It's wonderful to preach the gospel. It's also wonderful to sing the gospel. And we should be just as serious about our singing as we are about our preaching, to be honest with you. We don't need to forget who it is we're really singing to. We're singing to our great God. May He find us acceptable before Him, all the words of our mouth acceptable before Him. Let's go to Him in prayer. Again, Lord, we approach your wonderful throne of grace. We do so, Lord, only because of your grace, only because you have chosen to know us and cause us to know you. Thank you, Lord, for faith to come. Thank you for faith to sing these songs this morning and to know, Lord, indeed that you hear us. And Lord, you respond to our singing. As we've just sang, Lord, we pray that you would speak to us. Speak to us through your holy words. Speak to us so that our lives will never be the same again. Help us, Lord, to honor, to glorify, to love you as you are worthy to be loved. For Christ's sake, in his name, amen. Our appointed text for this morning is 1 John chapter 5. 1 John chapter 5. And I guess I have been appointed this morning the guy that messes up the schedule for the rest of the day. I'll try not to do that. I'll go ahead and warn you right now. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get through the first five verses of this chapter. But I'm going to try. I'm going to have to get down and get with it to do it though. So you be in prayer for me because everything here, it's so important. I want to get it out. But it's a lot here, a lot more than I originally intended when I began the study for it. Our topic today is God is lovable. God is lovable. So really we have been been tasked within this text The privilege of exposing and helping us to apply a most wonderful, a most amazing attribute. 1 John 5, verse 1. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. At the base of our subject, at the foundation of our subject this morning, is this amazing attribute, this even, it's almost unthinkable, a communicable attribute of God. An attribute that goes right to the very essence, the very heart of not only what God does, but actually who He is. As a matter of fact, this apostle in this letter, very short letter, but he states this emphatically not once but twice, God, our God Yahweh, He is love. He is love. J.I. Packer in his book, Knowing God, said, When we looked at God's wisdom, we saw something of His mind. When we thought of His power, we saw something of His hand and His arm. When we considered His word, we learned about His mouth. But now, contemplating His love, we are to look into His heart. God is love. This is the very essence of God, of who God is. Now let's not misunderstand this. This doesn't mean that He can't hate. This doesn't mean that He doesn't or will not demonstrate wrath or judgment. It doesn't mean that. But what it actually does mean is that even those things Even those things will serve a higher purpose of demonstrating and revealing the intensity of His love. His hate, His wrath, His fury serve a higher purpose in this God who is love to demonstrate the intensity of His love. Now that is an amazing thought. God is love. So one of the core truths that John would have us to know in this amazing letter, and it is an amazing letter, it is the essence, it is the heart, it is the being of God, that God is love. That is the truth. But there is another parallel truth that he exposes here as well. The God who is love is as well lovable. As a matter of fact, if I could turn something around that he says here in chapter 4, verse 19, not to turn it around to draw it out of what it is, but just to turn it around so we might clarify what he's saying. We might grasp this. Let me turn it around for us. God first loved us. God first loved you. God first loved me. God first loved us saints. So that we could be enabled to actually love Him. Others also, by the way. That's in the same context. Let me say that again. God first loved us so that we could be enabled to actually love Him and others also. To actually love Him. And I want you to think about the implication just like this. I'm just going to give you a little something to take home with you and think it over, mull it around. This implication of God Himself actually being love, does that not mean that without knowing God, that we can never really truly know love? Without knowing God, so that also means without knowing God, we can never really truly express love. I know we live in a culture, a romantic culture, where love, love, love, love, love. What if all of that is not love? What if all of that can't even compare to what love is? What if all of that just covers up what true love is? It just smears over what true love is? Because if God is love, that means for us to truly know love, we must know Him. He is the essence of love. So, this obviously is an amazing letter, but there's something else that we must know about this little short letter. It's an argumentative letter. It's an argumentative letter. Here in this letter, John, the Apostle John, is arguing he's battling against something. He's battling against a doctrinal heresy that began to infiltrate into the churches. It was the heresy of Gnosticism, or literally, dualism. And I don't have a lot of time to get into everything, and I'll be honest with you, I don't know everything that it promotes. This teaching basically separated the spiritual from the natural. It made two dual things. Dualism. Anything that is spiritual could not be natural. Anything that was natural could not be spiritual. The two things were totally separated. They even went so far as to deny the deity of Christ in this, because if He was truly God or spiritual, He could