We are here in chapter 3 once again and we'll be here for a few more weeks. I've got a few things that I don't want to forget today in the context of this. You know it's interesting when we come to worship together we do come with all the burdens of life. We carry them with us in the car, we carry them with us to bed, we carry them with us to work, we carry them with us around our house. So it stands to reason we carry them with us here when we assemble as the body of Christ. Just like if we have arthritis in our shoulders or hands and wrists or neck, it doesn't matter where you are, it's with you. If you have a headache, you can leave the house, it's still there. And beloved, the one good thing that we've been promised is that it's not forever. It is light, momentary affliction. It is temporary. It is also disciplinary. Disciplinary has nothing to do with punishment. It has to do with discipleship. It grows us and it teaches us and it corrects us and it matures us. And it takes us to a place where we begin to understand the sufferings of Christ just a little bit more. So that in that understanding, we grow in our knowledge of grace. We grow in our knowledge of Christ. We grow in the context of the gospel to such a place that we begin to not just sympathize but experience. We begin to experience in a very small way the sufferings of Christ. I know that sounds blasphemous for a lot of people to hear. They think, well, well, well, now we're just all like Jesus, aren't we? Just suffering away. Jesus took the sins of his people. Jesus took the wrath of God. But Jesus was hated. I read Isaiah 53 and next Sunday you're going to hear an exposition on that text. And it tells us that he was despised. It tells us that he was hated. It tells us that he was an ugly man. But yet, historically, oh, Jesus must have been beautiful. That when he suffered, he was unrecognizable as a human being. So no, in any literal way, in the context of just physical human suffering, we cannot fathom, nor will we ever taste that type of suffering. But some people have. And never shall we taste the wrath of God. Hallelujah. But Paul says to the Colossians, as he's suffering in his flesh, as he's suffering in his mind, as he's suffering in his body, as he's suffering in his ministry, as he's suffering the lack of freedom as the world and his liberties have been encroached upon, he never complained. He never stood up and said, I have rights. Yes, he did, preacher. I'm a Roman citizen. You're not going to take me out the back. Why did he exercise that right? Because in the divine intervention of God the Holy Spirit, he, the Spirit, wanted everyone to see what Rome was doing to its own. And more importantly, The saints of God would see the suffering of Paul. And they would say, I'm not alone. If Paul is suffering, then my suffering means something. They would see Paul's resolve in tears and weeping and pain and stress and frustration. They would see Paul as he suffered in his flesh and he then would cry out to God, who will rescue me from this body of death? You talk about covetousness. Paul coveted freedom. He coveted not being destroyed in his body. Yet he rested in Christ. So that when his word went out into the Gentile population, when he would speak to his Jewish brothers like Peter, it carried weight. Because Paul didn't have it easy. He didn't have a good ministry. He didn't have a successful popular platform. He was hated by men. And when we stand. In Christ silently we will be hated by men. But he says to the church of Colossae, I pray, so he's talking about his desire for God the Father to do on his behalf for the sake of the body of Christ, the Colossians. He says, I pray that I may fill up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for your sake in my body. So that when you see me suffer, you have hope to know that I am suffering and We can be reminded that Christ has suffered and He promised us. He promised us to suffer as He suffered. It is what He is going to do for us. That God in His sovereignty is going to shove His people into the oven of despair and aggravation and frustration. And he's going to give them joy in the midst of it, while the world that hates him, particularly the religious world that call themselves his own, they will destroy all they can in the context of the faith. But he fills up what is lacking. So that our suffering, our burdens, our pains, our aggravations, friends, it is a fool's errand to say, God, remove it away. Take all the suffering away. Like I had a conversation, a long conversation with my six year old this week. That it was naive to desire world peace. It was naive to desire prosperity as nations. It's stupid, narrow-minded and naive to think God has any purpose to establish any people but Christ's body in any way, to any place or platform. So God is merciful. That he hasn't destroyed the very fabric of our freedoms. May he do it as his will comes. Bring it father. Destroy our freedoms. That we may know what true freedom in Christ is. It's funny how people can read the Bible and they can take a word or two. And they could take a phrase or two and they can take a chapter or two and then they can decide, I want to see this this way. I would show you if it weren't stupid for me to do. Because if I showed you how easy that is, then I would be putting in your mind the probability of false teaching. So I don't want to do that. But it's very easy. It's very easy to take For example, for one beloved do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone into the world. And we take that and we just build upon it. Hmm. God's saying my job is to Do something with these false prophets. My job is to be the police officer for his courts to go out and go and expose all the wicked burglaries of truth. No, it's not. He's not commanding us to do anything there but test. The test of spiritual testing is 100,000% in the mind. Always in the mind with a closed mouth and a somber heart and a humility about us that people think we're weak and workless and sissified. A real man of God is quiet, humble, gentle to the point he's called weak. No, Jesus went into the temple and got a whip and he beat everybody up and he John Wick the whole place. Marvel, hero, Jesus, here we come shooting laser beams out of his eyes, blowing away the wickedness. That's who we want to be. We don't want to be Paul in the bottom of a prison cell with nothing to eat and no one to take care of him. We don't want to be John who didn't have the ability or the freedom to write anything until he was imprisoned in the latter few years of his life in his 90s. We don't want to be David. We don't want to be David in his ruling reign when he was a lover of God, a man after God's own heart. We don't want to be that David. We want to be the ruddy David that killed Goliath. We're going to be the dumb David who jumped up in front of a man three times his size. And then we want to go see, I'm going