We've already heard one sermon today. Did you catch that in our Scripture reading? We listened to Peter preaching on the day of Pentecost. I don't have a sermon for you now, but we're going to base it on God's inspired Word. So I invite you to turn to 1 John 4. 1 John 4, continuing our series of messages through this letter from God to us. I won't be looking specifically today at verses 17-19, but I do want to go back and read verses 13-21. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testified that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. And whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in Him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. we love because He first loved us. If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar. And he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. In this commandment we have from Him, whoever loves God must also love his brother. I believe we learn in this text, particularly verses 17-19 really, that the experience of God's love in your life gives you confidence as you face God's judgment. You face the day of judgment. Now last week, we asked what connects our confession of Christ with our confidence in Christ. Really, if you know the Gospel story, you know who Christ is, you know what He has done, You've confessed faith in Him. How does that give you confidence in your day-to-day experience as you go through all the realities of life? And we saw the answer to that was love. Love is what makes that connection. Love is that sweet motion of the heart toward God, as one man has put it, which translates doctrine into devotion. which connects the truths we confess about Christ to how we live with Christ and for Christ and in Christ. And so, as we've seen, we have this mutual abiding, our delightful union with Christ by the Spirit. And by the way, don't forget, before we go on, ask yourself, where is your love? If love is what connects those things, where is your love? That is where you will place your confidence. And of course, the upshot for what this means in our practice, what we ought to do about it, actually doesn't show up in this passage until verses 20 and 21. So, although the Apostle John is driving there, he's not there yet, so we're not going to quite go to that application today. But our text goes on from where we're at here, in verse 17, to speak of the reason for our love being perfected. V. 17, it says, by this is love perfected with us. By what we've just seen before. This mutual abiding in God and God abiding in us. By this is love perfected with us. But it gives a reason then. So that. Here's what this is for. So that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. Now we need to stop right there. And let me impress upon your hearts this truth by unpacking it just a little bit, because I don't think we should breeze over it too quickly. He said the reason that this love is perfected with us is so that we will have confidence in the day of judgment. Not just confidence in general, so to speak, but confidence in light of God's judgment. You see, there's a clear implication in this. John is building on something he assumes we know, and that is you will face the day of judgment. Every single one of you here, every man, every woman, every child, is going to have to stand before God and face His all-seeing judgment. God is the ultimate judge. He's the consummate judge. Because He's a judge who sees and knows everything. Everything about you is naked and open to His eyes. There is nothing that He does not know about you. And you're going to have to stand before Him in judgment. And there can only be two results of this judgment. Jesus said in John 3.36, whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever does not obey the Son does not have life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Those are the only two options. You're either going to have life with God, His favor, Him imparting to you His eternal life, or His wrath is going to remain on you. If you do not believe and obey Jesus, then that's the condition that you're in. You will suffer His terrible wrath forever. And so, given that God is the perfect judge, those who are not right with God, those who have fallen short of His glory, and do not have Jesus Christ as a propitiation for their sins, will be thrown into what the Bible describes as the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus called it the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. It is eternal punishment in Matthew 25, and eternal destruction in 2 Thessalonians, the Scripture says. Revelation describes it as the great winepress of God's wrath, which is torment of fire and sulfur. It's the lake of fire. Now the danger of this judgment is so great that Jesus said this, And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. Do you see the seriousness of this? What would it take for you to cut your hand off or to gouge your own eye out? You'd have to be pretty desperate to do that, wouldn't you? You'd have to be pretty convinced that that was the only option available to you. Jesus says it's better for you to do that than to end up in hell. This is the judgment. The worst you've ever experienced in this life, the worst pain, the worst suffering, will feel like sitting in a hot tub compared to this torment. See, people often compare things on earth to hell. This is hell on earth, they might say. We understand what they're getting at, but I think they also reveal they don't know what they're talking about. They haven't taken God seriously. Whenever they compare anything on this earth, and I mean anything, that mankind has