Well, I should have come to the songs thing this morning. Good job, y'all. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, we pray that your grace may always proceed and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, almost 20% of Americans suffer from some sort of anxiety disorder, and one out of every three people will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. Now the Institute makes a distinction between general and occasional anxious feelings that one experiences any time you're having a problem at work or taking a test or making an important decision from an anxiety disorder. An anxiety disorder involves more than a temporary worry and fear and is instead marked by an anxiety that does not go away. It gets worse over time and it begins to interfere with job performance, school, work, and relationships, and it's generally irrational and inexplicable. Psychology today, likewise, looks at anxiety as a kind of unfocused, objectless, future-oriented fear. And so they note that there is an element of fear in anxiety, and yet they would also differentiate anxiety from fear, in that fear is seen as a reaction to a specific observable danger. And so while anxiety is a generalized worry about the future, fear is a specific response to a reality. Now the line is definitely blurry and the two are usually related, but when you worry about whether or not you're gonna be able to provide for your family because of the potential instability of the future, that's more in line with anxiety. And when you're mowing the lawn for the first time in two or three weeks in flip-flops and scream like a 12-year-old girl when a snake slithers out from the tall grass, that's more in line with fear. It is a specific, observable reality. The Bible makes a similar distinction. And while all feelings of anxiety and fear are not inherently sinful, some of them can be. So whether you're slightly anxious and you don't know why and you aren't in sin, or if you are in sin and are so used to feeling anxious that you feel anxious when you're not feeling anxious, God doesn't want you to feel that way. And whether you are scared that you might get sick and die of the coronavirus and are not in sin, or whether you're so fearful what people might think about you that you're being unfaithful and disobedient, fear is not God's ultimate desire for you. His remedies for all of your anxieties, for all of your fears, real or imagined, immediate or impending, sinful or not, is the same. He wants you to have your fears rightly ordered and then driven out by his love. When people are anxious, Jesus says, don't worry, don't be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear, for the Father takes care of all of his creatures and he loves you even more than them. And while we aren't to fear anything in this world, for even the most fearful thing here can only destroy our bodies, we are to fear the one who can destroy both our body and soul in hell, and yet, We will see in our text today that even then, even in your godly fear, God does not want you to remain even in that rightly ordered and properly directed fear. And so, Saints of Reformation Covenant Church, I invite you to stand to honor the reading of God's most holy word, if you're willing and able, from 1 John 4. We'll pick up in verse 11 and go through 21. Here God's word. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also owe love to one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us. He has given us his spirit. And we have seen and testify that the father has sent his son to be the savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. For we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in the world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment. And whoever fears has not yet been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment that we have from him. Whoever loves God must also love his brother. This is the word of the Lord. May God add his blessing to the reading and the hearing and the preaching of his word and may he grant us all the grace to trust and obey him and all the church said. Amen, please be seated. Now we are about halfway through part two of John's epistle. For those of you that haven't been with us in his prologue, John laid out the foundation for us that would mark his path going forward. There were men who were once in the church that had gone out on their own and were spreading false teaching, they were living godless lives, and they were toying with people's affections, all in the name of being God's messengers. So God's people are confused. John writes to them and reminds them of his apostolic authority, and he calls them back to the beginning of the new creation. He calls them back to Christ. He wants them to have fellowship with one another, fellowship with him, and fellowship with the triune God, and he wants them to know the assurance and joy that comes from knowing that they know God. He does this in part one, which is one verse eight through 229, by reminding them that God is light. And if they're gonna have fellowship and experience life in God's new creation light, then they must confess and renounce sin, which is darkness, and walk in the light, and obey his commandments. They must reject the old world's counterfeit goods and renounce the false teachers who might profess a kind of Christ, but are actually anti-Christs. And they must continue to do this over and over and over again together. In part two, he takes a similar approach. He reminds them that God is not only light, but God is love. And if they are to experience life and fellowship and joy in this new familial love, then they must confess and renounce sin, obey His commandments to love and not hate, and love what God loves the way God loves. And that's where we're picking up today. Having just been reminded of who God is and how he loves, John now turns to what that should look like in our lives if we are going to have the joy and the assurance that comes from knowing that we know the one true God, for there's only one. I picked up our You may have noticed a couple verses early, mainly to mess with Ruth, but also because it's how the Greek text breaks down these distinctions. Last week was a sort of poetry or a song of sorts, and as a