But through God's providence and this new equipment, I've managed to erase the recording two out of three weeks. I'll do better today, maybe. 1st John. John writes in extremes. He's talked about light and dark. He's talked about truth and lies. Today he's going to talk about love and hate. So that's what we'll be focusing on. And in this section he deals with four lies. How many lies does he deal with? Four lies. Now the first lie that he exposes is chapter 1 verse 6 where he says, If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. And we've already talked about that. Notice, what do you do with truth? You practice it. It's not enough to say you believe it. You have to practice it. And so that's the problem with what could be called dead orthodoxy. You can be just as straight as a gun barrel theologically and just as empty. And so John says, no, no matter what you say, if you don't live that out, you're lying. And maybe you're deceiving yourself, but you're lying. The second lie is in verse eight. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So the second lie is people who say they have no sin. Have you ever been to a sawmill? They can take an old crooked log And they can saw off one slab on one side and turn it over and do the other side and turn it over. And they can keep turning that thing until when they're done, you've got a perfectly straight beam out of a crooked tree. But if you go around to the end of it and look at the grain on the end, you'll see it's just crooked all up inside of there. And that's the way a lot of people are. On the outside, they look pretty good. But on the inside, Jesus said, they're full of rottenness and dead men's bones like a whitewashed sepulcher. And so you will meet people who say they have no sin. John says they're lying. And so those kind of folks have a do-it-yourself salvation. They think they're too good to need to be saved. So John attacks that lie right here. Remember that old poem, What a Good Boy Am I? That's what they think about themselves, these people. Now the next lie, the third false profession, is chapter 2, verse 4, which we talked a little bit about last week. Whoever says, I know him, But does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. So there's the third false profession that he deals with. And that is what I would call the heresy of easy-believerism. And among Southern Baptists, that would be probably the greatest of these heresies that are here. The Bible does teach once you're saved, you don't lose that. Eternal life is eternal. If you've got eternal life ten years and then you lose it, it wasn't eternal. You had ten year life, but you didn't have eternal life, right? And so, God does that work, you don't lose it, I think. But, people have truncated that into the false doctrine of easy believism, or they've messed with it. Instead of the perseverance of the saints, saying that you'll persevere in holiness, they've made it down to once saved, always saved. And the problem with once saved always saved, it makes it sound like you can just get your fire insurance salvation and then live like the devil the rest of your life and still go to heaven. Ain't gonna happen. And it's not that your good works save you. You're only saved by grace. But if you are saved by grace, your life's gonna show it. You're gonna have good works. So that's the balance. And so that's what John is dealing with there in that third false profession. Now today, we're gonna look at a fourth false profession. And that is in the new paragraph for us, which is 7 through 11. And so, as is his custom, since he's close and up front, I'm going to get Nathan to read it, and y'all see if you can zing into the fourth false profession. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. So which verse has the lie in it? verse 9, which says, whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in the darkness. So there it is. You don't want to be a NATO Christian. A NATO Christian. NATO is no action talk only. So John starts off by saying he's got this old commandment. And he never explicitly states what that old commandment is. But he says, I'm writing to you an old commandment you've had from the beginning. And he never says what it is. But you can kind of figure it out. So based on the whole paragraph, what commandment is he talking about? What is that commandment? It's got something to do with love. That's right. And so now, he said, now you've had this commandment to love from the beginning. Well, from the beginning of what? Okay, well, now Al said one option is the beginning of the Bible, and that means God's relationship with the Jews. Now, if he's writing mostly to Jewish Christians, where way back in Judaism does it talk about, this is Big Love Command, where would that be? It's not Genesis 1, but it is back there somewhere. Where is it? Yes, it's in the Law of Moses. In Leviticus, it says, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So, if he's talking to Jewish Christians, he says, man, this goes back to the beginning of Judaism. What if he's not talking to Jewish Christians? What's your other option? Well, if you're not a Jewish Christian, what are you? You're a Gentile Christian, so it would be the