This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Well, unless you've been living under a rock, you should know the name Conrad Mbewe. And I'm going to just embarrass him probably just a bit. Conrad is known as the African Spurgeon. And I just want to be known as the Gardnerville Spurgeon, but I don't even think that's going to happen. I remember reading about Conrad many years ago in a World Magazine article where I think that title was given. And on my first trip to Zambia a number of years ago now, four or five I guess, I had the pleasure of meeting him. But it was his last trip that was a special blessing to me. I was able to stay in his home and just get to speak with him and had him drive me to class in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoons. We had great conversation and began to realize that he is a kindred spirit. He loves the gospel. He loves the power of God's word. He believes in preaching. He loves the church. He loves all the things that we love. And Conrad is a busy, busy man. He's the pastor of Caboada Baptist Church. He's the chancellor of African Christian University. He's the principal of Lusaka Ministerial College. He's the editor of Reformation Zambia. He is a leader. He is a traveling man. Travels probably half of the year, if not more, all over the world preaching the word of God. And here he is in Minden, Nevada. And so, brother, come, please. We are privileged to have you. Bring us God's word. I have one major advantage over almost all of you here, and it's the fact that I can blush without anyone knowing I'm blushing. Yeah, so after that powerful introduction, you can't tell what's happening with me right now. Just one second before the recordings of the message begin. I mentioned at the end of my Sunday school presentation that I had squeezed in the African Christian University in my presentation, but time ran out. So just one or two words that I'd like to say about that, and then we can turn to 1 John and chapter 2. We've been involved, a number of our churches, the Reformed Baptist churches in Zambia, in establishing a Christian university. The project began in the year 2008. when we discussed this with an American missionary and his family, Ken Tenbo, who then came back to the US and resigned from the mission body that had sent him to Africa, and a year later, having garnered enough support, came back in the year 2009. And as I speak right now, we have currently a faculty of about five individuals. We have rented property and are ready literally to launch at least four courses in education, in agriculture, in theology and also in business. The major The hurdle that we've had to cross, and we're still crossing, is that a few years ago, probably three years ago, the Zambian government changed its policy with respect to higher education and came up with a new body that is meant to license especially private colleges and universities. And it's taken this long, at least three years, for that body to begin functioning. And so we've been waiting since then for them to license us. While I've been here, we have received their first response to us, asking us to provide three more details. And you can imagine this has been after three years of pushing and pushing. And last Thursday, they ought to have provided those three extra details, so please, Do pray for us that this will be realized. We are hoping and praying that come January, we can have our first students coming in. We also have property, approximately 150 acres of land just outside Lusaka where we have begun to clear the land and bring in materials to begin putting up our university campus. It's going to be a mammoth project, and we're constantly thinking how on earth will the Lord provide for this in our economic situation, but we trust that the Lord will put it on our hearts. will also provide not only the personnel, but also the finances, so that we currently, in the name of our churches, have church schools, and we're hoping that all this can finally culminate with these individuals that are coming through our ranks being educated in their specific careers from a biblical worldview. So that's what it's about, and please continue to pray for us. Now to God's word. First John and chapter two. First John chapter two. We will read verse seven to verse 11. And I'm speaking this morning on a new commandment. A new commandment. Reading from the English Standard Version, First John chapter two and verse seven. Beloved, I'm writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you heard from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you, which is true in him and in you. because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. Well brethren, as has already been said, we are taking a journey through 1 John, and invariably, because time is not on our hands, we're not making our way through the whole of this epistle, but at least in much of the first two chapters. And the theme that we are looking at is that of walking in the light, a phrase that John uses in chapter one, and as you've already noticed, he also uses it here in the passage we have just read. It's a picture that is easier to imagine than to try and define because all of us have known something of walking in the darkness and consequently stumbling and then also walking in the light and the difference that that makes. John is clearly using this, first of all, to describe to us the kind of God who is there. And we saw this yesterday from the phrase, God is light. And as we try to imagine what aspects of God John would have had in mind, we at least came up with three. The aspect of truth and knowledge, which invariably makes sense when you think in terms of being in the dark and being in the light. And we also saw the aspect of goodness and love where light is, there is health that invariably comes in a sense of joy rather than misery and gloom. And then lastly, we thought