ever gone through in this earth to hell. Sometimes the horrors of war and what goes along with it are compared to hell. Sometimes cancer or extreme physical suffering is compared to hell. And again, we understand that. Perhaps it is a created analogy to hell. And yet, we don't want to shortchange what God says. Will it be real fire? Some people ask sometimes. My answer to that is it's more real than anything you've ever encountered. You see, this fire is unquenchable. It can't be put out. Any fire you've ever come across in this created life can be put out in one way or another. But this cannot be. It's real in that kind of a sense. Will it really be eternal? People ask. I think the Bible repeatedly is explicit on this very point. It's eternal. It's everlasting. Revelation 14 and 11 says the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. and they have no rest day or night. There's no relief. There's no release. There's no end. It is eternal judgment. Now, why such awful judgment? If that's really true, and it is according to the Scripture, why such awful judgment? For this very reason, that God judges with precise justice. He gives exactly what is due. And some people struggle with that. Is it really true that we deserve eternal, unspeakable torment with no rest forever because of some sins, like maybe I stole a candy bar from the grocery store? That doesn't seem just. But we forget in that reasoning who it is we have sinned against and what that means for our sin. God judges with precise justice, and so He gives to sinners exactly what they deserve. Sin against an infinitely holy God deserves infinite punishment. There is no way a creature can ever exhaust the punishment that is due because of our rebellion against God. And don't forget that in one sense God gives to sinners exactly what they ask for. They say no to God. That's what sin is. It's saying, no thank you God, I'll be my own God. In other words, I'll determine what's right and wrong for me. And I'll do what I determine is best for me. That's what sin always is, when we reject God's instructions and we make up our own. That's what Adam and Eve did in the garden, and that's what we've been doing ever since. And so when we say no to God, by rejecting God, we give up all the blessings of His love. And all that we'll ever know then is His wrath. So you must face the day of judgment. You must. That's what this text presupposes. By this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, for exactly what we've just touched on from the Scriptures. That's what the Scripture is aiming to give you confidence in. But the problem is having at least some sense of that. And we all do. Every human being has at least some sense of accountability to God. We have a conscience. We know that we live before the face of God and that He judges our actions, even as we deny it. But with that sense then, men invent false forms of security in view of their judgment. They try to come up with something to give them some confidence, give them some security. I mean, how could you really live life knowing you are liable to that kind of judgment at any moment? You're going to have to find some kind of security somewhere. So what do men do? Well, some just deny judgment. Deny that it really is true. God is love, they might say. And so He wouldn't really do that. He wouldn't send people to a place like hell forever. It's interesting to note how in this very passage, This very passage we're looking at, where it explicitly says, God is love, what does it talk about? The day of judgment. There's no contradiction between God's love and God's justice. That is clearly who God is. In fact, if God were not a just God, His love wouldn't be all that significant. What would it be by a sentimental feeling? He just overlooks sin and pretends everybody's okay. There's no real justice in the world. You wouldn't want that kind of love, I don't think. And so, some men will try to redefine judgment then. Okay, well, God does judge. But in the end, everyone will be in heaven. He'll judge them for their sins and then eventually, His love will overcome and they'll all be in glory with Him forever. We could take time to refute that, but I don't think we need to here. This just willfully ignores what God himself has said. Just even think about the passages I just referenced earlier. There's nothing in the Scripture that is a pure invention of men's minds which flies in the face of everything God says when they say, well, eventually people will all be purified, maybe through a little bit of judgment, and then... No, God judges with perfect justice. And eternal condemnation is exactly what we deserve. So, if we cannot deny or fudge on God's just punishment for sin, then maybe we can get rid of the problem by getting rid of sin. Let's just redefine it so that we don't have anything to be judged for. Okay, we all agree God judges sin, but these things I do aren't really sin. I'm okay in that way. Now, we do that in a multitude of ways. We are almost infinitely creative in coming up ways to justify our sin. But let me just mention one, because it is a very common one in our society today, and even within the church, which is medicalizing behavior. In other words, the devil made me do it is too old-fashioned, because that means you have to believe in a devil. So if you don't use that excuse, what do you do? You say, my body made me do it. I'm not responsible because My body made me do it, which actually fits perfectly with a naturalistic, materialistic worldview. I just do what I do because of the way that the biological processes of my body. And that means what we really