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All right, let's look at verse
15 in chapter number 3. And I know that's not my assigned
task, but I hope to do more than just
preach this morning. In fact, I hope not to preach.
I hope to help you. John writes in verse number 15
of chapter 3 of the first epistle out of three of them, John the
Evangelist, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. Did you notice there are no caveats
to that? Everyone who hates his brother
is a murderer and you know that no murderer has eternal life
abiding in him. Would you read that with me one
more time? Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer
has eternal life abiding in him. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Help us, Lord God, to be edified this morning through
our time in the Word. And God, just help me to be a
good teacher this morning. May your anointing be on me because
of my desire to help these men learn the Word of God. And because
it's your word, Lord, and because it is the words of life, come
here under this tent, Holy Spirit, and do what I can't do. In Jesus'
name, amen. Now, I chose that verse because it captures the difficulty
of these five chapters. And it captures the difficulty
of these five chapters so well. Now, men, me, you, and us, right,
because I'm you, The Word of God is hard. Reading
the Word of God is hard. And if we're all honest under
the tent, I don't want it to be hard. I want to be able to
read a sentence one time, comprehend it, and be done with it. In fact,
nothing that I read today is as hard as the Word of God. with
some exceptions of Shakespearean literature and things like that.
But everything else that I read today has been dumbed down, and
it's been written in such a low level that most of the time I
get it in less than one sentence. I can just about skim over it,
and I get what it says, and I move out, and I've got it. Then I
run into this genre of Scripture, and let's just be honest, it's
hard to understand. And what we have to acknowledge
is that when John wrote it 2,000 years ago in a different language
to a different culture, it wasn't hard like this. He didn't write
it intentionally to make it hard. The issue is, I'm not living
2,000 years ago, and we've got this giant cultural and language
barrier between us and back then. That's just the reality. And
it's incredibly remarkable if you contemplate the idea that
you are reading something written 2,000 years ago. I mean, that's
inconceivable. You don't do that anywhere else,
and no one else does it anywhere else. I mean, we are the only
ones that read and study ancient texts. with this level of expectation. We don't just read it occasionally.
Our expectation is that we read it to the point that we can understand
it and defend it and articulate it and communicate it. And so
when we look at this language right here, John writes, everyone
who hates his brother is a murderer. And I go, I have been guilty
of hating my brother. And you just told me I was a
murderer. And so what we immediately attempt
to do is dumb it down and figure out how we're gonna put words
in here and modify it. Right? Because he says you know that
no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. So what I want to encourage you
to recognize is that if you're going to be a good student of
the Word of God, you cannot do it in isolation. You must do it in community.
And what I mean by that is you've got to get into a relationship
with other men who can help you as you work through the Word
of God. In other words, microgroups should not be something that's
programmatic and scheduled. We're doing it that way to get
it started. But it should be happening organically within
our organization. That there are individual groups
of men that bond together, and their commonality they share
is that they're working through a book of the Bible together,
and they bounce ideas off of each other as they work through
it. Because they understand that reading the Word of God is not
enough, Jim. You have to comprehend it. I
have to get something out of it. I have to rightly divide
the Word of Truth. I have to correctly interpret what I'm
reading. And I will often get off course if I don't have someone
to help me. And it needs to be the men in
this tent that are helping you and guiding you in this. And
if we don't get that happening, you're never going to become
the self-feeder of God's word that you need to become. Self-feeder
being the idea that I can read and interpret scripture for myself.
in community. So verse six is my text in chapter
number five. And right away you just read
verse six and it's just flat out confusing. It's just flat
out confusing. It's this cryptic language. This is exactly why devotional
books are so preferred. and why they're so unhelpful.
Because the devotional author, Pastor Michael, get the verse
for me, he'll put it at the top, and then he'll tell me what I
need to understand from the verse. That's what he does for me. And
so I feel like, man, I had my quiet time, I read a Bible verse,
and then I read a paragraph and got some therapeutic application,
and now I'm ready to go charge the world for Jesus. But I feel so unequipped to do
family devotions. I feel so unequipped to disciple
someone else. I feel so unequipped to defend
the faith or give an answer for the hope that lies within me.
