Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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HMM. If you're able to remain
standing, please do and turn your attention
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again to first John, this time
chapter two, versus seven through eleven.
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I have seven through eight printed in
the bulletin, but I'm going to go
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a little further. Seven through eleven. First John Two, verse seven.
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This is God's holy word. Give
your attention to it, beloved. I'm
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writing to you no new commandment,
but an old commandment that you had from
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the beginning. The old commandment is
the word that you have heard. At
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the same time, it is a
new commandment that I am writing to you,
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which is true in him and in
you, because the darkness is passing
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away and the true light is already
shining. Whoever says he is in the
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light and hates his brother is still
in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides
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in the light and in him there
is no cause for stumbling, but whoever
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hates his brother is in the darkness
and walks in the darkness does not know
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where he is going because the darkness
has blinded his eyes. May God bless
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his word to us may be seated. The Apostle John is facing a situation
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that is similar to one that we
face today. And it's a very simple
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thing. It's just that there are
false teachers, there are people that pretend
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to know and love the Lord,
people that know and tell us to follow
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after them, but people which we
ought not to follow. And he's helping
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the Christians then, even as he
helps us now, to understand how it
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is we might know who to follow, that not everyone who says I follow
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Jesus is actually following Jesus. He's
helping us to understand that we might be
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wary, that we might be careful. But of course, in doing so
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he also gives us a test,
not just for those people out there who
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are saying they follow Christ, but
for the person right in here, for
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us, for us who say we
follow Christ. He's helping us to understand
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what it means to know him,
what it means to follow him, who
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he is and who we are in
him. In the previous verses, he
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helped us to see that true Christians
demonstrate the genuineness of their faith through true
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obedience. An apples tree demonstrates that
it's an apple tree because of the apples
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that it produces. Christians Demonstrate The
righteousness of God that has been given to
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them by producing the righteousness of God. And so John says, for example
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in chapter two, verse three,
and by this we know that we have
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come to know him if we keep
his commandments. Whoever says I know him
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but does not keep as commandments is
a liar and the truth is not in
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him. Christians demonstrate the genuineness of
their faith through acts of true obedience,
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and that summed up particularly in love, as he says here. Whoever loves
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his brother, he says in verse
ten, abides in the light. The
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opposite of Salso true. Whoever hates
his brother does not abide in the light,
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but walks in the darkness. If
we abide in Jesus, then we
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walk in the way in which he
walked. Is What John is saying.
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Maybe you were remember the experience of
dancing on your father or your mother's shoes.
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You stand up on their feet and
then as they move, you move.
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You are in a way abiding with
them or in them, your dancing
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in their steps. Well, it's
like that. If we are abiding in
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Jesus, then we dance his dance
or, as John puts it, we
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walk his walk. Verse Six of
Chapter Two. Whoever says he abides in
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him ought to walk in the same
way in which he walked. If we
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are not walking or if we are
not abiding in the Lord, then we
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will not walk in the Lord.
We will be out of step with the
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spirit, out of step with the
things of God. Now, out of
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that same spirit of love that he
has called us to in the previous verses
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and the same spirit of love that
he calls us to her then the commands
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to love in these verses, John
is now giving a more of his apologetic
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you might say, his defense of
what he's saying. He's saying that love,
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this love that flows from abiding in
Christ, is an important one,
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one you must pay attention to,
and he clears away in the passage today,
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seven through eleven, certain objections.
Want you to think about these,
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not just so that we might analyze
John's argument and have fun being rhetoricians for
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the morning, but so that we
might apply his own arguments to our hearts.
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Are we impressed by the things he
is in pressing on us? Are
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we falling in love with the things
that he is calling us to love?
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Consider that as you hear these reasons
that John is giving. First, the
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first thing John tells us is that
that theme is that the command to love
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is not new, and by this
he means it's nothing novel. This is
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shouldn't be a surprise to you.
Now. In our day and age,
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we love the new. Usually the
new is used as an argument for the
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good of something. Hey, I've
got something for you and guess what,
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it's new, and immediately we go
oh, really, before I've even told
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you what it is. The very
fact that it's new sounds appealing. But
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maybe there are still vestiges of the
ancient world among us and there's a sense
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in which new things sometimes have the
sense of untested. Right we still talked
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about Beta users, for example,
or initial trials, experimental tests. It's
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new, but who knows? It's
that kind of sense that John here is
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saying. This is not new,
this is something that's established, something that's
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trustworthy, something God has been saying
all along. The command to love is
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not some strange thing John Dug up
somewhere. John Saying Christians, you ought
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to love one another and not hate
one another is not new. The command
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to love is not some hairbrained idea
John figured out in his garage one day
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while working on another project, and
comes over to tell you, I got
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this idea. What do you think
now? The command to love is solid
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established and certainly not from him.
