to read our text this evening. It has been my desire to return to Galatians for a number of reasons, but I'm unclear on that right now. I would rather be preaching through a whole book but I'm also wrestling over certain series that may be useful to the congregation in these days. If you would remember me in prayer for that, I desire nothing but for God's people to hear a word in due season that they might feast on Christ. I'm reading tonight from 1 John chapter two. First John, chapter two. I almost had an outline for you this evening. Didn't quite make it. You'll be okay with that one. First John, chapter two. We're going to read two sections of this chapter. We're going to read verses 7 and 8, and then 9 through 11. We're going to be focusing on 9 through 11, but we must have the background to it. Chapter 2, verse 7, this is God's Word. Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. He that saith, He is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes. Amen. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. Holy Father, who can preach with any effectual power without thy Spirit? None. I know that I cannot. who can hear without the effectual power of thy spirit. None. Oh, God. Oh, Christ. Get glory to thy name. Help us as we work through this passage. And I pray that thou would give us light. Life. Sober thinking. joyful hearts. We pray it in Jesus's name. Amen. Please be seated. One of the great themes of this letter is that John calls his readers into fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. The goal of this fellowship is that the Christian's joy may be full. Another important theme in John's letter is walking in the light because God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. That means, for the believer, a life of communion with God, confession of sin, faith in our advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous, obedience to his commandments, and love for Christ and his people. That means that we know Christ Jesus if John doesn't mind using ifs. These things that I've just said mean we may know Christ if We keep his commandments. It doesn't say we may know that we know him because we have faith. That was startling to me when the Lord saved me and I read it. Hereby we know that we know him. It doesn't say because I walked an aisle, prayed a prayer, shook a hand, filled out a card, had an emotional quiver. It doesn't say that. And if anybody understood grace, certainly it was the Apostle John who walked with Christ. He's saying something very important about the Christian life. And this is built directly on the teaching of Christ. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth it not, doth not love me. Christ taught this, and John's a faithful apostle of Christ. Now that's very sobering to me. When the Lord first saved me, he took me to First John, and I spent a lot of time there. I think I probably have a love for John's first epistle, as Brother Frank mentioned about first Peter or the writings of Peter. The Lord takes you to certain places. He brings you to certain wells and lets you drink. Because he has something for you to live, something for you to believe, something for you to do. We know that we know Christ if we keep his commandments. It's not the only thing by which we know that we know Christ. But that is amazing. Secondly, he goes on to say, and to walk even as he walked. Have you ever meditated on that? You know Christ. If you walk. Even as he walked. Now, all of us immediately ought to have some questions. Well, we're not Jesus. He was the perfect son of God. But it means this. How did he walk? It means that he lived in loving his father. and in loving obedience to his father and in fervent love of his people. The title of this message is then, Loving or Hating God's People. This is involved in the commandments we are to keep that we might know that we know him. Loving or hating Christ's people. May the Holy Spirit shed abroad the love of God in our hearts through Christ Jesus, our blessed Savior. And may He give us ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to us. So we begin with this first main heading. The reason for loving Christ's people. The reason for loving Christ's people. Let's be honest at the outset. They're not often really lovable. Context is important. Any time we come to the text of scripture, context is important as we take up this passage. So let us consider it first, verses seven and eight here in chapter two, which begins with an old and new commandment. An old and new commandment. John says, brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. But John then says, again, a new commandment I write unto you. He just said, I write no new commandment to you. And then he says, I write a new commandment to you. And he says of that, which thing is true in him, Christ, and in you? Because the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. Now this sounds like a contradiction at first. So what does the apostle mean? We've heard what he says. What does he mean? The answer lies in Christ's blessed words, to which John is referring, and they were uttered shortly before his crucifixion. He said in John 1334, a new commandment, I give unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. The