Heavenly Father, we give you praise for who you are. You are glorious, perfect in all of your ways. We praise you that you have ordained and planned all things. Even creation itself is a part of your plan. And you have worked out how all of time and space and history is to be ordered, functioning. You have provided all means for the working out of your plan throughout all time, space, and history. So we glory in you. You have made us, and you have brought us even to this place this morning, that we could hear your word, we could think about your word, we could meditate on the truths of your word, that your spirit would do a work within our souls according to your purpose and plan, that ultimately you will be glorified in these things. So we glory in you alone, praising you for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, giving honor to you through his name, who he is, the one true living glorious king, son of God, reigning in all things and at all time, We give you thanks for the work of your spirit. That even as we come this morning and we may be still having our minds awakened this morning, we ask that your spirit will work in our souls. Illumine the truth of the word to us as we think about its teachings and its context. We praise you in these things in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Last week, in looking at the doctrine of assurance, we were looking a little more in detail at the belief or the doctrinal test of assurance. And that, of course, is mentioned here in these verses. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask, we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. This is His commandment that we believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. First and foremost is believing, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we've walked through that at various forms of thought and detail, and we've considered some different aspects of that. But also what is mentioned in here is the idea of the commandment. Verse 22, because we keep His commandments. Verse 23, this is His commandment. Believing in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and loving one another just as He commanded us, the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him. and he in him. The idea of the obedience test or the moral test is a part of assurance. So this morning I want to give a little bit of thought and information to the obedience test or the moral test. And I'll say with that, some connection to the social test or the love test. And I don't know if we'll get to it, but at some point I'll also have some thoughts on cautioning us about the obedience test in our idea of assurance of faith as well. And so I don't know if I'll get there this morning, if I do. It might be amazing. But my goal and desire this morning is for us to consider a little more in detail this obedience test and the context of the social test or the love test. When we think about the obedience test, here John wraps it up in very succinct statements. He says to us that we are to obey his commandments, Christ's commandments. He gives us an idea of what it means to follow in these commandments. He gives it in these broad terms, belief in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, and he says to love one another. Now, this is a very succinct thought, and we get some further understanding of this from the Gospels. And in the Gospels, there is the Lord Jesus being approached to answer the question, what is the greatest commandment? And what is the Lord Jesus' response to what is the greatest commandment? to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. So in the first context of obedience is when one believes and trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ, then one will not only believe and trust in Him, but one will love Him. And in loving Him, they will be loving who sent Him, the Father. And in loving the Father, the one who is loving the Father is also one who is loving the Spirit, because it is the Spirit who is at work in them, bringing about these good works of obedience in loving God, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. Now Jesus' answer here in loving God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength is a summation of what? The first four commandments. This is Jesus' statement of a summation of the first four commandments. It gives us an indication that there is some, not only practicality, but some substance to the statement, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. What commandments? Well, first of all, Jesus sums up, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. And in that statement, there's a summation of the first four commandments. In those first four commandments, we have four very, very structural ideas of obedience. What are those four structural ideas of obedience? There is to be no other God that we love and worship. There's only one true living God in substance and in truth, and therefore, to worship and love any other God besides Him is what? Disobedience or sin. All right? What other structural ideas given to us in the first four commandments? Okay, that was great. Y'all really answered that time, but I heard so many answers I couldn't parse them out. What was that again? Okay, don't make idols. There's a structural idea of don't make idols. Now this is a place where we see what is a physical structure from Exodus 20. This structure was not just given to Moses alone, and this was the first time it was given, but there was an idea already present and commanded to people before Moses and yet here in stone is written the idea of not to make idols. Now we certainly know that there is a very strict context of not making physical idols and that's been inherent in man for centuries and it still goes on today. There are still places that physical idols are made and worshipped. Can