need is instead of repentance, we need therapy and we need to fix ourselves in order to be better But note how this works out. And I'm just going to actually, in order to avoid a long discussion of this, actually quote one medical professional, Dr. Arthur Hautz. Now I believe actually Professor Emeritus from the University of Memphis, director of their clinical training there. But he explains how so much of what is passed off as science in the mental health profession is really no more than what he calls a social invention narrative. A social invention narrative. In other words, this works for us. We imagine things to be this way, and so we invent things that are explanations for things, and we set up our systems to work according to it. So, let me just quote from him. Someone go to a mental health professional. He says, applying then a diagnosis solves several social problems. Receiving a diagnosis often, here's one of those problems it solves, it often entitles the person to get social services that might otherwise not be available or that might not be paid for by a third party. If you don't have this diagnosis from a professional, then maybe insurance won't cover whatever the problem is you're dealing with. Receiving a diagnosis may be personally comforting to the extent that it provides an individual with a kind of explanation for behaviors or feelings that are upsetting even to oneself. This kind of, oh, this is why I am this way, because I have this. That's an explanation for me, and so it helps me cope with it. I feel better now because at least I have a handle for it. I can say, well, this is my problem. And so we like to have a diagnosis like that, as opposed to it being more nebulous, like, I don't know what's wrong with me, kind of a feeling. Nobody likes that. So we would rather hear, this is what your problem is and have a label for it than live with, I don't know what my problem is. He also points out another benefit by medicalizing the behaviors. The person is entitled to the sick role. a positive feature of which is to remove the personal blame. I'm not responsible for this now, this condition of whatever it is I'm dealing with. I don't have responsibility, especially blame, especially culpability, especially any liability to judgment for this. Don't judge me for this. This is just a condition I have. He goes on, receiving a diagnosis may also excuse a person from acts for which they might otherwise be held responsible or even punished. The growth of diagnostic systems suggests that social benefits outweigh social costs, at least from the vantage point of some of the involved parties. name all kinds of ailments, we can deal with them this way, then one of the benefits of that, he's saying, is we don't have to shoulder personal blame for it. We like that. That's a benefit to us. Let's come up with some other explanation for why I'm acting the way I'm acting, or why what I'm doing isn't actually blameworthy. I'll finish one of the things he mentions here and then comment on it. He also notes just how it helps those mental health professionals. Insurance companies typically make payments for services contingent on providing a diagnosis, thus enabling practitioners to be paid. It's pretty basic. These people are working, they want to make a living, right? They can't send in a form to the insurance company that says, well, I told this guy that came in to me that he just needs to grow up. Like, he's just being a baby. And common sense says, take responsibility and grow up. I can't put that on an insurance form and get paid for it. I have to have a code that goes along with this diagnosis that says, here's the diagnosis, here's the treatment, such and such, and then they'll pay me for my services. If I don't have that, I don't get paid. So, what does he do? Finds the one that works best and sends it in. Again, I'm not attributing evil motives to this, I'm just saying this is the way it works. But this idea of medicalizing behavior has permeated our society so much, I hear children using this kind of thinking. I disobey my parents is because I have this condition. Or because I drank milk this morning. Or because I... Now, do those things affect us? Drinking milk, or eating sugar, or... Of course they do. We're human bodies. But do they remove responsibility? Not in the least. God holds us accountable for our actions. Again, I'm not trying to negate legitimate science in any way. We should study ourselves and understand ourselves and try to treat ourselves wisely. But when we try to use it to remove responsibility, that's where we've gone wrong. When we've said, I'm not responsible for my behavior or what I do or what I think or how I act because and I can explain it away. I've heard men who are diagnosed as alcoholics use this with me. Well, you see, this is what happens in my brain. Okay, so, you're still responsible before God even if that does happen in your brain. God didn't say, this is a sin if nothing else was influencing you to do it. You're responsible. That's the point. You're liable to God's judgment. You see, this is how we try to avoid God's judgment, but it doesn't work. God is the one with whom we have to do, whether the people around us call our sin sin or not, they might even explain it away. But God is the one with whom we have to do. You are accountable to Him. So what some people do to come up with security, is simply ignore judgment. And this might be the most common one I run into. They just simply refuse to stop and think about God's judgment. We fill our lives to overflowing with work and things and fun and new gadgets and doing this and