Believers grow by obeying God's commands, which demonstrates a true knowledge of Him. John's letter in 1 John 2:1-6 emphasizes that while Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for sins, genuine faith is evidenced by walking as Jesus walked and obeying His word. This obedience is not a means of salvation but a natural outflow of a transformed life, reflecting God's love and demonstrating a commitment to Him. The sermon encourages believers to study the Gospels to understand how Jesus lived and to apply those lessons to their own lives, thereby fulfilling God's will and finding balance through obedience.
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Take your Bibles, please, and turn to First John Chapter Two. We are continuing our study in the book of First John, a study that I have entitled, How Does a Deliver Grow? And this series will indeed continue over the next number of times that we meet together. We've been working our way through Chapter One, First John Chapter One. And this morning, I think, had a pretty good adult Sunday school class as we talked about some of the issues having to do with worldliness that will come up a little bit in our study in first John chapter two by fast way of reminder we began a number of months ago by looking at first John chapter one that I will review very briefly with you that we need to be growing as believers that we need to grow in grace rather than grown in disgrace and we saw in first John chapter one that we can do that because we have a firm foundation That firm foundation comes out of the facts of our faith.
As John says in First John chapter one, we know that the word of life has appeared. We heard him. We saw him. We beheld him with our eyes. We touched him. We handled him. He is indeed real. And because of that, we know that our faith is true. As the writer Josh McDowell says, he says, when I became a Christian, I did not make a blind leap into the dark. He said, I examined the evidence for the personal work of Jesus Christ, and I made a leap into the light. That's what's happened with us. So we need not be apologetic when we tell people, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. We've got the facts.
And even if we do not have ready access to those facts, even if we need to do some homework in order to defend the Christian faith, the bottom line, John says, in First John chapter one, is we can know that this is true because God indeed became flesh and lived among us and there's strong evidence, indeed, for that fundamental fact. We then noticed in chapter one the focus of our fellowship and there we saw that we are to share the gospel, the good news with others, that Christians are to talk about what they have in the Lord Jesus Christ, that there is something in it for us. Our joy is made complete when we share Jesus Christ with each other.
And then we saw in verses five through ten that God provides for the forgiveness of our failures. And many of us have memorized First John chapter one and verse nine, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And there we see that the provision is made for the child of God whose sins, and we all do, to find forgiveness and cleansing. that he forgives us on a righteous basis. He's faithful to his promises. He said, if you come to me, I will forgive you. I will cleanse you. He's promised that many times in the Word. And he forgives us on a just or righteous basis.
There needs to be the desire for forgiveness. And in our adult clinical class a few times ago, we talked about how sometimes we Christians act as if we no longer sin. And yet I imagine that if you interviewed the non-Christians who know me, or I interviewed the non-Christians who know you, and we asked them, has so-and-so sinned, can you name something they've done wrong? They might say, well, sure, do you want those failures listed chronologically or alphabetically? And yet sometimes we Christians act as if we no longer sin, but we do. And there's provision made for us, John says in First John one, nine, that we would confess and find forgiveness.
and find cleansing and find restoration. Not that we get saved all over again, but we get restored into a full fellowship with God. This morning we want to move into First John chapter two, and we'll see how far along we get in this as we look at what I call a clear challenge. Not only do we have a firm foundation, as chapter one tells us, but in chapter two we find that we have a clear challenge. Would you follow along as I read, please? chapter two and we'll look first of all at the first six verses first john chapter two beginning at verse one my dear children i write this to you so that you will not sin but if anybody does sin we have one who speaks to the father in our defense jesus christ the righteous one he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins And not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.
We know that we have come to know him if we obey his command. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar. And the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him. Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. Let's pray together, shall we? Father, we thank you this morning for your love and for your grace to us. We thank you for the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, would you encourage us as we pour over these verses this morning that we would see this clear challenge to live as children of a life to be quickly obedient to your word, to be deeply concerned about the spirit of the age, the worldliness that can so easily entrap us.