to show y'all who my God is. That isn't what David said. David said, my God is going to show you who he is. So God could have used David and God could have used a grasshopper or God could have used a bird or God could have used just his word, die Goliath. But we all can, have these Sunday school lessons and we go into the Bible and we just say, oh, this is what it says. Oh, that's your interpretation. That's my interpretation. We're just different. But let me suggest something to you that all of us, all of us, every one of us, even our children, even the ones who cannot speak fully yet because they're not old enough to have developed language. All of us have an Americanized hermeneutic that is isogetical at best. in the context of applying the Word of God to our culture. We need to understand that the Bible is not a list of how we do things. The Bible is not an instruction manual. The Bible has nothing to do with laying out a path for us. The Bible is God speaking to His elect about who He is and what He did on their behalf. And in the opening of their pages here, we have to read it like we would read any other book in the world. If it is a story, we read the story. The difference is the stories of the Bible have power. Because God, the Holy Spirit, teaches in a childlike manner, through childlike language, through infantile simplicity, He teaches with His divine power the absolute important things to know about who He is and what He's done with whom He wishes. The Bible is not a theological study. The Bible is the revelation of God concerning Himself. He calls Himself. what he calls himself. That's a paraphrase. I am that I am. I am. And I have always been, and I am the beginning, and I am the end, and I am the middle, and all things are subject to me. I am God and there is no other and I can make a bird fly from California to Georgia and I can make a man walk from here to the moon if I so choose and everything that happens under the feet of this humanity that I have created, God says, is my purpose and my business. Beloved, we complain too much because we don't grasp that. Above all things, the New Testament specifically is supposed to show us what God can do and is continuing to do with his people. And we rest in the nature of this narrative. We embrace the presence of God in the teaching, but we are not the first century Church of Rome. We are not the first century Colossians. We are not the Ephesians. I am not Timothy. You are not the Church of Antioch. And what they did has nothing to do with what we do. Who they are is identical to who we are in Christ. And the truth and the application of the teaching in the day that they heard it from the words of the apostles, then subsequently received their letters, is the same application that we have today. We don't come to a place of trying to find a relative application that nobody can understand. We don't need to go to John's Apocalypse and see Apache helicopters. We don't need to come to the garden and see two or three different types of creations. We don't need to be arguing about how many hours we're in a day. We don't need to be dealing with what this word means and what that word means and doing word studies to the outside of the context of the simplicity of it. You want to know what the Bible teaches? Get a Bible without any chapter or verses in it. And just read it like you're supposed to. Because through that discipline, God the Spirit, He will teach you. And then you can agree with me or you can disagree with me. And you can see when I'm in error and you can see when I'm in truth. And together we have unity in the faith. We will know what is true. We will know him who is true. And beloved, I'm going to tell you. Many people that I talk to throughout the week, I mean, I can't I cannot imagine what next year is going to look like. Because no matter what happens in a few weeks, nationally, politically, Half the country is going to be upset about it. Half the church is going to be upset about it. See, that strikes a nerve. I can go to the Bible and make it say anything I want it to say, just like I can go to a political party and I can find the evil in all of it and I can find the Christ in all of it. And if we think there's no Christ in any of it, on a particular platform or party or position, then we're as naive as a child. See, nobody likes to be called a child, but that's who we are. We are driven by our labels. We are driven by our worldview, and our worldview collides with Christ at every moment. There's no such thing as a nationalistic Christian worldview. In all its isms, And you see young people who are rising up against taxes and old people who are scared to death and other people who don't care. And then everybody else going, why don't you care? So you can't even be benign in these circumstances. You can't even be neutral. And we fight like this. And we fight like this over the Bible. We fight like this on Facebook. We fight like this in our hearts and our minds. And it's all evil. It's sinful. And the message that John is showing us today. And the message that John was showing these beloved, blessed, secure, saved, redeemed, elect Christians. He is not talking to one lost person in this letter. Not one lost person did he think about in this letter as an audience. Not one. John is not crazy. He's not out of his mind. He's not contradicting his gospel proclamation. He's not contradicting himself in his own letter. And, beloved, we need to understand that what the Bible is teaching us, especially today in the context of 1 John 3, is that sin is not of God. Sin is not of God. 1 John 2, verse 29. Let's just read through verse 10 of chapter 3. If you know that He is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins. And in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother." All right, we're going to stop right there. Now go home and work that out. in pretext and you're going to be in bad shape. You're going to be in bad shape because I can already feel it. I can feel the tension because I've read this 15 billion times. It's going to be hyperbolic. I've read this a lot. I've read this for years. I've read this letter continually. And people take this section of the scripture and they just make it a mantra. They make it the test of faith. They make it an issue of defining the terms in their own way. So let's listen to these things for just a moment. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning. So we've got a problem here. What is the deal with practicing? You see where the word study comes in handy? Well, let's get a word study. What does practicing mean? You know how you define the word practicing there? You read the context. What's the context of this? Starts in the beginning. that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it. and proclaim it to you, the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we're writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Now, beloved, I want you to listen. He talks about the light and the righteousness of God. He talks about the reality of God's essence. He talks about the person of Christ, the person of the Father, the person of the Spirit. And God in all of himself is holy, righteous, pure, and there is no sin in him. Yeah, there were some people who were changing that message. You hear me? There were some people who were changing that message, probably saying something like this. Well, you know, Jesus wasn't perfect. We know Jesus didn't have to be God. Oh, you know, Jesus, you know, he tried his best, but he's a role model, not a redeemer. Well, there's some stuff that's going on in my life, but that's none of your business. But that's unbecoming of a Christian. Well, you know what? Jesus probably did the same thing. I mean, this is some of the revisions that were most likely the case. You know, Jesus didn't really come in the flesh. He was sort of like a spirit. These are some things that we learned happened in the first century. Well, I'm OK because I believe. What do you believe? And then they begin to parse out the details and people who could believe the details and have them correct yet would not listen to the Word of God. But who's the context of these practicing, practicing unrighteousness? Who are the children of the devil? What does this comparison do? And beloved, I'm going to tell you, it is so close When we see evangelical life, when we see the false gospel of the evangelical church in America, which is a predominant gospel here, when we see this not good news, it is so easy to go, yeah, that makes sense because we have pretexted everything in the Bible around that idea that you know that you know that you know that you have eternal life because of your life that you live, which is a lie. It's a lie. and fear of condemnation will produce incredible transformation in the life of most people who are in a cult. It even works in public, doesn't it? You know, if you don't straighten up around here, I'm gonna fire you. I was thinking about that this morning, how I sold cars for a few months, right when I first got married. I was good at it. And I was the youngest guy on the lot, so I could beat all the older men out there to the guys who were coming on the lot. You know, they're getting their canes and all, and I'm going, shoo, sail, shoo, sail, shoo. And I got fired. And I don't know why. I don't know why I got fired. I just get they didn't like me. But I'll never forget, like, my second week there, a very sensitive skin. I really do. There's something about my paleness and my Anglo blue eyes and dark hair. I have very sensitive skin, and if I shave every single day with a razor, it tears me up. So one of the rules there at the car dealership was you cannot come unshaven. So I look like Freddy Krueger, coming in with like a roll of toilet paper around my neck. I mean, it was awful. And I decided I'm gonna shave every three days. I didn't work for the sales manager. If you don't start shaving every day, I'm gonna fire you. And I would tell you this, every day for like 15 days, he would tell me another reason why he was gonna fire me. If you don't start letting some other people get some sales, I'm gonna fire you. If you don't do this, I'm gonna fire you. If you don't do this. And he finally just walked up, handed me my pink slip, and he says, here's something for you. And I walked off, and I'm like, this is terrible. I've never been fired from a job in my life. Thought I was performing well. But I think about that pressure. I would figure out ways to keep clean shaven. Shine your shoes. That was another rule. You got to have shine shoes. You got to wear a tie. 135 degrees in July. Everybody else is half naked in a bikini, but you're going to wear a tie. Because that's what people want to see when they come on a car lot when it's 100 degrees, a tie. But I conformed. The pressure conforms. The pressure conforms us in spiritual circles. The pressure conforms us in Christian circles. And even church discipline is actually created by God for that very purpose. Because if we are intimately involved with the Spirit of God, and we love each other with a supernatural affection, and the idea, the possibility that if I don't lay down this particular divisive sin, or this particular divisive doctrine, and be quiet on it, if I love my brothers and my sisters, then I'll stop. Because the very stopping is the love. And the greatest fools that have ever been sophist in our culture have always said, well, a Christian will have a little bit of love for Jesus, some love for Jesus. That's a rule. You've got to have some love for Jesus. Well, what does some love for Jesus look like? Loving each other. That's the only way. Jesus said it. John wrote it in his gospel, the words of Christ, by the power of the Spirit of God. It was without error. John was not inerrant, but God the Spirit, He is inerrant. And then we turn around and we see John's now epistle and he's talking about these revisionists. He's talking about these people who are antichrists who come against the teaching and the doctrines of Christ and come against the teachings of the commands of Christ to love one another. This is the context of this letter. This is the only thing he's talking about. And so when we hear these words, practicing righteousness, practicing sin, practicing lawlessness, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, the devil is... What is the sinning? We have a list? You want to go through the Ten Commandments this morning? You want to take a test? What's the first one? To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength, with all your soul, with all your affections, And that would mean that I don't give any time to anything else that would take away my focus, my affection, and my service for the sake of God the Father. So how am I doing today? Well, you preaching the word? Yeah, but I combed my hair. I shaved, I brushed my teeth. I fixed coffee, didn't taste right, I got it right. I spent more time on my coffee this morning than I did my hair. As you can see. Well, that's just petty. What we call petty, God calls sin. What we call petty and non-significant, God says you are worthy of condemnation. Let's be careful how we say, that's all right. But I'll tell you what, when I preach the gospel, you should have that as your first response. Because when I preach grace as Paul preached it, and I preach grace as Jesus preached it, and I preach grace as John preached it, from the pages here, you should actually be able to say, I can do whatever I want. Because that's true good news. But Paul establishes that as an impossibility. He says, it shouldn't be. But grace is grace. And John is saying, it shouldn't be. Don't listen to that voice, test that spirit. So these people are those who do not love their brothers and sisters because they will not lay down this divisive doctrine. What