about it in terms of morality and righteousness. And often, that's a picture that the Bible uses, especially when it is speaking about the children of darkness and the kind of things that they end up doing. You and I know that often men and women use darkness as a shroud over their wicked and evil activities. And so light is the exact opposite of that. And what we've seen thus far is that on one hand, true joy is something that we only experience in the knowledge of God coming into a living relationship with the living God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We also went on to see how this walking in the light is what really proves that we have come into a relationship with God through Christ because God himself is light and in him there is no darkness. You cannot speak about being in this relationship with God when in actual fact your life is the exact opposite of that. That you are an individual who's living in hypocrisy, an individual who's spreading misery and gloom, and an individual who is deliberately in rebellion living in sin. We also dealt with a sensitive question, and in a sense, when we will be dealing with the new commandment, we'll again be dealing with something that's rather sensitive. And it's this whole question of sin. What if you sin? What happens? in your own thought process, how do you deal with it? And we spent quite a bit of time on that, because it's not only sensitive, but it's a very practical subject. We are sinners, and in many ways, that's what separates false religion from that which is true. It is when you are dealing with this question of sin in your own life. And we noted that the Those who are false in their religion get it all wrong. They go into the path of... denying sin, belittling sin, going into a life of hypocrisy. Whereas when the grace of God has saved you, you trust in the propitiatory death of Christ for you. And consequently, instead of running away from the light, you face the light as it were. You go to God and ask that he might forgive you in Christ. Well, we've come to yet another sensitive and practical subject, and it is this new commandment that we are given. And we need to appreciate the fact that when you handle 1 John, you cannot miss that you are dealing with an apostle of love. John again and again draws us. to this theme. And even though he opens it up in this passage of scripture, it is not until he gets into chapter three and beginning with verse 11 that he really follows through with this theme concerning love. He literally spends the longest section in the whole of this epistle drumming home this issue that if you don't love the brethren, you are not a Christian at all. But this is where he begins. This is where he introduces this subject. And I love the way he introduces it because we often think of love as a feeling. It's purely an emotion. And that's the way in which the world seems to speak of it. It's in terms of falling in love. Goes past your thought process to begin with. Your heart runs amok, goes out of control, and you now must follow it wherever it is leading you. And yet clearly, as John introduces it, he introduces it as a commandment. God is commanding us to love. And so it's not necessarily first of all in the emotions. It's what you do with kids when you're trying to engage in a serious conversation and there they are making noise and you turn to them and you say, shut up. Of course they don't feel like shutting up. But it's a command you are giving. You want peace and quiet. Shut up. And you know exactly what they know they must do. They zip their mouths. That's what God is saying here. He's saying love. Love the brethren. And it's a command that I am giving. It's essentially saying therefore there that if you are not loving, you are living in disobedience. If you are not loving, you are sinning. It is a command that's being given. A new commandment. But also what I love about this is the fact that John makes it clear that although I'm calling it a new commandment, it's actually not new. It's an old commandment. Verse seven. Beloved, I'm writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you heard from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. What does it mean when he refers to it as an old commandment? He's basically saying it's not something that is beginning with me, it's not a command that is beginning with us as apostles, it's not even a command that is beginning with the Lord Jesus Christ coming into the world and introducing it to his special people. The command to love is the seat of all true religion. where love is missing, you do not have religion as God intended it to be. And so for instance, when the Lord Jesus Christ was being challenged concerning the greatest commandment, you remember his answer. He went right back to the Old Testament. And he said, the greatest commandment is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And he didn't end there. He said, there is a second one which is like unto it. And it is this, you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. And he says, all the Lord and all the prophets hung on these two commandments. In other words, the entire Old Testament religion that God had bequeathed to the people of Israel as the vehicle through which he kept his knowledge alive on the planet. especially his saving knowledge, is on this subject of love. Love. And you will very well understand that it was at that point again that they clashed with the teachers of Israel, especially the Pharisees, because they failed to process how Jesus would be interested in tax collectors and sinners. Because in their understanding, you don't love such people. You ostracize them. You have nothing to do with them. And here is Jesus, as it were, fraternizing with them. And so Jesus gave a number of parables to show that he is right, they are wrong. And the way he did it was basically what John is doing