Because my entire Bible study consists of devotional books
in which someone tells me what the word of God says. So if you look at verse number
six, This is He who came by water
and blood, Jesus Christ. I want to insert the word the
in there. I want to put the definite article between the S and the
C. I want to do that all the time. I want to read it and think like
this. This is He who came by water
and blood, Jesus the Christ. I want to remind myself continually
that Christ is not a last name, that it's a title. Jesus the
anointed one, Jesus the Messiah. Not by water only, but by the
water and blood and the spirit is one who testifies because
the spirit is truth. You're like, what am I supposed
to do with that? So question number one, what
water event offers a testimony? Baptism. Great. Who's baptism? In this case, who's baptism?
Christ's baptism. Where is that? Where is that? Don't yell it out because some
of you never go through the mental gyrations. And I want to do more
and more questioning as the pastor because I want to create the
expectation in our congregation that I'm supposed to know this.
that I need to know generally where this is. So where would
you take someone to show them the baptism of Jesus Christ?
I don't want you answering anymore, okay? Because brother, you're
on fire for the Lord and I love it. And that's why we have such
a relationship. That's why we text five times
a day because you want to learn the word of God. I'm trying to
get somebody who isn't energized to recognize I need to get on
fire. And I want to tell you right
now, I'm ready to have a relationship with you. You tell me I want
to text with you more. I reached out to Austin Q and
said, Austin, we should be texting every single day. Every day. Austin's deployed right now,
was here last year. He'll be here hopefully next year. I am not
too busy for you. So where are we going? What? Not for the baptism of
Jesus. Where? Matthew 3. Anybody else? It talks about it, but do we
get the narrative? No. The narrative. So you can
go either way. All right, what is significant
about this narrative? We don't need to go there right
now because I have way too much to cover. Ryan, what's significant
about this narrative? Why is John reaching all the
back and going, testimony of water? Because Christ This is my son. Yeah, this is
my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And then what else happens?
There's a visible spirit coming down. So he's saying here, this
is what John's doing, this cryptic language is, he's bookending
the life of Christ. He's bookending the life of Christ,
the ministry of Christ, the adult ministry of Christ. And he's
saying that the adult ministry of Christ began at the baptism,
at the anointing, at the public display of who he was, Booming
voice from heaven says, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased. All right, blood. Okay, you guys are giving me
an answer, crucifixion, all that. All right, what about birth?
Shoot, people go there, John, they go births. And there's a
debate within the evangelical community as to is he talking
birth, right? I think that because of 1-7,
so look back at 1-7, 1-7, because of 1-7, I think that John has
already told us which way he's using it. So someone on Gene, read 1-7
real loud, please. CSB, dear friends, I am not writing
you a new command, but an old command that you have had from
the beginning. The old command is the word you have heard. Okay,
I must have messed it up. One more time. If we walk in the light, as he
himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.
And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. All
right, so I think that John has already told us how he's using
blood. early in the letter he told us. And Doc this morning
used that word recursive parallelism. He just whipped it out there,
just you know, like, you know, I got my PhD, you don't, I'm
gonna use recursive parallelism. But you know, it's this idea
that the way John writes is, I tell you something. I tell
you again. I tell you again. And every time
I tell you again, I give you a little bit more information.
