We continue working on our cross references, other passages of scripture that are rooted in the same concepts that Jesus Christ was teaching his disciples in the John 13 through 17 section. Some of those truths we find in the Old Testament scriptures and some of them we find later in the epistles as well. We were looking at the reality that Christ has made us more than mere servants, slaves of God. While that is certainly, to be a slave of God is better to be a king in man's world. But Jesus has treated us not just as slaves, but as chosen friends. And we see that by the fact that he rescued us by his self-sacrificing love. He informs us of his plans, an inside track on what God is doing. There's only so far a person can get just observing what is around him. The heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows his handiwork. The expanse does that. We have conscience that tells us that God is just, and yet if God doesn't give a special revelation through his word, we just don't understand enough. to actually understand who God is and how he can be rescued from sin and death. And so Jesus informs his friends of his plans, and that's part of what he was doing that night in the upper room. And then he also chooses us for a fruitful mission, not only chosen before the foundation of the world to belong to Christ, chosen in order that we might proclaim God's excellencies. We might be fruitful as we go and bear fruit in His name. The transformation that He is working in us is not just for us, but it's to display, to make credible the gospel. This is something that actually works. It's the power of God to salvation. And we exist on the planet in order to display that mighty work of God through the gospel and to draw others to Jesus. Bookending the passage in verses 12 and 17 of John 15, we saw that we are transformed in order to love others, and that love of others is actually the hallmark. It's the acid proof that we actually belong to Jesus, that we are actually trusting in Him, that the Spirit of God is actually working in us this love we have for others. Now, by the time that the Apostle John is reaching the final years of his life, He has seen literally decades of undeniable confirmation of what Jesus taught him and the other disciples that night, that special night before his crucifixion. I mean, there had to be at this point in his life some sense of satisfaction, not only to record what happened during the earthly ministry of Jesus, to record the very words of his Lord as the Holy Spirit gave him remembrance, including those precious hours in the upper room, but to also have seen over the course of a lifetime of service to Jesus, to see come to pass just exactly what Jesus had said. In other words, what John is teaching us in this epistle of 1 John is much more than mere theory. It's not just academic doctrine. It's actually what the apostle John has seen lived out in the church as it grew. The aged disciple has personally heard the teaching of Jesus, and he has personally seen that teaching lived out and confirmed. There's something beautiful about serving Jesus through a lifetime. Now, when we're younger, we take by faith an awful lot of what the Word of God teaches. As we get older, we've actually had the privilege of seeing it worked out in life. We've actually seen the Word of God confirmed. And so when we tell people what we believe and what we hold to, we believe it not only because it is written, and that is certainly enough, But we believe it because we've seen what is written confirmed and demonstrated in our lives. We're not just giving theological theory. It becomes autobiographical. We can actually tell people that this is what is written and what is written I've experienced in my own life, my own personal history. And so John can do that, and he gives us the blessing of getting to be taught by someone who actually saw and heard, traveled with Jesus. So tonight, you know, last week we're in 1 John 3, 19 and following. We're actually backing up into verses 11 through 18. So follow with me as I read, beginning in verse 11 of 1 John 3. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, Because we love the brothers. In other words, we once were part of the world ourselves, right? Whoever does not love, abides, remains in death. He's still in his natural state. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer, no man killer, has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know, love, that he, that is Christ, laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. And he makes a practical application. But if anyone has this world's goods and sees his brother in need and 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. I've entitled our lesson tonight, Two Ways to Live. I know we've got a track by that name, Two Ways to Live, whether you're king of your life or whether Jesus is. But as you read this passage, there's very clearly two starkly different ways to live. No real middle ground. It's either darkness or light, hatred or love, death or life. As I meditated on this passage this week and this afternoon, I was just thinking about how often we We want to find the middle ground. We live in the middle ground. Well, I don't really hate, but I don't really love. And the Word of God doesn't leave us that luxury. It's your inner out. You're either living according to the way of Cain, the way of death, of darkness, of hatred, or you're living a life of love, empowered by the life of Christ in you. And the question that we have to ask ourselves as we look at a passage like this, and it's intended to bring this question to us, is which way characterizes me? Is my life characterized by love or is my life characterized by hatred? Am I walking the way of death or am