It's from God himself, who is the
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author of love, the one who
brings love into the world, who births
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love, we might even say,
into the world. The command to love
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is an old commandment, an old, ancient, reliable, foundational commandment.
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You remember, as we read back
in Matthew, Chapter Twenty two, this
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lawyer comes to Jesus and he says, I know how to trick this guy.
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What's the greatest commandment? Prioritize the
law for me. You. Let's
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see how you do. And what
does Jesus say? No problem. Love.
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Love the Lord, your God,
with all your might, with all
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your strength, love your neighbor as
yourself. On these two commandments depend all
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the law and the prophets, everything
that God ever commanded, and all the
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prophets who came prosecuting that law,
saying fail, fail, fail, Fail,
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all of that judgment at all's all
about love. Not that judgmentals them
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is a loving thing, but what
they were prosecuting was the lack of love.
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You've not loved the widow, you've
not taken care of the orphan,
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you've loved your own ways, you've
gone after false idels. Over and over
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again. The prophets had in their
minds the breaking of the commandment of love,
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and when you understand this this way, you begin to see that love
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is not just a kind of gushy
feeling that so nice. Sometimes that might
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be part of it. Our feelings
are definitely engaged in love, but it's
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not just that. Love is not
just a feeling that sort of drifts in
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and drifts out like a breeze.
Love is a action that we take towards
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other people or other things or to
God himself. Paul reiterates this in Romans,
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chapter thirteen, verse eight. He
Says No, or sorry, Oh,
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oh, no, one anything except
to love each other, for the
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one who loves another has fulfilled the
law. Sometimes people will say, I
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don't like all these commandments, all
these things that God has told us to
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do, let's just focus on loving
people, as if you could separate those
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things right, as if there was
a way to love and not do the
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things that God has commanded. Paul
says that they go together when you love.
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If you love, then you fulfill
everything. In this one act you
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can meet every single commandment. There
is he in fact lists various commandments,
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particularly as we think about how we
love one another. Talks about stealing,
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talks about coveting, I believe,
adultery too. This is in Romans Thirteen,
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and he says any other commandment in
these included, are summed up in
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this world word. You shall love
your neighbor as yourself. Love does no
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wrong to a neighbor. Therefore,
love is the fulfilling of the law.
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If your neighbor steals from you,
is that just breaking some random commandment,
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or is that hatred? It's hatred, it's doing something harmful against you.
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It's not a loving thing to do. If someone lies, if someone steals,
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if someone takes your wife, these
things are not loving. But to
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love is to obey these things.
So now back to first John. So
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when John says that this is not
a new commandment, he's telling US listen,
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I'm not just some fly by my
teacher telling you to do something I've
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concocted up here. I'm telling you
to do the thing that we all know
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is essential to doing anything. When
John says this is not a new commandment,
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he's reminding of its importance, of
its permanence and its placement in the
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very will of God. Love is
not some passing fad, but the oldness
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of the command to love. Also
applies on another level. Our personal experience
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is Christians. While the law of
love has been proclaimed ever since God first
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expressed his will to man, there's
something that happens. There's something that happens
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when a person is reborn by the
spirit of God. Their relationship to the
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law, their relationship to love,
changes. Apart from Christ, the law
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is good, it's always good.
