Episode Transcript
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If you remained able to remain standing, please do and let's give our attention
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to God's word. Now in First
John, continuing our meditations, hearing God's
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word to us from first John this
morning, Chapter Two, verses twelve,
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thirteen and fourteen. So First John, Chapter Two, verse twelve. Let's
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give our attention to God's word.
I'm writing to you, little children,
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because your sins are forgiven for his
namesake. I'm writing to you father's because
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you know him who is from the
beginning. I am writing to you,
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young men, because you have overcome
the evil one. I write to you
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children, because you know the father. I write to you father's because you
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know him who was, or because
you know him who is from the beginning.
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I write to you, young men, because you are strong and the
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word of God abides in you and
you have overcome the evil one. You
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may be seen. So I've struggled
a little bit with this, not a
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little bit, a struggle a lot
with this sermon this week, and I
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want to explain why. On the
one hand, there is this very simple
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and very important truth. I'm it's
not complex, it's very wonderful and it
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touches on some of the most basic
and fundamental things of who we are in
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our faith. It's a very comforting
passage and I think that the first hear
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is of this letter would have been
comforted by it, and even immediately so.
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The trouble is is that as this
passage comes to US folks in the
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twenty one century who aren't familiar and
used to this kind of stylized language,
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aren't familiar with the ways and which
it's written, there's a lot of questions
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that we end up asking that end
up sort of confusing us away from the
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point and from the assurance. You
might imagine at all beautiful home that once
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stood with this large welcoming lawn,
guests would sort of walk through up to
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the House easily and smoothly. But
with neglect the yard becomes overgrown and cluttered
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until it's such a mess that you
really have to give a machete and kind
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of whack your way through it until
you can get yourself into the house.
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The House hasn't changed at all,
but it's become difficult to get inside.
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I don't want to make a bigger
deal out of this than it is,
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but I think in some ways this
passage is like that for us why does
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he address only men? Are these
ages metaphorical or are they not? Why
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does he repeat himself almost exactly and
then in other places not so exactly?
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Why doesn't he address other people?
Or is he addressing people? Who is
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he addressing? And how are we
to understand these things? What is the
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reason for this language of because how
are we to understand that? There's a
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lot of things that I think maybe
would have been easier to hear in a
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more oral culture, in a culture
that was familiar with this kind of way
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of writing and a certain context in
he was riding in. I don't think
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the original here is would have been
troubled quite as much as perhaps we are
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at the same time. So what
I recognize as we have to do a
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little bit of Weed whacking, we
have to do a little bit of digging
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before we can get to the gold. But at the same time I don't
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want to spend all of our time
interpreting and going through with a fine tooth
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comb all the details and then walk
away without a sense of the assurance and
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comfort and hope that God has given
to us. So we'll do our best
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and I want to and I put
it this way, so that we might
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write up front, keep in mind
what it is that we're after to hear
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what God's Word is saying. John
is telling us God's Elder Apostle is here
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riding to these Christians and by a
spirit, writing to us as well to
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reassure us, to tell us some
things that are true about ourselves. We
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want to keep that in mind.
But let's do a little weed whacking first.
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What about the repetition? What's going
on here? You might break this
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passage up into two stanzas if you
think about it like poetry. If these
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sets of three. He says I'm
writing to you little children in verse twelve,
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then in verse thirteen he says I'm
writing to you father's and then I'm
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writing to young men. And then
we have the same set of three at
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right after that, starting at the
end of verse thirteen. I write to
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you children, I write to you
father's, I write to you young men.
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So we have a parallelism here,
a symmetry that's going on. Why?
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Well, there's all kinds of different
reasons that parallelism is used. Some
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scholars have broken this into many,
many different categories and ways of seeing this.
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But most simply, you could simply
say it's emphasis of some kind or
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another. It's emphasis, sometimes it's
elaboration, sometimes it's clarification, sometimes it's
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strengthening it in one way or another. And but that's what he's doing here.
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He's emphasizing this point. It never
hurts to say things again, does
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it? It never hurts to say
things again, does it? It emphasize
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this, doesn't it? It has
a way of impressing the point, and
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we're used to this. If you
watch children's television shows and you listen to
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good preachers, or hopefully you listen
to good preachers, you'll get this a
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lot kids. We're going to be
talking about the letter a today, the
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letter A. It's a great letter
and that's what we're going to be talking
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about, the letter all right,
it doesn't feel repetitious when you're watching it,
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if there's enough variation in those kinds
of things, but there's a kind
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of impressing that happens so that when
you walk away you're clear, it's understood.