And Father, that we would stay closely connected with your truth. We thank you for all the gifts you've given to us. You've given us the Lord Jesus Christ. You've given us the Word of God. You've given us the Holy Spirit as that inner resident teacher. who longs to open up the word to our hearts and our minds that our lives might be different. Lord, we pray that you might encourage us in this hour and that we would remember, as someone said long ago, that the measure of a good sermon is not your people going away saying, my, what a lovely sermon that was, but rather your people going away saying, I'm going to do something about what I've heard this morning.
Lord, may that be the prayer of listener and speaker alike. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. As we look at First John chapter two together, we want to notice four major truths that are brought out by John and we'll focus on the first one for the next few minutes in verses one through six. And that is what I call the obligation of obedience, the obligation of obedience. Now, some of you are forced enough to have a little purple handout. Am I right? I think there's a special reward in heaven for those who still have that purple handout and I will do my very best two weeks from today which is when I'm back October twenty second notice that that didn't enter the bulletin that's okay but I'm back in two weeks I'll try to print a few more of those but those who do have those do not do not sell those at any price and it there's a kind of outline in that handout that has blanks and you're meant to fill in words And so you need to fill in, I think, the words, the obligation of obedience here in verses three through six.
God has provided for the forgiveness of our sins through the Lord Jesus Christ, that salvation. He's also provided, as we saw at the end of chapter one, for the forgiveness of the Christian sins. That's restoration. That's restoring us into a situation of close fellowship and communion with the Lord. We Christians need to take obedience seriously. We need to take sin seriously. You may have heard the story of the young Roman Catholic priest who was called into the senior priest's office on one occasion. And the senior priest said, son, I've been getting a lot of complaints about you.
Personally, I think you're doing a good job, but you could probably do a better job in the confessional. When people come in to confess their sins, you should sympathize. You should tell them that they need to do work for penance. But, son, please don't say, wow, anymore. That's just not appropriate. You see, when it comes to the issue of sin, we Christians need to respond by confessing, by acknowledging to God how we have moved away from His truth so that He forgives us and cleanses us. and restorable. The word confession, as I'm sure you know, means to say the same thing about our sin as God says about it.
We suffer in a world of a million euphemisms where we call sin everything but sin. And we excuse it away, and we explain it away, but we don't confront it and say the same thing about it that God says about it. Sometimes we hide our sin. My family and I are blessed to... My wife and I are blessed with two children. Our daughter, Amy, is going to be twenty in a week. My wife doesn't look old enough to have a twenty-year-old daughter. And our son, Brian, is twenty-two. And we also have two other members of our family, our dog Dixie, Dixie Dixon. We thought that was a good name for Alaza Opsa. She's a hairy dog. I'm not sure when you're talking to her, whether you're talking to her front or back, but she's a wonderful dog.
Definitely a Christian. I have no doubt about that. I know she's going to go to heaven. But the other member of the family, I'm not real sure about her salvation, and that's our cat, Happen. A cat, Happen is a kind of tabby cat with a stray up in Canada that my son felt it was right to rescue that cat. He still didn't figure that out exactly. But Happen has added a great deal of joy to her house and a great deal of terror to Dixie's wife. Happen likes to hide behind the bathroom door and take her paws, front paws that have razor sharp cats. things, what do I call it, claws. You knew that word. Okay, claws and loves to attack poor Dixie as she lays on the bathroom floor and appreciates the coolness of the tiles in the extremely hot day up until this morning in Columbia.
Happened within the hall the other day. Happened is still a very much a young cat, and I'm almost done with this story, but happened within our hall the other day, and my wife had a skirt laying over the banister. that she was going to wear the next day of school. And if you look, you could see Happen's head under the skirt, but the rest of her body was there on the floor. And so as far as Happen was concerned, she was hidden, like nobody could see her because she couldn't see herself. You follow my story? And so when you'd walk by Happen, she'd reach out and go, you know, just kind of basically try to rip your leg off. Why did the ankle with one of his sharp paws? And it was just a, to me, it was a picture, kind of the way we are.
We sometimes think that if we can just kind of hide our sin from other people, then it doesn't exist, and we don't need to worry about it. But if you stand back and think about it for a minute, we're only recovering up our own head. The rest of us is showing, I mean, it's apparent, maybe not to each other, but certainly to the Lord. So in my life, and I got a real chuckle, because this cat did this for about a half an hour. Just had her head covered, and she thought that nobody knew she was there. And so I stepped on her and nodded. Treated my animals with great dignity, but... Just so you understand a little bit of dynamics in the Dixon household. We two children and two wild beasts that live in our home. We hide our sin.