Pearsons sometimes called this the 11th commandment. Brethren. This is a commandment. We cannot say I love Jesus. Unless this commandment. Is obvious, evident in our lives. When John says old commandment, he is referring to Christ's new commandment. That's what he says. That's what he's talking about when he says, which you've heard from the beginning, which we have heard from the beginning. Now we know that's what he means. If we couldn't pick it up from the context, we know this from his second letter. The second letter of John, verse five, he says, and now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. So it's very clear what his old commandment is. It's Jesus' new commandment. From the beginning, means John's eyewitness experience of the gospel age and the inauguration of the new covenant in the God-man Jesus Christ. He says this at the beginning of his letter. That which was from the beginning. Now here he's not going back into eternity like he does in his gospel. He says, that which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life. For the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father. and was manifested unto us. What's he saying? I was an eyewitness from the beginning of Jesus's ministry. And that's what I'm bearing witness about. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. Now, it is true that Christ's new commandment was old, first in the sense that loving your neighbor was clearly commanded in the law of Moses. That aspect of God's commands, God's revelation to human beings goes that far back. But Jesus perfectly obeyed and embodied that law. You hear that word? He not only obeyed it, he embodied it. He was the perfect model, the perfect example of loving God and loving his neighbor. He loved all in his goodness and mercies to them. But he loved especially his elect. Jesus embodied God's revelation. We're being called to do something similar. And we can't do it as well as he did. But I simply ask you, do you realize that if you are born of God's Spirit, you possess the Holy Spirit, And you are in union with the one who embodied it. So that while we are a very faint reflection of his glorious light. We're still doing the same thing. We are to embody that revelation. Sometimes we don't shine as brightly as we ought to. But by His grace, for His glory, we can shine forth loving our God and loving His people. So John probably meant that the commandment was old to his readers. He's probably writing to the church at Ephesus. That's been what many have concluded over the centuries. We can't be dogmatic about it, but we know that he was deeply involved in that congregation. We have history that gives evidence and testimony to that. But he was also involved with other congregations. So it's quite likely that while he may be writing to Ephesus, he's writing to other churches with which he has been associated. So why would it be old for them? Because they'd been familiar with it from the time they were converted. That's why. from the moment they had repented of their sins, believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and were joined to Christ's people by the power of the Holy Spirit, the doctrines of love for God and love for His people began then. When you go back and read right here, first century writings, what do you hear from the apostles over and over? Love Christ's people. Love Christ's people. So John follows this comment about the old commandment with this. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you. Christ's commandment is still new. It's still new. He's referring to the same commandment, I believe. because the living Christ was and is the model of loving God and loving your neighbor. We wake up to Christ every single morning. His commandment hasn't changed. Over 2,000 years, it is still living. It is still fresh because it's Christ's commandment to us. Not for once in a while pondering, but living. Christ's commandment is a living word. It's not something that we read and go, oh, that's nice, and then move on because we kind of feel good about that. It is what, if you profess, if you wear the name of Jesus, you should wake up and throughout the day, be cognizant that whatever else you think you must do, the command that sums up the whole Old Testament and was clearly at the heart of Christ's commandment to his apostles and his people was love God, love his people. As I have loved you is always new and fresh. When you sin, do you not run to Christ, trusting that he loved you and gave himself for you and shed his blood? Do you think in some way that that takes the commandments to love God and his people, something that you can lay on the shelf and come back and look at once in a while? Or should that be the very pumping heart of your Christian life? Because you can't love him without loving his people. That's exactly what the scriptures tell us. As I have loved you. That's our marching orders. So what does that tell us? What do we have to know? We have to know Jesus. We need to be saturated in the Gospels. Saturated in the Gospels so that we can see how he lived it. When you look at his life and he's doing these astounding things, it's easy for us to go, God, not God. Right? But we're connected to God, regenerated by