Good evening. Brothers and sisters, turn with me in your Bibles to the first epistle from John, second chapter. Do you remember that we said that an outline of this epistle was like a spiral, that the Apostle John would return again and again to the same themes? We're about to see in upcoming weeks a turn again of that thematic spiral. You can tell that because in our opening verse, which I'll read in just a minute, which is the 28th verse, chapter two, you'll see it begins with the phrase, little children. By which, as we explained before, John essentially means beloved Christians or dear Christians. It's a phrase he typically uses when he starts a new section, a new emphasis in his letter. In recent weeks, we've seen that John has presented three tests of whether or not we're in Christ, three tests of whether or not we are walking in the light of fellowship with God the Father and with Jesus Christ and with the saints who are with with him. Three tests. Those three tests are, as you well recall, obedience to God's commands, love for the saints, and a commitment to right doctrine. And now as we enter chapter three in just a moment, those themes will begin to spiral back around. And in upcoming weeks, we'll consider the same three subjects, in fact, presented in the same order, obedience, love and truth. There's going to be new nuances in each of those, but it's the same three in the same order coming back by us again. But before John returns to those great themes, those three tests of real Christianity, we have in tonight's reading a brief parenthesis, you might say, a sort of set-aside fault. But please don't think because it's a parenthesis that it's not important. In fact, in many ways, this passage that we'll read tonight, which speaks of our new nature in Christ, is a kind of summary statement of the whole letter, the whole epistle. So, beloved, for Jesus' sake, I want you to give your complete attention now to the reading of God's holy word, beginning with the 28th verse of the second chapter and continuing through the third verse of chapter three. And now, little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. 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 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 will 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. Thanks be to God for this reading from his holy word. Let's pray together. Our father, even if a man were to Come back from the dead. We would not believe the gospel. Only by the work of your spirit teaching us again. The word of God, the words of Moses and the prophets, the words of Christ and his apostles, only by that will we turn to you and believe your promise of redeeming love. So we ask that your spirit would work through the preaching of your word tonight, that we might be ourselves raised from the dead spiritually and receive you with faith and love. For Jesus' sake, we pray. Amen. You know, it's a very serious sin to take God's name or to take one another's names in vain. In the biblical view, the name is a part of the person. To have contempt for the name or to use another's name carelessly or promiscuously is to denigrate the person, to harm them. I'll never forget when I first read C.S. Lewis's space trilogy, his science fiction trilogy, particularly my favorite among those three was the Peralondra book. It's an incredible story, incredible in every sense of the word. In this fantasy novel, Satan has incarnated himself in the body of a famous physicist who, in this satanic form, is called the Un-Man. The Un-Man. The Un-Man has traveled to another planet that is unfallen. That is, there's no sin there, there's no rebellion against the Creator on this whole planet. When the Un-Man arrives at this paradisical planet, his purpose is to tempt a female creature that sort of parallels our mother Eve to tempt her to become a rebel against God. But there's a hero that's been sent to intervene to stop the hideous Un-Man from leading the new Eve into sin. That hero's name is Ransom. Ransom first encounters the Un-Man while the Lady of Paradise is sleeping. The first thing that happens is that this twisted creature, the Un-Man, begins to call Ransom's name. Ransom, it called. Yes, said Ransom. Nothing, said the Un-Man. Ransom, it said again. What is it? Ransom said sharply. Nothing, it answered. About a minute later, it opened his horrible mouth again and said, Ransom. And on and on this goes with the creature saying the hero's name over and over with no meaning, no purpose, just a vain repetition of the name Ransom, Ransom, Ransom. It was an attempt to make the man himself, to make Ransom himself empty, meaningless, nothing. Hideous creature calls the name with no intention of communion with the one whose name he calls. He uses the name in vain. Now, God, on the other hand, never ever uses our names in a vain and empty way. In fact, so mighty and holy is his naming power that the thing he names it is forever its true name. And moreover, what he names is always what it, in fact, becomes. This was true even in creation, when God calls things to exist that did not exist by by his mere word and he named them as he created them. Let there be light. And there was light. Now, this same pattern is true in redemption, as we read in the letter to the Romans, where Paul is paraphrasing Hosea and he says, those who were not my people, I will call my people. And she who was not beloved, I will call beloved. When God calls out or names something, it always becomes the thing it is named. It is never without purpose or in vain that he calls. And it's always for the purpose of communion. And so you see the significance of the first verse in chapter three. I'm starting with the middle verse here. The first verse in chapter three, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called that is named children of God. So we are. Brothers and sisters, if we are in Christ tonight, that is, if we are showing the fruit of obedience, of love for the saints and faith in the truth. Then we are the children of God. These tests reveal the evidence of us being in Christ, but