to him.
That where we find ourselves is in a desire to be obedient to him and who he is.
Not because he's an angry God up above us looking down to punish those who disobey.
But because he's a God who loves us and wants to experience the joy of his way.
That he wants us to experience the joy in obedience to him.
I pray for you that if you're here today or you're listening today and you've acknowledged a set of facts about Jesus,
I'm so grateful that it resonates with you.
All of the things that Scripture claims of Christ are true.
But I pray it would move beyond an acknowledgement of the mind and that it would become a surrender of the heart.
That you would recognize Jesus is who he is as Lord and Savior.
And that he would be the Lord and Savior of your life.
Would you pray with me?
God, I thank you so much for our time that we could spend together.
Lord, may your truth penetrate our hearts.
May it change us and draw us closer to you.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
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