you think of a place that that might be across the world? You can name several different things, but even in our culture. Our Roman Catholicism still has that element. of forming these idols. Every cathedral that's built, there's a certain idea of structure and form of worship in the building itself, but even in keeping the crucifix, Christ on the cross, there's the fashioning of an idol. All right, what else? Okay, that's an overarching structure. Any religion that raises man above God, then man is fashioned into an idol. Okay? Hinduism. Two people said that. There's a sense in which there's always a fashioning not only in Hinduism of the structure of an animal that is worshipped or the structure of an idol that is worshipped. Materialism. That's close to our culture, isn't it? Materialism. There's lots of things that are materialistic in our world and in our culture in present-day America that can be worshipped and idolized, whether that be cars or houses or great big structures that are built. You know I'm, you all know I'm a sports fan. I'm often amazed at these new arenas that are built and they're now being built in greater scope than ever before with all of these immaculate things that you can do. I mean, it's like a playground of all kinds of things. And I think about that and I think about the fact that there are some people that spend all of their time looking toward getting to that arena and that being their place of worship. And they worship the idol of whatever is there, the arena itself or whatever's going on in the arena. And so we have that in our materialism and our culture today. watched a little bit of the World Cup this year in soccer, and for the world, these arenas that are built to come and take on the festiveness of this great game, and it brings the world together. It's almost a global religion. And there's materialism there because everything has to be built for this sport to be done and so forth. And so those kind of things, materialism, cars, houses, buildings and structures. What else could be an idol? Yes. And a lot of people think that if they rub that, they're going to have good luck for the day. Okay, so you have different idols from religions themselves and they make the religion an idol. All right, what would be another structure in the first four commandments? All right, using the Lord's name in vain. What is meant by that? Okay, and we would attribute that more in certainly the understanding and the interpretation that Christ gives us in understanding the Ten Commandments. There's one side of that. There is a strictness to our words. We have to be thoughtful about how we use our words when we're naming the name of God. That's why believers historically have been very much against using words that defame the name of God in any way. And yet, in the same sense, when we take the teaching of the Lord Jesus and apply it in the context of our souls and our heart, there's a certain hypocrisy that comes from our very hearts. And we take the name of God in vain when we use his name in a very positive, plain way in our speech, and yet our lives don't seek to follow those things, all right? So we can have very strict ideas of our language in the sense of being very careful or at least thoughtful about how we speak about the Lord. We don't want to take his name in vain. What would be another fourth part of that structure? That's in a part of maybe idolizing, but that's not the one I'm getting at. There's one main one in the fourth one. Yeah, worship. God's very clear that A, he is to be worshipped, and he alone is to be worshipped, and he gives us indications of how to worship him, and one of those is in his clear commandments that there is to be a day set aside to worship him. One day out of seven is set aside to worship God. This is an obedience to His commandments. When we will not publicly and corporately worship God, we are saying to God, I do not want to listen to your commandments. And Jesus made it plain in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 5, that He said He didn't come to change one of the commandments. He didn't come to abolish it. And He told them, don't you change a jot or a tittle. Jesus Himself may reorchestrate the day from the last day of the week to the first day of the week in his resurrection, but he's not taking away the fullness of the commandment. To change it from the last day of the week to the first day of the week does nothing to the whole of the idea. It's still one day out of seven to worship. We don't have to make any sacrifices physically anymore. The sacrifice has been made. So we come and worship under the glory and the greatness of that one sacrifice, but we are to worship. If someone says, well, I can worship God just as well on the lake, or I can worship God just as well on the Lord's day sitting in a deer stand, or I can worship the Lord just as well on the Lord's day sitting on my back porch, listening to the birds chirp as I can among a bunch of hypocrites, because that's often what I hear. Well, you know, all you Christians are hypocrites. So I worship God on my back porch with my coffee. Do we find that one here? See, that's a person who says, I don't want to follow God's Word. I'm going to worship my way. And what are they introducing into the worship of God? Idolatry. I would say to you, the person that says, I can worship in the deer stand just as well as I can among a bunch of hypocrites, that person's introducing strange fire. Nadab and Abihu. God has not commanded us to go worship Him, even on the right day, any way we want to. He has said the people of God are to gather. And that's orchestrated in the New Testament church. When they gathered on the first day of the week, they gathered for teaching, preaching, prayer, the singing of Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, of giving, See, there are