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Now that's, I think, hard
for us to get a little bit
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from this passage if we're taking it
in these small chunks, which we've been
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doing as we've been going through this
letter, but as if you read it
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as a whole, what you have
is that, very early on in the
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letter, not many weeks into it, but early on. Then in the
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letter Paul, or sorry, John, addresses his audience directly again. He's
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already done it once at the beginning
of chapter two. After his introduction,
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he says, my little children,
I am writing these things to you so
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that you may not sin. It
sounds familiar, doesn't it sounds like our
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passage. And in fact throughout the
letter he's going to do this again and
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again. So, for example,
in verse eighteen of Chapter Two, he
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says, children, it's the last
hour and I have something to tell you,
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and he tells them some other things. Or in Verse Twenty Six of
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this or I'm sorry, twenty the
aid of this chapter, he says,
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and now little children abide in him. But this happens other times. He
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also uses the word in addition to
little children. And another example, verse
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seven of Chapter Three, he also
uses the Word Beloved, beloved in chapter
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four, Verse One, do not
believe every evil spirit or little children,
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and verse four of Chapter Four,
little children, you are from God and
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you have overcome them. That is
the antichrists in the world beloved in verse
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seven of Chapter Four. Beloved,
let us love one another, for love
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is from God. He continues this
pattern all the way through the end.
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He can continually comes back to when
he sort of holds holds their faces and
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says, little children, Beloved,
I'm writing to you, I'm speaking to
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you. He's being very tender even
the very last verse of the Book.
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Little children, keep yourselves from idols. This elder apostle, when I say
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elder, I mean that he's at
the end of his life. He's been
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an apostle for a long time.
This elder apostle is riding to these Christians
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in a very difficult situation. They
have people that have left them, that
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have seceded from the church and have
gone out and taught new things, advocated
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for new things, lived their lives
saying that they're Christians but but not being
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so. This has happened since the
very beginning, but and it happens today
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and it's always disruptive. Whenever this
happens in any church and any close knit
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community, you end up asking yourselves
really difficult questions. Who Are we?
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What do we believe? How do
we make sense of their time with us?
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How do we make sense of the
fact that they're a way, they're
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calling us to come with them.
What do we believe about that? How
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do we understand this separation? John's
addressing them in this in this the circumstances.
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He's giving them these tests, he's
giving them hard things. For example,
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he says in chapter two whoever says
he abides in him, that is
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in Jesus, ought to walk in
the same way in which he walked.
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He gives other things. Whoever says
this is a two verse, for whoever
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says I know him but does not
keep his commandments is a liar and the
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truth is not in him. They
probably had particular people with names. When
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they hear John Saying this, yeah, I know him, he said that.
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He says I know Jesus, but
he doesn't keep his commandments, John
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says he's a liar. So John
is having this very intense time of teaching
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through this letter, but he brings
into it a continual reminder of who they
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are. He encourages them and then, and that's what we have in particular
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here in Chapter Two, verses twelve
through fourteen, he's emphasizing this point,
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he's repeating this point at the here, at the beginning of his letter,
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he's sort of sitting on it for
a minute so that they will be very
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clear that, despite these difficult things
he's saying, despite these hard things,
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there's he's saying, despite this situation
that they're in, he wants them to
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know that he's treating them as Christians. He believes they are Christians, he
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knows that they are Christians, and
so that's how he puts it. I'm
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writing to you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven for his namesake.
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And then again, I am writing
to you, children, because you
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know the father. This is something
that is true of you. He says.
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You are, as he says in
other places, beloved, beloved,
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loved of God. So that's what's
going on here with the emphasis, and
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that's why we have the kind of
repetition. It's a way for the Christians
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who heard this letter to walk out
and remember and have it in their minds
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and have it in their hearts with
a lot of clarity on this point.
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Now. Second who is he talking
to here? He's talking to the whole
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congregation, as you've seen, when
he or the whole of his audience,
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men, women and children, when
he writes little children over and over,
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as we've seen them this book.