When we hide our sin, we hurt ourselves. We think that we hurt no one. We hurt ourselves. We hurt the Lord. And God has made provision by which our sin can be taken care of. John emphasizes this fact in verses one through three. When he says in chapter two, verse one, I write this to you so that you will not sin. The Christians should be striving to live. what some call the victorious Christian life, that we are no longer slaves to sin. Will we sin, yes, but we should be striving not to sin. Please notice there in verse one that John says, but if anyone does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the righteous one.
Have you ever thought about the fact that if you're a believer in Christ, that you have the two best attorneys in the entire universe? I know we can all think of our most favorite lawyer jokes, but if you can disassociate a lawyer from some of the lawyer jokes, we have the two best attorneys in the entire universe. First time, chapter two tells us that we have Jesus Christ at the right hand of the Father, and Jesus Christ is described there as the righteous one, the righteous one. Jesus also tells us, in John chapter fourteen and sixteen that he's going to leave the disciples, but he's going to send another comforter, the Holy Spirit. He says he will be in you and with you forever.
He will never leave you. The phrase the other comforter is a special phrase in Greek that means he will be the one called alongside the help. It can be the word attorney. It can be the word defense attorney. It can be translated as comforter or counselor. There are several ways to translate that word comforter. And Jesus says, I will send you another comforter. And that Greek word means another one like me. Not another one of a different kind. It's the word meaning another of the same kind. Have you thought about that? Do you have the two best attorneys in the universe? One lives within you. And the other is at the right hand of the Father, John says in verse one, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
A number of years ago, my family and I lived in New Jersey when I was going to graduate school, and I had to get a haircut one day, and a lady from our church was reasonable and did a nice job, and so I parked on her street to get a haircut. What I didn't know was parking on that side of that residential street on a Wednesday afternoon between two and three-thirty was against the law. So I got my haircut, came out, took it on the car. Well, we didn't have very much money at the time and not that we're wealthy now, but I didn't want to pay a ticket I didn't think was fair because I looked around and there was no sign saying no parking between two and three thirty in the afternoon on Wednesday. So I went to court. Now I don't know how traffic court here is here in South Carolina and some of you shouldn't know that either, but maybe you've been there from time to time.
Traffic court in New Jersey was a disaster. I mean, the place was packed and there were people that had all kinds of, you know, from moving violations to parking things. and so on. And there was a judge at the bench that looked like he hated his job. He was sick of seeing this mass of depraved humanity. He couldn't read street signs. And so for him, it was his routine. He called their name. He would read the charge. And he wanted everybody to think guilty. And he would give them a fine. They would leave. And just do that all the time. Person after person after person. So I got to court about nine o'clock in the morning. Maybe about ten cases happened before me where everybody pled guilty. They paid their fine. They left. He called my name and he said, you know, Mr. Dixon, he charges parking between two and three thirty Wednesday afternoon and no parking shown.
How do you plead? He suspected I was going to say guilty. No. I said, not guilty, Your Honor. He looked up from the desk. Everybody looked up. They stopped talking. They knew that we were going to have a trial right away. That's how it worked. Had a trial right away. And I guess the way it worked was the police officers who wrote the ticket had to be available to come and testify. And I got to act as my own attorney. That's why I'm telling you this story. I got to be Perry Mason. I got to act as my, or Ben Matlock. I got to act as my own attorney. And after I'd interviewed the policeman who wrote the ticket, I asked the policeman where the sign was in regard to where my car was parked. And he says, well, it was about a hundred and twenty-five yards down the street.
I had done my homework. And then the judge says, well, Mr. Dixon, would you like to take the stand in your defense? And I said, yes, sir, I will, carrying my chart with me. He began asking me a few questions. He said, did you know there was no parking on that side of the street? I said, no, sir, I didn't. He says, well, New Jersey state law clearly says, and you read the law. And the law said, the sign has to be within a hundred yards. I said, Your Honor, if you please look at my multi-color chart, It shows where my car was. It shows where the sign was. And the sign, by the testimony of the officer, was a hundred and twenty-five yards away. Maybe a seat. I forget. Okay, but you get the point of the story, right?
