Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Let's turn to second John. Now, second John, I'm preaching particularly on
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verses four through six, but since
it's a short letter, I'll read.
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I'll read a little more than that. I'll read the whole letter. And
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so short it's easy to pass by
it, especially if you have one of
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those bibles with Itty bitty print.
It's right before revelation, the last book
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of the Bible. Second John.
All right, let's hear God's word this
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morning, the elder to the elect
lady and her children, whom I love
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in truth, not only I,
but also all who know the truth,
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because of the truth that abides in
us and will be with us forever,
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grace, mercy and peace will be
with us from God, the Father,
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and from Jesus Christ, the Father's
son, in truth and love. I
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rejoiced greatly to find some of your
children walking in the truth, just as
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we were commanded by the father.
And now I ask you, Dear Lady,
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not as though I were writing you
a new commandment, but the one
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we have had from the beginning,
that we love one another, and this
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is love, that we walk according
to his commandments. This is the commandment,
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just as you have heard from the
beginning. So that you should walk
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in it, for many deceivers have
gone out into the world, those who
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do not confess the coming of Jesus
Christ in the flesh. Such a one
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is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Watch yourself so that you may not lose
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what we have worked for, but
may win a full reward. Everyone who
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goes on ahead and does not abide
in the teaching of Christ does not have
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God. Whoever abides in his teaching
or in the teaching, has both the
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father and the son. If anyone
comes to you and does not bring this
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teaching, do not receive him into
your house or give him any greeting,
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for whoever greets him takes part in
his wicked works. Though I have much
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to write to you, I would
rather not use paper and ink. Instead,
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I hope to come to you and
talk face to face, so that
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our joy may be complete. The
children of your elect sister greet you.
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Amen. Well, through his Apostle, the apostle, Apostle John and Jesus
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is calling us to a certain kind
of life, to live in a certain
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way. He calls us to live
a life of truth and of love.
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He first introduces John, first introduces
these themes of truth and love and the
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first three verses, which we looked
at last time, and now he calls
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us to walk in them. And
I want to look at these three verses,
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versus four, five and six,
in turn and consider with you what
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it is Jesus is saying to us
today, what it is that he wants
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us to walk in and why,
that we might follow him and that we
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might trust him in these ways.
So let's consider them first first. For
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here, in first four, John
Calls us to walk in the truth,
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and he does so by way of
a praise and encouragement. He says to
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the church, I rejoiced greatly to
find some of your children walking in the
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truth. The PAT the passage starts
with a Happy Apostle. The Apostle is
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rejoicing, even rejoicing greatly, because
of what he has found in these Christian
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churches. He has found them walking
in the truth. And you know what
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it means to walk in the truth
in a general sense, right? It
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means to walk in reality. If
we walk in the truth, it means
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that we walk according to the way
things truly are. We make choices,
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decisions based on what is really true
about our situation. About our world.
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Take a just imagine a an example. Imagine you go to a an estate
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sale. You see it in the
newspaper or something like that, and you
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go there and the person is agreed
to sell everything for Tenzeros. Right,
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you have to buy it all or
or buy nothing, but that's the price.
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And you get there and it's all
junk, right, papers everywhere,
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piles of garbage, clothes that are
worn out and dirty, nothing really worth
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worth paying tenzero for it. But
then you see in the corner the scroll
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of a violin. You pull out
the violin, you look inside and it
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says Strativarius and you think to yourself, is it truly a Strad right?
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Is it truly? Is it?
Because if it is, by the whole
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lot, you'll you'll gain a hundred
times what you paid. But if it's
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not true, then you just bought
a big headache for the next few months
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for Tenzeros. Right it. What
do you do? Right, it's a
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choice that you make and you want
to know what's true about this instrument.
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It's like that in every area of
our life. We a lot of times
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we don't think about it. This
is just how we live. We live,
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we walk, and we walk in
the truth. We walk in the
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truth that it's typically colder in the
winter than it is in the summer,
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of it the sun rises in the
east, that this key opens this door
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and that key opens that door,
and these are things that we don't even
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think about. We Act constantly,
act, act, act, act,
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act, believe, Leiave, do
and relate and all kinds of things based
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on things that we know are true, things that we intuitively even know are
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true, and we just go,
we just walk, and those who do
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so often find a lot of success. They are walking with the grain of
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reality, and those that don't often
find constant frustration. And we've all been
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there. We've all thought something was
a good deal that turned out not to
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be a good deal, thought someone
was a good friend that turned out not
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to be a good friend. Thought
one job or one situation and on and
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on and on. Was One thing
and it turns out to be another.
