Well, good morning. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you. Let us pray. Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your son, Christ our Lord. Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living. that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns one God in glory everlasting. Amen. It is so good to be back with you guys after being gone for a few weeks. And because I don't want to scare you off right away, I'm actually gonna read some lyrics instead of sing them, okay? And I wanna go on record. I am not hip enough to enjoy or be a fan of U2, but I do like some of their lyrics, so here are these. One man came in the name of love. One man come and go. One man come to justify. One man to overthrow. One man caught on a barbed wire fence. One man he resist. One man washed up on an empty beach. One man betrayed with a kiss. Early evening, April 4, a shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last, they took your life. They could not take your pride. in the name of love. What more in the name of love? In the name. Bono said the irresistible need to belt out the chorus ruined the entire song for him. He actually hated this song because he said that chorus took the weight out of the message that he was trying to convey. And I think he's right, but the message still holds true. Love motivates in a way that little else does. Love motivated the men in that song to pay the ultimate price for the causes that they loved. Now most of you, if not all of you, picked up on the two obvious reference as Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr., but Bono's reference to a barbed wire fence was a tribute to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The man who resisted was Gandhi, and the man who washed up on the empty beach was Roger Casement, an Irish revolutionary. Out of love they gave all, and the question remains, what more in the name of love? We heard in John's gospel that it was out of love for the cosmos that the father sent his son into the world to conquer sin and death. And we heard in 1 John 4 that it's love for God and his people that will drive out fear and motivate us to storm the gates of hell until every enemy is brought under the feet of Jesus the Christ. and the promise that God's people that in Christ you have already overcome was true in John's gospel in the first century. It was true in the 16th century. It's true today. And it'll even be true on Wednesday morning. So, Saints of Reformation Covenant Church, if you're willing and able, please stand as we honor the reading of God's most holy word from 1 John 5, where we will see that this love is a victorious love and overcomes the world. Hear God's word. 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? This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. And these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God, that He has born concerning His Son. Whoever believes in the son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God is born concerning his son. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God does not have life. This is the word of God. 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. And we are drawing ever nearer to the end of our time with the apostle John. We spend a year and a half in his gospel, hearing the testimony of the Spirit to Jesus as the Son of God, come to tabernacle in the flesh, to die and rise again in the flesh for the life of the world. And we spent four months in this, his first letter, where he's writing to people who already believe in this Jesus over and above all the other Jesuses, but they're tempted to waver and they're tempted to doubt because of what's going on around them, which has turned out to be quite a fitting journey for us over the last year. Now, one of the reasons we decided to take this approach of spending so much time with John is so that you could get to know this apostle. By being immersed in his writings, the hope is that we would begin to think the way that he thinks about Jesus and about one another and about the world, to begin to love the way that he loves Jesus and one another and the world, and to begin to live our lives in the way that John lived after his life-altering time with Christ. John has been so obviously shaped by the ministry of our Lord, that as he closes out this letter to the people under his care, you can feel John's final words to these people as being so similar to the way Jesus spoke the night that he was betrayed. Even our text today feels very much like we're in our own upper room experience. And wrapping up his letter, John is preparing to leave us, not alone, but with his words and the Spirit and one another, just like Jesus had done with his followers. He restates a common theme that we've seen here in verse one, that there are those who have been born into the new creation, and this is God's work first and foremost in their life. If you remember, this echoes Jesus's statements to Nicodemus in John three, that whoever comes out of the darkness and into the light is evidencing that God has already been working in them. It is God who draws them into the light. And being in the new creation, the new birth that everyone who is born of God is brought into was inaugurated by Jesus, who himself was born from above. Every single person who has this birth believes that Jesus is the Christ and they believe that because God worked a miracle in them first. If you were here this morning. If you trust this Jesus and no other Jesus, then what that means is God has birthed you from death to life, from darkness to light, out of the old creation and into a new creation that he recreated 2,000 years ago. There isn't some