certain things we can do, and these are wrapped up, not only in the thing itself in an action, but it's also, from Jesus' perspective, about an issue of what? Heart, soul, and mind. Jesus said if you've been angry at your brother, you've done what? You've murdered, you've committed murder in your heart. That even means you could show up here on the Lord's day, have the wrong heart attitude and still be in sin. I didn't really want to get up. I didn't really want to do this. I've driven all the way here. My kid cried all the way to the church. This happened and that happened. That person almost shoved me off the road. And now I'm here, God. So do something in my life. We need a mind change, don't we, to come before Him in worship. So there is an obedience test built on the first four commandments. What about the second six? The Lord Jesus says what? The greatest of these is, yes, the greatest of these is love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, and then what? Love your neighbor as yourself. And the second six are about this. Now there's much contention in modern day theology wanting to do away with the Ten Commandments and the importance of the Ten Commandments. And I'm not gonna get into that debate. Many of you have been here for years and you know we've taught on that. It's clear to us in the scripture that the Lord Jesus did not abolish the Ten Commandments even in the life of a Christian. What Christ did is that he, in his life and death, took away the debt and the guilt that the law would put on us. But he did not take away the use of the law. And the example I've given to you all before is, you've asked and contracted with a builder to build you a house. They build you a really whole nice house with all of the right structure, and the structure's laid out there, and then you say, well, I'm not gonna use it, I'm gonna sleep out in a tent. The Ten Commandments are this beautiful house of structure. And we're no longer under its, It's debt. It's guilt. We're now able to use it in a way we were never able to use it before. And so that goes with the first four and the second six. Love your neighbor as yourself. This is the love or the social test. Do you lie to your neighbor? Do you often think about lying to your neighbor so you can get what you want? Are you angry at your neighbor? Say, well, who is our neighbor? Who's our neighbor? Everybody. Everybody. To some extent, everybody is our neighbor. And we have some neighbors that are closer than others. If you're married, you have a spouse. That's a really close neighbor. Really close, right? Yes, my wife admitted that she does steal the covers. I'm so glad you're confessing that this morning. I'm encouraged by the spiritual work going on. You steal the covers one time, you steal them a hundred, right? Anyway, we have close neighbors, spouses, children, family members, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, co-workers, some. Even when we're in a store and we don't know some of the people. Those people are our human neighbors. If I go into a store and I don't particularly agree with how someone's handling themselves, depending on what it is, is it my job to go tell everybody what to do? I think we have to be thoughtful. And the Lord Jesus is pointing us to these second six to outline what it means. Not to covet. Not to look at not only my neighbor's things, but my neighbor's spouse and to covet them. To be thankful for the spouse that God gave me. Because he's using that spouse in my life in a way that quite frankly he's saying to me, I never intended to use that person in your life that way. If I had meant for you to have that person, then you would have them. So you're being unthankful for what I did give you when you're coveting your neighbor's spouse. Love your neighbor enough not to steal from them. Over the years, I've learned from one of my friends that we can even steal from each other in time. Take your neighbor's time seriously. Don't be thoughtless and just say, well, I'll show up and meet with them whenever I feel like it. If you agree to spend time with someone, Do what you said you were going to do and you spend time with them and you do it thoughtfully and graciously. There is this moral test that leads directly into the love test. Love one another. John in his letter says on several occasions that we are to love one another and we're to do it in word and in deed. Now, I want to give just a quick caveat here. I think you all know this, but I want to make sure, because we have some people that are newer, and we have young people with us today, and the world seems to be really crashing in on this idea. To love one another doesn't mean that we always agree with everyone the same way, okay? There are times that I may need to say something to my neighbor that is constructive and thoughtful about a particular issue, especially if they're a fellow believer. If they're a fellow believer, sometimes we, and even scripture, Paul commands us to go to one another. That's the idea of the accountability in the church, even before it gets to something that's corporate like discipline. There ought to be thoughtful accountability among believers to where we go to one another and speak the truth of God's word, not my truth, but the truth of God's word, and we do that in love. Now, they may disagree with what we say. And at that point, if they begin to disagree, we say, okay, well, here's scripture, you go and read scripture and ask that the Spirit of God deal with you. And if they're not willing to look at that, then there comes a place where we have to take a step back and do as Christ instructed, shake the dust off our feet. Because some people, even after a lengthy period of time, just will not listen to good, solid biblical truth. And when we do that, we have to go to them in love, and then we have to leave them in love. We may