they're not its calls. The fruit only points to the root. But where does the root come from? How is it that we are the children of God? We are the children of God only because God calls us that he has named us that that's what John means by that last phrase. And so we are. He calls us that. And so we are the thing he called us. It's the opposite of the unman's vain and empty repetition of ransom's name. God calls us his children and through Christ we are. God calls us to himself and through Christ we come. The call of God is always for the sake of communion with God. This is our what the theologians call our effectual calling. It's the mighty calling of the Lord, which causes something to come out of nothing. Namely, our redemption, our coming to him in faith, our love for the Lord, our new life, all of it coming out of nothing in us, springing from nothing at all in our fallen nature. It comes from the power of what we in the Reformed tradition call the secret call, the power of the work of the Spirit, the power of the naming, the redemptive power of the Lord God himself. But let's be honest, for many people in our culture today, it means almost nothing to say you are God's child or we are God's children. To them, it is a pious platitude, like saying we're all human beings. It has no real meaning. You know, Dr. Martin Luther King preached many true and powerful things, and he had a great deal of physical courage. I've often said that about him. But one of the things that King said was that all Americans and really all people are God's children. This is the classic post-enlightenment humanist view that all human beings are God's children. A hundred years ago, the great theme in many American church pulpits and still in many today is the universal fatherhood of God, although they don't like using the term father anymore for God, but the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood or sisterhood of man. Of course, you know, the problem with this is simply not what the New Testament teaches. We human beings may all have come from God in one sense, like children come from their father biologically. We are derived, in a sense, from God. We're all made, of course, in God's image, though that image is terribly defaced in fallen man. We are becoming unmanned. But the New Testament reserves the language of God's fatherhood and of us being his children for believers only, for the elect, for the redeemed, for the faithful. Those who are his children have been specially called children of God by God himself, not just by John, but by God, and thereby enabled by the Holy Spirit to respond with saving faith to the preaching of the gospel. So the doctrine of our adoption into God's family as his beloved children is no platitude. It is not some vain or empty teaching. It's no vague and general description of all humanity, but it is nothing less than the very resting place and refuge of our souls as believers. See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are, he said. This is why I began this sermon focusing on the middle verse of the reading, verse one from chapter three. But now let us go back to the very first verse, which is chapter two, verse twenty eight. And now little children abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. Now, you cannot abide in God, as John would require of the church here, until you know that you are his child and that he is your father, that is the nature of the abiding. That's why I started with verse one, not verse twenty eight in the previous chapter. Now, in this verse, 28, the word abide is a simple, common word. It just means to rest in, to dwell in, to live in. Now, you need to remember, as we preach through first John, that the Gnostic false teachers of John's day, they're they're in the church in a sense, they're calling themselves Christian teachers, but they're false teachers. Because they taught that you had to have a special hidden knowledge of this mystical and otherworldly Christ who appeared on Earth, but never really became embodied in human flesh. It's kind of a spirit being. And they taught that they who were in the know the gnosis in the original language would help you attain this secret, sophisticated knowledge if you joined their elite sect of the super spiritual ones. But John throws all that overboard here when he says simply that the people of God should abide in Christ. This is plain and common language, the language of workers and widows, the language of slaves and children abide in Christ, dwell in him, live in him so that when he appears, when he comes again, you'll not be ashamed or afraid of his coming. But with the great confidence and the great joy of salvation run to him. How does one dwell in Christ? Well, you dwell or abide in Christ when you remember what kind of love the Father has given to you, namely, that he has in the councils of eternity by his supernatural power called you his children and that you are therefore his child by grace. Again, to many people today to say God loves you, is to say something so obvious to them, so banal, it's boring. It's the stuff of roadside billboards in the South. It's the stuff of bumper stickers on little old ladies' Buicks. It's not interesting. No offense to little old ladies' Buicks. For many, Telling someone God loves them is like telling them what an Oklahoma newspaper headline did some years ago when it read, cold weather causes temperatures to drop. No kidding. It can never be that way for us, beloved. To really abide in Christ is to remember your election, to remember your adoption, to abide in Christ. is to remember that God chose you for Himself. That He sent His Son to change your sin condition by altering your position before Him from a position of being a condemned criminal deserving death and wrath, to His beloved Son inheriting the redeemed universe. And that He has called you to Himself by your own name. That He has anointed you with the Holy Spirit We saw last Sunday night in that perfectly marvelous image that Sean used of a house out west that was soaked in water when an approaching wildfire