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And that typically doesn't sometimes there are
nice surprises, right, it can work
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in a positive way. We can
find out that, well, I had
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no idea this was so good,
but still there's a sense of why didn't
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I know this before? It to
walk in the truth is good, but
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we'd be be patting ourselves on the
back a little too much if we only
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regretted our accidental mistakes of not knowing, of not walking in the truth,
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because there's plenty of ways that we
don't walk in the truth that are just
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totally on purpose. Now you might
say that's crazy and I would say you're
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right, but that's what we do, isn't it? You remember how this
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all began? The classic example,
the beginning of all this is in the
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garden of Eden and Satan tempted US
and he says to Eve, did God
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really say? Right, he was
encouraging her to act based on a questioning
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of the truth. What is really
true? It's a core question, of
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fundamental question, and to people who
are interested in staying away from God,
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walking in the truth becomes pretty elusive, difficult, because God isn't a distortion
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and trickery. God is truth himself. And when we walk away from the
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truth of God, when we walk
away from the truth of his word,
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and we do this for all kinds
of reasons, some of which we confessed
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this morning in our praying, when
we walk away from God and his truth,
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things get kind of crazy, and
that includes both parts of God's revelation.
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I should mention his law and his
Gospel. When it comes to God's
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law, when we walk away from
God and his truth and we think,
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well, I don't need to obey
it, it's not really that important,
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or we think I can't obey it, I'm perfectly capable. In either of
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these ways, we end up fooling
ourselves. We tend to ignore it,
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the law, that is, we
tend to downplay at God says this and
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this and this is true, and
we say well, maybe mostly I'm going
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to do this thing or not at
all. Or we make it easier.
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We God's law has standard is way
up here and we say that's too hard,
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so I'm going to bring it down
here so that I can do it.
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These are ways in which we distort
the truth of God's law and which
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we distort our sense and our ability
to keep that and the same is true
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when it comes to the Gospel,
when it comes to the truth of God's
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News, the good news of God's
revelation in Christ, that Jesus has come
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into the world to save sinners,
we say yes, for them, for
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the people that need it, of
course, not for me, or we
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say he's done that and I'll take
it when it's time or when it's ready
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or when I'm ready, or it's
a good salvation but not a great salvation,
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or all kinds of things that we
do. We take the Gospel and
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we ignore it, we don't believe
it, we think we can find our
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own paths and our own ways.
We say that's not really as believable as
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I want it to be. Jesus
might be fine for someone else, but
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not is necessary for me. He's
not necessary for me. My sins aren't
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that great. I'm not having that
heart of a time. Well, to
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do to think things like that about
the Gospel, about the promises of God,
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is to not walk in the truth. To reject Jesus as the incarnate
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summon of God who came in the
flesh to atone for our sins, is
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to not walk in the truth.
So you can see, then, why
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John is so happy, why he's
rejoicing greatly. He's rejoicing greatly because here
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are people who did not walk in
the truth. They walked in a distorted,
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strange reality, but now they walk
in the truth. They walked according
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to God's mercy, they walked according
to His grace and his peace. They
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had come to know the truth,
both in God's Law and his Gospel,
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and they lived in light of it. They'd come to walk in it.
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This is certainly worth cause for rejoicing. Imagine you had a friend, for
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example, who had lost his or
her mind, a sad situation where they
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did not live in light of of
how things really are. It's a difficult
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situation, it's a frustrating situation.
You heard for them, perhaps you yourself
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of experienced moments like that where you
knew you were not thinking rightly about your
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world and just even the most basic
sense, to be freed from that,
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to come out of that, to
know things as they really are, it's
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worth it's worth a lot of rejoicing, isn't it? It's worth a lot
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of praise, and that's what John
has experienced and seen in these people.
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They are now walking in the truth, having seen that, now we come
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to verse five. He talks to
them and he asks, and he makes
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this request, we might say,
to also walk in love. Having seen
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them walking the truth, he now
also calls them to walk in love.
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Now this request doesn't mean that this
is optional. I should say that John
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Asks, I ask you, Dear
Lady, not as though I were writing
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a new commandment, but the one
that we had from the beginning, that
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we will love one another. And
when he asks her in this way,
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this ask is is an expression of
his gentleness, it's an expression of his
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respect. It's not, it were
not to read this, in other words,
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as though this were or oh,
he's just asking so I don't have
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to do this. Kids, you
know about this, right when when your
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parents say, you know, sweetheart, I'd like to ask you to unload
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the Dishwasher, the proper response is
not no, thank you. Right.