have spoken directly, It doesn't mean we don't love you if someone speaks directly about something. But there's a time to just walk away and say, in a sense, when it comes to corporate discipline and even excommunication, that's the church stepping back and saying, we're leaving you over. We're giving you over. We've said what we can say, at least what we know to say. We're putting this in God's hands. And if God brings you back and he deals with your soul, amen. But we're leaving that in God's hands. The world is crashing in on the church today and the church is caving because it's taking on the mentality that to love correctly and according to Jesus means that we just begin to agree with anybody and everybody on everything. And that's not the teaching of scripture. This social test does not mean that we capitulate to the world and say homosexuality is fine, it's no big deal. let it in the church. Homosexuals can do whatever they want in the church. Now, I really, you know, to a certain degree, I think we have to recognize we're not going to have control over what the government does. We're not going to have control over what some businesses do. Okay? But I at least have to be able to understand that the church needs to guard itself against those things. And that's how we show the kingdom, the kingdom of God to the world is that the church looks completely different. We don't take our sin lightly. And when sin goes on and on and on, and when it comes publicly to light, and it's really to a place that there's no repentance, then the world says, oh, just let bygones be bygones and people do whatever. And the church says, no, we have to obey God's word. We're not going to have homosexual marriages in the church. We're not going to have homosexual ministers practicing outward homosexual ministers in our pulpits. Or any officer, for that matter. We will not have practicing homosexuals as church members when they are outward and open. If a person who says I'm homosexual, but I'm abstaining from that and I'm fighting against it and I hate it, if they're striving against that and they're saying it's sin, it's terrible, I don't want it in my life, then that person can be brought into a covenant community and encouraged to strive against their sin just like any sinner would be encouraged to strive against it. But if they're outward and they're practicing and it's no big deal and they say, this is not sin, then no. But we wouldn't do that with any outward open sinner. If a person is a thief and they say, stealing's not that big of a deal. I've only robbed three banks this week. What would you say if they came and wanted to join the church? Hopefully the church would say, sorry. They'd say, yeah, but I got all this money I can give to you. We would say what? Brother, you need the gospel. Right? So the love test doesn't negate our responsibility to still deal with the truth of God's Word. And remember, even in what I've just talked to you about, that's in the structure of these commandments, right? Stealing's in the structure of the Ten Commandments. Homosexuality falls under the structure of the Ten Commandments. Homosexuality is a form of adultery. It's sexual sin. God has made man and woman, there's only two genders. He's made man and woman to cohabitate with one another. One man with one woman. That's the guise of you shall not commit adultery. So even though we're calling this the love or social test, we're not saying that to love people means to give in to everything the world tells us to give in to. Yet at the same time, there are times that we have to be gracious to people around us, recognizing that we wouldn't agree with their lives. But we still want to show them grace, or mercy at least, right? The mercy and kindness. I may see a homosexual couple in the store. Is it my job immediately to run up to them? Hey, hey, hey, hey! You're in sin! Something's wrong with you! Get right with God, he's gonna burn you in hell! Right there in the middle of Kroger. Is that what I'm supposed to do? I don't think so. If I don't know them, the best thing I can do in the moment is stop and say, Dear Lord Jesus, in my mind, help those people. If you would give me an opportunity to speak to them, amen. If it may be somewhere, some way, some other person, amen. Lord Jesus, will you show them their sin so they will not be in the kingdom of Satan for eternity with wrath heaped on their heads and their souls for eternity in the fire that will not be quenched? Do we stop and pray for those people when we see them in a store or in a parking lot or at work? Doesn't mean we can't loathe what the sin is, but those are still human souls. There's all kind of people in the world that do things that disagree with the Bible. And even though we have the truth on our side, we still have to handle it in the love of Christ. Even when we're speaking that truth, thinking that truth, and walking in that truth. Because if it weren't for the grace of God, where would we be? If I think for one minute, Outside of God's grace, I couldn't be a homosexual or a murderer or an adulterer. If I think for one minute outside of God's grace, I couldn't be one of those people, then I do not understand my own sinful nature. And I am thinking too highly of myself. I need to go back to the gospel and have it humble me once again. that I realize whatever morals I have, if they are inside the teaching of God's word, those morals have been constructed in my soul by God's grace alone and nothing else. Anytime we take one of the commandments and we chop them up into what we want them to say, we are actually breaking the commandments. And we have to not only think about the letter of the commandment itself, but the very heart of the commandment. And then think about our own heart and recognize that by our own sinful nature's remaining flesh, that we often in our hearts