God, in union with God, informed by God, empowered by God. What should it look like then? As I have loved you. So how would you describe his love? Have you read him in the gospels? Have you followed in his footsteps? Have you taken notes on who and what he is and what he's doing so that you can say, how do I live that? How can I do that? How am I supposed to be that? Lord, you know how faulty I am. I can't do this by myself. And he says, good, you've got that part down right. All right, now, that's why you live by faith and you believe what I've told you in my revelation and walk according to it. Well, that means you have to know the revelation, doesn't it? That means we need to have fellowship with him so that we understand it more deeply. More potently. More sweetly. More kindly, more graciously, more lovingly. as I have loved you. This plainly teaches believers to show Christ's self-denying, self-sacrificing, others oriented love. Let's repeat that. That means, that means at the very least that God is teaching us that we need to know how by faith in Christ, power of His Spirit, informed by His Word, how we live a self-denying. You didn't come into the world with self-denial. You weren't born in a culture that admires and encourages self-denial. Some people will sit back and look at it and watch somebody denying themselves and say, oh, that was nice. He was a hero. She was a hero or something, a heroine. But we don't run after it. We should be panting, running after how to be self-denying. I'll tell you, who generally does it more readily than almost anybody else is mothers. Best mothers I've ever known were among the most self-denying people I've ever encountered. They manifest something that men often seem to be alien to. I'm not saying there aren't men that are self-denying. Certainly there are. And I know there are some here in this congregation for which I praise the Lord. I'm just saying you don't have it naturally, generally speaking, unless you're a mom. And it ought to be one of the most manly things about a man. that he's more concerned about self-denial, self-sacrifice, and others. You're not going to learn that from our culture. You're not going to learn that from your flesh. You will only learn it by taking in the unchanging revelation of God's Word. That's the kind of love, that is the most I almost have to make up a word for this. That's the only minimal way I can put it. Self-denying, self-sacrificing, others-oriented. This is what Christ was about. Jesus so loved his people that he suffered, bled, died on Calvary's cross, and rose again for the salvation of their never-dying souls, and they weren't likable. You and I should have been cast into hell before we took our first breath. God didn't do it because we were likable, because we were nice people. He did it because he loved us and did what was necessary to make us a righteous people. And at the heart of that is his love for us, which we're to manifest to him and to his people. Well, John says that Christ manifested that love, and thankfully, he can say to those to whom he is writing, he sees it, it is true in them, the believers to whom he was writing. It is true of him and in you, he says. There was actually some evidence of their new birth, that they knew Christ. Not just knew about Him, they know Him from fellowship. That's what John is writing about. Fellowship with Him. We're fellowshiping with Him. We want you to fellowship with us because we fellowship with Him. And what comes out of that? Not only love for Him, but for what He loves, His people. When we don't love his people, we are being just about as un-Christlike as we can be. You can't have half the picture. Oh, how I love God. Really? Do you love his people? Do you love his people? Why, I have friends. Good. I'm glad you have friends. Some of us are not that friendly. But the fact of the matter is the Lord hasn't said, oh, I want you to make the little list of the people that you'll spend your time with, your two or three or five friends. He says love his people. Love his people. And a congregation is his people. Surely there are lost people in it. We understand that. There will be even some that will profess to be Christians who are not. But unless the Lord gives you an unmistakable Geiger counter for the lost that have an outward shell of Christianity, then if they're professing to be Christ's people, if they've been baptized in his name, if they're taking the Lord's Supper, if you've voted them in to be members And you have to believe that they're God's people. Don't vote for them and then ignore them. Well, some people are hard to like. Yeah. It's true. So, what does Christ-like love look like for people that are not likable? Self-denial, self-sacrifice. Others oriented and like Christ doing what we do to please others, because even Christ pleased not himself. Brother, if we're not doing this kind of thing. What is it that we think is Christianity? This is the unchanging revelation from God. If there was anything that Jesus put, if you want to say it this way, at the top of the list, we're talking about it. Once again, people look at the Old Testament, they think it's, oh, it's just, oh, that's just law. And Jesus himself says, oh, here's here's the chief