I walking the way of life. And we want to ask some follow-up questions even beyond that as we work through this. Let's now ask the Lord to speak to us as we look at his word this evening. Our Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, it's powerful and at the same time it's simple and profound. So much religious debate is complicated So much of it's difficult to follow, so many categories. And while it is true that in your word there is addressed so many different topics, and you can spend a lifetime studying the word and digging into it and still not run out of more to study, nonetheless, the point of it and the practical outcome of it is really very simple. Do we love God and do we love others? Or is our life characterized by the opposite? So God, we ask that you would do your work of grace in us. Help us walk close to Jesus. And in so doing, may his power course through our lives as evidenced by our love. Help us to be honest with how we're really thinking and how we're really talking and how we're really living. and see to it that we're actually walking the way of following Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen. Two simple points. The way of hatred is the way of death. The way of love is the way of life. We see the way of death outlined for us in 12 through 15, the way of life outlined for us in verse 11, and then 16 through 18. So consider with me first, the way of hatred is the way of death, death and darkness. Verse 12 reads, we should not be like Cain, taking us all the way back to the beginning, the very first murder, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Whoever hates his brother, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. You remember that Cain is actually the first son of Adam and Eve. Eve's name, Adam gave her in faith that God would fulfill his promise that the offspring of the woman would crush the serpent's head, that this penalty of death this judgment of death that had been passed upon the human race, would be erased by this coming Savior who would be the offspring of the woman. So he called his wife, the woman, the Ishah, she came out of man, Ish, He called her Hawa, Eve. He called her life because she was the mother of all living. In Genesis 4 we read, Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord, with the help of Yahweh. Cain means acquired. So I have acquired from the Lord offspring. a man from him, and it's no doubt that Eve hoped that Cain would be that promised offspring And it turns out that she was actually sorely disappointed. As you read the story of Cain and Abel, you have three basic scenes of Cain's interchange with God. You see his deviation in worship, where instead of bringing a sacrificial animal from the flock that would point to the coming Savior, instead, he brought what pointed to his own works. He brought the fruit of the ground. Never forget years ago being in Salt Lake City, and I don't know if they still have this in the visitor center, but the very first display was a beautiful bronze of Adam and Eve kneeling on either side of an altar. In front of the altar was a little lamb, like a pet lamb, and on the altar was a sacrifice of fruits and vegetables. And quite honestly, that's all you needed to know, to know that what you were being exposed to there was a religion of works and was the way of Cain. It was not a saving religion at all. Cain was offering to God in his worship what Cain could do It was contrary to what God had evidently commanded because God confronts them and said, if you do well, will you not be accepted? But Cain was too hurt. He was too humiliated. He was too angry. His face fell. God said, sin crouches at the door. It wants to have you. And Cain chose, rather than correcting his life, he chose instead a development of hatred for the righteous, for Abel. And he ends up killing him. And then when God brings judgment against Cain, then Cain's upset that the judgment is too much. He resents the judgment of God. So he deviates in his worship. He hates the righteous. He resents God's judgment. Why? Well, according to John, because he was of the evil one, literally out of the evil one, his source. His father was the evil one, Satan himself. Murder springs from a heart of hatred. That's what distinguishes murder from just mere killing. If somebody kills someone by accident, it might be called manslaughter, or perhaps there's some kind of argument that's not premeditated. But when somebody kills someone premeditated because of harboring resentment, that's what makes killing murder. So the essence of murder is actually hatred. Hatred is murder in the bud. And hatred is at the level, you know, what we have in our heart, how we feel toward a person, is at the level of who we are and how we think. It's at the level of identity and at the level of desire. And that's why John can say that anyone that has eternal life, the life of God and the soul of man, can't live in hatred. It's not possible for him to have this hatred bottled up inside him because God is there. And God doesn't live that way. The life of God is marked by love. Love marks those who have divine life operating in them. And that's why John says this is how we know we've passed out of death into the life. In other words, we all start in the world, we all start in the way of death. It's our nature to be children of disobedience, our nature to hate. It's our nature to have ill will toward others. And before we can have the kind of love for others that we ought to have, we have to pass out of that realm of death into the life that God offers us, which John terms eternal life. When we talk about eternal life, we're not talking just about the length of it. We're not talking about just someday. We're talking about the quality