Look because love is good right, even
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apart from somebody believing and trusting in
Jesus, the law is perfect, the
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law is holy. The problem is
is that, apart from him, we
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are not lovely or holy or loving. And so when the law comes to
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US and says love, Love,
love, and we hate and steal and
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Covet and lust. This is why
Paul speaks about love bringing or love in
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a way, the law of love
bringing forth death in us, not because
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of any problem with love, but
because of how we react to that,
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how we respond to that in our
sinful nature, because the person before we
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are in Christ, the person who
it is in it is commanded, does
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not desire love, nor does it
love is there in a way, of
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course, but it's disordered, it's
focused on ourselves, it's sinful. Let
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me explain it this way. Imagine
I point to a husband and I say,
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look, that husband is loving that
woman. He just gave her flowers,
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he just gave her chocolate, they
just went on a date for four
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hours at the most romantic restaurant in
town. Isn't that loving? And then,
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I tell you, but it's not
his wife. Right. So it's
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love, I suppose, but it's
all the wrong kind. It's a terrible
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kind of love. It's a disordered
love of it's a it's a hatred against
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not only this person with hitch,
with which or with whom he's committing adultery,
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but it's a hateful act towards his
wife, towards his community, towards
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his family and towards God, who
created the very institution of marriage, that
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this bond which is supposed to bind
people together and love. There are many
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people walking around today who say I'm
loving, I do loving things. Well,
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that may be true, but love
is not abstract from whom God is
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and the things he has told us
to do. The only kind of love
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that matters is love that's directed towards
its proper end. We give no credit
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to the man that's committing adultery with
this woman. We don't say, well,
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at least you really were dazzling and
charming. There's no no benefit or
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in from that, no credit that's
given, no way in which we say,
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well, at least there was some
love there. No love must be
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directed towards the right place, in
the right person. And that's why,
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when God says that we are to
love him with all of our heart and
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all of our soul and all of
our mind and all of our strength,
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and then we go and love other
people, other things. We Love Mu
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any, we love power, we
love ourselves. That's not love. It's
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not it's misdirected, its selfish,
it's adulterous, it's idolatrous, it's everything
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that the Bible condemns, it's hateful
and it ought not to mark a Christian.
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John says, whoever loves his brother
abides in the light and him there
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is no cause for stumbling, but
whoever hates his brother is in the darkness
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and walks in the darkness and does
not know where he is going because the
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darkness has blinded his eyes. But
when we become Christians, the light of
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God comes into our souls and begins
to change us from these perverted, twisted,
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self interested, hateful people into people
that begin to see for the first
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time, the begin to love even
as God has loved us. The impulses
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to idolatry, the impulses to self
love, these things begin to change.
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I heard Michael Horton say this week
we're not brains on a stick. It's
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a good phrase. John is not
telling us these things, saying you ought
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to know Jesus so that you can
be this brain on a stick and walk
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around with your head full of doctrine
love. When we know Jesus is produced
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in our lives, in our bodies, in all of ourselves, we begin
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to give God our love, our
souls, our strength. If you want
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to understand what a true Christian teacher
is, or what a true Christian person
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is, you have to understand it's
more than just figuring out a list of
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doctrines. It's more than figuring out
just an intellectual puzzle. Knowing Jesus is
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not, as you've heard me say
many times, I'm never going to stop
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saying it, but it's more than
just checking the bunch of boxes and saying,
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look at these questions I memorize,
look at these things that I've marked
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off, the books I've read,
the people I know, and on and
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on and on. Listen to what
John says, listen to what the word
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of God says, and John Three, twenty three free, and this is
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his commandment, that we believe in
the name of his son, Jesus Christ,
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and love one another, just as
he commanded us. Whoever keeps his
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commandment abides in God and God in
Him. John Speaks to them with this
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in mind when he gives us this
verse. In verse seven, I'm writing
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to you no new commandment, but
an old commandment that you had from the
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beginning. The old commandment is the
word that you have heard. The old
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commandment is to love, and that's
the very thing that we have been receiving
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into our hearts ever since the spirit
of God first spoke to us. Before
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Christ, we hear the command to
love and we hate it, we turn
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from it, we move towards the
things that we want. But in Christ
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we hear the command to love and
we love it. Think about the way
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David talks in the psalms. Your
Law to me laws love. Your law,
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to me is as sweet as the
drippings of the honeycomb. MMM Right.
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If you don't love the law like
that, if you don't love love
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like that, if there's not something
that's sweet to you about obedience, lovely,
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about love, and something's wrong.
These are the test that John is
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applying to our hearts, that is
impressing on our hearts even today. If
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we do not love love, if
we do not love the commands of God,
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if we do not love God,
who is love and commands these things,
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something is wrong. When we become
Christians, though, he says,
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this old commandment is the word you
have heard, and there's something John says.
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Paradoxically, it's also new. Well, so in Verse Eight. At
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the same time it's a new commandment
that I am writing to you. It's
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old and that it's always been there, it's old and that it's always been
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established and always been the right thing
to do, but it's new in the
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way that we relate to it.
This is another way John is appealing to
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us and teaching us what it means
to abide in Christ. He says it's
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a new commandment that I'm writing to
which is true in him and in you.
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True here in the sense of genuineness. The command is not novel,
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but it does take on a new
US, in us as we are in
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Christ and John says this in a
way that the new testament says it in
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a lot of places. Let me
read it to you again so that you
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hear it. Has To do with
light and darkness, he says. Here's
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the reason for this, here's why
it's new for you as a Christian,
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he says, because the darkness is
passing away and the true light is already
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shining. The darkness is passing away
and the true light is already shining.
