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Take your Bibles, please, and
turn to 1 John, chapter 2. Continuing our study in the book
of 1 John, and we'll not be here long tonight, and I know, famous
last words, but I'll do my best to just kind of touch some high
points of the mountains, so to speak, and here in this passage. We finished last time with verses
1 and 2 of chapter 2, and we began reading verses 3 through
6, 1 John chapter 2, while you're
getting that, let me just tell you, sometimes things come out
of our mouths not quite right. And I understand that that happens. Sometimes things come out slurred
out of our mouths, and that happens in my communications as well. Sometimes it's a cultural thing.
Have you ever heard the term spitting image? She's a spitting
image of her mother. Okay? Now, that's a crude kind
of expression. And it's traced back to the Appalachia
area. I'm not so sure if it's West
Virginia or not. But it's traced back to Appalachia.
And it comes from the actual phrase, she is the spirit and
image of her mother. The spirit and image of her mother. And over time, as people talk
quickly and talk fast and slur their, it got to be spirit and
image, spirit and, spit and image. That's where that came from. And, you know, as we get older,
it's amazing how we tend to take on the characteristics and even
the appearance of our parents. As we get older in Christ, as
we grow in Him, as the Word of God flourishes and blooms in
our heart, it should be something that takes place as we mature
in Him that we get more and more like Jesus in our actions, in
our attitudes. I don't know that any of us would
be able to be in our appearance, but one day we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Until then, there's an
inner battle inside each and every one of us. And it's that
inner battle that John is dealing with here in this passage. Paul
dealt with it. We might look at that as well.
Look, please, in verse number three, the Bible says, and hereby
we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He
that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar,
and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in
him verily is the love of God perfected. Hereby know we that
we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him
ought himself also to walk, even as he walked." We see three positions
here in this passage. The first is a possessor. I hope
you're a possessor of eternal life. 1 John tells us, He that
hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not life. All one-syllable words, very
easy to understand. You either... My wife often said
this. She makes a comparison sometimes
when she's talking with ladies. She said, you're either pregnant
or you're not. You're not kinda or sorta. You
is or you ain't type of thing. And the Bible says you're either
a possessor of the Holy Spirit of God, of the gift of salvation,
like with the song we sang first, your name written in the book
of life in heaven, or you're not. If you have a hope so salvation,
that won't carry you through the pearly gates of heaven. 1
John 5, 13 says, These things have I written unto you that
believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that
ye have eternal life. Now, you might say, I remember
when I was, say, born again by the grace of God. I reached up
my little hand of faith. He reached out his strong arm
of faith, and he saved my soul through his grace. And so the
Bible says in verse 3, Hereby we do know that we know him. From time to time, Satan might
perch himself or one of his little emissaries upon your shoulder
and whisper in your ear and say, Are you really sure you're saved? Are you really sure you're going
to heaven? He is the one who wants to cast doubts. May I interject
something? Whenever Satan brings doubts
into your heart and mind, you quote the Word of God to him.
For by grace he is saved through faith, not of yourselves. It's
the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. I'm
thankful that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
shall be saved. I asked a judge one day. He had
been a lawyer. He was in our church. And his
wife was a member, was saved, but he was not, and his name
was Tom. Tom came to my office, and he was broken, and we'd been
praying for Tom. And we sat there on a Saturday
morning in my study there in West Virginia. And I said to
him, I said, Tom, I presented the gospel. And when I got down
to the end, I showed him Romans 10, 13. We knelt down there in
our chairs in the office, and he gloriously and humbly received
Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. Before we got up off
our knees, I opened my Bible up again. I said, you're a lawyer
and a judge. I said, would you look at this
verse? I said, you're used to finding and identifying loopholes. I said, would you tell me, are
there any loopholes in that statement? And he read it for about a minute.
He didn't rush. He looked at me and said, nope,
no loopholes. I said, that's good. That's a
promise of God. I said, did you ask Jesus to
save you just then? He said, yes. I said, did God
promise he would save you? He said, yes. I said, are you saved? He said,
yes. And God used Tom in a marvelous
way as a judge, and continuing to use him as a beacon of light,
of righteousness in our area, because the Holy Ghost of God
came to live within him. But now, hear me please. The
Bible says that we can have some outward assurance, some outward
assurance of what God has done inwardly, hereby we do know that
we know Him if we keep His commandments. Jesus said this in John 15. He
said, You're my friends if you do what I commanded you, if you
keep my commandments. Now, I want to caution you on
something, and I do not want to be in any way untrue to the
text. I want to be exact with the text.