here, to begin with God rather than to begin with ourselves. John here begins by saying God is light, in him there is no darkness, therefore you should be like him in order for you to be in a relationship with him. Well that's basically what Jesus did in giving the parable of the lost coin, the parable of the lost ship, and then finally the parable of the lost son. He basically shows that he is the one who is functioning like the father functioned. And they were functioning the way in which the older brother was functioning. By saying, this son of yours who's squandered your wealth with prostitutes, He comes home and instead of you setting the bulldogs on him, so that he learns never to do a thing like that again, you kill the fattened calf for him? Treacherous! Jesus is saying, yeah, that's the way you are behaving. But I'm behaving like the father who loves. And so really, it's an old commandment. It's the way in which God has always wanted us to relate to him. And it's also the way in which we've always failed as a human race to relate to him. The sin of Adam and Eve was essentially the sin of failing to love God. Because when Eve was being tempted by the evil one through the serpent, and he was now saying to her, look, actually God just doesn't want you to be like him. He's causing her to doubt God's love for her. And in the process of that doubting, she went ahead and sinned against him. Passed that on to the husband. The husband did exactly the same thing. The wife is bringing me something that is against God's command. If I love God more than I love her, I ought to say no to this temptation. He still went against that. And that's the nature of sin right across history. So when we love ourselves more than we love God, then we sin against him. The sin of Cain against Abel was again Cain failing to love his brother Abel. Abel did not do anything directly against him. But clearly, Cain had very serious negative feelings towards his brother's success with God, towards his brother's favor with God. And as that turned into a grudge within his own soul, he knew that the only way he was going to be happy, at least humanly speaking, is to get rid of his brother. Jealousy took a hold of his heart and he killed his brother in cold blood. What was it? It was a lack of love for his brother. So clearly, this is not a new commandment. When we are being told, love your brethren, it is a new commandment in one sense, and we shall see that in a moment, but it is nothing new. God is simply saying, this is the seat of true religion. God is saying it is a failure to love that has destroyed both the vertical relationship between yourself and me and also the horizontal relationship between yourselves in your community. Christianity is remedial. Christianity seeks to fix that which the world has failed to fix. And so what Christianity does is to take us to the foundation and make that which the world has failed to do and make it doable. And so when this commandment is given afresh, what Christianity has done is to give it a new lease of life. So that those of us who are Christians are able to live a life that was previously impossible. And that's what he goes on to say in verse eight. He says, at the same time, it is a new commandment that I'm writing to you. And capture this. Which is true in him and in you. What does he mean by that? He says, which is realized in you and in him. He has loved You are loving. You are a community of people where love is present, it's evident. I go outside the Christian church, and it is hatred which is evident. Each one for himself, they will say, and God for us all. I come into the church and I'm finding that the love which God himself has is channeled, piped through his people and it is being realized wherever the gospel goes. Or to borrow the picture of light and darkness which he uses, listen to this. He says because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. This is not wishful thinking. John is saying we've seen it with our eyes. Wherever the gospel is going, hatred is giving way to love. A brand new community of people is coming into existence where this commandment that the world has failed to obey is now being obeyed readily and joyfully in great abundance. Darkness is being pushed away, light is coming in. The God who is light, remember, is truth, goodness, and righteousness. That goodness being love, love, love. And if you go to the beginning of the book of Acts and you read the day of Pentecost and the gospel being preached and thousands coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ as savior, one of the things that immediately hits you there is the sudden newness of life between the believers. We are told there, beginning with verse 42 of Acts 2, that they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and then there's this little phrase, and the fellowship. The fellowship. And then it says the breaking of bread and prayers. And all came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. Now listen to this. and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together, breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Here was a new body. These individuals would have been strangers to one another, largely, but responding to the gospel of grace, And look at this new life that was beginning among them. They were not just coming to church, hearing good sermons from the apostles, and then disappearing back into life as they knew it. They came into fellowship. koinonia into a common life, and it was a life of love. All they were doing is following the nature of God. Remember, God is light, Light has come into their lives. It's not simply about truth and righteousness, it's also about this love. Jesus had just been among them. And his had been a life of love. They had seen it with their own eyes. And when he was now about to go away, he had gathered his disciples together, at least the