He addresses them in this way, going
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back and forth between these terms,
beloved children and little children. He keeps
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addressing them in this way, and
not just the small people, but all
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the people. As I said,
John is an elder apostle. He understands
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his role. He is this spiritual
caretaker of these people. They are to
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him as children are to a parent. That's how he addresses them, with
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a kind of authority but also a
kind of tenderness. I'm riding to you,
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little children, because your sins are
forgiven for his namesake. This is
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helpful because this tells us this is
not John and John. When John Identifies
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these groups, we read children,
fathers and young men. He doesn't intend
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for us to make hard and fast
distinctions between these things, because when he's
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sang little children, he's talking to
us all. If we don't understand that,
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we get down some odd rabbit trails. We ask questions like well,
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is it just children who sins are
forgiven, and just fathers who know him
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from the beginning, just young men
who have overcome the evil one? How
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do these work together? Why are
they separated in all these sorts of things.
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We're not intend to read it like
that. It's not intended to be
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read like that. He's addressing all
of us, his little children, the
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people that he's addressing this way throughout
the letter, and he says, I'm
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riding to you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven for his,
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nay namesake. I write to you
children because you know the father. Well
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then, what about this other pair, the fathers and the young men?
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This is a little bit more difficult
for me to answer, but I think
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what's going on is he's addressing as
he addresses this whole group and he's talking
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about who they are as those who
are identified in Christ. He'd also,
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in a way, not singles out, but highlights those that are mature and
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those that are coming into maturity.
There's a kind of extra assurance that comes
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to those who are who have lived
longer, or especially those who have lived
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longer in Christ, those who are
mature in the faith. There's a blessing
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that comes from simply seeing God's experiences, or, sorry, experiencing God's work
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again and again and again, seeing
his faithfulness over and over and over.
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As we come into maturity in our
faith, and then, as we even
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come into a greater maturity, is
as father's, as those that are leaders
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and capable of teaching others. We
have an ability, we have an extra
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degree of assurance, and that's what
John Highlights here, because that's what he's
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talkinging about. He's saying father's you
know him who is from the beginning,
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in your experience, in your knowledge, you who are older in the faith,
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not just men but women too,
you have a sense of who he
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is. This is old knowledge for
you and it's it's knowledge of someone who
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is very old, very very old
one, who even doesn't have a beginning
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himself. And to young men,
those who have overcome the evil one.
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This is again true of all of
us, and John Intends this very specifically.
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If you have your bibles, you
can flip over to chapter five and
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listen to what he says to everyone. Chapter Five, verse one. Everyone
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who believes that Jesus is the Christ
has been born of God, and everyone
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who loves the father loves whoever has
been born of him. By this we
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know that we love the children of
God when we love God and obey his
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commandments, for this is the love
of God that we keep his commandments.
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In his commandments are not burdensome,
for everyone who has been born of God
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overcomes the world, and this is
the victory that has overcome the world our
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faith. Who is it that overcomes
the world except the one who believes that
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Jesus is this Christ. Jesus is
the son of God. This is true
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if you're six years old or sixty
six years old or a hundred and six
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years old. Everyone who believes knows
God. Everyone who believes has been born
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of God, everyone who believes has
overcome the world. So John writes not
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to make hard and fast distinctions between
these groups, but to speak to us
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as his little children, even those
who are older, even those who consider
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themselves as strong and in their prime, they are to him as little children.
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And he speaks to us all and
reminds us of some very, very
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important things. So what does he
remind us of? Let's get into the
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house. John reminds us first that
our sins are forgiven for his name's sake.
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As I said, so simple,
so true, so foundational to who
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we are. Let's talk about what
is the essence of being a Christian?
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What's essential, what's fundamental? Mental
that your sins are forgiven because of or
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for his name's sake. This is
put simply here and expounded in many other
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places in God's word. We've even
read here in John that Christ, Jesus,
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is the one who came into the
world. Chapter two, verse two.
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He is the propitiation for our sins, meaning he's the one who turns
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away God's wrath and not for ours
only. John says, before the sins
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of the whole world, Jesus is
the one who turns away God's wrath,
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because Jesus is the one through whom
our sins are forgiven. Apart from before
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we become children of God, every
single one of us are like orphans,
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separated from him. We have no
right to his blessings, no right to
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his love, no right to his
power or his strength or his protection.