beginning of what for them? Well, yeah, the beginning of your Christian experience, which, let's take that back to Jesus, and He said, "...a new commandment I give you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." So, one of those two, but it's got something to do with love. Now, have you noticed He says, "...I am writing to you no new commandment." Singular. Before, in this book, when he talked about commandments, it's been plural. For example, if you look at chapter 2, verse 3, By this we know we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments, plural. Verse 4, whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments, plural, is a liar. Why do you think he has now shifted from plural to singular in verse 7? Okay for sure he is gonna zero in on that one commandment And I think there's one step beyond that could be taken Adam might have taken that step. What's that? Well, you had the old law, there was a whole bunch of various commands, but then Jesus says that they're basically all summed up in this one commandment. And so rather than saying it's not really new because it was the sum of all the others, and yet at the same time it is kind of new because rather than doing all the others, you just have this one in its place. Yeah, y'all hear what he's saying? So all the commandments, it says, are summed up in that one commandment to love. For example, Romans 13, the commandments, plural, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, or any other commandment are summed up in this word. Notice he calls it a word, as John does. You shall love your neighbor as yourself, quoting Leviticus. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. So that's good. It's interesting, John starts off by saying that this old commandment, he says it's not new, it's old in verse 7, and then in verse 8 he says this old commandment is really a new commandment. And so, it might be related to what Rusty just said, but in what sense is the old commandment really a new commandment, even though he just got through saying it wasn't new? How is it new? What's new about it? telling us how to love one another by using his own love for us as a model. Alright, we're supposed to love each other as Jesus loved us, right? And Jesus said it was a new command. Going back to that, a new command to give you that you love one another, here it comes, even as I have loved you that you love one another. So he repeats the law of love from Moses. Not only are we to love our neighbor, but now, wow, love each other like Jesus loved us. And last week I talked about that old song. I thought nobody seemed to know it, probably because I sang it so bad. So I went and I found it on YouTube. I walked today where Jesus walked. And the song is about this guy that goes to the Holy Land and he walks where Jesus walked in days of long ago. And he goes through this whole song and that bottom line is, and I felt his presence there. And I try to make the point that we're not told to walk where Jesus walked. We're told to walk as Jesus walked. And so Jesus said we're supposed to love each other as He loved us, right? So you don't need to go to the Holy Land to do that. A lot of us take turns having marital problems. And I like to teach through books of the Bible. And when you get right down to it, it don't say a whole lot about marital problems. I mean, we went all the way through Romans and didn't see a peep in there about marriage, did you? We went through Hebrews, nothing in there about marriage. We went through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, nothing in there about marriage. Now, we did hit a little bit in Ephesians, didn't we, right toward the end of it, but it didn't take long to get done with that. Why is that? They don't say much about why we're having all these marital problems and how to solve them. Well, it's because if we're walking with the Lord the way we're supposed to be walking with the Lord, you're not going to have marriage problems. Somebody's not walking with the Lord if you've got marriage problems. It's just that simple. I know it takes two to tango, but it only takes one to sink the ship. Jesus said, love your enemies. I was talking to this couple one time and she had problems. Not in our church. She prayed, Lord, help me not be an enemy to my husband. And I was thinking about that, and that's the way she acted sometimes. But Jesus said, how you treat your enemies, you love them. So even if you see your spouse as your enemy, what are you supposed to do to your enemies? Love your enemies. So I'm just saying, when we're living this out, this business of walking with the Lord, walking as Jesus walked, loving one another as Jesus loved us, would not apply to your spouse more than anybody? You know what I'm saying? So, if you're looking to your spouse for fulfillment, it ain't gonna happen. If you're not content in the Lord, you're never gonna be content. Now, I know God said it's not good for a man to be alone. That applies to women, too. So, yeah, I know. God meets our needs through other people sometimes. But still, you gotta find your primary fulfillment in the Lord. Not where you live, not where you work, not who you're married to, not how your kids are doing. It's got to be independent of that, which is kind of the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is based on happenstance. Joy is independent of that. So I'm just saying, I'm just thinking about this stuff. 