Anytime that you take one verse out of a context, And you try
to build a whole thought and a whole doctrine upon that. You
take it out of context. You have a pretext. You have
something that can be twisted. I want you to see something here. It says about keeping His commandments. I want to remind you of what
we just read a few verses prior. Look at chapter 1, verse 8. If
we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us. He is not talking to lost people. He's talking to the church. He's
talking to the bride of Christ. He's talking to people who are
saved, born again. And he says, if we say we have
no sin, he said, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us. And so
verse 9 is there for a wonderful reason. If we confess our sins,
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. Praise God for the cleansing
that can come. Keep short accounts with God.
May the Holy Spirit always have His clarity of conviction in
our heart, in our life. May we not grow insensitive to
the Lord. May we become more sensitive
to His Holy Spirit and have a conscience that is sensitive to God's leadership
and God's speaking. And in verse 10 he says it again,
So he's establishing something here. He's saying we can take
our halos off. and look at each other realistically
and say, we're still in the body of a sinful flesh, living in
the midst of a sinful world. And that old nature that is within
us has an inclination to do things against God. And God provided
cleansing. The penalty for all sin was paid
at Calvary. The penalty is all settled. But
the fellowship must be kept vibrant, must be kept unbroken. And our
willful sin can break that fellowship and can grieve the Holy Spirit
of God to where the Holy Spirit of God stands over in the corner
of our heart and He's not going to use an unclean vessel. When
you get done running your life, Mark, let me know. And after I fall on my face and
after I realize that I'm straying from God, I say, God, I am so
sorry. What caused this? And He brings
this to my mind, and He brings that to my mind, and I confess
it to the Lord as sin, and turn from it, and repent of it, and
ask for its cleansing. The Holy Spirit says, welcome
back, son. I'm still a son, but now I'm in fellowship with Him. Okay? We cannot have been given that
in a few verses earlier, just a few sentences away, and then
develop a doctrine in verse 3 that says, and hereby we do know that
we know him if we keep his commandments. It's not talking about faultless
conformity. It's not talking about a perfect
life. If we understood that word, keep,
it has this meaning, has this thought behind it, to set a watch,
to guard, to see something as vitally important and to guard
that, to keep His commandments, that this is the most important
thing to me. It's my guide, it's my compass. It's what will direct
me through my life. The psalmist said it this way.
It says in Psalm 119, verse 9, Wherewithal shall a young man
cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according
to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought
thee. Oh, let me not wander from thy
commandments. Thy word have I hid in mine heart,
that I might not sin against thee. The psalmist told us over
and over on the power of the Word of God is quick and powerful
and sharper than any two-edged sword. So if we keep his commandments,
we bind them to our hearts, we hide them in our hearts, we meditate
on them like Joshua chapter one, verse eight. Keep them close,
guard them, hold them. As opposed to someone who supposedly
walks an aisle or supposedly goes through the motions. Sometimes
one, two, three, pray after me. And they don't have a clue of
what's going on in their heart. They have no repentance toward
God. They have no understanding of their own sin, of Jesus as
their Savior, of a new life in Christ. You know, they're just
trying to be a people pleaser. And you wonder why they don't
care about what Jesus said in His Word. But, you know, the
Bible says, I don't care about that. That's not important to me. Folks,
this is God's love letter. I want to keep it close to me.
And hereby we do know that we do know Him, if we keep, guard,
set a watch on His commandments. I'm not being untrue to the text.
I'm being very true to the text. Because, you see, when there
are times that we do stumble and fall, there are times we
do fail. And by the way, as we grow in
Christ, those times that we fall should be fewer and farther between. I was talking one day to the
folks at Journey Through Christmas, all of our workers, and we were
getting ready to go out for the journey that evening. I was trying
my best to express to them the need to be animated, be into
the story, be into the message, be part of it, and present it
from your heart. And I was on these kinds of stairs
up here. A bunch of you were here, I think,
and I was so into it. I wasn't paying attention what
I was doing or where I was, and, boy, I went down. I went, boom. I don't know, fell off the back
or the front or something. I fell, you know? And I'm laying there
on my back in front of everybody. I mean, there's 150 people out
here, you know, all in costume. Then I went, and the Lord moved
all in my heart, and I jumped up, and I said, you need to be
just like that, right into it. They all thought I did it on
purpose. I felt like Dick Van Dyke, you know, at the beginning
of his show. Are you a possessor of eternal
life? Or are you, in verse 4, a professor? Just, you have a profession.