is the word doctrine? Teaching. Well, this isn't really an issue of... I've got a question tonight from a brother back there. This is not an issue of, you know, what is essential and non-essential. Listen, if we're going to divide over what the Bible teaches on what kind of songs we sing, we're a heretic. The word heresy means divided opinion. And anything, even arguing rightly, becomes heresy when it divides you from your true brothers and sisters in Christ. So we're not going to divide over anything, but we will discipline and correct and encourage and rebuke to a fault. each other in the context of truth. We've got to be patient. So these people needed to lay down this silliness, this foolishness, this revision of the doctrines of Christ. And John's saying they didn't lay it down for them, so they departed from them because they were never of them. They never had fellowship with them and they never had fellowship with Christ. You need to keep that in mind. This is where it becomes very easy for certain groups of religious groups to say, well, you know, the lineage of the of spiritual leaders and bishops come from these apostles because the apostles basically affirmed it this way. You are with us or you are dead in your sins. It wasn't that they had the power, it's that they preached the truth. So when you weren't in company with Paul and John and Matthew and James and Peter, when you walked away from what they taught, you were not in Christ because they taught Christ. And so a divided opinion is, well, you know, I don't really think Paul had it right. Well, you're lost. If you hold down and double down on that. Well, I think this is a historical tradition. I think God shows people stuff outside his Bible, baloney. If the apostles didn't teach it, it is not of God. So here we have these comparisons. John does a lot of comparisons in this writing. He's got the source of evil and the source of righteousness. I'm going to talk about it this way. So here we've got this sentence after sentence after sentence. He's already told them, you are the children of God, verse 1. You know that God is righteous and in Him there is no sin. And God has loved us that we are His children right now, and He calls us His children. But the world, everyone in the world who is of the world, remember every time John mentions the word world in his writings, it is negative. In John 3, for God loved the world in this way, the world there, cosmos. He's saying that the sinfulness of all the nations. He loved His elect of all nations who were in the world. And then he tells us here, do not love the world. Do not love the evilness, the negativity, the worldview of the world. Do not love nationalism. Do not love religion. Do not love Southern Baptists. Do not love Sovereign Grace guys. Love Christ. Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul. Hold fast to the truth that is yours in Christ Jesus who died for His people and saved them from their sins. This is the truth. And many people will take that truth and add a skin of works or take that truth and refuse it all the way around. When someone refuses what is clearly taught in scripture, they have not been taught of God. Could they be confused? Yes. Could they be deceived? Absolutely. Why do you think most of the New Testament has been written? Because Christians elect people who are deceived. If you don't think you can be deceived, you're as arrogant as the shoe on your left foot, thinking it's an elephant. We are not wise. We are not guarded from deception. Most of you trust me so much that with a little bit of NLP and a little bit of time, I could coach you into believing something completely stupid about something. Now, y'all are sharp. I'd have to work on that. I'd have to write that out. I mean, I can't hardly get off the platform before some of y'all text me. We might talk about that. I mean, you know, can you wait till after service? We can be deceived. We can be deceived in our own hearts. We can be deceived in our own minds. We can think we're loving, but we're not loving. We can think we're truth bearers, but we're actually not truth bearers because we're not loving. Do you know if your truth out of your mouth is not loving, it's wrong. Your love is more important than the truth you preach. Because truth can come out of the mouth of demons. But we see in the apostles, they didn't want demonic people proclaiming the truth of Christ, so they silenced her. People who rise up in the ministries in our culture, they get that truth out there and they bait the sheep and the sheep come in and they nibble, nibble, nibble. Oh, this is such a good meal. And then they sprinkle a little poison in there. And it's hidden by the truth and a little more poison. After 20 to 30 to 40 to 50 years in a pastorate, oh my goodness, people are just piling in there, serving themselves as garbage. And it happens, there's no discernment, so we can be deceived. The New Testament is written to that end. The only letter that I can think of off the top of my head, the only people who weren't deceived, yes they were, the Thessalonians, they were still deceived. The Galatians. That was Paul's first letter. He worked his butt off to plant churches and to preach the gospel. They had all received the truth of Christ. This is the prophecy of the Word of God, and here is how it is fulfilled. That's how the apostles shared the gospel. This is what God said He was going to do, and this is how He said He was going to do it, and this is who He said He was going to do it through, and this is what He did. And the Spirit of God brought them to life. And then some other folks come in, just like here, and they started adding to that. Well, you know, that is true what Paul says. However, he's ignoring a really important fact about the law. He's ignoring a lot of important things about how we ought to live. But that's conflating growing, maturing knowledge with grace. You don't conflate the gospel with anything. So in this comparison, John says there's a source of evil and a source of sin and it is not God. It is not God. God is not the source of sin. Now some people say, wait a minute, what you're saying there is something happened outside of God's plan. I didn't say that. Why do we hear that? We already know the truth that God is sovereign. So why would we impart a true statement as an antithetical statement to another true statement? They are congruent. They work together. God is not the enemy. God has never sinned and God does not make people sin. Is He the cause of all things? Yes. All things after the Council of His own will? Is He the purpose? Yes. Did God in a figurative way create sin? Absolutely. But God is not the Father, the source of sin, of evil. He did not put evil into the heart of Lucifer. He did not put evil into the heart of Adam and Eve. Because He's evil. The scripture says that God causes all things to work together out of the counsel of His own