doing that and, you know, just doing the things of life, putting off any serious consideration of what life is for and what we will be judged for. Just don't stop to think about it. Have fun. You only go around once, right? Who knows what happens after this? Might as well just work hard, play hard, enjoy life, not think about it too much. A lot of them wouldn't particularly want to stop for a sermon like this, right? Why come to church on a Sunday morning and hear this? I can go do other things. Ignore God's judgment. But again, ignoring it doesn't make it go away. All of these ways of dealing with guilt do not give us real security, because they still leave us liable to God's judgment. And God does not leave us with any rock under which we can hide, any excuse, any fig leaf to cover our pitiful attempts to cover our guilt. Now, maybe I should mention there's another way in which men frequently try to find security in the face of judgment, and I think this is one that even Christians can fall into, and that is reducing God's love to something you get in reward for a religious performance. It comes out like this, I prayed a prayer and asked God to save me, or I was baptized, therefore, no other consideration I have confidence in the face of God's judgment. Well, there is truth in these things. Martin Luther, for example, used to fight the devil by recalling his baptism. And I think there's biblical basis for that. But when this is cut off from the mutual indwelling that John speaks of, then it becomes just a dead ritual. then it's, okay, you performed this action. That's not the basis of your confidence. It never can be. None of the works of your hands can be. So don't fall for a false security. Judgment is real. You must face the judgment of God. But don't fall for a false security. Don't try to take a shortcut to security. Instead, our text points us to how you can find true confidence. And that comes out here when we see that true confidence in the Day of Judgment comes from God's love being perfected in us. It says this in verse 17, "...by this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the Day of Judgment." God is love, verse 16 has already said. Whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment. You see, God's love worked in us, produces confidence, first of all, verse 17 goes on to say, because it makes us like him. What does it say? Because as he is, so also are we in this world. Why do we start to have that growing confidence before the face of a holy God? Who is our judge? Because His love is working in us. His love is being perfected in us. And what does that do? It transforms us. It makes us like Him. He is love. That love that the Father manifested by sending the Son to be the Savior of the world. Jesus coming to this earth, showing the glory of the Father full of grace and truth, living perfectly in His life of love. And we become conformed to Jesus. We start being more and more like Him. We start loving like He loved, as God's love is perfected in us. And that gives us confidence. This is reality. This isn't just based on a ritual I performed that had no power to it. It isn't based on any excuses. It isn't redefining. It isn't taking away God's judgment at all. it's facing it squarely and saying, how am I going to have confidence in the face of that? God's love being worked in me. And there's no ground for boasting in this confidence. Verse 19 says, we love because He first loved us. Why is this love being produced in us? It all goes back to God's love. His love is the source. We're downstream from that. The stream of love is flowing in our lives. Where did that come from? We didn't generate it. It came from God. We love because He first loved us. Our love comes from His love being perfected in us. And so that's why I say there's no presumption here. Have you ever run across somebody who has a presumptuous kind of confidence in God? No real consideration of their life before Him? Have you ever wrestled with that? Have you ever fallen into that trap? Or are you there today? Yeah, I'm good. I did such and such. I came forward at a church meeting. I signed the card. I did whatever it was. That's a presumptuous kind of confidence. But when there's the life of God working in you, there's no presumption there. What we're seeing is true rest and joy and peace in Christ. And don't forget this, Christian. You need not fear God's judgment. Take verse 18 to heart. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. The Christian who lives in anguish over God's judgment, I think needs to stop and look seriously at what God says. Do you believe Him? Look at what God does. If you struggle in your soul today with fear over God's judgment, that I might ultimately be damned at the end because I wasn't good enough. I mean, even reading 1 John can be scary at times. If you struggle in your soul with fear over God's judgment, then my advice to you today would be to abide in love. Abide in love, and do it in a three-fold way. First, look at the immense dimensions of God's love for you. Look carefully at the immense dimensions of God's love for you. That's really what John has been building off of here even in this whole text on love. If we back up to v. 9, in this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. What is propitiation? Do you remember from chapter 2? That is the satisfaction of God's wrath. It's taken care of. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. There is no more wrath to be poured out on you if you're one of His. But looking at that, what does that teach you? The immensity of God's love. How much He loves. and what He will give because He loves. What He has done. We need to go back to that often, Christians. I found myself, even as a pastor, not to mention my personal life, but as a pastor in counseling situations, so often pointing people back to the truths of Romans 8, where it says that if God has given us Jesus Christ, how will He not with Him also freely give us all things? Do you see that kind of love? Do you get that? If He's already given you the greatest possible gift, He's given you Himself, how is He going to withhold anything less than that from you? Do you really look at His love? Look at that. Think on that. Meditate on that. Dwell in it. Pray for it. Pray to know God's love. We have a great example of that in Ephesians 3. Ephesians 3 is the Apostle Paul prays for these believers that according to the riches of God's glory, He would grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." You need to know the full dimensions of the love of God. That's what you need. That's what you need to know. Meditate on that. Pray for it. William Cooper. wrote, Lord, it is my chief complaint that my love is weak and faint. Yet, I love Thee and adore. Oh, for grace to love Thee more. Make that your prayer. God, give me grace. Give me the strength that He's praying for here to love You, to see Your love, to understand this. Pray for knowing that kind of love. And then secondly, in response to that, stir up your love for God. Stir it up by meditation. Meditation upon the Scriptures, as we were just saying. Not only then recognizing God's love for you, but stirring up your love in response to Him. That, again, that sweet motion of the soul toward God. That said, yes, He is what I desire. He is what I delight in because He is glorious. He is beautiful. What He has done is worthy of devoting myself to. Stir up your love for God by meditation, by Scripture study. One of the reasons we study doctrines such as the person and work of Jesus Christ is to be able to love Him the way we ought to. To truly understand what's going on here and thus put our whole heart into it. We want to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength? As Moses told Israel in Deuteronomy 6? Well, part of your heart is your understanding, and your will, and your affections, and all of that being united in knowing who God is and thus responding to Him rightly. So study the Scriptures. Study them about God's great works. Stir up your love for God by worship. One of the reasons we gather as a people each Lord's Day, the beginning of the week, is to come back again and again and again to see our God. And to see who He is. And to praise Him then publicly, to invest ourselves into that. Publicly worshipping Him. Sing. Sing about God's love. Sing Psalm 23. Sing, Jesus loves me. This is stirring up your soul to God, to love Him. Do this by obedience. Do you realize that obedience is not just, again, the performance of a duty for the believing heart, it is the expression of our love to God. Why do we obey Him? Because we love Him? Because we've come to grasp His worthiness of our obedience? And so that other dimension that John has brought out so often, that of walking in the light with God, is perfectly coordinate with loving God. You can't say you love Him when you disobey Him. Right? Those don't go together. On the other hand, loving God always flows into obedience. If He says this is what I should do, I'll do it. because I love God. And you realize that by obeying Him, you actually learn then by experience to love Him more. By obeying. By going through the trials, the realities of what it means to have to make those commitments and make those decisions, and even those sacrifices, to obey God no matter what. You actually begin to learn to love Him more. You train your loves through obedience. You may start off... well, you do start off in your Christian life. with very immature loves. It's the nature of how we are as human beings. We have immature, unformed kinds of loves. It's kind of like in marriage. Do you love each other when you get married? Husband and wife? Certainly you do. But does that deepen and grow through life? through exactly working out that commitment and that loyalty through life. Yes, and you begin to learn what love is in a way you actually couldn't have even perceived before. So it is with God. You work out your love. You stir up your love for God by obeying Him. Do that if you struggle in your soul with fear over God's judgment. Stir up your soul to love Him. Then not only abiding in love with the two dimensions I just talked about, recognizing God's love for you and stirring up your love for Him, the third dimension that comes out that we need to abide in love in, and this really is the point of this current text in its context. We haven't gotten there yet, but this is the point. Love your brothers. You want to enjoy confidence before God in the day of judgment? Well, you want God's love perfected in you. How does that work out? You love your brothers. You love those who are also in God. We'll get to that more later. But God here in this text, it's really a beautiful text. Very rich and deep. God does not motivate you to obey the command to love by trying to induce fear in you. He's saying, watch out. If you don't love, guess what? You're going to hell. Now, there's some truth to that, but how does He communicate this to us? He shows us His love and says, this is what you have to live in. This is what has to be in you. You abide in God. God abides in you. He strengthens us to love by working His love in us. And true confidence then in the day of judgment comes from God's love being perfected in us.