I give you a little bit more details about it. I drill down
on it again. So I think that when he says blood, what is he
talking about? His death. But is it just his
death? Okay, so now we need to make
a distinction here. Are we talking like Jesus takes his physical
blood and washes me? Okay, it's a picture of his blood
covering, but is blood sufficient? Can he just take some blood from
his side and sprinkle us? Yes, his death. Right, blood
is a cryptic reference to his death. Okay, you'll hear somebody
say, without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of
sins. And they're absolutely correct. Please understand that
they're not talking a blood transfusion. The lamb dies when it sheds its
blood. Right? And we know that he's
not merely talking death because in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul tells
us that if Christ be not raised from the dead, this is all in
vain. This is all for naught. So in
one word called blood, one word called blood, you just got one,
Ron, you got one word blood there. You've got death, burial, resurrection,
atoning, sacrifice. Right. And fellowship. Sure. I don't think that way. That's
not the way I think. Nobody writes like that. They
spell it out for me. Right. So I don't want to just
preach to you this morning, man. I want to help you learn how
to read scripture for yourself. Amen. So what's the next thing
that we see going back to our text? We've got water, we've
got blood, Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and
blood, and then the? Spirit. And the Spirit. Now why
do you think it is, and we'll answer Spirit in just a minute,
but why do you think it is that John goes out of his way to testify
in three ways? Water, blood, spirit. Why does he do that? I heard
picture of Trinity. Anybody else? Yes, Marcus is exactly right.
I'm going to read it to you. You don't need to look back,
but Deuteronomy 19.50 says, A single witness shall not suffice. A single witness is not enough. You do not convict anyone on
a single witness. A single witness against a person
for any crime or wrong connection for any offense that he has committed
only, listen to this language, only on the evidence of two witnesses
or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. So what are,
John's giving you his letter, what are his three witnesses?
What are his three witnesses? Witness number one is the baptism. Witness number two is the death,
the burial, and don't negate the resurrection. Because we
don't know that the death is efficacious without the resurrection. Make sure you understand that
concept. Right. If he merely dies, we
don't know that he's just not another ordinary criminal who
dies a death. Right. So he's resurrected. And then what's witness number
three? The Spirit. Yeah, the Holy Spirit. The very Holy Spirit. And Paul
the Apostle will teach us that your Spirit bears witness with
that Spirit. Right. And there's something
going on internally that I really can't explain to you, Mike. I
just know. And we'll talk about that idea
in just a minute more. So verse nine says, so verse
seven says, there are three that testify, spirit, water, and blood,
and these three agree. So I'm making my case to you,
my final chapter, my final precipe, and this is a testimony. Verse
nine, if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God
is, what's it say? Greater. Greater. Now you're
going, wait a minute, I heard that. Yeah, you heard that from
Bill's message. And this is language that John uses on multiple times. So here you are doing your morning
Bible study and you're at this verse and you read God is greater.
And you go, wait a minute. Let me just stop right now. I
don't have to plow through a lot of scripture. My devotional quality
is not measured by Clifford by how many verses I cover, but
the quality of it. Everyone get that? Quality is
much better than quantity. So I pause for a minute, Daniel,
and go, wait a minute, I read greater before, and I go back to the
previous chapter, I underline that. I go back to the previous
chapter, I underline that. And suddenly I realize that this
is Johanian language. We take John, the noun, and we
add that Ahonian to make it an adjective. This is the way he
writes. God's greater. And because God's greater, God's
testimony is greater. Because he's making a case. He
wants you to see this. So in 1 John 3 20, whenever our
heart condemns us, this is Bill's message. God is greater than
our heart. And Steve, I thought that your
summation was excellent. You're exactly right. Subjective
guilt, its origin is the pit of hell. It's where it's origin. Objective guilt comes from the
Holy Spirit. Right. And what you have to figure
out is, is this objective guilt or is this subjective guilt?
If it's objective guilt, I need to deal with it. This is legitimate. I need to deal with it. If it's
subjective guilt, stop. Stop. Greater is he that is in
me than he that is in the world. Stop. Just literally stop. You
don't need six months of therapy. Okay. I mean, Steven, stop it. Just stop it. We don't need to
pay a therapist to tell us to stop it. We just stop it ourselves. Right. Right. Get up. Go live
victorious in Christ Jesus. You're not under condemnation.
You're as righteous as you're ever going to be in Christ Jesus.
