If you want to eat breakfast, we've got to get through this. 1 John chapter 5. Yes, I only have five verses. 1 John 5, starting in 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, and that word overcomes there is conquers. For everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory, and it's the same word. This is the conquering that has conquered the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God? Father, I pray that you would speak through these verses to us this morning. Help us just get our day started off and help us to point our hearts towards you. In Christ's name, Amen. Bill spoke to us about the struggles and dealing with that objective and subjective guilt and to try to summarize his 25 plus points, my takeaway was, are you actively combating Satan in his attempt to tempt you to live a defeated life in Christ? Are you actively combating Satan in his attempt to tempt you to live a defeated life in Christ. And John takes that thought and he combats it here in verses 1 through 5. And he tells us you can overcome it. You can conquer these temptations. You can conquer these struggles that you are facing in this fallen sinful world while we anxiously await for Christ to return. So what are some issues that we do face with combating Satan? Well for some, it's always trying something new. We always want to try the next thing. As believers, what's the next book? What's the next this? What's the next help thing? Trying to get something new or just never being satisfied to a fault. you know for me as a I'm a perfectionist and I don't I don't try to force that on anybody else I never tried to force it on my children but but I want to be perfect. I want everything I do to be just as good as it can be. When I was in first grade my first grade teacher Miss Barker had a parent teacher meeting with my parents and said yeah I'm really concerned about Steven because if he doesn't get a hundred on a test he really beats himself up over it and he's just really distraught over that. You know, and my parents were like, well, you know, he really wants to do his best. You know, that's what he's striving for. And that was somewhat ingrained within me, you know, just to always do your best. And for me, maybe to a fault, but I don't, but, but the struggle then that I have is I don't want to try something if I don't think I can succeed at it and do it really well. If I can't conquer it, if I can't do it to the best, then I struggle with figuring out should I really do that. I'm more comfortable doing what I'm good at. and I'm sure many of you are the same but the problem with that is that it only gives us a sense of self-gratification rather than pushing us to grow and pushing us to do more than what we're just comfortable doing and I really think and again I'm kind of broad brushing here and I know everybody's not in that same group But I think some men struggle with taking on service as a deacon or teaching Sunday school or just sharing a thought or a verse or something with others because their fear of failure or their fear of not meeting someone else's standards as they perceive them. You know, and we look at somebody else and go, man, you know, you know, they preach a sermon like this, or they teach Sunday school like this, or they reach out like this. And, you know, they can minister to somebody like this and I can't do it that way. So instead of trying just to do what you can do, we just back away and say, well, I'm just not going to do it at all. Because I don't want to be compared to them. I don't want somebody to view me in light of them and be like, well, you know, they're better and you're not. And so we don't push forward. Some struggle with the opposite in that they think they're always right and everything they do is always the best and can't be improved upon. And in this way, they're allowing their pride and their arrogance to prevent them from growing and to be used in a more efficient manner. And whatever the issue, the fact is God does not want us to live defeated and alone. And he says, you can overcome, you can conquer. So what is God's solution? What is John's solution here in these verses? And we see the recursive parallelism coming out in John's writing. And he's just going back to the first four chapters and just pulling things back in and back out to remind his readers of what he's already said. And so he says, believe in Jesus as the anointed one, the Messiah, the son of God. David brought this to our attention. What do you believe about Jesus the Christ? Do you believe that he is just a good teacher? Do you just believe that he's a prophet? That he's just this charismatic leader? Or do you truly believe that Jesus is the anointed one? The Son of God? The only one Savior of the world? Because everything starts and revolves around what you believe about Jesus the Christ. And our task is to continue believing in Jesus as the Son. David said, faith that sticks until Jesus comes. Secondly, love God. Steve Rohn said be part of the church in an active role, confess your sin, continue to believe the gospel. We see that again in verse 2. And I think it's kind of a, you know, we don't really realize it when it's happening, but it's a progression. We believe in Jesus as the Christ. We put our faith in him. We believe in him. Then what happens? We're born of God, like instantaneously. And then the love for the father results from believing in the son. How many of you that are married, when you fell in love with your spouse, you immediately fell in love with your in-laws? One. I was already in love. My son-in-law is getting brownie points. He's a little slow, but he's not totally stupid. But what's the point? We fell in love with the woman that we were going to marry, and then in time, we hopefully But when you fall in love with Jesus, you're going to fall in love with the