apostles, into the upper room. And in John chapter 13, we are told in the introduction that now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, listen to this, having loved his own who were in the world, there it is. He loved them to the end. God the Son comes down and love oozes out of him, especially for his own people, pours out on them. And even before he goes to the cross, He spends hours preparing them for the period of his absence. And in the same chapter, John 13 and verse 31, we read, after Judas had gone, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while I'm with you. You will seek me and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also said to you, where I am going, you cannot come. Listen to this. A new commandment I give to you. that you love one another. Please don't miss this next phrase, just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. And this is really what John is repeating in his epistle, this new commandment. It is not an optional extra to Christian life and living. It is part of the warp and woof of Christianity. Love, and especially love for the brethren. It's a command. He's not saying, do you feel loving? Therefore give your heart room. He's saying, love, love. I'm commanding you to love. And the prime example is my own son, Jesus. And the way in which I, as the father, have loved you. I have given the best of heaven in order to bring you your eternal welfare. And all I'm saying is, you do the same for one another. Are you obeying that commandment? Are you? Remember I said it's practical, and then I also said it's sensitive. Because really, as you know, if you're a true believer, you hardly, ever are satisfied with yourself. You always sense your shortcoming. You always sense I can do better than this. And I often find in preaching back home that when I take a scalpel and, in a spiritual sense, begin to do some heart surgery, It's usually the true people of God who end up feeling, oh, I'm such a failure, such a failure. And usually it's the downright hypocrites and the rebellious sinners who goes caught free as it were, untouched. Hence, it's quite possible that as you're sitting there, you may be judging yourself too harshly. But let's go into a bit of the practice because it's very clear that John is using love as a litmus paper test for our salvation. He puts it this way in verse nine. Whoever says he is in the light, okay? We already had that statement before, remember? And hates his brother is still in darkness. So here you are, God is light, you understand that and you profess to be in fellowship with him. Therefore in your life you claim you are walking with God. But he says, but if the reality is that you hate your brother, then you are cheating yourself. You are not in the light, you are in darkness. And then it's the opposite which is true. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light. So you may be doubting your salvation over a number of other areas. But if there is genuine, sincere love from the heart, that should act as a source of assurance of salvation. It should act as. And in him there is no cause for stumbling. Whatever that is that might be causing you to stumble can consequently be addressed. There's no cause. On the other hand, he goes back to what his emphasis is. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. You can't read that and still continue justifying yourself as you go around with a chip on your shoulder. You can't. Because it's clearly saying that it's an important test while we are still living on earth for us to know whether we are walking in the light or not. to know whether we are truly God's children or not. When he speaks about hating your brother, clearly John is suggesting that we are close enough to one another that something has happened. And whatever it is that has happened, under natural circumstances it would cause you to have ill feelings and probably even get on an agenda to equals cause with that person. And that's not strange in the life of the church. Every so often someone will come to you and say, do you know what he's saying about you? And then they'll tell you. And we all love to have a good name, don't we? So the moment you are told about someone else gossiping and slandering you, yeah, your thermometer goes up through the ceiling. You don't only feel bad, but you notice ill feelings towards that person. or at least in the case back home where most of our church members are young people, it happens from time to time a young man shares a prayer request with his friend. I pray that that young lady may accept my proposal. And then a few days later discovers that the friend actually pushed in the proposal and got accepted. He's taken away my future wife. What kind of friend is this? And often, as pastors, we have to try and process those ill feelings. Believe in the sovereignty of God. And that's hard. The tendency is I've been betrayed, should take out my knife and do something about it. And sometimes it's financial issues. Someone has squandered your money, someone has defrauded you. They asked for a quick loan to pay back and then they're now doing everything else to run away from you. and you know you needed that money. And so on, we can multiply examples. The point is, there is a cause to hate. That's why he's talking about whoever sits in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. But when you go to chapter three, you find that John is not only talking about hatred in that active sense, there's also a hatred that has to do with you not doing what you should be doing in the light of what you've seen. First John three, and verse 16. By this we know love that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, again there is the close proximity. You are together in the same fellowship and you see. a brother in need. The Lord enables you to see or to hear that brother so-and-so, sister so-and-so, there