commandment. Love God. And the second is like unto it. In other words, it is in the same category because it is a matter of love. Of course, we give higher deference to God. But you have to love his people. Jesus said, remember, the lawyer that was talking to Christ about this, ask him about one commandment. Jesus gave him two. He said they go together. You love his people. Well. Thankfully, John saw some of this evidence in the people to whom he was writing. What a great blessing. And may it be so here. I know that there are people here that love God's people. Now, that brings us again to our context. The darkness is passing by the shining light. Chapter 2 verse 8 says, because the darkness is passed, the verb actually there means is passing, and the true light now shineth What does the apostle mean by this? This is one of John's profound statements. It comprehends a great deal of biblical truth in that short clause. The verb tense in the Greek means is passing. It's in the state of passing away. I don't believe that's changed. And it is this passage that sheds light on verse eight. The darkness that is passing away is both the realm and era of Satan's evil rule. When Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, he plunged the world into the dark of night. In fact, it was the dark night of sin and rebellion and the tyrannical rule of Satan. This is why Paul says to the Ephesian Christians, and you hath he quickened, you hath he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. There is no neutral ground. You are born of God's Spirit and you are in the kingdom of light or you are lost and a slave of Satan held under his power and you will not escape by your own. The Spirit that now worketh, what remarkable words in the children of disobedience. The word light is used throughout the Old Testament to speak of God's truth and holiness. Send out thy light and thy truth, that's the idea. And this is clearly John's thinking when he writes in chapter one, verse five, God is light. That means God is truth and holiness, and in him there is no darkness, error, or wickedness at all. That's the God with whom we have to do. Christ has come. Christ has triumphed over the world, the flesh, the devil. Christ is the light of the world. And the people which sat in darkness saw great light. And to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. We should be reflecting that light. This is what John is telling us. How do we do that? Love God, love His people. There are many ways that that manifests itself. The list, no doubt, is endless. There is much in Scripture that gives us specifics, but the fact of the matter is we should be lights in the darkness, as Paul says to the Colossians. Lights shining in the darkness. How do you do that? It's how you think. It's how you speak. It's how you live. And it's manifested as a love for God and a love for His people. Coming of the Lord Jesus inaugurated the messianic kingdom and the glories of the new covenant. Satan's hold over the darkened souls of men is forever broken by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, the true light, now shines and he drives away the darkness, the sin, the death, and Satan's power. And that darkness is passing away for everyone who believes in Him. You're not under Satan's slavery if you are born of God's Spirit. Now, you can give yourself over to Him. You can give Him ground. He cannot possess God's people. But if you think the powers of darkness cannot powerfully deal with Christians, you're not reading the scriptures carefully. There's no reason to be warned about the principalities and the powers and the spiritual wickedness in high places, the rulers of the darkness of this world, if they don't have anything to do with you. Why in the world even take space up to talk about it? You can open up the door and give them ground and they can certainly oppress you. They can't possess you because you are the blood bought property of Jesus. Satan will never own you again. But don't think for a moment that he will not try. So that's the context of our passage. We've been called to a life. We've been called to a certain kind of love. We are to be a certain kind of people living by the unchanging revelation of God. And it should be noticeable. One of the great temptations that falls upon young people is they want to be accepted. Well, by whom and why? You want to make sure you're accepted by God and that you are living a life that manifests the one who owns you, not people that you're trying to impress. That's a waste of life. And by the way, it's slavery. Now, number two, that means then he that hates his brother lives in darkness. Now John is one of those brothers. He was, remember, along with James, he was called the son of thunder. Lord, you want us to call down fire and burn up these people now? You don't know what you're of. You don't know what spirit you're of. So he's very black and white. You go down to South Louisiana. You fall in with a group of Cajuns. If they haven't changed over the years, the ones I know are generally very black and white. And they will tell you what they think, and they're not troubled about what you think about they think. They're going to tell you. I always loved that and appreciated it. Though