Now when it's objective guilt, Jason, then stop and deal with
it. You know, that's what Steve said. He dealt with objective
guilt yesterday and had to deal with it. And what's struggling
is he gets an attitude when he has to deal with it, because
it's so infrequent that it's problematic. The rest of us that
are sinners all the time, we're like, yeah, I know what objective
we have to live with, and I deal with it all the time. When you
live where he lives, it's like, this is a rare occurrence. Get
out of here. But do you see, 1 John 4, 4,
little children, you are from God and overcome them, for he
who is greater than you is in the world. Verse 10, back in
chapter five. Whoever believes in the Son of
God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe, now
listen to this language, it can't be any stronger. whoever does
not believe God has made him a liar. So you encounter somebody
and they don't believe that Jesus is the son of God. They subscribe
to the existence of a supreme being and they're willing to
capitulate that we're gonna call him God. They won't call him
Yahweh. because Yahweh is too specific.
Yahweh is the God of Israel, so he's a generic God. And then
you look at him, Dr. Boyd, and say, well, you know
he has a son. In fact, he only has one son, and his name is
Jesus. They named him Jesus because
he'll save his people from their sins, Matthew 121. And they go,
I don't believe you. And your response is, do you
understand that you have just determined that God is a liar? Because that's John's argument.
Make sure you see it. That's John's argument. John
is saying that if you deny that Jesus is the Christ, if you deny
that Jesus is the Son of God, then what you in fact have said
is, God, you're a liar. Look at the language. Whoever
believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe, so
we're dealing with an unbeliever who does not believe God's testimony,
where do you get God's testimony? It doesn't say that. Go look
at verse number nine. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony
of God is greater. So in verse number 10, when he
says, do not believe in God, he's talking about God's testimony.
God's testimony that Jesus is the son. Wait a minute. How did
you make that connection? Matthew 3, this is my beloved
son in whom I'm well pleased. That's God's testimony. You understand
that? God said, this is my son. You're like, no, he's not your
son. I don't believe that he is the son of God. I think he
was a good man. He was a good teacher, but surely
you're putting too much on there. Then what you've just said is
that when God said that, he was lying. Verse 11, and this is the testimony
that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Verse 12, whoever has the Son
has life. Now, John does not have to insert
eternal in front of them, but he could, because he just established
what life he's talking about. So we could read it to reinforce
how specific he's being, we could read it like this. And this is
a testimony that God has gave us eternal life, and this eternal
life is in His Son, and whoever has the Son has eternal life,
and whoever does not have the Son of God does not have eternal
life. You understand how we did that? I write these things to you,
verse 13, I write these things to you who believe in the name
of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. All right, how big of a deal
is this? In my passage, my pericope, eternal
life is mentioned specifically, not including the ones in which
I put it parenthetically, three times. In the entire book, it's
six times. In the New Testament, it's 43
times. There are 43 references to eternal
life in the New Testament. And in this little tiny book
with five chapters, there are six. Look down at verse 20. We'll
go back up, but look down at verse 20. Scroll all the way
down to foot 20. And we know, and we'll talk about
that in a minute, that the Son of God has come and has given
us understanding, insight, a mind, so that we may know Him who is
true. And we are in Him who is true
in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and what's
it say? Eternal life. He's eternal life. God is eternal life. God is eternal
life. That's what he says. Do you see
it with me? He says he is eternal life. So I want to ask the pastors
in the room who've been working through this with me. Bill's
not here. He had to go back and take care
of something. Steve Ron had to officiate a wedding. Is anything
more important to John that you know that you have eternal life?
Is there anything in the first John? You said you've been reading
it for a year. Is there anything more important to the author
John than to get you, his reader, to understand that eternal life
is available in his son? What do y'all think? Yeah, he
wants you to know that you know that you know. Steve, would you?
Yeah. It does say the exact same thing.