heaven out there that you're ultimately destined for while you survive this place that's going to hell in a handbasket. This is the new creation that's being redeemed right now, and you're a part of this rebirth in this new world. Christianity is not just one religion among many religions in this sort of quasi-neutral world that you can fiddle with on Sundays when you get around to it. to confess that Jesus is the Christ is to confess that Jesus is seated on the throne, ruling over every square inch of the universe right now. And what's more, and what's better than that is he's not only King of Kings, and he's not only Lord of Lords, he's our brother. And his father is our father. So you're not only bowing to a king, though you are, you're getting to experience an entire new creation life, because in love, God sent his son to be the firstborn of many brothers, and he's adopted you into this family. These are truths that John wanted to get into these people, to remind them, because they were weak, and they were wavering, and they were doubting. They were in a world that seemed like it was crumbling. They believed Jesus was enthroned, and they believed that he was bringing his kingdom to bear, and yet it had been 30 years since he left, and things seemed like they were getting worse. The guys who were in Jesus's inner circle were not winning any popularity contests. In fact, they were almost all dead. Steven. James the Lesser killed by stoning. James the Greater and Simon stabbed to death with a sword and Thomas was run through with a spear. Matthias and Peter. and Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew were all crucified. Paul was beheaded. Thaddeus was missing. These guys followed King Jesus and their love and their devotion to him led them to preach a gospel so boldly that they were murdered by the people that they had infuriated. And now there were other teachers who were dissatisfied with this. Teachers who said they could be Christians, but they didn't really have to take it so seriously. Even though they claimed to be for Jesus, these teachers were contradicting him by telling people that you could find your own personal life without losing it. rather than continue to submit to the apostles' authority and teaching, these false teachers began to preach a different Christ. They taught that the apostles' version of Christianity took theology too seriously. The apostolic gospel was unnecessarily offensive, and adhering to that gospel was too costly. And to a degree, they were right. The apostolic faith was eternally serious. The apostolic faith is quite offensive in the apostolic faith is unquestionably costly. And when faced with all of that, who wouldn't be tempted to at least give these other guys a little hearing? John writes and he says. These guys that are. Reimagining the church and preaching another gospel are not just dangerous, they are anti-Christs. Again, that's extreme language, but it is language inspired by the Holy Spirit, by God himself. These slick talkers thought they could do church more effectively. than the apostles. And by just changing a few things, they could have a Christianity that allowed them to maintain fellowship with the religious and political powers of the day. And the members of John's church were tempted to go back into the old world, back into the shadow lands, where things might be safer. Things might work better if we do it that way. I mean, couldn't we still love God and go back to the way things were? Couldn't we still love the church and not have it cost us our lives? John says, no. Those guys who say they love the father, but don't keep his commands, they're not born from God. And people who say they love the church, but don't love God and keep his commands have no reason to think their claims to love God and his people are legitimate. And John wants nothing of this foolishness for God's children. That was 2000 years ago. Or was it? As always, God's word stands true and he speaks the truth yesterday and today and forever. I go to meetings and talk with pastors. And it's more common than not. To have to listen to some new idea about how they can reimagine the church. They don't want to talk about what we believe. They don't want to talk about the eternal significance of the gospel. They don't wanna be relevant and they don't wanna mess with the mess that comes from trying to honor God in thought and word and deed and come alongside other people who are trying their best to do the same. And so as long as you believe in Jesus, they'll tell you that you're good. And then they'll give you a bunch of extra biblical requirements that they've come up with to try to advance their brand of the kingdom. They don't wanna talk about whether or not your Jesus is this Jesus or their kingdom is at odds with his. They wanna reinvent the church such that we don't have to be so offensive, such that we don't have to stand firm. We need the religious and political authorities to like us if we're gonna be effective, whatever that means. Historical Christianity doesn't work. despite the fact that there are more Christians now than ever, and this is the best age in the history of the world to be alive. No, we need to go back to Acts and reimagine and reinvigorate and re blah blah blah. This is garbage. The only re we need is to repent. To try to go back and recreate acts is to call into question the work of God's spirit in history. And to try to create some new Christianity that will be more relevant and cost less to adhere to is the exact same things these false teachers in John's day were trying to lure God's people with. Now hear me, we are not being hard on the church back then for wavering and doubting. And