was coming to protect it from being destroyed. That's the anointing of the Spirit. We have both the status of sonship and the soaking spirit of sonship so that we might answer back to God as He calls us children. We call Him Abba Father. Abba Father. To abide in Christ is to remember that God himself has united us forever to his son so that we will always be his sons in the way that both men and women are his sons, his favored ones, the inheritors of the father's kingdom. This is why Jesus said in John chapter 15 to his disciples, abide in me. Later in the chapter, he says, abide in my love. Brothers and sisters, if if you're too sophisticated or complicated a personality to abide in Jesus's love for you, then you're just too sophisticated and complicated a personality. If abiding in God's adoptive love, which has made us nothing less than his children forever, the high God of heaven, if somehow that is not satisfying or sanctifying to you, And the problem is with you or me, as the case may be. I mean, I have nowhere else to point you than to this one thing, this still center of all our hopes and dreams, see what kind of love the father has given us. We should be called children of God, so we are. This is where we have to dwell and abide in Christ and in his love. One commentator I read this week was helpful in saying that abiding in God's love in Christ is like standing in the middle of a small boat. As long as you stay there, you'll have equilibrium and spiritual balance. When you get off that center, things become unstable in your spiritual life and spastic in your relations to others. We begin to act out of craven fear. We begin to to act out of personal insecurities. To begin to manipulate other people and to be easily manipulated by them, we fall for every seduction, every advertisement. We have to abide in him. Little children abide in him. And when you do dwell in the Lord Jesus in this way, then his first and second coming are not just immensely significant historical events on a redemptive timeline. They're that. In verse 28 and in verse two in the next chapter, John refers to Christ's coming or his appearing when the apostle speaks of him appearing, he's not talking about the appearance of some stranger. He's not talking about the appearance of a condemning king. But the very one in whose love you and I have been dwelling day by day. So when we abide in Jesus in this way, we see that we are bounded by divine love. Jesus is the one who once loved you and me on a cross. Jesus is the one who comes back to Earth for you and me in order to finish our redemption in the general resurrection. He came for us and he comes for us and he will yet come for us. So if I look back, I see his love. If I look to the future, I see his love. That's how you can say I have loved his appearing, as Paul says to Timothy in his second epistle. In this present moment, what am I supposed to do? I'm to dwell in his love. No wonder John says, see what kind of love the father has given to us. Some point out that the strictly literal construction of the Greek phrase is like this. It says, behold, what country this love has come from. This is this is a species of love that is alien to this fallen world. It's not like any love you've ever known from anybody else. It comes from another country, from another realm. And it has been given to us, or as one translation helpfully says, lavished upon us. So clearly this this isn't because God saw something worthy in us or saw that we would have faith. So we decided to reward us with his love. This comes entirely out of his own free decision to place his great love upon us. The reason for his love, well, it lies with him. not with us. As John Calvin said, it has come to us out of his mere benevolence and bounty. I especially delighted in what Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones said about this verse in a sermon he preached on the subject. Now, I always tell our ministerial interns been telling interns for years that you should never do a really long quote from a great preacher. But I also tell them, don't be surprised if I break my own rules. So. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this, he said, lastly, there is the marvel of it all. Behold, what manner of love. Words become meaningless at this point. There's nothing to do but to gaze upon it and wonder at it all, to stand in amazement and astonishment. Oh, the quality of this love. Just realize what it means, he said, the freeness of it all, that you and I should be called and become the children of God, the freeness of this love that is looked upon us in spite of our sin, in spite of our recalcitrance, in spite of our unworthiness, in spite of our foulness because of the fall in sin and our own sinful actions. Oh, the love that is not merely forgiven us, but has given itself to us, that has entered into us and shared its own nature with us. Stand in awe at the greatness of it all. Think of what it cost him, our Lord Jesus Christ, to come into the world, to live in the world, suffering its mistreatment, staggering up Golgotha with that cross upon his shoulders and being nailed to the tree. Think of him dying. Suffering the agony and shame of it all so that you and I might become children of God. And then the good doctor closed his sermon with these sentences. What manner of love? The only thing we can say is that it is eternal love. It is the love of God that is self-generated, produced by nothing but itself. The Son of God became the Son of Man that we, the sons of men, might become the children of God. Amazing, incredible, but true. So now, brothers and sisters, now perhaps you can see why John is entirely confident that if you're abiding in this love, this love from another country, from another realm, you're going to be changed by it. And so this is my final point, it is the transforming power of our identity as God's beloved children. As John says in verse 29, if you've been born anew in God, you're going to practice righteousness as he is righteous. His righteousness is the reason for ours. I think this is more this