often, it could be painful for me. Now John says, he that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother is in darkness even until now." Do you hear those words? They're powerful. John speaks here in and with black and white clarity. Whoever confesses before God and men that he or she is a Christian, a believer in Christ, but hates his brother in Christ is still in darkness. Does that make you back up and think about how you're thinking about people? Can a Christian hate somebody sinfully? Yes. How would you know that they're not still in darkness? They repent. There isn't a sin in here that you and I could not do were it not for the great grace of God. And when we do sin, As our brother prayed earlier, what do we do? We repent and we go to Christ. We don't stay with it. We don't let that nasty, ugly grudge live in there for decades. You're in darkness if you don't love God's children. Love them. How? Like Jesus. I'm going to have to know Jesus better. I don't know about you, but I need to know Jesus better. He that hates his brother in Christ is still in darkness and has never been in the light. That's John's words. I didn't make them up. Let's talk about the definition of hating a brother for a minute. The theological word book of the Old Testament tells us that the Hebrew idea of hate expresses an emotional attitude toward persons, uh-oh, emotion. Emotional attitude toward persons and things which are opposed, detested, despised, and with which one wishes to have no contact or relationship. John was a Jew. He knew what hate meant. You don't want to be around God's people. Something is wrong. Something's wrong. Now, I've never preached on this subject or come close to it where sooner or later someone didn't come to me and say, well, you can't pick my friends for me. Are you telling me I have to and I tell them I'm not telling you anything other than Jesus says if you hate your brother and you want nothing to do with them. Now I'm not talking about somebody who has sinned biblically defined and refuses to repent. We're not talking about that. We're talking very often about who I will let be my friends. God has picked your family. It's called his people. He chose them, remember? That's why you're in it. So we need to think about that. We need to think very cautiously about that. Hatred is therefore the opposite of love. And what does Christ call us to? To love God and love his people. It is therefore. That. We must examine the word of God first. Make sure that we understand what love really means. And then ask ourselves if that's what we're really doing when we call something love. Definition is everything in any argument. Definition is everything. And you can say, yeah, well, I love them, but, and your idea of love may have nothing to do whatsoever with what God calls love. Remember, it's self-denial, self-sacrificial, others-oriented. Whereas love draws and unites. Love draws and unites. Hate separates and keeps distant. Love, I mean hate isn't just feeling something towards somebody. It's going to manifest itself. And very often it's in Distance. Love unites. The hated and hating persons are considered foes or enemies and are considered odious, utterly unappealing. Every church. Has its oddballs. Might be one in the pulpit. But now, what's your definition of that and where'd you get it? Maybe God loves them very specially because they're different. I'll let you determine who the oddball is there, all right? But the point is what we should be doing is how do I love that person? Thinking, how do I love that person? How do I love that person? That person doesn't agree with me on this and I think this is a big deal. So how do I love that person? Self-denial, self-sacrifice, others-oriented. That means we have to die to ourselves and think about it and pray about it and make moves to show that we're thinking about it. We just spent a wonderful time in prayer, praying for unity, praying for some of the very things I'm talking about. Now it's time to say, all right, we've talked about it. What are we gonna do about it? How are we gonna do it? How will it look for your family? How will it look for mine? Well, let's consider the description of those who hate their brothers. Oh. Well, we'll have another part on this. Unless something unusual happens, I know what I'll be preaching next week. Let's consider the description of those who hate their brothers or sisters. By the way, I trust you all know that when it talks about brothers, it means men and women. The brethren. Brothers and sisters, so John tells us four sobering things about a professing believer who hates another believer. Four things. One, such a one is in darkness even until now. Number two, such a one walketh in darkness. This is not a vain repetition. They're in darkness, they're trying to walk in darkness. You ever tried to do that? Have you ever tried to walk in a place that's so dark you can't see? That can be an unnerving experience. Number three, and knoweth not whether he goeth. He doesn't know where he's going. Why? Because he's in darkness. In Louisiana, there was a recording studio, still there. And it was a multi-million dollar studio going way back, which means it would have been a lot more expensive today. It was built