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The proper responses yes, of course, right, the the it is asked
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as a request in gentleness, not
as a request in options, and that's
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the spirit in which John Means it
here. And we know that because the
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command to love is all over the
scriptures. It is, of course,
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called a command and he says as
much here in verse six. This is
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love that we walk according to his
commandments. And so love is not an
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optional thing. And who wants it
to be an optional thing? Really?
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Who of this here wants to raise
our hand and say I'd like love to
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be optional in my life? Right? No, love is what we all
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want. Love is what we strive
for. Love is what we want in
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our lives and our families and our
communities. It's the disruption of that love
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that hurts so bad. And so
John Calls them to love one another and
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he says it's an old command,
it's one from the beginning. Might say
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that John is giving that getting them
back to basics, back to essentials,
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and by God's grace, the spirit
will do that for you today as well.
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It's easy to get off course.
It's really easy to get off course.
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If you start, if I turn
just one small degree this way,
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it won't look like I'm walking in
that different of a direction for about one
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step, but then the second step, the third step in pretty soon I'm
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way far away from where I started. It's easy to get off course,
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it's easy to lose our way,
and that's why it's so important to always
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be returning back to the essentials,
to hear a command like love one another
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and not go, Oh, yeah, I don't need to hear that,
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but love one another go I probably
need to hear that. That sounds like
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one of those basic things that I
need to be reminded of again. This
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is why we always return to God's
word over and over and over again.
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We need that correction. This is
what of the truths that he gives to
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us. I once found myself lost
somewhere on camel back mountain up in Phoenix,
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and for those of you who know, this is a little ridiculous sounding
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because camelback mountain is right in the
center of Phoenix, right, so it's
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it felt embarrassing to be lost there. I was heading down a path until,
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of course I wasn't heading down a
path and I couldn't find my way
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back, as I kept trying in
different ways and I found my stuff self
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stuck on these boulders and the only
way I was able to get out of
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that mess was eventually, eventually,
getting back to basics. I was like,
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okay, I know that and I
know that and I'll head those directions,
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and then, slowly and surely,
the Lord led me back to where
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I had come from. God's word
does this for us. He calls us
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back by showing us the essentials.
He gets us back by calling US here
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to love. It seems so simple, right. It's three words. Love
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one another. All right, we're
done, go home. Right, very
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simple, but of course we need
reminders, because there's lots of things that
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often keep us from loving other people, even silly things like the way they
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look not going to love, or
harder things like the way they treated us
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one time, or higher loves that
we have, like love for comfort or
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love for ease, or our fear
for what people will think if we love
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them. The list is sad and
it goes on and on. But love
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is what we are called to do
and, as John says in verse six,
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this love, this is love that
we walk according to the command endments.
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Jesus says in Matthew Twenty two.
You shall love the Lord, your
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God with all your heart, with
all your soul and with all your mind.
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This is the great and first commandment, and the second is like it.
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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments, Love
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God, love your neighbor depend all
the law and the prophets, or consider
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Paul Romans. Thus three hundred and
ten. Love does no wrong to a
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neighbor. Therefore, love is the
fulfilling of the law. Or again in
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First Corinthians thirteen versus four through eight. Love is patient and kind. Love
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does not envy or boast, it
is not arrogant or rude. It does
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not insist on its own way.
It is not irritable or resentful. It
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does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but
rejoices with the truth. Love bears all
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things, believes all things, hopes
all things and doures all things. Love
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never ends. As for prophecies,
they will pass away, as four tongues,
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they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away, but
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not love. Love never ends,
he says. Why does John Want them
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to walk in love? Why does
John want it to permeate every action,
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every look, every word? Because
that's God's command, that's his loving command,
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and it's the kind of life that
he has brought us into through Christ,
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who, after all, first loved
US, through Christ who fulfilled his
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father's will, who obeyed the command
of love so that we might be justified
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for all time, even though we
didn't love as we ought. Brothers and
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sisters, we have been saved by
love in order to love. This is
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why, when we abide in God, John says, and first John,
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we become those who love one another. When we abide in God, through
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the grace that comes to us,
the loving grace that comes to us in
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Jesus Christ, we become different kinds
of people. We walk in a new
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way, we walk as those who
love one another. In other words,
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if you are really abiding in the
truth of Jesus Christ, then you will
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also abide in the love of Jesus
Christ. This is God's grace, the
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complete package. He doesn't doll out
little bits and parts. He when he
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saves us, he saves US completely
in our hearts and our minds. If
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we are really abiding in the truth, than we will also abide in love.