The sign was obviously not within the right distance. I didn't know. I didn't park there because I was a rebellious sinner. I do other things because of that, but not on that particular Wednesday afternoon. Showed in my chart. I was so proud. I'd worked for hours on this thing. It had all kinds of colors. Grouped cars. Showed the apartments. I'm not an artist. Yes, it was in crayon, but I did the best I could. So do my chart. He says to me, he says, are you finished with your testimony? I said, yes, sir, I am. He says, whack, guilty. Pay the fine. I couldn't. I was outraged. It was probably thirty-five. I was outraged. I said, in your honor, I, he says, guilty. He just wasn't listening.
Guilty. I went to go pay my fine, paid my fine. I'm walking out of the courtroom. There's fifty, sixty people waiting to be tried. He sees me walk out of the courtroom and I raised my hand. And he looked at me, he says, watch. And I said, Your Honor, may I appeal? You could see the smoke coming out of his ears at that. I wasn't trying to be rude. I just felt like he had not been fair. And he says, well, yeah. And then basically I left the courtroom, talked to a couple of priests and afterwards. who were very sympathetic. They said you had an excellent taste. They said you were clearly not guilty. But he's a grumpy old judge who doesn't listen to what anybody says. He hates what he does.
He waxes mallet on the thing and makes people pay money. And I said, well, I can appeal, right? And they said, well, sure. You can appeal, or it probably costs you about a hundred and fifty dollars, and it won't get decided for about a year. Did I appeal? No. I was a graduate student. I didn't have time to engage in that. Here's the point of the story. He was an unjust judge. I thought I was a pretty good lawyer when you think about him. You and I, if we know the Lord Jesus Christ, don't have pretty good lawyers. We have the best of you. We have the Spirit of God living within us. We have the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteous one, at the right hand of the Father. Do you know that you have an arch enemy by the name of Satan? He's real.
He's real. Somebody has said that we have caricatured Satan along the lines of the dimensions of a cartoon character, a fellow person. and led leotards carrying a pitchfork. Satan is a real enemy. He hates you. He hates me. And Peter says, you and I are the first item on his menu. He walks about like a roaring lion looking to devour us. You ever thought about the fact that Satan loves to hurl accusations against the people of God? One of the ministries of your internal lawyer, the Holy Spirit, is to descend you and to remind you that you belong to your Abba Father and so do I.
It's nice to have an attorney to do that and tell us who we really belong to, even when we fail, even when some of those charges may be true. We also have the Lord Jesus Christ, who the Bible teaches engages in a ministry of intercession for us at the right hand of the Father. And you'll notice in verse one, he is called the righteous one. There is no sin in him. There is no darkness in him. He is there as our advocate, pleading our call. So why should I obey? I should obey because I have the Lord Jesus interceding for me. He is involved in presenting me before the Father, in defending me before the Father.
Would you notice in verse two, he is described as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. In seminary we sometimes argue about first John chapter two verse two. Can you see where it might produce an argument? Do you see the verse there first John chapter two verse two? That he is the he is the toning sacrifice for our sins and not for ours only but also for the whole world. There are some very sincere and godly Christians who say that Jesus died only for the elect, only for a subcategory of humanity that have been called out by God, that God has sovereignly chosen.
It's called the doctrine of election. And that perspective is called reform theology or Calvinist thought. And they have a lot of verses that seem to support what they say. That's one group. Another group kind of comes from what's called an Arminian perspective that says that Christ died for everybody and everybody can believe the gospel and get saved. And that he didn't die just for a subcategory or a smaller group of humanity. He died for every single human being. And that anybody who believes the gospel can be saved. Well, I got good news for you this morning. I'm not going to solve that debate. Because there are principles and biblical verses on both sides of that. So don't sit there and think that, well, the Calvinists can't be a real Christian because That's not what the Bible teaches, or the Arminian can't be a good Christian because that's not what the Bible teaches.