of it. We're talking about divine life, God, cannot die. God is the ever-living one. He's the source of life. And so this ever-living nature is what makes eternal life eternal. It's God's vital force coursing through me. His power. And that power is what gives me power to love. Cain murdered his brother. And John uses very very graphic kind of language. He literally slaughtered his brother. You could even translate it, he cut his throat. We're not given that information in the Old Testament. John gives it to us. But he did so because his brother's deeds were righteous and Cain's own deeds were evil. It was evil for Cain to offer to God an offering that God did not want, contrary to what God had commanded. It was evil for Cain to refuse to repent. It was evil for Cain to develop jealousy and to feel that Abel's doing right made Cain look bad, so get rid of Abel. And it appears that this murder of Abel, the way John describes it as slaughtering, it's almost like Cain considered the appropriate way to murder Abel was the way Abel sacrificed the sheep. and Cain would sacrifice Abel on the altar of his own pride and his own evil heart. Satan hates God, and Satan's children hate God's children because their lives underscore the difference. In other words, all it takes for us naturally to feel ill will towards someone is for that person to make us look bad. Right? If we're all joining in the evil, then we can all be happy with ourselves, but if somebody decides to serve God in the middle of that, it shows us up. Sin is the hallmark of Satan's children. It's born of deception and of murder. Satan is the father of lies, and he was a murderer from the beginning. He murdered the human race. Righteousness is the hallmark of God's children, and righteousness expresses love for God and love for others. So, when we, as God's children, manifest the character of our Heavenly Father, we can expect that the children of the evil one will hate us. They'll lie, and they'll seek to do harm. And that only makes sense. So it's no surprise that the world hates you. It's not a future possibility. It is a present reality. Now I want us to think about what the world is by biblical definition. The world is is the organized rebellion against God. It's ruled over by Satan. And you see it, as you read the early chapters of Genesis, you see it in Cain's descendants. You have Cain's descendants, you have Seth's descendants. You have two different lines. You have a godly line and you have an ungodly line. And in the ungodly line, while you see a lot of technological advance and building of cities and all that kind of thing, you also see lust and murder. You see violence and you see immorality. That's what dominates that ungodly line. In the godly line, you see people calling on God. You see people bowing the knee to God and submitting rather than having a kind of arrogant self-centeredness that tramples on anybody in order to get your own way, in order to advance yourself. Now, I think what's important for us to understand, and I think this passage helps us, is if those who are of the world, of the evil one, are marked by their hatred toward other people, particularly toward believers, If those that actually have life from God are marked by their love for other believers. If the world is in rebellion against God and hate, so those that hate are of the world, those that love are of heaven. That's the contrast. And as you think about this and you think about the New Testament, That means the dividing line is not those that are religious and those that are not. We tend to think that those that are religious are the ones that are right with God. And I include those that are part of the Christian religion. But the scriptures don't say that those that are religious demonstrate that they are of God. I said, where are you going with this? Think about who the greatest enemies of Jesus were in the early days of the church. In fact, the most outlandish persecution you see in the early decades of the church did not come primarily from irreligious people. It came largely from the Jews that rejected Jesus. That's where the dominant persecution was. And it also came from those that were part of pagan religion. The dominant persecution of God's people actually came from religious people, but they were of the world. Colossians talks about worldly religion. It's got its ceremonies, it has its rules, it has its mysticism, but it doesn't follow Jesus, and it doesn't have life from God. There's a lot of confusion about what worldliness actually looks like. Here's what worldliness looks like. It looks like hatred. It looks like ripping on people that are believers. It looks like trashing the reputation of those that love God. That's worldly. That's ungodly. That's darkness. That's death. And that is often sitting in the pew. If we take John's words here, the calibration of whether we're of the world or whether we belong to Jesus is not how much religious stuff we do. It's whether or not we love the brothers in practical ways. And the mark that we actually belong to the world and that we're still in death is that we don't treat brothers with love, but we treat them with hatred. It's striking, because we get confused. We think that if we're very religious that somehow we're right with God. Well, being very religious never saved anybody because you can't be religious enough. The only thing that saved you and me was the life of Jesus poured out in love for you. That's what saved you. And those that have been saved that way pour out their life in love for others. That's Christianity. Everything else is a fraud. And that's the point that John is making. It's no wonder, you know, history tells us when John was so old he couldn't even walk and they had to carry