You are correct, Paul. John 20, 21 is the purpose of
this gospel. It's so that you would know that
Jesus is the Christ. He's the son of God. And in knowing
this, that you will have eternal life. Right. Why is eternal life
such a big deal? Why can't I just go, hey man,
if you want to live forever, that's cool for you, but I'm
okay with just having a good life this side. Why is eternal
life such a big deal? Why can't I just say, hey man,
if you want to do that Jesus thing, and live for eternity
with Jesus singing songs in heaven, you know, tweet, tweet, tweet,
that's cool for you. But I'm just gonna live a good
life this side. What's not being included, but
John knows you know this. What's not being included, but
John knows you know this. The consequences, right. Yeah, say that one more time.
If there's eternal life, there has to be eternal death. Right.
Now God could choose, if he wanted to, not to do that, but he's
revealed to us that he did chose not to do it that way, right?
Right. What do we call this? Eternal separation from God.
Okay, we call it eternal separation from God. Hell. Okay, we call
it hell. I want you to turn to Revelation
20, please. You know the Johanian literature.
The Johanian literature consists of the fourth gospel, John. You know that it consists of
1, 2, and 3 John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. And you also know that
the book of Revelation is authored by the same John. If you read
the book of Revelation, what you notice is that what is absent
is the word eternal in front of life, but what is present
is there's a tree of life, there's a crown of life, there's water
of life, and there's a book of life. All in the book of Revelation. A tree of life. a tree of life,
water life, water that produces life, a crown of life, and a
book of life. So now let's look at Revelation
20 together and see if we can understand how significant this
is. Then I saw a great white throne,
and Him who was seated on it, from His presence earth and sky
fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the great,
the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the books
were opened. And then another book was opened,
which is the book of life, and the dead were judged from what
is written in the books. according to what they had been
done. And the sea gave up the dead that were in them, and according
to all that they had done. And death and Hades were thrown
into the lake of fire. This is the second death." We're talking about the second
death. He says, the second death, the lake of fire. and anyone's
name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown
into the lake of fire. This is our motivation. This
is what drives us. This is why we pray. This is
why we preach the gospel. This is why we make disciples.
This is why we do all we can to call you to love God, to love
your brothers, to believe in Christ because of the reality
of the second death. We literally want to grab you
by your shirt and shake you into the reality that there is a second
death. Wake up, please. That's why we do this. This is
what motivates us, Landon, to look at you and say you don't
want the second death. It sucks. Your heads are down in the back
and we wanna lift them up to you and say, wake up and listen.
John wants you to know that eternal life is available to you through
faith in Christ Jesus. He told you that the blood will
cleanse you from all unrighteousness, but that blood is only applied
to those who believe that he died for their sins, was buried
and rose again on the third day. The T-shirt is that authentic,
authentic faith, authentic belief is what gives assurance. And
we're trying to make a clear distinction between what is intellectual
and heart. And the text allows us to talk
about that. So let's do that. I wanna go down to verse number
18. We know, I'm back in chapter
number five, everyone. I'm looking at verse 18. We know
that everyone who is born of God does not keep on sinning. I mean, that's just about as hard
as what we just read in the very beginning. I just really got
some bad news for you. Have you ever hated your brother?
Well, I... Guilty. Well, you're a murderer. And murderers go to hell. We know that everyone who has
been born of God does not keep on sinning. So it seems to me that it's a
reasonable conclusion and you tell me if you think I'm on target
and I don't mind being corrected. If my cell phone needs to be
turned off, I need to turn it off. It seems to me that if I can't
see sin being crushed in my life, in some sense, Steve, if I'm
not being victorious over sin, if I'm not conquering sin in
some sense, if I don't have moments in which I feel a sense of accomplishment
in crushing sin, then I need to ask myself, is my faith in
Christ authentic? And we're not suggesting, Gene,
that you don't sin because if I say that I don't sin according
to chapter one, I'm a liar and I make God a liar, right? So
this is why we can't read individual verses, Sean, in isolation. The
entire book has to be read in its totality, right? So you just
told me that if I act like I don't sin, then, well, that doesn't
work. And then you just told me if I make a practice of sinning,
then I'm not born of God. So if that's this side and that's
this side, Nate, then it's gotta be something here. It's gotta
be something here. Which is, I haven't arrived,
I haven't arrived, but I can see progress. I can see progress. And you need to be tracking progress. Some of you are still using foul
language that you don't need to be using. You use it at work,
you use it with teenagers, it's cool to use it. You need to get
victory over that. You say, but I fall. Yes, we
all fall. But what you need to be seeing
is measurable, quantifiable victory over that. What do you mean by
that? It could be something like, it's
been 12 days since I've dropped an F-bomb. Say 12 days. Yeah. Yeah, because before that,
it was three days. Yeah, exactly. In the culture
we're living in. When you guys go to university.