follow-up to that spiritual song, John ties the status of God's people to the name of God's people. grabs them by their baptism, if you will, and reminds them that they are the beloved of the God who is love. He has continually expressed his endearment for these people. He's called them little children six times so far, and as we get closer to the end of the letter, he gives them a hint that the letter is coming to an end by referring to them here as beloved the sixth time. Beloved, if God has loved us in this way, if the father who loves you sent his son who loves you in order to give his very life for you because he loves you, and what's more, he's given you his spirit to keep you safe because he loves you. Beloved, if he's done all of that in love because he's loved, and he most certainly has, then you get to do whatever you want. regardless of what your father thinks about it. You can believe what you want to believe. You can chase after what you want. You can treat people however you want. He's done all of that so that you can have complete autonomy, destroying your lives and the lives of the other people that he loves, and no one can say anything to you about it. No, that's absurd. We know that that's not how it goes, even if somehow we hear teaching like that coming from the church, that God has loved you, and then there's no obligation that comes out of grace. How can as the church, when we look at what the triune God has done for us, think and love and act the way that we do? How can we, who say we know this God, come to the word of our lived out by his son and inspired by his spirit and then treat it lightly? How can we see the great kindness and the patience and the mercy that he's shown to us and then lash out with our tongues or from behind our keyboards? How can we see the extent of his sacrificial love for us and put our preferences and our comforts and our own desires above everything and everybody else? It's nonsensical. It's irrational. It's sin. And it's something more we'll cover next week, but for now, beloved, this ought not to be so among us. John says, beloved, if God has loved us like he's loved us, the only possible and appropriate response is to love who God loves, what God loves, the way God loves, and that's to sacrificially love one another until your love looks just like his. It's by His Spirit, which He has given to His church, we can be assured that we are abiding in Him because we are seeing this kind of love. In verse 13, John is not separating the possession of the Holy Spirit as some sort of promise for people, regardless of how they're living, as though the Holy Spirit would abide in a place filled with sin and darkness and idolatry and hate. He's also not saying that if there's a ton of people getting together and feeling like things are going great, that's because the Holy Spirit's there. The Bible does not equate the presence of the Holy Spirit as some sort of nebulous, subjective presence of a neat feeling when cool music comes on, or you read an awesome quote in a book, and John isn't doing that either. John is couching the promise and the testimony of the Holy Spirit for God's people within the context of his entire letter. Are we all continually walking in the light as you mourn over and confess and repent of your sins? Are y'all continuing to reject worldliness and false teachers and continuing to grow in your love for God and his word and one another? If not, it doesn't matter if you get goosebumps that you attribute to the Holy Spirit. You can't know that he abides in you. But if so, then it doesn't matter that you don't get goosebumps and you're worried something's wrong with you because your friend's false assurance that they've equated with the musician going from C to E minor. I don't know what that means. Dave Hatcher said he could manipulate people that way, so when y'all are up there, talk to him. Anyone who would say otherwise. does not have a leg to stand on. And in the next verse, John sort of reminds these folks of his apostolic credentials to bolster his argument. In verse 14, he implies that they must listen to him and not those other guys because John was taught by Jesus himself. It was in this similar vein that the early church demanded that any and all teachers must be able to trace their discipleship lineage back to the apostle who could trace it back to Jesus. No one could self-ordain and no one could self-commission. Now that's not to say that just because they could trace their lineage back to one of the apostles that they were legit, but it is to say that if they couldn't, then they definitely weren't recognized as such. John reminds them, as if they needed it, he and those whom he has commissioned have seen and are now testifying, are bearing witness that Jesus is the Christ, the eternal Son of God and Savior of the cosmos, which is evidence that they possess the Holy Spirit. continual messages, God the Father loved the world such that he sent God the Son to save it and God the Spirit to bear an effective witness to this good news and no other good news. Everyone who maintains this confession reveals that God abides in him and he has been brought into that triune fellowship. This is not about getting a dose of the Holy Spirit from a magic dropper so that he can live in the little container in your heart. This is the third person, the Trinity, dwelling with you in such a way that he embraces you and he envelops you and he draws you into his family where you get to live and move and have your being. We must always remember that that subjective experience is directly tied to the objective person and work of the Lord Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the world. This is always done for the individual in the context of the covenant community, a truth that John does not consider even an apostle to be the exception to. In verse 16, he includes himself with them, and by extension, we do the same. If an apostle doesn't separate himself from the community, how could we? What's more, God doesn't exist outside of the context of community, so how could we? The Trinity has projected outward. His love has projected outward in the sending of the Son and the Spirit, and then He draws you toward Himself by the power of the Holy Spirit through God's