we are not being hard on the church now for wavering and doubting. John wasn't. It's not hard to understand why people are tempted to waver and doubt and to follow those guys back then, the way things seem to be going. And it's not hard to understand now why people might seem to waver and doubt with the way things seem to be going now. John's harshness and God's harshness is directed toward those false teachers, not toward God's little children. You're wavering and you're doubting. He's gentle with you. John wrote and God preserved this very epistle to remind us that what they say is good and right and true will lead to your destruction. But what God has said in the faith delivered once for all to the saints is good and right and true. Means you've already overcome. Jesus is the Christ, even if the kingdom doesn't look like you thought it might. And if you believe this, then you've overcome the old world, even if it doesn't look like it for a minute. And so the answer isn't to try to come up with some alternative means to advance God's kingdom, other than the means God has given to advance his kingdom. There's not a need for another gospel or another supposedly better approach than is better than the approach found in the Word of God. God's means for accomplishing God's ends is for you to love the triune God, love your neighbor, and to continue to keep God's commands and transform the fallen world. Now, so many people like those first two phrases. Love God. Love your neighbor. But they balk at the third. There are professing Christians who say you can love God and one another without keeping the law. But that doesn't make any sense. God has given us his good law to show us exactly what it looks like to love him and to love one another. And once we've seen his love, then from love and in love and by love will we love God and one another, evidenced in the keeping of his commands. Anybody who would try to steal that from you by telling you that those commands are too burdensome is trying to get you to believe the polar opposite of what John says in verse three. He says that the love of God motivates us to keep his commandments. And what's more, his commandments are not burdensome. If anyone thinks our father's commands are burdensome, then they do not understand who God is and what true love looks like. And they might say they want to love you and take the burden of obeying God off of you, but that would rob you of so many good things that God would have for you. And it would rob the world of so many things God has for them, even if they're not Christians. The American church has been infected by a sort of pietistic retreatism. Where we say we can love God and love our neighbor, but only over here in the corner. We say be warm and be fed, and we do wonderful things in many acts of charity. But the church at large has increasingly cowered and refused to bring God's good, loving law to bear on our society to whom we are called to show love. 60% of Oregonians profess Christ. And yet on Tuesday, We are going to vote into office a candidate who literally promotes violating all 10 commandments. Doesn't matter which one. They're advocates for idolatry. They're profaners of the Sabbath. They're promoters of murder, destroyers of the family, and they embody lives filled with adultery and greed and theft. We have an amazing opportunity to live in a country that lets us pick our leaders. And these two guys, they're the best that a country who is 65% Christian can come up with. That's on us, yo. We fail to love our neighbors by continuing to endorse guys who don't promote God's law. You know why? Because we don't think our God is a good loving God. We don't think he knows how to rule well. We think it's unloving to try to legislate morality because deep down we think it was mean for God to give us rules. We think our God wants to keep us from enjoying the life that we would rather enjoy if he didn't keep raining on our parade. Brothers and sisters, hear me, that idea is a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is and just how much he loves you. If we loved him, if we believed that he loved us, we'd love his love. And we'd be motivated to serve him with joy, not groaning. That's how we treat everyone else we say we love. But why not God? If someone you love asks you to do something, you jump at the chance. If your wife asks you to make her some tea and you love her, you jump at the chance. If not, you sigh and throw a fit or expect something special in return. If you do that, you're not loving her. If your mom or dad asked you to go brush your teeth or pick up your shoes and you whine about it or you roll your eyes, even just in your heart, then you're not loving them. If your dear friend who professes Christ and took vows with you to help them in the faith and they're flirting with dangerous teaching or they're neglecting their duty and you don't joyfully pursue them, you are not loving them. Now I can say that and it all makes perfect sense because we know that part of loving other people is serving them and doing things for them. But then when we try to apply that same thing to God and His rules for how we are to love Him and love others, people freak out and call you a legalist. A wife isn't a legalist because she asked her husband not to look at porn. What a blessing it would be to live in a world that made pornography illegal so that women aren't sold into sex slavery and abused by wicked men. That would be a better country. It's not legalistic for a father to tell his kid, no, you can't steal the neighbor's bike. And how great would it be to live in a world that didn't put laws in place to steal your money on somebody else's behalf? It's not