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We are we have no right to
claim anything from his inheritance, no right
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to belong to him, to to
pray to him, to seek him.
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Know, before we are adopted and
justified by God, we are children of
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Wrath, sons of disobedience, to
use language we heard earlier from Paul.
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We are enemies of God and on
the long side of him, on the
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wrong side of history. On the
wrong side of judgment. But when we
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become little children of the heavenly father, we become those who are in his
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household, under his protection and have
the rights to a great inheritance that has
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been earned for us by Christ.
That all happens, and only happens,
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because the sins that separated us from
him I've been forgiven, that God's wrath
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has been turned away and his shining
face of glory and grace and kindness is
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turned toward us, not only having
our sins forgiven, but being named and
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declared righteous because of Jesus. This
is what it means to be little children,
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and that's why John writes in this
way. He doesn't write so that
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we can. He doesn't say I'm
writing to you little children, because your
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sins are forgiven for his namesake.
Is a way to mean that we can
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become little children or that somehow,
if we do certain things, we can
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receive this word. No, he
writes to us as little children because these
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things have happened. If you are
a Christian, your sins are forgiven.
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To make a deep breath, relax
in that, have peace, for there
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is no condemnation for those who were
in Christ Jesus. The second thing he
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says to us is that we know
him who is from the beginning. We
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know him who is from the beginning. This knowledge of God is a very
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significant thing. To Know God isn't
merely to know about him, but it
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is to know him in an intimate
and personal way. It's to know him
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as he loves us. We speak. So, for example, looking chat,
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I will read this again, chapter
two, Verse Four. Whoever says
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I know him but does not keep
his commandments is a liar. You can
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go back and listen to that sermon
for more on this. The point is
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is there's a way in which we
know of people and then there's a way
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in which we know people that were
connected to them and we care about them
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and we love them. Do you
know God in that way, in that
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careful way, in that loving way? Does he know you in particular?
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Do you know Jesus Christ, who's
reveals to us God himself so that we
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may know him well? John says, yes, I'm riding to you because
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you do know him who is from
the beginning. He says the same thing
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in verse fourteen, because you know
him, Him who is from the beginning.
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The last thing he says is that
I writing to you, young men,
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because you have overcome the evil one. The parallel to it is because
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you are strong and the word of
God abides in you and you have overcome
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the evil one. This is a
significant aspect of what it means to be
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saved by Christ. He didn't only
forgive our sins, he rose as victor
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over Satan, over the grave,
victor and King and conqueror. John is
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about to say after this, this
this careful assurance and reminder that there are
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dangers in this world, a world
that is passing away. In Chat,
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in Verse Eighteen of Chapter Two,
he's going to say, children, it
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is the last hour and you have
heard that antichrist is coming. So now
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many antichrists have come. He's telling
them watch out. He tells them that
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some of them were even among them. There are these dangers, there are
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people that are trying to deceive them, he says in Verse Twenty Six in
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Chapter Five, he talks about overcoming
the world. As I read earlier,
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everyone who has been born of God
overcomes the world, and this is the
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victory that is over thecome the world. Our faith, when we are saved,
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when we are born of God,
when we are adopted as his children,
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when our sins are forgiven, we
are also conquerors or, as Paul
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puts it, more than conquerors,
through Christ, Jesus, who saves us.
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This is a remarkable thing because these
Christians, just like us, are
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in a context where there's pressures,
external pressures trying to deceive, trying to
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trick, trying to harm them,
anti Christ's people that are anti Christ,
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and trying to take them away from
Christ, their savior, their internal pressures,
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sins. Chapter two again, verse
one. I'm writing these things to
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you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does, and we
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have an advocate with the father,
Jesus Christ, the righteous, that's because
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in Christ we are overcomers, we
are conquerors, more than conquerors, when
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he rows of victorious and even on
the Cross, he put to shame all
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the powers of this world and Satan, the evil one himself. Well,
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if that's true of Jesus Christ,
which it is, and if we are
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united to him, that it means
it's true of us as well. To
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be a Christian means that we are
no longer in slavery, it means that
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we're no longer in bondage and no
longer. It means we're no longer helped
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captive to the bondage of the will, but instead we are set free towards
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the obedience of God, keeping the
commandment's loving and walking in him. We
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are strong. There's a kind of
Trinitarian pattern of what John says from the
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end of thirteen, in this last, our second stanza, I might say.