1 John is as good a book on marriage counseling as anything, because we just don't do what it says. We just don't do it. That's a problem. John says if you don't do it enough, you're really probably not in the light. You're not in the truth. You don't belong to Jesus. So that's serious business. I don't find it near as difficult to love my brothers and my sisters in Christ, people who are close to me, people who I have grown up with. When Jesus says, love your enemies, I find that exceedingly difficult. Well, I guess some of that is God gives you the grace to do it when you need it. But my point in bringing that up was, even in the worst marriage scenario, where your mate is almost sometimes your enemy, so bad you're tempted just to get in the car and drive away, it's not worth it, that's the very time we're supposed to be loving our enemies, if it's that bad. So that's why I brought that out. How bad can it be? You're still supposed to love your enemy spouse, as God does. That's what I'm getting at. Let's see, Rusty. But to what? To bless them. You mean bless them out? No, to bless them. Oh, to bless them. Uh-huh. Yeah. Not only to love them, but to bless them. And that is a hard thing to do, because the way we feel is we feel like, Lord, I don't want you to bless them, I want you to punish them. There is some sort of a release that takes place. It's like the beginning of the forgiveness process when you pray and ask God to bless them. I don't know what it is, but try it. Amen. That's good. Thank you. loving our enemies, we, again, in not loving them, we've probably forgotten where we've come from. Like, God's given us grace, why are we not extending it to someone else? So that's a bad thing. It's really ugly when you start thinking about it. You've forgotten where you came from. We do. I was reminded of that verse. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us. Enemies. I've said this before, but it bears repeating. When I was a kid, my dad had this World War II book on Iwo Jima. It was all the Marines that posthumously got the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima. Most of them, it had to do with a Japanese hand grenade came into the foxhole, and one of the guys would jump on the hand grenade, blow it up and kill him, but it would save all his friends. Well, not one of those Marines got a Medal of Honor for jumping on a hand grenade to save a Japanese soldier. Who were the enemy? And yet, Jesus jumped on the hand grenade of the enemies. So yes, Leif. Thank you. Well said. So John is, in verse 8, he's talking about light and dark. Go back to verse 8 again. The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. What has he used light and dark to represent in this so far, in this book? What has he used light and dark to represent? Well, light is truth, justice, and the American way. So what's dark? No, what's light? Okay. God, righteousness, holiness, truth. So what's darkness going to be? sin basically, lies, idols. Now in 9-11 he says what's true of he who hates he or him who hates his brother. Let's read 9 through 11 out loud together. We'll see it as a public scripture reading all together. The congregational response here. But we're looking at what's true of somebody who hates his brother. Okay, I'm going to start with verse 9. You ready? Here we go. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother and abides in the light, in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is still in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. What's true of him who hates his brother? Number one, he's still in darkness. Verse 9, verse 11, what's true of him? He doesn't know where he's going. He walks in the darkness and he's blind. Y'all see that? Now what does it mean to hate somebody? When you typically think of somebody, I hate him. What do you mean? You're judging him. How do you feel about that person? You have warm feelings. How do you feel? Anger, maybe? Disgust, frustration? Intense dislike? Now, in English, that's how we think about it. I don't think John uses it that way, though. Not here. Because we think of, in English, too, we think of love as a feeling. It's an emotion. It hates an emotion. That's the way John uses it. John says, if you love God, what are you going to do? Practice the truth. Walk in the light. Obey. And so I have a hard time imagining a person claiming to be a Christian hating other Christians with a burning passion of intense dislike toward other Christians. And I don't really think that's what John is talking about here. Based on what he has written, when he means you hate somebody, what does that look like based on what he writes here? Not a feeling, what is it? If love is not a feeling but obedience, what's hate going to be? Disobedience. What's disobedience in the area of loving your brother look like? Withholding what? grace, fellowship, whatever his needs are, time spent with him. During World War II in the Philippines, the Japanese took over the Philippines and