But that's a sin. And I can't make a practice of
sinning because I believe I've been born of God. So I've got
to be victorious over this. And so be diligent about it. Actively work hard at this. We
know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on
sinning, but he who has been born of God protects him. And
the evil one does not touch him, so stop blaming it on the devil.
Right. Wow. Wow. Do you see it? What verse is
that? Wow. 18. 18. Yeah. So you can't use it. Right. Everyone else can, but you can't.
You know, the devil made me do it. Yeah. you have a promise
that the Father is protecting you from the evil one. First John chapter 1 verse 7
through 10, but if we walk in the light as he's in light, we
have fellowship one with another in the blood of Jesus Christ.
The death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ cleanses us from
all sin. If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins. He is faithful and just or righteous,
if you have the NASB, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Chapter 2. My little
children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate, we have an intercessor,
we have a mediator. We have a lawyer on retainer,
right? Jesus Christ the righteous. He
is the propitiation. He is the wrath absorbing sacrifice. The satisfier on our behalf. 1 John 2.12, I'm writing to you,
little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's
sake. So, Let's go back to Bill's message
just for a moment. Let's make sure we understand
what happens. Objective guilt. I was rude and inconsiderate
and I surely wasn't kind. I was short with my wife. I look
her right in the face and I tell her, you're right. Guilty as
charged. I'm sorry. I'll work harder at
being kinder. Would you please forgive me?
Lord God, forgive me. From that moment, any future
guilt is now subjective. Right. You need to understand
that. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. So that moves you from no longer
having objective guilt. Does everyone understand what
I meant there? You no longer have objective guilt, but many
of us will still have subjective guilt. And the reason we'll still
have subjective guilt is because sometimes our wives won't let
it go. Wow. And so we'll think that she's
bringing objective guilt, but if she's bringing objective guilt,
then the word of God is no longer true. Now, this is where you're gonna
have to navigate a really significant tight wire. Let me talk you through it, okay? Because you know that your objective
guilt has been forgiven. but she's still bringing up subjective
guilt, right? And if you're rude back to her
about her bringing up subjective guilt, then more objective guilt
comes in. Man, what a vicious cycle, right? So you literally have to work
on two planes. Come on, stay with me on this,
man. Plane number one is my wife is attempting to bring subjective
guilt into my life. I'm gonna be kind to her. and
recognize that she's going to have to move that and I'm not
going back under subjective guilt because I've been forgiven. But
if I lose control again over this subjective guilt, then there's
more objective guilt. It's almost like you need the
Holy Spirit leading you. Yeah, you know? All right, I want to look at
19 with you please. We know that we are from God
and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And John has just giving us the
theological truth that lets us know why it's often sucks to
live in this world. Because the whole world lies
in the power of the evil one. And so there is a dichotomy here
that we live within. And you've got to see it in the
text. Don't lose sight of it. In verse
number 18, the evil one does not touch you. In verse number
19, you live in the world in which the evil one has power.
Do you see it, everyone? Right, and the two are true,
and they are held in tension. Verse 20, and I know it feels
like we're rushing, but we have to. I want you to look at 20 with
me. There are two different words
for no in verse 20. In the first no, and we don't
have to worry about pronouncing the Greek. We can if we're trying
to look cool in front of our Sunday school class and everything.