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The New Testament emphasizes this over and
over and over and over. There are
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two ages, two ages an age
of darkness and sin and an Age of
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light and righteousness. But these ages, the Bible teaches to teaches us,
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overlap. The age of darkness does
not pass away completely before the age of
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light begins to advance its way into
that realm into that age. Like the
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sunrise this morning, the light of
God and the revelation of the sun causes
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the darkness to pass away by its
very existence. What does it take for
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the darkness to pass away, for
the sun to rise. As simple as
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that. But what John says here's
that the true light is all ready shining.
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Are you waiting for something else to
happen before you put your faith in
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God? Are you waiting for some
experience, some special signs, some further
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knowledge or evidence, before you trust
in the light that is come, the
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light that is changing our hearts,
the light that is changing the world?
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Let me ask you another question.
When the sun rises, it's in the
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rises in the morning and it's first
rays of light come in through your window
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and hit your closed eyes. Do
you ever ask yourself, I think I'll
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wait a little while and see if
it's really a new day. Of course
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not. I think I'll wait until
the fullness of the sun is at noon
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before I really believe that light has
come into the world. I'm going to
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just sit here in bed and see
what happens. Of course not, because
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we all know what the light is, we all know what it's doing,
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and the fact that it's up means
that it's up, means that the darkness
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for the darkness game over. Your
time is over, you're done and the
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sun rises. We react accordingly.
You Wake Up, you move, you
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rise, you you wake up because
it's daytime. The Bible teaches this.
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In Jesus, this parallel that I've
just described between one day in the next
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applies in this big, epocal sense. EPIC is the word I'm trying to
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use. Their Eras Ages, the
Day of light and age of light is
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beaming its way into our world and
you couldn't mistake it, because when Jesus
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was born there were angels in the
sky and miracles happening, and when he's
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doing his work in the world,
people are being saved, rescued, changed
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from sinful tax collectors and prostitutes and
all kinds of terrible people into children and
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followers of God, people that,
in their physical ailments, are broken and
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weak and blind, are standing up
and opening their eyes and becoming whole.
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In Jesus, the new day has
dawned. The Day of light and age
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of light is beaming its way into
our world and it shows itself in our
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lives. Praise God for that,
the lives of changed people, people who
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no longer hate God and follow their
own paths, but devote their lives to
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him. And when they stray and
when they fall apart and when they they
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hate, they returned to him and
they love him because the love of the
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love that he has shown us.
These people, John Explains To us,
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do not stumble or cause other people
to stumble. Why? Because their eyes
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are open, they walk in the
daytime. which will you be? which
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ought you to be? Who Do
you want to be? Love is not
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optional for any of us. Love
is be. Love is the most basic
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requirement of all that is good.
It's essential to every living person, every
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true person, to do and live
as they were designed. Love, in
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our humanity is no more optional than
breathing or sleeping or eating. But when
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we do not love as we ought, when we neglect it, the same
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thing happens to those that don't breathe, that don't sleep, that don't eat,
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they die. Those that do not
love die. They die inwardly and
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for their sins, they will die
externally as well, in our bodies.
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This is true. It is sad
and it's frustrating sometimes, this world that
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we live in and these bodies that
we have and the sinful flesh that's still
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in us. It's very easy to
be saddened when we look around at our
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lives or look around at the news
or anywhere, and what do we see?
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People Abusing Love, hating love,
hating each other and hating God.
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Again and again and again. It's
unlovely, that's terrible. But John Comes
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to tell us not only this command
and not only that this was what we
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were made for, but that the
New Light has dawned. Beloved, as
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John Calls You, as God calls
you, as I call you, there
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is hope in all the darkness and
all the hatred and all the evil that
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we are surrounded by. Again and
again and again, John is proming,
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so promising to us that we don't
have to wait until the end for love
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to reign supreme, because Jesus has
already come, the darkness is passing away,
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the true light is already shining.
So wake up, enjoy the new
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day, get out of your beds, stand in the sunlight, know that
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the sun of Righteousness has been revealed
to us and that when we trust in
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him, things begin to change in
our hearts, we produce these things in
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us, and that one day,
when the age comes in its culmination,
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the things that we fear, the
darkness that still exists, the flesh that
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still fights, will be gone and
we will be at peace and at rest
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forever, living by the light of
Jesus, forever, in the noon of
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his righteousness. Beloved, you are
beloved. Put your hope in the God
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who has loved you. Give yourself
over to him, wake up and walk.
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It's a new day. Let's pray.