they rounded up all the Western non-combatants, the civilians, like if you worked for the airlines or the banks, and they put them in a college campus, and they put a big fence around it. So it's like a concentration camp. They didn't mistreat them like they did the soldiers, but just didn't do anything for them. It was what they called lethal indifference. They just rounded them up, put guards around them, and left them alone. If you had money, maybe you could sit down and buy food. They didn't do anything to help these people. Lethal indifference. Did they hate them? They just didn't care. So some philosopher one time said the opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. As John is using this here, hatred is not loving your brother, which means you're apathetic. You care about you. You don't really care about him. So he has needs. You withhold. You don't meet those needs, whether they're financial, whether they're some kind of physical need, whether it's some kind of emotional need. You just do your own thing. So hating, according to John, it's just doing nothing. I'm just doing my own thing, man. That's why a lot of churches, when you just show up on Sunday and go home, that's a great kind of church. You don't have to get involved with people. You go there, feel good, and go home. You don't have to interact with people. You don't have to do things for people. Adam? We didn't have an example in the scripture of that kind of term of hate where it talks about that if a father doesn't discipline his children, he hates his children. And it's not that he's doing anything specifically bad to them, it's just that he doesn't care. Thank you, Adam. That's a good example. Now why do you think John's having to write this to these people? What would cause him to write this? I think it had to do with what was happening historically in the church. There were false teachers that were rising up questioning the truth, and he was combating them. not only combating false teachers, he's also dealing with false practice. Now remember, it's thought he's outside of Ephesus writing this, and remember it was the church in Ephesus that Jesus said, I have this against you, you have abandoned love you had at first. John heard Jesus say that, because he wrote it down. And now there he is in that same town, in that same church. So maybe these Christians are empty Orthodox. It's dead Orthodoxy. They don't have the life of community love for each other. And he's saying, you know, this is a real problem. Look at verse 10. Two things that are true of somebody that loves his brother. Verse 10. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. Okay, if you love your brother, you're going to abide in the light. By the way, now if you claim to belong to Jesus, if you claim to walk in the light as He is the light, you're going to love your brother. This is supernatural. It says, God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us. So if you don't love your brother, now this ought to be a clue you've got a problem here. Craig? This ties into where Jesus said, they'll love you by your love for one another. Oh, yeah. ties into the whole witness thing to the rest of the world. I do have a question. Is this this love we're talking about here, whether it's loving your enemy or if you're at odds with your spouse or maybe family members, is this a talking about a ongoing lifestyle? Or is it just talking about intermittent? Because stuff happens. Stuff comes up and then you have to deal with it. That's part of the growing process. If we were perfect, we'd never have to grow for anything. And the other question is, is this a self-control and a self-reliant process we're dealing with here? Are we being told, we've got to take control of our emotions. we've got to do it ourselves. Or how much do we depend on the Holy Spirit to supernaturally work in us? Because I know in my life there were things that the Holy Spirit supernaturally just changed my whole outlook about things. And then there's other things that you just don't matter. You know, you can't get a grip on them. To answer your questions, got to answer it on two levels. Some of you need to feel bad about your lack of love. Some of you need to be concerned that you're not right with Jesus. I say that hypothetically. I don't have anybody in particular in mind. John's writing to people who needed to be concerned. So some people need to be concerned. On the other hand, your question was, is this a one-time thing or an ongoing thing? You said the word perfect. Well, there is a perfect tense in Greek, and that means something that happened in the past that keeps on going today. And that's sort of related to the present tense. It's an ongoing, continual thing. So, John is saying your lifestyle should be, generally speaking, one of increasing love for other people. And I don't mean by that just warm, fuzzy feelings, but love that's made perfect in obedience and going out of your way to serve other people and do things for other people. But, from a punctiliar point of view, we do sin. We do screw up. We do make mistakes. That's gonna happen. And that would be what we call the Aorist tense. I said this before, but it's a cool word. Aorist is