That's all you have. You just profess to know Christ.
Verse 4 says, He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his
commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. Yeah,
I know this thing about Jesus, and it's a marvelous thing, and
we go to church, we have a big time and all that kind of thing,
but nobody's gonna tell me how to live my life. I don't want
that preacher. He doesn't understand what I'm
going through. And, you know, God's, he's the man upstairs. That's blasphemy. He's the, you
know, I don't, I'll leave him alone, he leaves me alone, we're
doing just fine. That man's salvation is a lie. He's a professor, not
a possessor. You see, we ought to love His
commands. It ought to break our heart when
we break His heart. There ought to be a real sorrow
over our sin. Turn your Bibles, please, to
Romans chapter 7. Hold your place here in 1 John, but turn to Romans
chapter 7 and verse 14. The apostle Paul is probably
one of the greatest Christians who ever lived. In verse 14,
he pulls back the curtain and he is transparent. You know, I'm glad when people
can do that. Usually people can't do that because they're afraid
that people will see too much. Usually because there are things
that they really truly want to hide. You see, the Apostle Paul
had a desire to serve God with all of his heart. And he said,
I struggle with something. And he pulled it back, and you
could see into his heart and life. In verse 14, he says, For
we know that the law is spiritual, and I am a blind carnal, sold
under sin. For that which I do, I allow
not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that
do I. Now, don't get caught up in all
this, you know, circular wording here. He's saying, I find that
I can't help myself sometimes. Verse 16, If then I do that which
I would not, I consent under the law that it is good. Now
then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in
me. You still have a sin nature that
will be taken away one day. When you die or when the trumpet
blows, one of the two, your sin nature stays here. And all God's
people said, Amen. Verse 18, For I know that in
me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. For to will is
present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not.
For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would
not, that I do. Now if I do that, I would not. It is no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when
I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the
law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members." Look at verse 24.
I can just imagine as he's writing this, He's probably with exclamation. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Verse 25. Read it with me. I thank God
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Who shall deliver me? Thankfully,
Jesus Christ is the one who delivers me. He goes on to say in chapter
8, verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus. If you're a possessor, then you
have God's nature, the personality and nature of Jesus Christ in
the person of the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within you that
wars with the old nature that is within you. I was talking
with a gentleman this morning after service, and I was using
that old illustration about the black dog and the white dog within
us. And every time we feed one of those dogs, that side of us
gets stronger. I told him, I said, you feed
that white dog. You feed that new nature. You get into the
Word of God every day. You pray. You be under the sound
of the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. Folks, churches
are closing their doors on Sunday nights. They're closing their
doors on midweek services. They're closing their doors because
they have to because God's people won't come. Listen, folks, we
need We need to be in church more these days than we ever
used to be. These days, things are very quickly. By the way, I'm just gonna give
you a little preview here. There's a whole movement behind
this gun thing. There's a whole movement about
that. that they want to declare folks unsafe who don't have good
mental health. And we don't want someone who
doesn't have good mental health to have a gun. I'm not saying
that that's necessarily all bad. If someone don't pass out guns
in the insane asylum, I understand that. I understand that completely.
It's how you define mental health. And you see, if someone has an
end-time, prophetical, biblical view of prophecy, there's a huge
part of our society that would declare us insane. And frankly, they're afraid of
us. They shouldn't be afraid of me, but they better be afraid
of my God. Are you a possessor? Are you a professor? Or are you
a perfecter? Perfecter. See this last, please,
in verse number 5. But whoso keepeth his word... Again, what are we talking about
here? We're talking about having his commandments dear to our
hearts. That's our target. That's our goal. I want to be
like Jesus. I want to serve him. I want to please him. I want
to feel the smile of his countenance upon my life and my family and
my church. I want to have his boldness in my witness. I want
to have his peace in my life. He said, if you keep his word,
in him verily is the love of God perfected. Now that word
perfected has the idea of complete, mature, all its parts, everything
functioning, everything working. I mean his love, his perfect
love, the kind of 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love. the kind of love that makes marriages
work, the kind of love that makes parenting work, the kind of love
that gives us a desire to share the gospel with someone, not
just to punch our card or to make the pastors feel good about
what you're doing or whatever. It's the kind of love that allows
us to teach the Word of God and people sense that you love Jesus
and you love them. If you love His commandments,
It'll come through. It'll be the perfect kind of
love. Hereby know we that we are in him. And he goes on to
say in verse 6, he that saith he abideth in him ought himself
also to walk even as he walked. Now we're getting into behavior.