Father. That's going to happen. And if you don't love God, the Father, then John says you don't love the Son. It's not like I love Jesus, but God, that's okay. Or vice versa. I love God, but I don't really do the Jesus thing. No, they're hand in hand. You're in the family. You know and I would hate to be part of a family where you say I love my wife but I hate her parents. I mean what a miserable Christmas that's gonna be kind of idea. You know and what a miserable spiritual life you'd have one way or the other. And so you've got to understand that loving Christ is loving God and loving God is loving Christ. And then it goes a step farther. We love like God loves you. David brought this out. This sacrificial, continually present in you, strengthening love that allows you to impact other and make disciples. And I would even take that maybe a step farther where do you love yourself as God loves you? Because too often we beat ourselves up and God doesn't. You know, God, And I'm sorry, I struggle with that. I understand mentally, I get it. God sees me as perfect and I stand before him that way, but yet I know I sin. And I struggle with that. Again, as a perfectionist, I don't want to sin. I hate to sin. I had an incident yesterday and I hated it. Had to apologize, had to make things right with someone. And you know, I just, I hate that. I enjoyed, you know, it's good to make the reconciliation, but I hate having to go back and remember I have to do that. You know, I hate the action. Then he says, love your brothers in Christ. Steve Ron again. You know what? Your horizontal relationships aren't going to be right until your vertical relationship is right. Right. And whenever one begins to decline, the other is going to decline as well. They go in parallel. You know, you can't say, I'm right with God and hate my brother. I can't love my brother and say, well, God, I don't really need you. The two go hand in hand again. Then number four, he says, obey God's commandments and learn to understand how they relate to you and to your growth and maturity and being conformed to the image of Christ. Steve and Mike both touched on this. Why are rules often created by man? Often. I'm not gonna say all the time, but often. Because people mess up. Alright, because people mess up. So we would say that is reactive, right? You know, man creates rules reactively. You know, when I was principal of the academy, you know, somebody would do something stupid, so here, let's make a rule against that. You know, and next year, somebody does something else, and all right, we need a rule about that. You know, and it ended up, you know, you had all these rules because you're always trying to combat the sin of people. But you know what? God doesn't do that. God provides us with commands that will enable us to conquer the world and to bring him the honor and the glory that he deserves. And when our relationship with God is healthy and right, we'll obey his commandments. Because the love that we have for the Father that we've received after believing in Jesus as the Christ gives us the desire just to please him and to obey him. So I obey out of love and the desire not to grieve the Lord or not to grieve the Holy Spirit. We've been talking about that in our study school class. And those of you that have children, let me encourage you Your goal for your children is that they obey you because of their love for you. You want them to obey because you know what? I love my dad so much. I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to grieve him. I don't want to disappoint him. That should be your goal to instill for them to know how much you love them. that it just breaks their heart when they see a look of disappointment upon your face. And then take that thought and realize that's how it is with God. That's how it is with the Holy Spirit. And we should have that same, man, I just grieve the Holy Spirit. I don't want to do that. And that should drive you to change that behavior. True believers emulate their master and they don't find it a burden to follow in their footsteps. Jesus said, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. The greater our love for God, the more that we see ourselves through his eyes, the easier it is to obey him. The less restrictive his commands are. because we begin to see them as a pleasure to obey. We understand the desire that God has for us, that it's not he's trying to squash us under a thumb, but he's trying to get us to flourish and to blossom and to be conquerors in this world. And so the things that he has given us to do and to obey are to benefit us and then ultimately to bring him that honor and glory as well. And when we realize how much God loves us, how much God saved us from, I really feel like everything else should fall into place. But we have to maintain that, the idea of how much he loves us and what he has saved us from. Because God has provided us with everything that we need to conquer sin, to be conformed to the image of his son, to overcome the world. And what does John say that is? One word. If you have the ESV, there's a dash and then he says, our faith. Our faith. The faith that he has bestowed upon us and given us as a gift, but that we grab hold of. And we have a confident assurance in Christ and his promises. Not from me, but my confidence is in Christ. My confidence, my assurance is in his promises. So when we love God, when we love our brothers, when we obey God, it gives us the confidence that our faith is authentic. Father, I pray that you would take these truths, that you would burn them into our hearts. We ask that you would bless the food and the continued time of fellowship, the remaining service this morning. and that you would help us to grow and be conformed to you as a result of our time here at the camp and our study at First John. In Christ's name, amen.