never be a man natural. and vice versa. That's what their argument, and this is what the background of this letter of 1 John. He's arguing against this heresy. Another tentacle, which is really borne out in this book, in this letter, another tentacle of this heresy also promoted the thinking that a person's spiritual life, their spiritual life was completely separated from their natural or physical life. Which led people into thinking basically as long as their spiritual life, what they called their spiritual life was good, they could just live their physical life any way they wanted to. However they wanted to because they were two separate, totally separate things that could not be connected in any way. It didn't matter a bit how you lived. So John argues in this letter, basically he says, if you've read it, don't tell me that you have no sin when I see sin in you. Don't tell me that you love the Father when you love this world. Don't tell me that. Don't tell me that you love the children of God. When you live like the children of the devil. That you are the children of God when you live like the children of the devil. He argues that all through this. He brings us up to chapter 5 arguing that way. But here you are. This is the argument, but let's bring it right here today. Just make sure we get it. This is the same heresy that is alive and well today. It is the same heresy that is alive and well today again, even in sovereign grace Baptist churches. Now we don't call it Gnosticism anymore. We don't call it that, but I guarantee you there are people, perhaps even here today, there are people who believe that as long as they make a profession, and they jump through a few religious hoops, and they do their Sunday duty in their Sunday best, and give their Sunday tenth, that the rest of the week and the rest of the life is for their own pursuit and for their own glory. Their spiritual life, their religious life, is separated from their everyday life. That's the essence of the heresy of Gnosticism, and that is the same heresy that is alive and well in churches today. And let me just say, there's an aspect of it that is alive and well in every one of our hearts. Mine especially. Well, if we think like that, then the Apostle John is here making a spirit-breed argument, and actually it's a three-fold affirmation that proves us wrong. If we think that somehow that we can have this religious life, and then we can have our life, and God's okay with that, that that's okay, that that's even scriptural, well, John's going to argue against this here is what he's going to do. He's going to set forth affirmations that prove us wrong. He begins this argument way back in chapter 2, where he gives his three points of affirmation together in chapter 2. In chapters 3 and 4, he breaks them down separately and deals with them independently. But then here in chapter 5, we're just coming to the end of his argument in chapter 5, and he's going to bring them back together for us again so we can see them. So he states them. He deals with them independently. He brings it back together and concludes or summarizes what he has been teaching for the last four chapters. And he does that here in chapter 5. So this little amazing letter is really an argument against this Gnostic heresy. And then it is an affirmation of the real truth of God. And here in chapter 5, we have the summation of that real truth of God. So, let's come to the text. This text, this way, this morning. What about you? What about you? Are you truly, are you really, if I could put it like this, are you really okay before God? What about your, what about God's love for you and your love for God? Since God is love and God is lovable, is that your life? Is that the well your life is drawn out of? Is it really? Well, here we see John would have us to know, he would have us truly know that the truth, the truth of our spiritual life, this being loved and loving God, the real truth of our spiritual life is actually revealed by our life, by our physical life. The real reality of our love for God and His love for us, it is revealed. This is what John's saying here. It is revealed by our physical life. It's not separated. They're not separated. It's actually revealed by our physical life. First, He would have us to know that the real truth about you, the real truth about you is revealed on the ground of your faith. Look at verse 1. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Everyone, all who believe, all who have faith in Jesus as the Christ, as the Messiah, and all that entails that we read about in Scripture, all that have faith in Jesus as the Messiah of God, they are born of God. Or in other words, they have real, true, spiritual life. That's the statement. And I want us to notice something here. Because this one thing really gets at the heart of what John is expressing. You will notice that this truth about faith in Jesus bookends this text. It bookends this text. We just read, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Then look at the end of verse 5. Who is it that overcometh the world except the One, or we could say everyone who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This faith in Christ, it bookends this text. It's on both sides of it. It's really getting to the heart of what John is expressing. Let me put it like this. If you truly are loved of God, if you truly have been born of God, then all of your life runs from this faith in Jesus Christ. All of your life runs from the person and the work of the Christ of God, and all of your life runs to the faith that is in Jesus Christ. All of your life runs from it. All of your life runs to it. After all, I'll remind us what Paul said in Romans 8. Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God. Right? We like to hear that. We like to hear that nothing's going to say, if God loves us, there's nothing that's going to separate us from His love. Oh, it's wonderful. God's love is wonderful. And it is. It is. It is. That's not all He says. Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. The love of God is found in Christ Jesus. God's love is not in the air. God's love is not some kind of towel just thrown over the universe, no. God's love is found in one place and it is in Christ Jesus. It is not found any other way. And let me just say it like this. I'm going to get really plain with you. If you do not have faith in this person, Jesus Christ, if you do not have faith in His person and in His finished work, if you do not have faith in His life, in His death, in His burial, in His resurrection, in His present intercession for you, in His future exaltation, and glory, if you do not have faith in the Person and in the work of Jesus Christ, there is no reason for you to think that you possess the love of God. There's no reason. There's no reason for you to think that somehow God loves you if you do not have faith in Christ. The love of God is in Christ Jesus. That's the only place it's found. It's in Christ Jesus. The same apostle wrote it like this. This same apostle wrote it like this in his Gospel. For God, we know this, don't we? For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only Son of God. I mean, he can't say it any clearer than that. It's about faith in Christ. It's about believing in the person of the Son of God. So here the apostle is affirming to us that the true reality of our lives before God can be proven, the true reality of you, can be proven by our faith, by your faith in Jesus Christ. Our entire lives will run from Jesus. Our entire lives will run to Jesus. Our lives will be a believing life. If you possess, if you truly, if I can say it like this, if God truly loves you, you will have a believing life. If He truly loves you, if you don't have a believing life now, if He truly loves you, you will yet. He will give you a believing life. He will give you faith. Our lives must be a believing life. We must possess faith in Jesus Christ, in the person and in the work of Jesus Christ. And so you say, well, of course I believe in Jesus. Well, hold on. Because he's about to build on that first affirmation. He's not speaking here of just a mental head knowledge about a man named Jesus who actually existed. No, that's historical fact. Look at verse 1 again. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. So our true spiritual reality, brothers and sisters, your true spiritual reality is proven by your faith in Christ, but also by your love. This kind of believing, this kind of faith that John is talking about here, it is proven and verified through our love for God the Father, which let's include this too, it is proven and verified through our love for Christ, our love for God the Father in the face of Jesus Christ, and then it is proven and verified by our love for all of our other spiritual siblings. One writer said it like this, it is impossible to love God without loving His children. It is impossible to love God without loving His children, and it is impossible to love them without loving God. So our true state before God is tangibly proven by our faith in Jesus Christ and our love for Him, our love for God the Father, and our love for each other as His children. True salvation. If you possess true salvation, it will be verified. It will be revealed by you living a believing life and a loving life. Is that your life? So Sister So-and-so, she comes up to me after the service and says, she says, I know you don't know me, Brother Tom, but I love Jesus. I do love Jesus. I do love God the Father. I do love my brothers and sisters in Christ. I do, Brother, I do. So I ask her, why do you love Him? Why do you love Him? God the Father, why do you love Jesus Christ? Why do you love your brother and your sister? And she says to me, oh, Brother Tom, I love Jesus because He just makes me feel so good. He just makes me feel so wonderful. And I love God the Father. I mean, God the Father, He has blessed me so much. And my brothers and sisters, well, you know, Sister Sweetheart, she is just so sweet. I just love her. She's so sweet. But dear Saint, what about when Sister Sweetheart, what about when she becomes so ensnared in her sin that when you reach down to try to help her, try to help her up, she figuratively punches you in the face? You say, well, that don't happen. Well, you've never passed her to church evidently, have you? When a child of God can become so ensnared in sin, It's kind of like a person that's drowning. You go out and save them and they'll kill you. You're trying to save them. They'll take you down. So sister, what about when sister sweetheart becomes sister stench? What about that? What about then? Well, let me tell you what's going to happen then. This is going to happen then. When Sister Sweetheart, who has become Sister Stinch because of her sin, when she needs you to love her the most, when she needs you to love her the most, when she needs you to love her even when she is hating and abusing you, you're going to turn away from her. You're going to turn away from her and you're going to leave her trapped in your sin. Because really, you only love Sister Sweetheart when Sister Sweetheart was Sister Sweetheart. You loved her because how her sweetness made you feel. That's why you loved her. And Saint, what about when Jesus, and what about when God your Father puts you upon the bed of affliction? What about when He does that vivid description that He gives us in