legalistic for a child to expect her parents not abandon her. And it would be loving for us to repeal a no fault divorce law. It's not legalistic for a boy to ask his dad to spend some time with him. And what a blessing it would be to live in a nation that gave people one whole day in seven off of work in order to spend time resting and refreshing and rejoicing, even if the whole nation wasn't Christian. Brothers and sisters. That would be a wonderful world. And it's the world you live in. Right now. Right now, your King has subdued you to himself. He rules you, he defends you. He restrains and conquers all his and your enemies and your King has given you all these wonderful laws to bless you right now. In Christ, you've overcome that world. You've overcome the world that's mercilessly lashing people by allowing them to change their sex at eight years old. You're free from that world. You're free from the world that tells people they can sleep with whoever they want, even if the end is their destruction. You're free from a world that requires you to work seven days a week. That's their world. That's not the new creation that Christ inaugurated on his death and resurrection. That's their world. You're living in a new world, a world ruled by a good, just, loving God who's told you how to love him and how to love others. And so no, it's not legalistic for us to encourage keeping God's law, and it is loving for us to try to create a world that is in alignment with it. For us to not do that would be indicative of us not really knowing the God who is love. And if we don't know the God who is love, we don't know eternal life. We've not been born of him. Now, for the non-Christian, will keeping those laws feel burdensome? Of course. For a heart that doesn't love the lawgiver and the law, it doesn't matter what laws you give them, they're gonna feel burdensome. Doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or not, if you don't love the lawgiver and the law, you won't feel joyful. But for those of us who have been born of God, for those of us that are motivated by His love, then His commandments are not burdensome. That's the truth. Now, are there times whenever it feels as though God's law is burdensome? Yes. Yes. But that's not because something's wrong with God. That's not because something is wrong with his law. When we feel burdened, it's because we've forgotten how much he loves us. And we've forgotten, even if it's for a moment, the gospel. Where are you in your love for God and his law this morning? Was it burdensome to think about Sunday school starting back up because getting to worship was burdensome enough? Does it feel burdensome to honor the authorities in your life, whether they be your boss or your husband or your parents? Does it feel burdensome for you to love and promote life even on the internet? Does it feel burdensome for you to work rather than steal or burdensome to tell the truth about your neighbor or make sacrifices so that your neighbor can have a warm home, a blossoming marriage and a blessed life? If it feels burdensome, you've forgotten the gospel. We've forgotten the testimony. We've forgotten the good news that Jesus is the Christ. The good news that the eternally begotten Son of God, out of love, took on flesh, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary, emerged into the world by water and blood. If we feel burdened, we've forgotten the good news that the Lord of the Sabbath, for the joy set before Him, was baptized in the water, received the Holy Spirit, and submitted to a bloody death on the cross. And if it feels burdensome, we've forgotten the good news that Jesus loved the Lord, his God with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength. And we've forgotten the testimony that the king of all submitted to his father was murdered, had his life stolen, his reputation perjured, and his glory coveted so much that wicked men shed his blood and pierced his side with a spear, bringing forth water and blood just before, just after he gave up his spirit. The entire gospel, the entire testimony of Jesus is covered in water and blood and inspired by the Spirit at every stage. And though it was undoubtedly heavy, Christ's obedience was not burdensome because of the love with which he loved his father and his father's children and likewise. Though your burdens may feel heavy at times, Christ invites you to bring your burdens to him and to remember his commands aren't burdensome. That's the testimony that the Holy Spirit inspired John to write in his gospel and in his epistle. And the testifying nature of the Holy Spirit is the reason Jesus said he would send him. The Holy Spirit was not sent to tell you which pizza to order, which car to buy, or even who to marry. The Holy Spirit came to convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment, and to testify to Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, as the only hope for overcoming sin and death and hell. If you believe that testimony, you are born of God. And if you keep believing that testimony, then you will not help but be overflowing with love such that you joyfully and sacrificially love your father and your brethren, and that you'll strive to love your neighbor by bringing God's law to their life. You feel burdened. unmotivated or scared or uncertain, then come back again and again to this apostolic testimony of Jesus the Christ so that you might have the life giving love poured into your hearts through the preaching of the word and the participation of his sacraments of water and blood. And then together with a love like this, we'll continue transforming the fallen world God's way in God's time. Amen. Pray with me. All praise.