Now we're getting into behavior. You see, most of the battle for
our life happens right between our ears. It happens in our mind. It happens in our heart. It happens
in our attitude. It happens in all those arenas.
And that's where His commands, that's where His Word will do
its best work. And if we abide in Him, like
John 15, He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth
forth much fruit. For without me ye can do nothing.
If we abide in Him, that has the thought of constantly, without
intermission, It implies a lasting condition. Abide with me, stay
with me. If Jesus is abiding in us, and
we're abiding in Jesus, it's going to affect our behavior. They're not just gonna sense
it, they're gonna see it. And you know what they're gonna
say? They're gonna say, there's a
grown-up Christian. You know what they're gonna say? I want
that person to pray for my need in my family because I know that
they're serious about serving God. I know that they will pray
and God will hear their prayers. Have you ever been in that kind
of a scenario? Have you ever had that kind of
situation happen to you? Brother Farrell told me, he said,
this is our, This is part of our life. We're calling it our
experience with Jehovah-Rapha. Say it for me, please. Amen. Journey of faith with Jehovah-Rapha. Who would you want to get a hold
of the throne of grace if they said that your child, that your
loved one had cancer and the clock is ticking? You'd want someone that you could
see Jesus outwardly in their life. You'd want someone that
you sensed Jesus in their spirit and their attitude. You'd want
someone who is real, someone who's not a professor but who's
a possessor and who is perfecting Jesus in their life. That's what
the Apostle John is telling Christians. He said, and when you fall, get
back up on your feet, confess that, forsake it, learn from
it, and turn from it, and continue on for Jesus Christ. The penalty
is paid for. Don't live in the past. Don't
repeat the past. Let God's power change the past
into something new for Him in the future, and continue growing,
and keep His commandments. Guard them. Hide them. This book
of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt
meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do
according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt
make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success."
Keep his commandments. A love letter, not some dictator's mantra. This is God saying, I love you. I want the best for your life. So when the bad news comes to
your friend, they will come to you and they will say, I know
that you can get a hold of God. And when the bad news comes to
your family, you will have direct access to the throne of grace.
And you will realize that God has been watching you all along
And He saw that coming and He prepared you. And you say, I'm
going to continue on with God's grace and His strength. Are you a spittin' image of Jesus
Christ? Are you of the spirit and image
of your Savior? That's what He wants to make
us. He wants to make us that. And He will mold us and shape
us and carve us to look like Him. John, the apostle who Jesus loved. May I tell you that Jesus loves
you too. Let's stand together with our
heads bowed, our eyes closed. I don't know what God is doing
in your heart and your life. But I have found this, that usually
people who are willing to make a public obedience to God's call
are probably the ones who don't even need it the most. They're just used to hearing
the Lord's voice, and they're used to following Him. May I
invite you, as we sing in just a few moments, I'm going to have
a word of prayer. As we sing in just a few moments, would
you do a check-up spiritually? And when you ask yourself, do
I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior, that heaven is my home?
Do I have it settled in my heart and life? You might look like you're a
possessor, but you know if you're just a professor. Don't walk
out these doors here tonight without Jesus in your heart and
heaven as your home. And if you're a believer in Christ,
Take that next step of growth following the Lord Jesus as your
compass and as your guide. He has your best at heart. Heavenly
Father, there would be some here who are burdened and discouraged.
I pray, God, that you would lift up their hearts. May you tell
them, I love you. I care about you. I have the
answers that you need. I have the power to bring it
to pass. Would you trust in me? Would you follow me? Lord, if
there's anything that is breaking our fellowship and short-circuiting
your power in our life, may we lay that at the altar. Say, God,
deliver me from this weight or this sin which has so easily
beset me. Lord, may I continue to run the
race for your glory until you come.
Look More Like Jesus
Series A Study Through 1 John
| Sermon ID | 225181931437 |
| Duration | 29:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | 1 John 2 |
| Language | English |
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