Hebrews 12, Hebrews 12, when He disciplines, and let me say it like this in a Georgia way, when He whoops you so bad, when He whoops you so bad, your arms and your legs are put out of joint. What about then? Here's the reality, if you are only loving God for how He makes you feel, and how blessed He makes you feel, how long are you going to love Him then, when it looks like all of His blessings are gone as far as the natural is concerned? How long are you going to keep loving them? Here's what I'm getting at, saints. Our love for God and our love for each other has to have a greater foundation than just us. It has to have a greater foundation than just for our own benefit, for our own enjoyment, what we are getting out of it. Our love for God, our love for one another has to be bigger than that. And that's what John is telling us. Here's the evidence of true faith. Here's the evidence of true love. This is how we can really know the truth. Look at verse 2. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. By this we know or we have an experiential understanding Here's how we know. We know that we love the children of God when we love God, when we love God and obey. That word obey means to observe, carry out, and it's a present active verb. It means that we are now obeying. We are now obeying His commandments. And this word commandments is not just about 10 of them, and it's not just about 1,613 of them. No, this word commandments is talking about the authoritative declaration of God. This book. Here we are. Right back to it. This book. Here it is. Our love for God and our love for one another must be God-born love. That is a love that is born out of God-born faith which comes from where? Where does God-born faith come from? The hearing of His Word. This book. And by hearing, obeying is implied. We love God. We love Christ. We love God in Christ. Look at me, because of this. Because of this book. We love God. We love God in Christ because of what He has revealed concerning Himself and His Son and His children in His Word. And we love each other like this. We love each other this way. We must continue to make, not only to make, but we must be continuing to make a conscience experiential choice to love each other. It doesn't matter if Sister Sweetheart has turned to Sister Stench. We are going to choose to love her anyway. It doesn't matter if we are put on the bed of affliction. It doesn't matter if God has wore our behinds out. We are going to love Him anyway. It doesn't matter how we feel. It doesn't matter about our circumstances. We are going to love Him anyway. We are going to love them anyway. They have wronged us. Oh, preacher, you don't know how that person, that brother or that sister has wronged us. I guarantee you, they have not wronged you like you have wronged God. Love that brother and sister. Don't do it because it makes you feel good. Do it because God told you to and God showed you how to do it. Look at the cross. Look at the cross. That's how He loved us. That's how He loved us when we were absolutely unlovable. That's how He loved us when we deserved His wrath to be poured down upon our heads. He loved us anyway. We obey His commands. We believe His Word. We do what He has told us to do in spite of the circumstances of this world. The circumstances of our life. Matter of fact, he continues to build on this in verse 3. Look at verse 3, it's interesting. When I got into this text and dealing with these verses, it's so interesting the way he says it here. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. You know what he's really arguing, affirming there? He's basically saying, just like he said in the other parts of the book, don't even talk to me about God loving you, or you loving God, or you loving one another. Because this is love. It's us saints keeping, guarding at all costs, truly treasuring God's Word. What does this book mean to you? What does this book mean to us? Loving God is us realizing what this book is. It is the breath of God Himself. Loving God is having the right esteem of God's Word of this book in and upon our lives. This is love. Us keeping, guarding, treasuring God's Word and viewing, understanding God's Word. Not as some grievous, weighty, troublesome, burdensome is the word that it uses. Not as some grievous thing that holds us back from what we want. No, but us knowing and acknowledging God's Word is that which will lift us up to life. We understand that? This book, oh, that just keeps me from doing what I want. That keeps me from having what I want. That keeps me from feeling what I want. Oh, when the preacher preaches on Sunday, I just feel so terrible. I shouldn't feel this terrible about myself. If God's Word makes you feel that terrible about yourself, you need to feel that terrible about yourself. You need to repent from whatever it is and realize what God's Word is. It's God speaking directly to you. We need to know and acknowledge God's Word that it's not something that keeps us from what we want, it gives us life. It leads us to life, not only just life, but super abundant life. The real life that is truly worth living will be life lived out of this book. This book, God's Word, we need to realize it is something that will give light, not dreariness to our life. but light and blessing to our life. We love God and we love each other through obeying, doing, living God's Word, which, by the way, guess what the central theme of God's Word is? Well, let me answer it like this. What's the greatest commandment that all other commandments are built upon? Love the Lord your God with all your everything, and love one another. Isn't that a coincidence? The very central theme of God's Word, the life He is showing