I believe that a case could be made for both of those provisions, contradictory though they appear to be. In fact, I believe that both the convinced Calvinist and the Arminian had better be preaching the same gospel, that those who believe in Jesus Christ will indeed be saved. But in terms of some of the specialized issues like election and calling and Those kinds of things, I believe that's where we need to sort out some of the biblical material. Did you notice verse two? I can see your eyes glazing over. I've left them to theology there for a minute, and I want some of you real quick to see that happening. Look at verse two. It says that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, but not for ours, only for the sins of the whole world.
To me, that seems to say he's died for everybody, that there's a potential for any human being to breathe a gospel and be saved. and my stronger Calvinist friends will try to backpedal and explain that verse away, but that's a problem text, I think, for some of them, to say that he died for only a limited number. The fact is he's the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Is that really true for him? If God is as holy as the Bible describes, And if we are sinful, as the Bible describes, then we needed a Savior. We needed an atoning sacrifice. And verse two clearly declares that Jesus, the righteous one, became that.
If that's really true, what stronger reason do we need for obedience than that? He paid the debt. Now, we should be obedient to God. I understand that in a San Diego courtroom... Two men were on trial for robbery. A witness to the crime was being examined by the prosecuting attorney when he asked the following sequence of questions. Were you at the scene when the robbery took place? Yes, the witness said. And did you observe the two robbers? And again, the robber nodded. Yes. The attorney then turned up the heat of his intensity and boomed out his last question.
Are these two men present in court today? And there was no need for the witness to answer, because the two defendants raised their hand. Some of you are with me and some of you are. They acknowledged their own guilt, didn't they? Yeah, we're here. We're the ones he saw. Yeah, we did it. I mean, the case closed. God's grace leads us to raise our hand and say, yes, I'm guilty. And I needed an atoning sacrifice. And I'm so glad that Jesus Christ became that for me. Pretty good motive for obedience, would you think? Notice verse three.
John says, we know that we have come to know him if we believe the gospel, right? Oh, there you go. Beware of theologians who misquote Bible verses, okay? Look at verse three. We know that we've come to know him if we attend church on a regular basis. I'm sorry, that's not right. Here it is. We know that we have come to know him if we fill in blank outlines of visiting preachers. What does it say? We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commandment. Oh, beware of a Christianity that says God doesn't care about your obedience. He cares about our obedience.
Jesus says, if you love me, keep my commandment. Now, friends, that's a foreign cry from a cult or a sect that says we can be saved only by believing in Jesus and obeying the Ten Commandments. That's not the gospel. We do not get saved by believing in Jesus and then by our obedience. That is the work of Christ plus our obedience. That is not the gospel. That's the gospel of works. We get saved by believing in Lord Jesus Christ, but we evidence saving, saved by the way we obey the Lord. We are to be obedient. Notice verse four. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is still a pretty good guy.
Is that what you're saying? You're being more skeptical, aren't you? The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar. Wow. And the truth is not in him. We don't normally call people liars these days. That's a strong word. John is not hesitant to say, if your claim says something, but your life says something different, there is only one conclusion. You're a liar. I'm a liar. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth.
is not in him. God doesn't want us to lie. He wants what we say and how we live to match. And for someone to say, I know God, based on what John has said to us, especially in chapter one, brings a moral obligation to us to walk as Jesus walked, to live a life of obedience. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth is not in him. Verse five, but if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. Isn't that marvelous?
If anyone obeys his word, God's love is completed, is truly made complete in that person. Have you ever thought about the fact that there are a lot of Christians walking around with incomplete love? Or put it a different way. God's love has not come to its goal. It's not reached its completion. Its completion is that it is a transforming love that makes people like Jesus. So the person who says, I know God, but is not obeying God, is not seeking to live for the Lord. There is incomplete knowledge. There is incomplete love. God's love finds its completion in the one who obeys.
who seeks to do what God has said. I sometimes have the opportunity to speak to young people on the thorny issue of the will of God. I think that is one of the primary questions of every generation of young people. How can I know the will of God? And I guess I take a different tact than others do who talk about that issue. I really believe the Bible teaches that ninety-nine percent of God's will is right in His word. That it's not something beyond His word. and that we need to seek guidance for the choices we make every day based on our study of Scripture and our prayer and our consulting with others that we hold in high regard and that others that intercede and pray for us and lift us up before God and that we are wise in the way we interpret circumstances and all the rest.