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He says, I write to you
children, because you know the father,
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speaking of the father, God,
the father. I write to you
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father's because you know him who is, from the beginning, someone John has
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spoken about a here and in his
Gospel as Jesus Christ, the son of
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God. And then I write to
you, young men, because you are
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strong, the word of God abides
in you and you have overcome the evil
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one. This happens because of the
spirit WHO's working in us. We abide
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in God, because God is in
us. He is ruling in us,
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he is reigning in us, he
is uniting us to himself and has united
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hims us to himself in such a
way that we are overcomers. We have
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overcome the evil one. This is
hard to believe sometimes, of course,
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when temptation is pushing, pushing,
pushing, and it feels like there's no
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escape. When sin full thoughts creep
in again and again and again, when
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darkness clouds are understanding in our minds, or we are attacked from outside and
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attacked from within our communities, it
seems as though the devil is strong and
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he is Peter says, he prowls
around like a roaring lion waiting for someone
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to a devour. The fact that
we are overcomers doesn't mean that we take
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Satan and the evil that he does
lightly, but it also means that we
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don't despair. It is strength because
we have overcome in Christ. This is
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what it means to be a Christian. It's to Walk Strong and upright and
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bolden him and in Christ and before
God the father, because our sins are
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forgiven and we have nothing to fear. There's no more condemnation, because he
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has revealed himself and made himself known
to us and cares for us, and
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because this work is continually ongoting,
ongoing God and his word, abiding living
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in us. We have overcome the
evil one. When you're a parent,
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sometimes you have to have difficult conversations
with your children, and I'm not talking
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just about those times where everyone's upset
and crying and angry. I'm talking about
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those difficult conversations where that go on
for maybe some time, that really touch
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the heart, both yours and theirs, conversations with tears, conversations that touch
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on things like fear, loneliness,
discouragement, death, abandonment. When you're
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a parents, sometimes you have to
have conversations with your children the require you
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to say hard things that make your
children come face to face with their sinful
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nature's and with our sin filled world. These are conversations that my parents had
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with me and I'm thankful for them. But I remember that as a child,
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there would be these moments in these
long, teary conversations where I would
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be reminded that everything was going to
be okay because of love. We're telling
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you these things, Sun because we
love you. We're telling you these things
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because God loves you. We're having
this conversation because things are wrong and there
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is a problem, yes, but
we're also having this conversation because there is
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something right, there is something firm, there is something truthful and solid that
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always allows us to have hope.
This is the kind of conversation that John
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is having with these Christians. It's
the kind of conversation that God is having
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with us. What does it mean
when people abandon the faith, when they
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say they love but do not,
who claim to be Christians but lie and
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hurt and abandon the good news that
they have heard and seemingly once believed?
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These are the kinds of questions he's
dressing, addressing as an elder apostle to
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these younger Christians in and around Ephesus, whom he knows, whom he loves.
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And now the kinds of things that
he'll continue to address as he goes
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on in the letter, as he
gives more explicit and direct instructions about various
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things. But for the moment he
takes his little children upon his knee and
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speaks to them about who they are. He reminds them he's not saying these
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things as tests because they aren't Christians, but because they are Christians. This
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portion of God's word this morning is
about assurance, reassurance. It reinforces in
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our minds and in our hearts the
most basic truths about what it means to
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be a Christian, about what it
means that you or a Christian. Are
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you a Christian. If so,
then hear these words. And if you
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are in a place this morning where
you feel you've been having some difficult conversations
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with your heavenly father lately, that
there are things that are going on in
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your life right now that are not
good, things that are difficult to bear,
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maybe even things that you know,
with your father in heaven is not
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pleased with in your life, then
let him speak to you this morning and
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remind you of his love. Quiet
yourself and allow God to press pause so
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that he can remind you who you
are, you who have trusted in Jesus
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for your salvation, that he can
remind you that the whatever difficult things he's
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doing in your life right now,
whatever ways he's challenging you, teaching you,
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trying you, that they are not
happening so that he can so that
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he can see if you're worthy,
but because you've already been made worthy on
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the Cross of Christ. Beloved.
Hold onto these truths, know your father,
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who has given you this love through
his son, and have hope,
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because you have overcome the evil one, you will overcome the evil one.
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Let us pray