him around, this was his mantra. It's just like a drumbeat, you know, love one another, love one another. And we see it in his writings. D. Edmund Hebert, in his commentary on 1 John, sums it up this way. No one who holds on to a spirit of bitter hatred and hostility toward a fellow believer, that goes beyond the walls of your own local church, and it goes beyond the boundaries of your particular religious group or your denomination. No one who holds to a spirit of bitter hatred and hostility toward a fellow believer can, at the same time, have eternal life abiding in him. This is the acid test. This is it. So, practically, you know, how do we work this? How do we hold ourselves accountable? I would encourage you at the end of the day, and maybe at the beginning too, but at the end of the day, to kind of think through the day and ask yourself, as you go through the day even, ask yourself, if I had to categorize my thoughts toward others, and my words, and my deeds, would those thoughts, words, and deeds fall into the category of hatred, something that does harm, or something that neglects to do good toward others, or would they fall into the category of love? I mean, that is the test that John gives us. So, what actually characterizes my life? You know, all of us, the world itself loves to talk about love, right? I mean, this is a human need. This is universal need. This is what makes the gospel so appealing and so attractive. The human heart is, like, starving for love. And so it responds positively to love. And so we want this, and we might sing about this and talk about it. Glittering generalities, but when it comes right down to it, the question is how do we think how do we talk? And what do we do? That's consistent with love or hatred Second the way of love is the way of life the way of love is the way of life verse 11 Look at how John puts this. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. What do you mean by love? Verse 16. He seems to be thinking back to the very words that we looked at this morning. 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 this world's goods and sees his brother in need, 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." Now, look at how John characterizes what he's telling us. Because I think sometimes we think the emphasis on love is like, this is kind of newfangled. It's just the trend right now. or the trend in certain areas. Look at what he says. This is the message you heard from the beginning. In other words, when you first heard the gospel preached by the apostles to you, this emphasis was part of it. In other words, You can't separate this loving lifestyle from the gospel itself. Why? Because it is Christ's love for us that provides a way of salvation, right? So you strip that away, and you've got no gospel left. Because the whole index to love and the whole motivation for it comes from what Jesus did on the cross. You have no cross. You have no self-sacrificing love. When you strip this love out of the gospel, it's core to the gospel itself. It's not some add-on aberration. It's not some compromising slippery slope. It is. It is part and parcel of the gospel itself. Christ's own teaching, 60 years before John penned these words, underscores how it all fits together, and we've been studying that on Sunday mornings. Jesus himself called for his disciples to love in the same way that he showed love to them. And he hadn't yet died, but he's about to. He said, just as I'm laying down my life for my friends. At the time, such a prospect was horrifying to them, but it was exactly what salvation required. It was what Jesus was glad to do for the sake of his people. Immensely practical this concept is, reaching into all our significant relationships. I mean, think about it. talks about how a husband is to love his wife. What does he do? He points to Christ giving up his life for his church. He might sanctify her. He might make her what she needs to be. And he tells the husband to love his wife, to cherish her in the same way. How often it's precisely in the home life that one finds self-sacrificing love to be missing. Why is that? Well, because that's nitty-gritty. That's when you feel good and when you don't. That's when you've had enough rest and you haven't. That's the place where you build up the hurts and the disagreements. And that's where, if you're self-centered, it's going to show up. That's where too little effort and too small a commitment to one another to make the marriage work is going to be demonstrated. So God says, look, lay down your life for your wife. Put your own needs behind those of your spouse. And wife, have affection for your husband. Give yourself to one another. He gives a practical application that shows that if a person is willing to die for someone he loves, then that means that really any need his brother has, he's willing to sacrifice for. He says anyone that has this world's goods, so he has the ability to help. And he sees his brother in need, he has the awareness of the need. I think of the book of Acts, remember? They shared so freely with one another that even though there are literally thousands of Christians, there was no one who had his needs unmet. That is, I mean, it's almost incredible. The power of the Spirit was so evident in that church. Well, if anyone has the ability to help, he's aware of his brother's need, and yet closes his heart to him, It's inaction that comes from deliberately shutting down his loving response, like closing the door, locking a gate, putting the need out of his mind. The way he describes this, this is clearly a problem at the heart level. It's a problem with how we respond emotionally to other people. It's at the level of motive behind our action or inaction. It's