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And if you are really walking in
the truth, you will also walk
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in love, because where one is, the other is always there, as
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it is in God himself. God, as all truth, is not,
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you know, a giant brain or
something like that. No, God is
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all truth. He he knows all
things, he speaks truly all things,
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he is the source of all things
and he is also love. These things
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are not sort of two separate things. Within God he is fully both of
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these things, perfectly held in harmony
together. And so when we are brought
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into a life in him, we
get the whole package. We get all
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truth, we get all love.
We walk in that, we make our
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decisions, all the things that we
do in this way. If you know
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the truth, then but you don't
have love. Well, maybe then you
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don't know the truth, maybe you
know it, but you don't walk in
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it, abide in it, because
is what he's saying here is those who
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walk in the truth also walk in
love, as he goes on in verse
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six, and now we're fully here. In verse six, he says in
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this is love, that we walk
according to his commandments. We walk according
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to His Commandments. So what we
find when we come to verse six is
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that the reverse of what I just
said is also true. So if we
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know the truth, then we also
walk in love. Well then, if
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we walk in love, then we
are also those who walk in truth.
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He says this is the command just
as you heard from the beginning, that
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you walk in it. So the
question is, what is it? What
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is the thing that we are to
walk in? And he's just mentioned several
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things. It's a it's a little
bit ambiguous and commentators disagree. There's three
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options. We can walk in love, the command or the truth. You
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really can't go wrong with any of
those in terms of living your life,
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and they're also interrelated. But I
do think that that that John Means the
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truth when he says walk in the
truth. So the verse would read like
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this, and this is love,
that we walk according to Commandments. This
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is the commandment, just as you
have heard from the beginning, so that
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you should walk in the truth.
I think there's a couple reasons for saying
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that he means the truth. One
is that to say to walk in love
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or walk in the command would be
to repeat exactly what he's just said,
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when it seems like John is emphasize
or a developing his points more than emphasizing
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here. So it would seem to
be a little redundant to say that.
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The second reason that is convincing to
me is that verse seven, the next
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verse, transitions and talks about a
deceivers who have gone out into the world.
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And so if he is referencing truth
at the end of verse six,
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then it would it would create a
tight connection with the next verse and in
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Verse Seven. I find that a
convincing and it pulls all of this passage
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together so that he's essentially saying love
is walking according to the commands, and
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the command is that you walk in
the truth. In other words, in
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this passage, Jesus is telling us
that we must walk in truth. And
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in love, and that to walk
in love is to walk in the truth
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and that to walk in the truth
is to walk in love. So he's
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giving us these both these actions to
do any showing us that to do bull
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or to do either truly is to
do the other. He's showing their relatedness
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to us, that we might not
go astray, that we might not try
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and, let's say, get all
of our theology right but then not care
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for orphans and widows, or that
we might be a active in service and
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busy all the time, but have
it totally disconnected from the Gospel, totally
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disconnected from the truth of Jesus Christ
and his revelation, because many deceivers have
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gone out into the world, he
says, those who do not confess the
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coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. We are to avoid this error and
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we are certainly not to hold it
ourselves. And so, as we see
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all of these things, as we
hear this command, I want you to
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hear it as God commands it.
I want you to see its beauty and
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it's splendor and, most importantly,
I want you to see it grounded in
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the Lord Jesus Christ, in his
person and in his work. As I've
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said, Jesus is the one who
reveals the truth and love to God in
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the world. He is the one
who reveals the truth and love of God
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from Heaven, his law, of
course, and his salvation. And when
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Jesus does that, that, when
he reveals that truth, he does so
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imperfect love, love for his father
and love for us, even though we
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were unlovable, beloved Jesus is.
Truth is brighter and his love is warmer
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than anything the world is ever felt
or known. Nothing comes more than this.
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And when we go astray and either
of these two ways, it's always
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because we disconnect them from Christ.
It's always because we think that somehow,
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either in us or something around us, we can find truth or love on
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our own, in our own way. And when we do that we elevate
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above the Lord and things of course
fall apart, because that's not according to
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reality, it's not according to the
way things are. So the good news
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for us is that God has revealed
himself to us in this way, even
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through his death on the cross.
God has spoken in the Cross of Jesus
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Christ so clearly of his love,
of his desire and his purpose and his
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plan and his accomplishment to save sinners
from their sins, we must believe him,
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that we must trust him, that
we must walk in him. All
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real love, all real truth,
starts in him. He's the one who
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turns us away from our selfishness.
He's the one that turns us away from
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our distortions and reality. He's the
one that turns us towards himself. I'll
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praise and glory and honor be to
the true and loving God. Amen.