is this real need. And then here is the response. Yet closes his heart against him. How does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. That's a form of hatred. It's a hatred in terms of a sin by omission rather than a sin of commission. How do you process this? As an individual whose professed faith, you claim to be walking in the light and either individuals in the fellowship have wronged you or you are seeing a real need. Well, the point being made here, and we need to really emphasize this, God, if he has saved you, his spirit, who is in your heart, causes you to want to do something about it. And to want to do something in order to bring in goodness, instead of misery and gloom. And consequently, often, if it's offense, you will want to do what Jesus advises in Matthew, and it is this, that you approach the brother or the sister and you say, look, you've offended me. Let's talk about it, let's process it. If that fails, you say, okay, let's bring in others, try and help, bring about the reconciliation. So I'm not going around with a chip on my shoulders wanting to damage you and revenge. The Spirit of God who is in me is moving me towards reconciliation. And only where that completely fails and in the light of all those structures will the ostracizing and the discipline take place. but I have done everything I could to bring about reconciliation. And then on the other hand, it is seeing the needs and the heart says, I must do what I can, what is within my power to love. to help reduce the suffering. Is that true of you? Because brethren, this is part of walking in the light. Rather than you come to a church member's meeting and you know that the moment this person says white, the other one will say, no, no, no, must be black. Why? Don't ask me for the reasons, must be black. But you know the reason why is because the other person said white. And in the process, an entire church is cleavaged into two directions, simply because two personalities cannot get along. Friends, that's not Christianity. We can't turn the church into two major political parties in opposition with each other. We are one body in Christ. And love causes us to say, let's deal with the cause, the root cause of this breach. That's what God did, sending his son. He dealt with that which had caused the cleavage between himself and us through propitiation and expiation through the cross of Christ has brought us together. and he's even brought Jew and Gentile together into one common loving family. He is light, his light is now permeated through us and consequently we are showing a similar trend. That's the church. And there's also the question, are you deliberately, actively, going out of your way to meet the needs of others using that which God has given you. Especially in the body of Christ, this one another, one another, one another, this loving his brother has primarily in mind those who are in Christ. who are part of the visible body of Christ. Is that you? Because that's what it means to walk in the light. Let me hurry up and close by putting it this way. One of the greatest mistakes that you can ever make in life is to think that it's only those who are conscious hypocrites who are gods in sheepskins. Those who are deliberate hypocrites. That's one category, yes. But it's possible to be sincere and to be sincerely wrong. It's very possible. And that's why tests like this are vital. They are crucial. Because you are claiming to be walking in the light, fine. You are sincere about it, fine. But here is the litmus paper. Let's put it in. What color is it coming out with? And one of them is love. God is good. God is love. And if he has transformed you to make you like himself, guess what? That goodness and that love will flow out of you. Is it flowing out? Therefore, when you come to a person like this and it's sort of scratched away, it's a little painful, the thing to do is not to try and justify yourself. Well, he's done so much wrong against me, nobody can even want to talk to him. Well, yes, there are needs, but there are other people who have more means to help than I. So clearly, they are the ones who ought to be doing, it's possible for us to try and justify ourselves that way. But if you are a genuine believer, you will instead go before the Lord and say, search me, O God, and know my heart today. Try me, and know my thoughts, I pray. See if there is any wicked way in me. cleanse me from every sin and make me free. That will be your attitude. It's to humble yourself before the Lord and say, Lord, am I really in the light? Show me by your spirit. Show me. And the Lord is a saving God. He's on the agenda of saving. When you come before Him that sincerely, if you are sincerely wrong, that's a door of opportunity for Him to show you. And then you can really cry to Him, Savior, oh Savior, while on others thou art calling, do not pass me by. Change this stony, rocky, self-centered, selfish heart of mine into a heart like yours. And do not be satisfied until Jesus brings about that change. Where yes, you can say, I haven't arrived there yet, But one thing I know, when I look at my reactions to these things, I'm saying, this is not me. It can't be. Because knowing what I was like, I would have knocked that guy's teeth in by now. It must be the Lord working in me. Let's pray. eternal and gracious God in heaven. You've given us a new but old commandment. In a sense, nothing has changed. You are demanding the same from those who would come and dwell with you in heaven forever. And yet there's something new, the ability to love. by the power of your Holy Spirit and a new family in which the love is freely spread out so that the world can see that this is a new humanity. Something extraordinary, supernatural is happening here. Oh God of heaven, help each one of us to walk in the light. We ask it for Jesus' sake. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.