A-O-R-I-S-T. A in Greek means what? like atheist and not and Horus we put an H on that we got a word horizon no horizon what that means is the aorist tense has no sense of action it's just a verb and you know what the verb means but it's not like it's ongoing or way in the past or something in the future it's just a verb and so a lot of times we sin in the aorist tense which is just kind of bang you sin you do But what's in the present tense and the perfect tense is ongoing, continual obedience. So your life on the whole ought to be one of obedience, in this case love. So when you walk in the light, does that explain that you're in the light? So you have put yourself in that light, or is it meaning I decide to walk up this aisle? I'm making myself walk up this aisle. It's all about how much self-control I have. And it's just an action. We were talking about feelings versus actions. And if you're checking on your neighbor who you can't stand, call them up saying, hey, I can do something for you. But you really don't feel it. You're just, well, I need to be doing this. Well, it's both. It doesn't have to have the feelings. What John is dealing with is people who say they love and they're not doing anything. And he's saying we are to love one another, which means taking interest in one another. Put their interests ahead of your interests, whether you feel like it or not. Feelings follow actions a lot of times, don't they? And so it's like the locomotive is obedience. The caboose is your feelings. They follow. The caboose doesn't pull the train. It's at the end of it. So we make ourselves basically go through the actions. Yeah. Is it boiled down to that? Yes, but other times you're going to have a supernatural love for people as Rusty has discussed. And you pray and ask God to give that to you. But John's deal is people who say one thing and don't do anything. And that's the deal. And it's easy for us as Americans in a rugged individualism, just to live little self-contained lives and not be concerned about what's going on with other people. Gerald had said a long time ago, if you're praying for the other people in this church, God's going to burden you, a lot of times, to have something to share with the group to benefit the church. But if you come every Sunday and you can just completely and empty, Could it be because you're not praying for the people in church? You're not burdened because you're not praying. Well, this is the same kind of thing. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Physical emotion has to be there, but what I am saying though is that there's such a thing as a dead work out living. And if you do the right thing, but you don't do it in love, then it's like Paul said, you do all these great things, you can even give your body to the earth, if you don't do it in love, And so that's the difference between a living work and a dead work. What is one that's done in love? And so we have to seek the Holy Spirit and ask him, if you don't feel like doing it, then we have to ask the Holy Spirit to energize us, ask him to give us that love as we're doing that new work with that person. Yeah, you're right, Rusty. The reason I'm downplaying the feeling part of it is because of his emphasis on hate. See, you would say, well, I don't hate anybody, meaning I don't have intense feelings of dislike and disgust. See, John is saying if you're not loving him in the sense of serving him and obeying and meeting his needs, if you're indifferent, you hate him. That's why I'm hitting that side of that so hard. Yes, Ralph. To reference what Craig was asking about, in verse 10 he talks about abiding in the light, and because of that, in him there is no cause for stumbling. I find in my experience, for instance, if I shoot my mouth off and say something unkind or unloving to Val, almost immediately I feel badly about that. My attitude is that I was wrong. So there isn't a cause for stumbling in my relationship with my wife, and happily with most of the rest of the people in my life. And that's where the growth process needs to happen, where you need to do a little praying about that. So let's go back to this love thing here. Jesus said, I have come into the world as light, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. So he's going to teach us what's right and wrong. Romans says, and we're talking about stumbling blocks, love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. So imagine you're walking along at a martyr's station. You got a tangerine and you peel the peel off. Love for your neighbor means you don't throw it on the ground. What might happen? Well, the guy behind you might step on it, slip, and fall down, right? Love also means if you see one on the ground, what do you do? You pick it up. Even though you've seen it, you don't want the other guy to trip over it. Alright, so love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is fulfilling of the law. Galatians 5 says the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So we're obeying all the commandments of God toward our neighbors. That is loving our neighbor. And as Craig is saying, we're not perfect in that. We're working through that. But it ought to be like the stock market over