translated heart here because that's how we would say it in English. The Greeks would refer to your internal organs, all of your... In fact, the King James has what? Bowels. We don't usually talk about our bowels in today's English, but we do talk about having a visceral reaction Well, the viscera, they're your guts, they're your bowels, they're the internal organs. Now, why would the Greeks talk about having deep feeling that way? Well, when you have deep feeling for someone, You hit a time of great tragedy. A dear friend is suddenly killed in an auto accident, or you find out they have terminal cancer, or you have a severe disagreement with somebody that you love. What happens? How do you feel physically? You just like get sick at your stomach, right? You're you're affected physically you have a visceral Reaction. Okay. Well what John's saying is you're closing the door to that reaction You see you have the ability to help you see a brother in need You start to respond emotionally to that and you say nope. Nope. Not going there. I'm shutting the door on that and and John says When you do that, how does God's love possibly abide in you? It's interesting that he uses that word abide, isn't it? Because that's that word that Jesus keeps using when he talks about abiding in him, remaining in him, having close fellowship with him, my words abiding in you, all this interaction, this communion between God and man and between us and other people. Christ and his friends and his disciples are characterized by this abiding. And John says, look, when you ought to be responding affectionately with deep emotion towards someone else's needs and helping them, and you shut that off, how can you say that God's love abides in you? In other words, it's not possible. And then he turns it to a command, little children, Addresses him as little children. Why does he do that? Well there if you're a child of God you have God's spiritual DNA Like father like son, right? says little children Behave like your father live according to your spiritual DNA live this out God's put life in you and Let us love not merely in word or in talk, but in deed and in truth. True love is measured not merely by talk. One preacher years gone by called it mouth mercy. Mouth mercy. True love is measured not by talk, And you should talk in a loving way, okay? He's not saying that, but he's saying you don't stop at the top. It's measured by action. It proves, the action proves the truth of the love, the veracity of the love. And it also, the action gives evidence that you are actually in the truth. that you're in gospel truth, that you've taken that into yourself and that you belong to that kingdom that the gospel creates, the kingdom of Jesus. Think about it. None of us can actually see in one another, even physical life. I can't see the life principle in you, even physically. nor can we see spiritual life directly. In both cases, we measure physical life or spiritual life by the display of activity, right? I mean, why do they hook a person in a coma up to the machines? They want to see if there's some activity, brain activity. There's neurons, you know, firing. There's electrical impulses. There's something happening that shows that this person is actually alive. Well, for people to know, for us to know about ourselves that we're actually alive, there has to be this activity of love. Manifest, not just in words, but in our deeds. This reveals that Christ's life is in us. So go back to just the practical way of measuring this and a way of really helping us see what's actually happening in our lives. To go through your life and just ask yourself the question, and I love simple principles like this. I get tangled up if it gets too complicated. But I can live my life asking the question, okay, how should I respond to this? Is this response that I'm contemplating a response of love or not? And it's as simple as that. Is what I'm feeling in my heart toward this brother or sister, is it love? or not? Are the words that I'm using to talk about this brother or sister or to talk to this brother or sister, are they words of love? Or are they words of hatred? How often those that claim to know Jesus speak in lies? They don't bother to find out the truth? and find some kind of devilish joy in actually destroying other people. That's not a small problem. According to John, that's the way of death. So I want to ask myself, and we all can slip back into the old life, right? When we sin, love fulfills a law, so whenever we sin and when we're breaking the law, it goes to the other side of the equation. So I can actually live my life every day, every hour, with this in mind. There are two ways to live. There's the way of hatred, which is the way of death. And there's the way of love, which is the way. Let the life of Jesus flow through you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, we're pretty used to talking about love. It's way easier to talk about than to live out. But Lord, even then, this passage is like a two-by-four. It just whacks us. It nails us. It tells us to stop fooling ourselves about whether we're actually serving Jesus with His power or not. Help us live in love. We know that love, when it's expressing itself, does nothing contrary to the law. It's fulfillment of the law. And so, Lord, instead of our striving so hard to just keep all the rules, may we ask the question, does this show love to the person or not? Lord, I pray that as you reveal our heart, that if we find that we're not actually in the faith, that we don't actually have life from God, I pray that you would draw us to the throne of mercy to find grace that will save us from ourselves and give us the life of Jesus. Lord, help us live according to that life. In His name we pray.