break these commandments ourselves. And we're still in need of God's forgiveness. And that goes back to the belief test, doesn't it? The true believer will repent of their sin. And they will desire to repent of it. And even if for a moment or a little while they don't desire at some point, the spirit in him, verse 24, will cause him, bring him or her back to that repentance. I wanna leave you with just a couple of observations. It is fair to say that only a converted life can obtain a biblical assurance. It is fair to say that only a converted life can obtain a biblical assurance. Now, this goes back to our premise. There may be A converted person who genuinely is converted, but they don't have assurance, or they struggle to have it. But they're still genuinely converted, although they're struggling with assurance. But that does not mean that assurance is not obtainable. As a matter of fact, it's one of the guys of the New Testament given through Paul that we can obtain assurance of faith. And one of the ways that we obtain it is A, the belief test, that we have believed, we have been converted according to the work of Christ and not our work, his person, his work, not ours. And B, that in that converted life, There is work that is being done on us that not only do we believe, but we seek to live and act in a certain way. We have to be very thoughtful here to recognize that assurance is wrapped up in conversion. And I know in a way that kind of goes without saying, but I think we have a real problem in the church today across the world. Many churches are teaching the idea of Christian faith without genuine conversion. And without genuine conversion, there can be no assurance of faith. And once again, a person who is genuinely converted can have a lack of assurance, but no one who is not genuinely converted can have true assurance. One writer puts it this way, evidence without assurance is wrong. Assurance without evidence is dead wrong. Assurance without evidence is dead wrong. It is fair to say, number two, It is fair to say that only those in the church can obtain a biblical assurance. It is fair to say only those in the church can obtain a biblical assurance. It sounds like a little bit of a strange statement, but I think we have to recognize the idea that love to our neighbor cannot be obtained in a vacuum of brethren. A lot of people just want to put the whole context of the world around us. If we'll all just be nice to each other, everything will be fine. There's only one entity that genuinely has in and of itself and its workings the possibility of showing how to love one's neighbor, and that's in the Church of Christ. Local bodies of Christians or that place where the love of Christ should be worked out the most evident in all of the world. So it's sad when churches can't function in the love of Christ. because it's the one place that's supposed to have the truth among it in a way that it's impacted and affected, that it loves one another and shows the world what it means to love one another. that you love one another in dealing with sin, you love one another in the grace of God in dealing with sin, you love one another in the sense of letting each other know of what sin is, you love one another in the struggles of those things that aren't necessarily about sin. Lord willing, the church will be repainted in a few weeks. There have been a few people who have worked out what the colors will be. Maybe 90% of the people like the colors and 10% don't. Can the 10% still love the people in the church and not be too worked up about the colors? Can the 90% still love the 10% even though the 10% didn't like their choice of color? Now we say that's trivial. You realize there's been church splits over things like that. I told you the story of my friend at a small church in Alabama that almost had a split over the deacons buying a broomstick without the church voting on the broomstick being purchased. A broomstick. The church didn't get to vote on a broom handle, and so the church almost split over it. Come on. That does not show the love of Christ. I use these examples because they're real, and they're the kinds of triviality that the church gets into. This is the same church that if sin was brought to them that was real and serious, they wouldn't discipline the person. They can discipline the deacon who bought a broom handle. But the man who gives money to the church, who's been an adulterous affair for years and people have known about it, they won't deal with that man. You see, the church deals with those things that matter. in the structure of the Word of God. And then there are places that there are some things that are not about sin. Now, nobody's complained about the colors here. I don't think anybody will complain about the colors. And if you do, do it at home by yourself. Okay? Ed, I'm upset because you know my vote was Sherbert Orange. Yeah, I'm not using that. Nobody said anything. That's not been, but I'm saying that's the kind of thing that happens. This is how it goes on in the world and the church and we have to be mindful the church is the place that we show the love test rightly inside our own community and we show it to the world. Okay? All right, I'm gonna finish there. We did at least get through the love test. Woo, I did that. All right, good. If you have questions, I'd be glad to talk about those, or you have thoughts or whatever, I'd be glad to talk about those, but we need to close now in prayer. Heavenly Father, we praise you for your word. We praise you for your commandments to your people. May we glory in them as your son did, and may we look to live according to those laws that you've given us through the glory of the gospel of your son. May the laws themselves not become an idol, and yet may they be a light to our path. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Thank you.