us, what is truly living, is exactly what John's talking about. God's Word is good, isn't He? It's exactly why Jesus said, if you love Me, keep My commandments. So John's affirmation here of the life of a true Christian, A life, the life of the one truly loved and in love with God. Get this, three things. It is a believing life, it is a loving life, it is an obedient life. That's what he says. That's what God's Word says. This world is out here searching for life. Oh, searching for the perfect life. They don't know where to find it. And let's not condemn them. You wouldn't know where to find it either. I wouldn't know where to find it either. Matter of fact, how will they know if you don't go tell them? One more fact of affirmation that John wants us to know. Boy, I've got to scream here. You said, I thought you were screaming. This life, this believing life, believing in Jesus Christ, having faith in Jesus Christ, This loving life, loving God in Christ and loving others. This obedient life, loving, living and obeying God's Word. Get this, get this, here it is, the fourth one. This, that life, saints, that life is the victorious life. Look at it, verse 4. For everyone who has been born of God, And you go right back, take that back to verse 1 and mix it up. It'll tell you everything that you need to know about that. Everyone who has been born of God overcomes this world and this is the victory. This is the victory that has overcome the world. Our faith. Real, tangible, proven faith. This is the victory. This is the victory. The victorious life. Here in verse 4, John basically repeats one Greek word three times. Overcomes. Victory. Overcome. Basically one Greek word. Different forms of the same Greek word. And you all know it. Some of you are probably wearing it. Nike. That's the Greek word. Now when we hear that word, we think of a pair of tennis shoes, right? Just do it. But that's not what the original reader thought about when they heard that word. It's not. What they thought about when they heard this word, listen, it's very important. What they thought about was a nation conquering another nation. An army conquering another army. And do you know what an army did when they came in and conquered the city of an opposing nation? It's really interesting. The first thing you need to realize in this world, most everything was built out of stones. I'm going to tell you, in Israel, everywhere you look, there's a rock. That's just the way it is. There's a rock. They're plowing up the field to plant stuff and I'm looking out there and it looks like big mud clods. It's not big mud clods, it's big rocks. They got the field plowed and ready to plant and it's rocks. I'm like, how in the world are they going to grow it? By God's grace, they grow it. There's a rock. Everywhere. Everywhere. So everything is built out of stone. They build very little out of wood. When an army came in and conquered a city, they would go to great lengths to overturn those stones. They would go to great lengths to overturn everything. I saw firsthand when I was in Israel a couple of years ago, on the southwest corner of the city of Jerusalem to this day, there is a massive pile of these huge stones that the Romans had overturned off of the Temple Mount onto the main street of Jerusalem alone. But here's the thing. When I say huge stones, I'm not talking about this or this or this. No. Some of those stones that Herod used to build the foundations of the Temple Mount, they're half as big. One stone, half as big as this building. Okay, so now think about that. The Roman army comes in here and they're going to overturn that kind of stone. They don't have a bulldozer. They don't have a big tractor. They've got people. Why would they go to so much trouble to overturn a stone? I mean, they've already conquered the people. They've already led them away, got them where they want them, subdued them. Why would they go to all this trouble using, I mean, how many people, how many man-force it would take to destroy and overturn just all of these big, huge rocks? Why would they bother? Here's why. Because those overturned cities and temples and stones demonstrated it was tangible evidence of their victory over those people and their gods. That's what they thought. That's what all of that stone overturning was about. So get the picture that John is drawing for us here. Do you desire a life that demonstrates first to God and then to each other and then to the others around us? Do you desire a life that demonstrates the overturning, the defeating of this fallen world system of enmity and hatred and iniquity and our sin? Do you want a life that demonstrates, here it is, do you want a life that screams that your God is God? Do you want a life that screams that your God is mighty to save? Do you want a life that screams Jesus Christ is willing and able to really save me from my sin? Do you want that kind of life? Do you want that kind of life that demonstrates this overturning of all that sin and iniquity and fallen system upon you and upon this world? Do you want that kind of life? Listen, 1 John 1-5, this is that life. That's what John is saying. You want a life that really says, my God is sovereign. My God is the able Savior. My God really can save you from sin. Here it is. This is the life. This is the truly victorious life. This life, this life is a real tangible proof that victory has been wrought in you. This life is. This life. The believing life. The loving life. the obedient life. As a matter of fact, brothers and sisters, this is the life that love bought for you. This is the life that love bought for you, and this is the life that proves it. This is the life that proves it. May the Lord bless us.