What we do need to know is that it's not the same no. We know
that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding,
we'll talk about that in a moment, so that we may know Him who is
true. And we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal
life. Now, if we're reading in the
Greek, we would see that the difference between the K-N-O-W
and the third word and the K-N-O-W in the middle of the verse are
two different Greek words. Steve, this morning you said,
mentally, I get it. Do you remember when you said
that? You said mentally, comma, I get it. If you wanted to, you
could, in verse number 20, looking at that third word, are you with
me this morning? And we know, bracket, mentally,
comma, I get it. That's the way he's using no
in that one. Mentally, I get it. So I want to use this illustration.
Some of you were like, why is that old white man bringing in
a basketball? So yeah, right. Mentally, I get it. What do you
mean mentally get it? Okay. I understand that this
ball has to go into that round hoop. I understand that it's
way out here, I get three points. I understand that it's two points
of that, and if I'm on that three-fo because I've been fouled, I get
one point. I understand that if I'm moving the ball, I have
to dribble it, and I can pass it, or I can shoot it. I understand
that I have to minimize my contact, or I'll get fouled. I understand
that the person who scores the most points wins the game. I
got it mentally, but I don't know how to play basketball. I know how to play basketball.
I could tell you how to play basketball. I've seen enough
basketball games and barely participated. Chad was busting my chops about
this. I don't know why you were busting my chops about this.
You're like, I paid money to see you play basketball. And
you know, we're going to do that and see where your money is on
a worthy cause. It's coming up. So start putting some savings
away. But mentally, I know how to play basketball, right? But if you saw me out there,
this is what you'd say. He doesn't know how to play basketball. That's what you'd say. You'd
say, that cat doesn't know how to play basketball. I don't want
him on my team. Yet, if I came out here and talked
to you through the game, you would say, man, yeah, he knows
how to play basketball. He's got the general idea. There's
two teams, five on a team. They're at full court, they oppose
each other, they pass the ball, they have an objective of, yeah,
he's got it. All right, that's, in my opinion,
exactly how John is using the two nos. Only we're not talking
basketball, we're talking about Jesus Christ. And here's where we're at in
the evangelical church, and even under this tent. There are a
lot of you that mentally know how to play basketball, but you
don't know Jesus. And we're so concerned. We're
so concerned. We're praying for you. We're
begging God to do a work in your life. And this is really problematic
because the longer you're in the church, the more you know
Christ. Mentally, I get it. and you get
to the point where you've heard it so much that you think that
your K-N-O-W is the second one when it's really the first one.
So how do I know? Well, how do I know the difference
then? How do I know whether I know?
Well, if you're honest with yourself, I know that Sean Harris can't
play basketball. If you're living a lie, then
you might perpetrate a fraud. So then, how do we determine
it? Well, you say, Sean, put your
money where your mouth is. Get on the three-on-three team
and let's see if you know how to play basketball. Right? Okay. Do you know what the basketball
court is for us? It's called life. It's called
life. It's called life. And instead of shooting, we're
conquering sin. We're loving our brother. Our
faith is growing. There are less fouls and more
baskets. Are y'all getting this? I'm trying
to give you an illustration that you can apply. You're getting
it. The whole basketball court is
life. And there is a team that opposes
me and the captain is the evil one. The captain is the evil
one. But my captain is the King of
Kings and the Lord of Lords. He's greater. And I need to apply
what Steve taught me this morning. I need to apply it. I need to
get up in the morning and go, greater is he that is in me than
he that is in the world. 1 John 4, 4. Today I will be
victorious. Today, I will be victorious. You're struggling in your walk
with the Lord with your wife. You need to wake up every morning
and say, I'm gonna do better today than I did yesterday in
my relationship with my wife. Let's look at verse 21 together.