people. John, his audience. Us, everyone else who has been born of God have come to know and come to believe in the love God has for us by the power of the Holy Spirit through the church. And if we've come to know the love of God and the God who is love, then we abide and we remain in his love and in him by abiding and remaining in the household of God. John continues to drive the significance of this home by saying that remaining together in love is the means God uses to accomplish the goal of his love. And the goal of his love is our perfection. It's our completion. And it said, perfect, complete love of God that proceeds from His very being and took on flesh in the person of Jesus who loved His own to the end is the same Trinitarian love that we get to love one another with. It's that very same love, though not yet perfect in us, is right now being perfected in us by means of God's love to us through one another. God wants us to continue to abide in His love because His perfecting love is doing something for us. He's preparing us for something. He's preparing us for someone. Verse 17, we are told that He is perfecting His love in us so that when we see Him as He is, when we come to the day of judgment, we will not shrink back in fear and search for fig leaves. Having put on His love like a wedding dress, He wants us to run down the aisle to Him. And again, John draws on the teachings of Jesus to help him serve his people and give them courage during this time. You've probably noticed having been in John so long the last couple years, even in this letter, everything that John is saying is pretty much an echo of the things that Jesus taught his disciples, especially in the upper room. If you think back to that evening, just like John's audience is anxious and afraid because of the trials they're going through now, the disciples were becoming anxious and afraid because Jesus said he was going away. He wasn't gonna be with them, and he teaches them, and he says, don't be afraid. He beckoned them to look at him, believe in him, trust in him. He was gonna leave, but He was gonna send the Spirit of the truth so that they could remember all of these things to empower their ministry and to keep them safe in Him. If they loved Him, they would keep His commandments. And if they kept His commandments, the Spirit would be with them. Sure, they would scatter when the world came after them, but they had to stick together and remain in Him and in His love. And though Jesus said He wouldn't be there with him, He would send someone better. He wraps up these promises and exhortations in John 16, and He says that He's telling His disciples these things because they are going to face tribulation. They are going to face fear and anxiety, and He wants them to have a peace and a courage, for He has overcome the world. Verse 17, that's what John is drawing on when he says, as he is, so also are we in this world. That night before Jesus's crucifixion, before his death, he told the disciples they didn't need to fear because he had already overcome the world. Even though it technically hadn't happened yet, because the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God was the will of God from before the foundation of the earth, it was as already good as done. And so the disciples whom Jesus loved could take heart, they could have courage, they could have steadfastness, and joy, and assurance, and faith in the midst of terrifying times, because they trusted him and stuck together. It's the same for us. Everyone whom God has placed his love on from before the foundation of the world can likewise trust that they, just as Jesus, are already overcomers in the world. Just like Jesus was already an overcomer before his suffering and death, so also can his followers before their suffering and death have a similar confidence, not because they look at the perfect way with which they love, but because they look at the perfect way in which he loved them. The more we see his love for us, the more courage we will have to face our fears. And yet the more imperfect our love, the more we will be inundated with all sorts of fears, all sorts of anxieties, not the least of which should be thought of having to face a God who is love. And that might sound strange, to be afraid of a God who is love. But if we believe He's loved us, if we hear the good news and when we see and hear and taste the gospel and we know that the only proper response is to extend that very same love to others, then we are gonna be tempted to be afraid to face Him because we don't see that kind of love in our lives. We default in our flesh to think that we have to be more like Him before we're worthy of Him. But the gospel says he became like us so that he could make us like him. It was his love that initiated all of this and his love never fails. Every pastor has likely had to try to comfort a tenderhearted brother or sister who we know loves God. who we know loves his people, but the brother or sister is afraid because they look at their lives and they think, I don't think I love him enough. Sometimes it's a low-grade anxiety over the thought of facing God, but other times this is a life-shaking phobia. And that's the word John uses here in verse 18. The word for anxiety, merimno'o, is less well-known, but that's the word we translate into anxiety. And so when Jesus tells people to not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink, or what you will wear, he uses it to refer to that generalized angst about an unknown future. But when the disciples see Jesus walking on the sea, they cry out in fear, they cry out in phobia. It's a ghost. And even after he calms the thunder and he calms the lightning and the winds cease from the storm that he brought to them, they were filled with great phobia, with great fear. And they said to one another, who is this man that even the wind and the sea obey him? Phobia in the face of Jesus. It's this exact same word for fear that the Israelites are said to have experienced after Yahweh spoke to them from the thunder and the flashes of lightning when he gave them the Ten Commandments. We are told that they were afraid and they were trembling. And Moses says to them, don't fear, for God has come to test you so that you might fear him