whole concept here of our righteousness attached to his is more than just saying gospel privileges oblige us to gospel duties. That's true. Of course, we have an ethical obligation to walk in righteousness, and of course, people so phenomenally blessed to be called children of God by God are going to feel a natural obligation to serve God faithfully. All true. But I think John wants us to see something much more than even that. Remember that this whole section that we're dealing with here is about abiding in this union that we have with our savior, Jesus. This union makes us more like the one we're united to, so much so that the beloved disciple can say the reason why the world does not know us is because it didn't know him. We are becoming like him now sufficiently such that we're becoming incomprehensible to unbelievers, as Christ always was incomprehensible to them. And all this happens because of how righteous is the one to whom we have been united. Look at the second half of verse two and then at verse three. 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. See, it's precisely abiding in this union with Jesus Christ, which over time, degree by degree, purifies us. Improves us, sanctifies us, His righteousness is so mighty, it is so awesomely powerful that our sin nature cannot be in contact with it without being changed by it. And you do understand, of course, we do not change him. Praise the Lord. He changes us. Think for a moment about how this is the kind of illustration that the guys will like maybe and maybe the ladies won't like so much, but think about how an unmagnetized piece of metal becomes a magnet when you hold it against a strong magnet for a period of time. Do you know what actually happens there in the atomic level? The strong magnet pulls and tugs the chaotically spinning electrons in the un-magnetized metal until they're all spinning in the same direction, causing the other metal, the new metal, to become metallic or magnetic as well. So friends, it is the same thing, the effect of Christ's holiness when we're united to him by faith. He takes the chaotic nature of our spiritual life and orients it to God, his father, in every way. This is the effect of Christ's holiness when we're united to him by faith. Paul says to the Colossians that we have put on a new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. I don't have to use. Odd scientific analogies, you all, in fact, already understand this dynamic because all of you are in relationship to someone you love. It can be understood personally when you're in a union with another person in marriage or in a family relation, you're with these people a lot. And you tend to become more like them when you're when you're with them. So it is with Christ, our king. He's made us part of his family, even children of God. And over time, we begin to take on a family resemblance, you and I. Last weekend, Nancy and I, all of our family were in in South Carolina at my father's 80th birthday celebration. It was truly one of the happiest weekends I think I've ever experienced. I think all three of us children of my parents would say the same thing. I thought about it later. What was it that made that time down there so incredibly rich and delightful? Well, there were 17 people present besides my parents. There were a lot of folks there who connected now to them through us. to the people we married and our children, 17 of us, well actually I think it was 15 plus two who were there by FaceTime or something like that. You can see people on a computer screen. Aaron and Molly were still in Houston, but they were there at least visually with us. So really the whole family was present. for this great celebration of my dad's 80th birthday. And my sister had set these two high-back chairs at the top part of the room so that they looked like a king and queen sitting up there. And all this family spread before them and singing their praises and thankful for them. What is it that made it so wondrous? It wasn't just our physical presence. And it certainly wasn't that we all had the name Turbeville or married someone who did. It's more than that. It really was the character of my father, which has become represented in the extended family in many ways. And he's just a great guy. He's a very joyful and optimistic man. It's even more than that. It's the fact that everybody in that room, as far as we know, is following Jesus Christ today. There was a time when none of us did. Grandmother, who is now with the Lord, prayed for everyone in that room that she knew, every one of us to come to faith. And in due season, we all did. So I believe. When you're in loving relationships, you become like those to whom you're united, and that's how everyone who hopes in Christ purifies himself, because he is pure. And as he is pure. Hope in Christ. my brothers and sisters, abide in Christ, little children, and do so by always remembering what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called, that we should be named children of God, for so we are. Let's pray together. O Lord, You are our Father by Your adoption of us into Your family. Our sin had made us all subhuman. We were un-men before You. But Your amazing grace has made us sons, even children of God. We can never thank You enough for this. We can never praise You sufficiently for this, O Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when we see You next, We will be like you in an undying and unhurtful body, free of sorrow and its tears, but also like you in being sinless, even unable to sin. How glorious. In the meantime, we thank you for the progress we see in one another, in obedience to your commands, in love for your saints and in believing the gospel promises. Thank you for your presence with us tonight. Oh, Father, may we truly live our lives and a deep and abiding gratitude for all your gifts, not just this week, but every week of our lives. For Jesus' sake, we pray. Amen. If you would stand, beloved, we'll give the benediction. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you as our love is always with you. Amen.