from the ground up to be a perfect place to record sounds, music. I was in there doing a session once and the power went off. It was the blackest darkness I had ever seen in my life. Maybe you've heard the old saying, it was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. I'd grown up hearing that. And of course, it was something of an exaggeration. But I put my hand up and I kept getting it closer and closer until it touched my nose and I couldn't see it. That's how dark it was. And there was furniture, microphone stands, everything in the room. It was like, this is an obstacle course. I don't want to move. And one of the men came on the intercom and said, don't anybody try to walk right now. Wait just a moment. And one of the fellows had one of those throwaway lighters and he clicked it and he held it there for just a few moments. And in that absolute pitch black, you could see well enough to walk out of the room with one little flame. That's exactly what we ought to be. The person who hates his brother is in the blackness with no light. When the light of Christ comes, just one wonderful light, just one light, can cast enough light to change things all around. Father, that's what Paul calls us to be, and this is the kind of thing John is talking about. The one who hates his brother doesn't know where he's going and it's dangerous in the way. And fourth, darkness have blinded his eyes. It isn't that he just can't see well, he can't see. Now I hate to stop there. We'll develop those thoughts next time. Let me say that loving our brothers is a wonderful expression. Perhaps, apart from our heart's love for Christ, for God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the most wonderful love we can manifest is to God's children. God's children. To love them. And that doesn't mean you always have to feel good about them. In fact, sometimes you won't feel good about them. And so we go through asking the question, so what do we do when we don't feel good about them? Well, we learn how to love them. Because God loves us when we're a mess. Anybody here work himself out of not being a mess? Anybody here got to the point where you're just not sinning anymore? Wow, that was old. I remember that. I used to sin, but it's gone. Well, then we need to see how God loves us and then love his children the best we can. As I said, no one does it perfect. But we can do it. We can do something that looks like it. We finish on something of a dark note. God willing, next week we will see some brightness and the light. I had hoped to get to that before it was over. But let me simply say, there are passages in the scripture you can read from Genesis all the way to Revelation and there will be passages where you go, I don't know what he means. I love this book. You might read five different commentaries and come away and stay and say, I still don't know what this means. I know what it says. Why did God want to kill Moses in the end? Why did he want to kill Moses? That's a good one to wrestle with. You can go all the way to Revelation. You can be saying, I'm not sure what all these angels and all the seals and all the trumpets actually mean. Are they tomorrow's news newspaper headlines or are they something else? They're difficult. But despite. The difficulties in the scripture. What God expects most plainly, and John says it here. is that we're to love God, commune with Him, and love His people. And love them like Jesus does. That's an order for all of us that ought to put us on our knees in prayer. And it ought to begin to show even more. Again, I thank God for every expression of the love of Christ people for each other here. And I can tell you, I do hear from people who visit here. And from time to time, I get that great encouragement that was like I haven't been to a church in years where people actually came up and talked to me. I haven't been to a church in years where it looked like people liked each other and things like that. So, brethren, I praise the Lord for every ray that looks like Jesus. And I'm thankful for it. But our marching orders are clear and we need to, if we're going to examine ourselves, examine them by that revelation. Love God and love one another like Jesus. Part two, God willing, next week. Father, thank you for your mercy and grace. What love thou has shown to us. Oh, Father, May the word hate never come out of our mouths, nor nest in our minds about a brother or sister in Christ. Father, there are things to hate, but may it never be thy people. Help us, because we are all limping in some way or another. We thank thee for the mercy thou dost show us, Now help us to be merciful. We thank thee for the grace thou dost show us. May we be gracious. We thank thee for the love that thou manifest towards us. May we show love to all thy children. And then father, as thou granted us, grant us grace. May we love our enemies. Now take us, make us thoughtful, and help us to walk according to thy precious word in communion with thee and in loving obedience. We pray it in Jesus's name. Amen. If you would please stand with me. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And I pray, God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it. May we go in the love of Christ and one another. Amen.