and might not sin. Did you catch that one? Moses said, do not fear, God came so that you would fear. And so which is it? Were they supposed to be afraid or were they not supposed to be afraid? Yes. He's not contradicting himself. They were not to respond in fear to the thunder and the lightning and the flashes of smoke, but they should fear God. And so he taught them fear through fearful things so that they would learn to fear rightly and therefore not be afraid. You can think of Israel like a small, skittish child. And God knew that they were a fearful people, but he wanted their fears to be rightly ordered. He was doing something through his people. They needed to know all the things that they were used to being scared of, the things that they had phobias about were unworthy of their fear relative to how much they should fear Yahweh. And so he displays a hint of his glory in the thunder and the lightning because he wants them to snap out of it. Pay attention, let go of your various fears that cause you to disobey and fear me most so that you will obey. He wasn't mean for God to scare his children. He was merciful. He knew their frame. He knew that they were so immature that the only emotion that would keep them safe from themselves was fear. Fathers, if this is the approach the father took, then it's not necessarily wrong for our fathers to do that as well. But it is important to note that it is not the only way the father trained his children, nor was that initial fear supposed to be the thing that motivated them after they grew up and matured. So fathers, it is right and it is good for you to warn your children about the dangers of all sorts of things. And it is good and right for you to teach them to have a rightly ordered fear. If they do not fear the light plug enough to keep their fingers and their forks out of it, and you've moved them 10 times and they continue to go back to it, it's okay for you to instill a little fear to keep them safe. Now, in God instilling fear into his children, he does not sin. He does not be controlled by anger such that he lashes out in order to instill fear. Fathers, this is not an invitation for you to be harsh with your children. It's not permission for you to thunder at your children, and this is not an out for you to justify your impatient, sinful anger towards your children. This is an invitation for you to love, to care for, and to protect your children from hurting themselves and others by instilling a healthy dose of fear. If you don't do this, you will raise fools. And God doesn't suffer fools. But if our children and our goal for our children is wisdom, which should be the goal of every parent for their children, then we must understand that fear is the beginning of wisdom. At the same time, fear is just the beginning of wisdom. If you teach how to love well, if you model how to love well, then as your children mature and grow, you will not need to continually motivate them with fear, because they will grow in their love and respect for you and your words, and they will trust you that you are always for them, even when you have to scare them a little bit. That's the same pattern God the Father took with his children. While Israel was immature and needed a fearful discipline, he also begins to impart wisdom to them so that they might grow up. We see the embodiment of all of God's wisdom in God's Son. Jesus showed God's children what it looked like to obey the Father, not out of fear, but out of love. And when you obey out of a wise, faithful, joyful obedience, Jesus was able to fulfill every jot and tittle of the law. And so now as God's children on the other side of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, having seen the ultimate display of wisdom and love, we can grow up. Because of Jesus, we no longer need to hear fear and thunder and lightning Because we know God is more fearful than anything we could ever fear. Nor do we have to look at our failure to keep his laws and fear that there is eternal cross waiting for us on the other side of the grave. For in Christ we can see the love and wisdom of God to us and for us. And the more we grow in knowing his love for us, the less we will fear him and the more we will revere him. That's gonna produce an obedience that no amount of fear could ever hope to produce, an obedience that is rooted in love and expressed in joy. That's what it means when perfect love drives out fear. If we try to obey, and you know people who try to obey, perhaps it's you, out of fear and dread. If that's what motivates your obedience, you're gonna end up hopeless. You're gonna end up exhausted. or maybe worse, you're gonna end up running away to try to get away from the Father. But if when we fail, if when we fear, if then we look to the love God has extended to us, the love that He extended to us first, then we'll be reminded of the love with which He loved us is an infinite love. And if we remind one another that His love was such that He did not withhold His Son from us, then we will abide in that love and continue to have His love perfected in us. It's this kind of outward-facing, steadfast love that can only come from God, and we can only experience and extend it because He did so first. The good news is that He's gonna continue to do it in you and through you until His love has been completed and perfected and fills the entire world by the power of the Holy Spirit through His church. Therefore, let's continue to abide in Him, abide in His love, growing in our love for who and what God loves, the way God loves, together. Amen. Let's pray. All praise to you, dear Father in heaven. For you've opened up to us the way to eternal life and the resurrection of your son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We give you thanks for all those who have gone before us in the faith and now rest from their labors. Keep us in this same faith and embolden us by your resurrection to be fearless in the face of disease, chaos, loneliness, and every sorrow of this world. Give us a solemn expectation to cheer us that our Redeemer lives, and we too shall be resurrected and glorified to live with Him in His eternal kingdom. Through the same Jesus Christ, your Son, our resurrected Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.