And we're done. Some have concluded that although
we call 1 John an epistle, that it probably shouldn't be called
an epistle, a letter. And one of the reasons why they
argue that it should not be called a letter is because it doesn't
have the normal characteristics features of a letter. There's
an absence of an introduction. We have no idea who he's writing
to. James, we know who he's writing to. Church of Ephesus, we know
who he's writing to. Church of Rome, on and on. We
don't know who it is. We don't know. And now you look
at the last verse, you're like, what? You're done? Exactly. That's exactly how we
feel. There's actually a textual variant Between the Texas Receptus and
the majority text, say I have no idea what you're talking about,
but then you need to spend more time in church. You need to spend
more time in Sunday school classes. Some have added the word amen
in the Texas Receptus. If you have a King James Bible,
the word amen is after the period in idols because it just seems
just too abrupt. So let's unpack this last verse.
Little children. This is the seventh time John
has used little children. He loves to call you little children. He loves to call you beloved. Don't be offended by him calling
you little children. Don't be offended by that at
all. This is the most elder statesman for the entire evangelical Christendom
alive at the time. He is the only man alive who
walked with Jesus. From his perspective, everyone
is little children. They're all little children. And he loves you. He's crazy
about you. He thinks of you as his grandson. He can't wait to bring you and
put you on his lap. And all of you that aren't grandfathers
yet, you don't get it until you have one. And it's literally
a game changer. It's unreal. Am I wrong, Steve? Because you just became one.
I had no idea. All these grandparents
would come up to me as the pastor, show me pictures, like, yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know? And you just, you know, you give
them the courtesy, you know, like, you know, you try it out.
Yeah, okay, great, you have grandchildren. Right, that's how it works. And
then you get one, and you're like, this is amazing. Wow. Right, it's so cool. Randy, we're praying. Amen. I mean, there's good news. All
right, they picked a person of the opposite gender. We pray
that they'll know her. You can tell who knows the Bible
well. This is how John is. So the last
thing he tells us, like, this is important. I need you to think
about this. You going to see your grandfather
for the last time. Mine was Opa. Love my Opa. He was just amazing. I mean, I'm not exaggerating.
I really feel like, you know, Oma Opa in the dictionary, this
is how it's done, yours. And I was just blessed. I just really, really blessed. Mom and dad sucked. Oma and Opa
were amazing. Just good. Really blessed. So the last thing
he tells you, Sam, is he says, guard your life from idols. That's it, that's the last thing. This is your grandfather talking
to you, Mike. Is he still alive? No. Who's got a grandfather that's
still alive? And your grandfather loves Jesus.
And your grandfather just walks with the Lord. And your grandfather
knows the Bible inside and out. It's like he authored scripture.
And you have the highest respect for your grandfather. You know
that he lived the faith. He lived it to the very end.
And the last thing he tells you, he looks at you, Nate, and says,
Nate, just guard yourself from idols. So what's an idol? Anything that
keeps you from one, worshiping the Lord, or two, having right
theology. Now I know most of you were thinking
just worshiping the Lord, but I need you to realize that for
five chapters, he's been talking to us about right theology. Right
theology. Like if you don't think Jesus
came in the flesh, you're a heretic. If you don't think Jesus is the
son of God, you're a heretic. If you don't think Jesus is the
Christ, you're a heretic. If you don't believe that Jesus
is the God man, you're a heretic. That's how harsh he is. So if
there's a teacher in your life that is influencing you to leave
who Christ is, That's idolatry. And you guard yourself from him. If getting promoted is keeping
you from a walk with the Lord, then that has become an idol
and you get that right. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much.
We're so thankful that Jesus Christ died on a cross for our
sins, was buried and rose again on the third day. We don't take
that for granted, although we are guilty of it. We articulate
to you, oh Lord God, that for this day, at this moment, we
don't take it for granted. We realize that you died for
our sins, that in Christ Jesus, we are as righteous as we will
ever be. And for that, we are incredibly
thankful. God, if there's even one young
person under this tent that is yet to be born of God, we pray
God that today they would give serious contemplation to have
I been born of God, in Jesus' name, amen.
Playing Basketball on God's Team
Series 2023 Men's Retreat
| Sermon ID | 107231536523286 |
| Duration | 55:09 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Bible Text | 1 John 3:15; 1 John 5:6-21 |
| Language | English |
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