will. God causes all things to work together for good for His people. God causes all things. Nothing happens that He doesn't cause to happen. So God purposed, elected Christ to die on the cross before the foundation of the world. That is eternally. It wasn't a plan He came up with. This is eternal. And then in the moment at the Last Supper we see in the latter part of John, we see Jesus telling Judas to go do what he is supposed to do. And Judas is like, okay. And Judas did it. And God had purposed it. God had planned it. God had decreed it. God had caused it. But he's not the source of Judas' evil. He's not evil. Because what does Jesus say to the Pharisees? You think you're the children of God. You think you're the children of Abraham, you think you're the children of Moses, but you're the children of Satan. You're the children of the devil. So the devil is also the father of sin. It's already said that. He's been lying from the beginning, Paul says in Hebrews. He's the father of lies. So anytime someone lies about Christ, they are speaking through the father of lies. They are speaking through the devil. So even when Peter, who was standing there amongst the the disciples who just gave a Holy Spirit led confession of who Christ was, of who Jesus was. He was the Christ. Then turn right around and say, but you don't have to die. The very prophecy of Christ that he would die for the sins of his people. But he changed his mind. He listened to the temptation. This is a good thing. We can keep him from dying. We can actually see Israel free. And what does Jesus say to him? Peter, you are so silly. Why are you thinking that way? Let me sit down and teach you a little bit of something. Peter, you need to read some books. Here, read this book. Peter, you need to listen to this sermon. Peter, you need to think about that a little bit and let's get back together. No, he says, get behind me, Satan. Because the profession that Peter said was from Satan. The statement. you don't have to die was from Satan. Surely you will not die. See, the devil has revised the word of God and his promises from the very beginning. Adam and Eve sinned, not because they bit the fruit, because they didn't believe God. That's why she bit the fruit. They believed the revision rather than the redeemer. So the devil is the father of sin. And in that sense, he's a father, he has children, he has progeny. And Jesus, what did Jesus do? Took away the sins. So the children of sin are those who do sin. The children of sin are those who revise the truth. The children of sin are those who do the things that their father wants them to do. And sometimes, if we understand the narrative of Scripture, the devil, majority of the time, actually not sometimes, the majority of the time, he's known as the angel of what? The angel of darkness? That's a multiple choice. The angel of stupidness? The angel of light? That's the answer. He's the angel of light. That means he's the messenger of light. He comes in and goes, look at me, look how glorious I am. Look, I reflect 99.99% of the righteousness of God in my being, ontologically. That's why he said in his heart, I need to stand up there next to God. Look at me. Would you look at me? So that's what he does. He comes with the word of God from the mouths of men and women and children. He comes with twisting, not the obvious stuff. That's just delusion. Paul talks about the delusion in the last days, since the days of Christ, by the way, the last days, where God sends a delusion so that people will believe the lie. And then some of it is so close that if possible, it could deceive the elect. See, we can attach to the philosophy or the logic of a false teaching It doesn't matter how long we've been studying the Bible, if we hadn't been in it today, we're in good position to be deceived. But what corrects us in that? Our knowledge? Please. What corrects us in that? The Spirit of God. How? Through the Word of God. Through the assembly of the saints. Collectively, we are protected. Individually, we're in bad shape. The children of sin. They do what? They practice sin. They practice lawlessness. That's what they do. They always do that. Now I'm going to talk about what it looks like here. They practice lawlessness. Why do they do that? Why are they in the practice of sin and what does that mean? We'll look at it. Because they have the seed of sin within them. The seed of Adam. The first man who fell and brought it all into the world. We are guilty before God if we never commit a sin. Do you know that? Every human being that's ever been born but the Christ is guilty before God even if they never commit a sin. So we're guilty in Adam and we're guilty because we sin. We are sinners by conception and we will see the fruit of that. A seed always produces fruit. What is the fruit of lawlessness? A lot of different things. The fruit of sin is a lot of different things. And beloved, I'm going to tell you right now, and there are some contemporary historical things from the 80s up that people have applied labels to what I'm teaching right now, but I don't want to give you those labels because then you'll go look it up and you'll be confused. But there are people who say, well, there's no such thing as the seed of sin in the life of the believer. That's baloney. The very fact that makes me mad to hear shows I've got some sin in me. And what is it? Paul explains it this way. We have been separated from our sin because our sin guilt has been crucified with Christ. And then we have the promise of life through the resurrection of Christ that one day we will be like him, like we just heard. And that fleshliness will be gone. The fleshliness that's in me, my sin nature, has been put to death. Yours too. But our flesh has not been regenerated. If it had, and maybe I'm using the wrong term there, but if our flesh was made righteous, then I wouldn't be aging. If my body was restored, I wouldn't have phlegm in my throat just then. I wouldn't be in a place where I have to study, where I have to pray to overcome what I think and what I feel and the emotions and the frustration and the worry and the doubt. Listen, one day we will be freed from these things. And our sin will be no more as it is no more in the economy of God's courts. But sin will be destroyed by God and for the elect, our sin has been destroyed already in the person of Christ. Keep that there, okay? That does not mean there is not sin in our lives. That's why he writes that in his introduction. I'm writing these things so you do not sin. But if you sin, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is our propitiation. Right before that, he says these words. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. If we confess our sins, that means if we tell the truth of our sins instead of lying about them, He's faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all our wrongs. That's not a formula for forgiveness. It's a formula for guilt-free living with a clean conscience. Quit pretending that what we're doing and how we're living is sinless in its trueness, in the sense of literal, in reality. There you go. Thank you, Lord. I've been looking for that word all morning. In reality, Spiritually, we are not sinners. Spiritually, we cannot sin. We'll see that. In reality, flesh is very much alive today. And I can because it has been put to death. I can submit to that death and I can grow and I can learn and I can please God in my life. And you can too. And John is giving us the way that looks and predominantly it is love. Love is selfless serving. We selflessly serve when we teach each other the truth. We selflessly serve when we give each other who are in need. We selflessly serve when we sacrifice our time. Sometimes we selflessly serve when we just. Assemble. And now there's this source of sin and father of sin, the children of sin, the practice of sin, the seed of sin, which is all going to be destroyed by God, and it's all going to end in death. That's the point that John is making. And here is the opposite of that. The source of righteousness. Who is the source of righteousness? God is the source of righteousness. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, each of them, they are the source of righteousness as God. Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God. God is called the father of righteousness. He is the antithesis and the context of holiness to the enemy, to the devil. The devil is all that is evil, even when it looks righteous. And God is always righteous, even if it looks evil. You might say, how can God's righteousness look evil? Friends, this is an argument from the dawn of age. When I was 13 years old, I was arguing this apologetically in my classrooms. Well, God is just evil. Look what he did in the Old Testament. Look how he killed those children. Why didn't he stop that? Why didn't he stop this? And I'm not getting into that right now. I've been hearing this since I was a kid. People calling what God does that looks evil in their eyes may seem petty, but it's sin. It may seem evil, but it's righteousness. You see how mixed up we are? That's how we've been reading this letter our entire lives. I went back and I looked at some notes that I'd written down 16 years ago on this letter, and I wrote some personal reflections in the context of not understanding the practice of sin in my life and how in the world would I ever be perfected in the practice of righteousness. And I wrote 30-something things in my life that I needed to perfect. And if somebody found that and published it, I'd be like Jonathan Edwards. Look at all these things Mr. Tippins wanted to do. Throw that junk in the trash and burn it and put the cross on top of it. Sprinkle it with the blood of Christ and be done. And let me love y'all in the process. If I'm loving, then all this other stuff is going to take care of itself in the timing of God by His power. But Jesus Christ, God, is the source of righteousness. And in that, He has children because of His love, because He gave them to Christ before the foundation of the world. And Christ came into the scene and He died for the children of God alone. I want you to hear that, beloved. This is the prophecy of Christ throughout all the Old Testament, throughout the days of man. Adam and Eve were the children of God. Cain was not. I talked about Cain Wednesday night in our Hebrew study. Abel was. Christ died for Adam, for Eve, for Abel, for Seth. But He did not die for Cain. Now there may be some theologians out there that could argue that differently with something that I've missed through all the years of skipping so much Scripture. You understand, I read so little of Scripture, but I read it all the time. We're not able to get, I mean, I was thumbing through the prophets early this morning, and I'm thinking, man, I need to read that. I haven't read that in two years. Because I just can't go through Genesis in a week. I can't get through John. I can get through John in a day, and then I've got to read it again tomorrow. I've got to read 1 John several times a day just to stay focused on what it's saying. So there's a lot of scripture that you and I have forgotten. A lot of stories, a lot of short little things. The Psalms, you know them all? No. Have you read them all? Sure. You don't know them all. But we're the children of God because of the love of God. The love of God is not how He feels. The love of God is that He put us on the back of Christ and our guilt on Christ and He crushed Christ in our place. By His stripes, we are healed. That's what that's talking about. Righteousness. Because if Jesus' death on the cross was to heal my body, He failed. He failed. He's not going to heal this body. He's going to burn it. He's going to give me a new one. Praise God. I want a little bit better tan, please. I won't have to worry about sunburn. No, will I? And the children of God, in contrast to the children of the devil, they do practice stuff. What is the practice of the children of God? What is it that God's children ought to be doing? And that's the practice of righteousness. Why? Because the seed of righteousness is in them. Jesus Christ. Who is the seed whose blood went into the ground that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Jesus Christ, who, when he was planted in the ground, grew the tree of life that we are all part of. We don't have to go take and eat it. We believe in him who is our life. He is our resurrection. He is the truth of God. So we have this true son, this true seed who is truly obedient unto death, who is the righteousness of God. Had a little going back and forth with some brothers this past week. Friends, Jesus is not righteous because He obeyed the Father. Jesus obeyed the Father because He is righteous. It's not a play on words. It's a theological difference between the true God of heaven and the devil. And I know not everybody agrees with me that, but I've spent years digging that out of my brain and proving it through scripture. Jesus is not counted righteous because he obeyed. He is the righteousness of God eternally. And as humanity, he took on humanity as a perfect righteousness of God in the flesh. The law is a shadow of Jesus. The law will never give you life, and it was never intended to give you life. Jesus gives you life, just like the sacrifices never give you life, just like the prayers never give you life, just like the tithes never gave life. No to the blood of goats and bulls and dove would ever give life, but the blood of Christ, to whom they pointed, is the life giver. So the new birth, we are made as the righteousness of God. Therefore, we cannot sin. Let's look at that. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Who practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. The outcome of the Father of righteousness is eternal life. The outcome of the Father of sin is death. Jesus destroyed the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning. What is the devil doing? Why do we not make a practice of sinning? Because we have been born of God. We have the seed of God abiding in us. Who is it? Jesus Christ the righteous. We are counted righteous before the Father because Christ is our righteousness. So when we sin, we are not sinning according to the practice of the devil. We are sinning in contrast to the righteousness that we are. We are sinning against the nature of our Father in whom we have life. And it is not of Him. It is not from Him. It is not His. It belongs to another, and we're not His. When we sin, we're acting like somebody else's child. But we are the child of Christ. We're the child of God the Father in Christ. And so when we sin, we cannot sin. The wages of sin is death. But when we sin, we have an advocate who propitiated the guilt of our sins. So therefore, don't sin. Don't sin. Put it away. But you put it away well, when you put it away forever, you still have sin. And if you say you don't, you lie. See, you go all the way back. You can't forget what's already been said, beloved. What does it mean we cannot sin? That the sin will not be counted against us. We will not be judged as sinners. We will not be judged as sinful. We will not be counted as the devil's children. We will not be cast away. We will not be punished. We will not be condemned. And because of that, we know we have life. So walk that way. And I hear that song every time I say those words. See, faith in Jesus Christ is surely abiding in the Word. It is the obedience of faith. It is the practicing of righteousness first, above all things. I want you to hear that, beloved. The practicing of righteousness first is to hold fast to that which was just taught to you, that even when you sin, it is not sin in court. It is sin, isn't it? Because if we say it's not sin, then we're lying. Well, it's just petty. Well, God says it's sin, especially in the context of not loving one another. That's the whole point. And John's about to get on it. And the rest of the letter is about that, by the way. So there are many who want to say, well, let's figure out what this practice and right. That means it's only belief in Jesus Christ. And I will concede to that if that's the best possible outcome. Surely. above all things. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know you have eternal life. Now I want to tell you something. I had a peer many years ago to argue with me that 1 John was written to lost people and save people so that they could differentiate the difference between them. John's pretty good about telling us why he wrote certain things. So he gives us several purpose statements in this letter, and when you see a new one, he's not changing his mind. He's telling you all the reasons, plural, that he's written this letter. And this particular one in John 5, 13, is to show us his audience and how he defines them in their state. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. Who's he writing to? The elect, the secure, the saved, the children of God, the beloved of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. So you are the ones with eternal life, I want to give you confidence in that. And so there's a context there. And so when we see John moving into the testing of the spirits, the love for the brethren and then the testing of the spirits, that testing of the spirits has to do with how we discern love in some way. Has to do with how we understand the gospel. This is not segmented postcards. This is one letter with one purpose, with one audience, with one occasion, with one great gospel message. And this is what he's wanting us to hear. That as our flesh sins, we have an advocate, but the sin is not part of who God is. And you know that and you need to have knowledge of it. So you need to confess it. You need to admit it. And then walk in a manner worthy of the calling. But at no time is the walking abiding. Because faith is what abides. Because Christ is in us. He is the what? Vine. We are the branches. The only person that can break the branches off is the vine dresser. He's the vine dresser. So no amount of poor living can sever yourself from Christ. We've already seen that in John's gospel. So the doer of righteousness tells the truth concerning sin, the doer of righteousness tells the truth concerning God, and the doer of righteousness believes in the truth of God. And the ones who are not of God do the opposite. So when we find ourselves in our lives doing the opposite, we're looking like that, but we're not. because our flesh has an advocate. There are many people who practice righteousness that's not righteousness. There are many people who practice lawlessness. And don't hang up on the idea of practice. It's just simple to give you the picture. Evil people practice evil. Righteous people practice righteousness. This is the way it ought to be. One is indicative, one is an imperative. Evil people, everything they do. And it's easy. We could write all the sins. Let's all write down 10 awfully gross sins that the world commits every day. And we could come up with 10 different ones a piece. And we'll be justified in going, this is wicked. Look at this stack of cards here. It's the bicycle deck from hell. This is terrible. Sin, sin, sin, sin, sin. Deal me a hand. I'm done. Bankrupt. But I bet some of us would forget the fact that sometimes acts of righteousness, from our point of view, are actually acts of evil. Let's think about that. Many who are dead, the children of the devil are dead, they sin in word and deed and in desire. And many of the dead sin by evil things. But a lot of them, and I think the context of what John is writing to, is many of the dead sin in dead works. They practice lawlessness by dead works. They practice lawlessness by trying to practice the law. They practice lawlessness by having faith in themselves. They practice lawlessness by having assurance in their lifestyles. They practice lawlessness and sin by religious activities, by a work's righteousness. They practice sin to the point that their practicing sin sometimes to the rest of us may look like practicing righteousness, especially to the lost that don't know any better. or to the confused, or to the deceived. So, as the dead live in their dead works, and also their evil things, we should not do as they do. Why? Because we are not dead! We are alive! We are Christ's! So anyone who tells you differently than this has misunderstood the point of life. But the question then that comes to my mind, beloved, is where do we start? Where do we go? If we're going to practice righteousness, what do we start with? Well, thanks be to God that there's only a few more paragraphs in this letter. And we rest in Christ and we grow in our grasp of his mighty, redemptive love, and then we exhibit it by his power in a manner of love. And that is the center of our reflecting his nature. Paul commands, have this mind among you, which is yours in Christ Jesus, he says to the church of Philippi, that Christ being God did not take equality with God, something to grasp, but he made himself a nothing, a slave, obedient to death on a cross. And that's the nature of true love, humbling ourselves at the cost of ourselves for the sake of other in the body of Christ. So I think we ought to focus on what love really looks like. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love believes all things. You tell me something, I believe you. Love does not keep a record of wrongs. Love is generous. Love is selfless. Love is focused affection through service. Love sounds quiet. Love lets God be the one who brings things to light. Love considers others more important than ourselves. We are not the police department of God. We are God's Children. And when we love something happens in our hearts when we serve, we don't look to the service and find confidence there, but we do find peace. But we find peace not in the fact that it gives us an easy life. We find peace that as we serve, it costs us more and more and more. And we suffer as Jesus suffered. We suffer as the apostles suffered. We suffered as true Christians suffered all around the world. And this steadfast love of Christ produces no guilt in us literally before him. And the steadfast love of Christ's people for each other will eliminate guilt in our conscience. And we will not seek to hide from the Lord, but we will know the truth of grace, and we can rest. Something I thought about yesterday. We can rest boldly. What's that look like? Because I was thinking about how I rest sometimes. I just want to get away from everything. I can go sit in the truck, turn the air conditioning on, turn the fan up high and just sleep. I want to get away. You take a nap. You ever slept in an airport? I sleep in an airport, upright, you know, paint eyes on my glasses, make people think I'm there. I got everything around me. And a friend I used to travel with, he slept boldly. He'd open up his suitcase, put on his pajamas, just lay on the floor. Boldly. Is he dead? No, he's asleep. We can rest boldly before the Lord. We can boldly come before the grace, the throne of God and of grace, and we can lay down in front of it. Hey, Pop, Hey son, I need a nap, just lay right on here. I know we're in the middle of something, just go to sleep. What are y'all looking at? That's my child, he's sleeping. I mean this is silly stuff, but I think it depicts the nature of our relationship with God because of what Christ has done for us. We need to rest boldly before Him. But we don't need to forget what God has taught us, that He is light, He is righteousness, He is perfect, He is powerful. He is gracious and He is loving and He is true. And He loves and He is true to His elect through Jesus Christ. And this grace is free. And I know I've gone long, beloved, but I've got to get this out. This grace is free. You hear me say free and sovereign grace all the time. Here's how you need to understand this. His grace is free. It comes with no strings attached. It comes with no condition. It comes without volition. Doesn't matter if you want it or not. You don't have to receive it. You don't have to accept it. You don't have to see it. You don't have to grab hold of it. You don't have to climb up to get it. You don't have to straighten things out. You don't have to clean your life up. It comes with no conditions whatsoever. And because it is free, it comes with no fear. If there's a piper to pay, there's always a penalty. That means more today, doesn't it, than it ever did. We do not need to get our lives right in order to get in step or in gear with God. Christ put us in step with God and God refuses our efforts. They will not hold in His court. So God is righteous and perfect and powerful. He's gracious and loving and true and He's sovereign over all so we see free and sovereign grace. What is sovereign grace? Sovereign. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even our sin, not even our unbelief. Think about that. You got unbelief in your life? You better confess it. You do. Yes, you do. I don't care how strong your faith might be today. Stub your toe, your foot might break. Stub your toe spiritually, your faith might break. He's sovereign. God will carry his children to glory. without fail. And there is no condemnation for we who are in Christ Jesus. Sin is not a part of God. Yet we are part of Him and He is a part of us. Sin contradicts our standing. Sin contradicts our adoption. Sin contradicts our nature in the context of our regenerative nature. Sin contradicts the new man who is Jesus Christ in each of us. And dead people are always sinning no matter how good they're doing. And saints are never sinning, no matter how bad they're doing, according to the way God sees us. Thus, truth, I mean, as it's given to us, shows us that sin destroys our affection for one another. And Christ and His life destroys our affection for sin. Sometimes. Not all the time. We have been placed together, beloved, by God in order to grow in this truth. This is what the assembly of the saints is all about. We need to grow in the knowledge of this truth that we live it out. We live it out. Not find a place to serve, but be a servant. Not find a way to love, just love. God has put us all together for that purpose. So we can be grown to the full stature of Christ, so we can be known to each other as those who are humble and loving, so that we can go into the world and proclaim it, that God may bring his sheep home to the truth of righteousness. Let's pray. Father, we love you and we thank you that you can clarify that which is not easy to see, and Lord, that even through the teaching that I gave this morning, many would argue that I overlooked too much, but Father, I see what the context tells me. And you have not penned this through John's hand to be a treatise on doctrine, you have penned this poetically through John's hand to give us hope, to help us see that there are groups of people who claim to be yours who are not yours. And that you have certainly revealed yourself to yours. Your spirit testifies to us that we are your children because of the gospel of free and sovereign grace. This good news that has come to our hearts and ears. And you have caused us to believe it. To see it and to know it and to hold fast and to rest. Now, Father, because of it, as we are your children gathered together, help us to live in this love. To live in this hope, to live in this rest. That we may be patient and kind. and long-suffering and gentle. We may pray that as you show us that we would put away those foolish things, those foolish ideas, those foolish actions, those sinful things that destroy our intimacy with each other so that we would be a lover of you because you have first loved us. In Christ we pray these things. Amen.