time where basically it goes up. I know it's cyclical and it goes up and down, but it ought to be on the whole going up. It's a lot higher now than it was in 1920, even though it's gone down a bunch of times, it's still a lot higher. I just want to give an example of somebody who did obey God when God told him to do something on somebody's behalf that had the wrong heart in it. It was Jonah. Jonah reluctantly. The key to it is, I think if you pray for those that spitefully use you, if you're praying for your enemy, there's no possible way Jonah could have been praying for these Ninevites to repent. praying on their behalf, and have the heart that he had. So for me, part of the key to it is, if he would have been praying for them, his heart probably would have changed. But if we don't pray for each other, our hearts don't change. And therefore, there are times we reluctantly, begrudgingly, do something on somebody's behalf. But really, deep down inside, what we want is for God to go ahead and get them anyway. We want it because they did wrong, or we don't like what they did. Alright, give me the big picture of this paragraph. Y'all help me here. What is the point of this paragraph? Why did John write this paragraph? 7 through 11? To encourage people to get serious about money. Al says John's purpose in writing this was to encourage people to get serious about loving. Okay, I'll buy that. I think that's good. According to John, how are love and hatred expressed toward other believers? How do you express love toward believers? How do you express hatred toward believers? How do you do that? Do good and either do bad or do nothing. Which is doing bad. Okay, that's right. Now what's the salvation test John lays out in this paragraph? If you say you're in the light, but you hate your brother, you're in darkness. And hate doesn't mean you feel bad toward him, it means you don't care about him. The way John's using it. You just don't care. So if you don't care, if you just don't care, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A little salvation time going on there. I think, as Craig was reflecting, we all struggle with love and hate toward other believers. And what we've concluded today is it's okay every now and then to get mad and punch somebody out, but you just can't hate them over the long haul, right? Well, I said that facetiously, but obviously we're going to blow it, but you're looking at the long haul and involvement in other people's lives. So if you just like to come to Sunday and show up and not be bothered the rest of the week by anybody, that's not a good sign. Not. Yeah. It says here, in verse 10, it says, "...and there was nothing in him to make him stumble." Yeah. Let's talk about the person that loves his brother. So he's really watching out. It's kind of weird. It encompasses everything. It's a win-win situation. The ones who are the enemies who need to be won for Christ or who just need the grace like God gave us. And it also keeps us from hitting our own selves in the head with a hammer. It does both. Amen. I just didn't have time. I was going to ask, who's not stumbling here? Is it the guy walking in light or is he not setting up a stumbling block for the neighbor? And it's actually both. That's why I gave the orange peel example. You're looking out for the other guy. You don't do something to cause him to stumble. Yeah, Alfred, last thought. My brother, Anil, visiting with us, probably more passionate to pray for that ministry in India because I'm thinking about Brother Anil's And to get real again, it's not the guy that you've never met in Hyderabad, God ask you to love. It's the guy that's, the other guy, the other people sitting in this room right here with us. And it's whoever you're married to and whoever your kids are. How do you show love for them? in these difficult situations. Rusty. That's what it says. It's just like Jonah should have done. Yeah. Would you pray for us, Rusty? Oh, Father, Lord, help us. Thank you for the words that our brother Steve shared with us today. And thank you for inspiring the Apostle John to write these words. Father, we just ask that you help us to love. Help us to look to your Holy Spirit to give us the ability to love because we know it's a supernatural thing that you do. It's a fruit of your Holy Spirit. And Father, we just know that because You desire us to love, You'll be faithful to do it. All we have to do is ask and allow You to do that work in our hearts. And so Lord, we just want to look to You. Enable us, Lord, to love our enemies. Enable us to love those around us. Enable us to love and bless those that have hurt us. to love and bless our enemies, to want to truly be lights in this world through the love that you give us for all men. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. This message was produced by the New Testament Reformation Fellowship, reforming today's church with New Testament church practices. Permission is hereby granted for you to reproduce this message. You can find us on the web at www.ntrf.org. May God bless you as you seek to follow Him in complete obedience to His Word. May your faith in the Lord Jesus be strengthened and your daily walk with Him deepened. Okay.