But that ninety-nine percent of God's will is right there in His word. And that in many situations of life, God may not care whether we choose A or B. as long as when we choose A we honor him or when we choose B we honor him. God may give us a great deal of freedom and liberty to make a wide variety of choices provided they are consistent with his words. John says if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. You see the focus upon the word of God? The focus is not upon our interpreting circumstance. The focus is not upon our polling Christians to find out what the majority of Christians think. It's being focused on the word.
It's listening to the word of God and obeying what we know. So there are times when a young person may come to me and say, Dr. Dixon, I really want to know God's will for my life. And there are occasions where I'm tempted to ask, well, tell me where you are obeying God right now. What are the areas in your life in which you are saying, I am definitely obeying God. I know that I'm doing what God wants me to do. You see, sometimes it's not so much a matter of the understanding. It's a matter of the will. It's a matter of choosing to do God's word, to do God's will. Notice that John goes on to say, if anyone obeys his word, verse five, God's love is truly made complete in him.
This is how we know we are in him. If we have believed the gospel, is that what verse six says? Still with me this morning? This is how we know we are in him. Verse six, whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. I appreciated the kind of cultural phenomenon that came out a couple of years ago where people started wearing bracelets with the initials WWJD. Of course, it spawned a whole merchandising segment of Christianity, didn't it? for all kinds of merchandise with those letters. WWJD came out. What would Jesus do? And for many young people, that was a key.
I mean, it was a very helpful process in their wanting to make decisions that would honor Christ. There were, of course, unsaved young people that would look at a WWJD bracelet or necklace or patch or button or bumper sticker and ask what that meant and it would give Christians an opportunity to witness. I think those things are wonderful. The problem with those things is the way we answer the question, what would Jesus do? It's right there in verse six. How do we find out what Jesus would do? Verse six says, whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus walks. So if I ask the question, WWJD, what would Jesus do?
There's only one way to answer that question. Can you get it? It's the study before gospel. You'd expect a seminary teacher to say that. But it's still true, even though I'm the one saying it, okay? It means going to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and reading about how God's incarnate lives. How did he live? How did he deal with the pressures of society? How did he make decisions? How did he honor his father when it seemed no one else even cared about what God the father saw? How did he act in terms and circumstances of persecution? How did he respond when people began turning the screws and trying to make him look foolish?
What did he do? What would Jesus do? We can only answer that when we read the Gospels and we study Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and study how God incarnate lives. I believe that John is giving us in this first epistle in chapter two, verse six, he is giving us the very best reason to study the four Gospels. He's saying if you want to live a life of obedience, if you see that you have an obligation to obey God, the really great news is God has given you a model for how to live a God-honoring life. He modeled that by his son coming into the world and living for thirty-some years of public life, a life that's been recorded that can be studied from four different points of view from Matthews, Marks, Luke and John's perspective.
I would say that's quite a gift, wouldn't you? God, it's given us that material that we can pour over that. And we can ask, what would Jesus do? And we can come up with a very important answer. One of the things that has impressed me as I've studied those Gospels and sometimes asked that kind of question, as I've noticed how often Jesus used questions to respond to challenges, especially from the religious leaders. Maybe you've seen this. But one of the ways that I would recommend studying a gospel account, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, you might want to consider is to read one of those gospel books and underline every question of Jesus. It's a fascinating study. He was not only a man who taught by parables, he was a man who taught by questions.
You remember when the religious leaders came to Jesus one day and they said to him, Lord, what miracle is it you do that proves you have the right to say the things that you say? Prove to us that you have this authority. Remember what Jesus is? He didn't answer that question. He said, I'll answer your question if you answer my question, right? And he says, my question is, the baptism of John, was it from God or was it from men? Do you remember the passage? Are you still out there? Do you remember the passage? And Jesus said, the baptism of John, was it from God or was it from men? And these religious leaders, Pharisees, I'm sure, among them, said, well, to themselves, well, if we say...
that John the Baptist baptism was from God, then Jesus is going to say, well, then why didn't you believe him? But if we say, well, it was just from men, then the people will get mad at us because they held John in high esteem. You remember the text. So these religious leaders who should have known a thing or two come back to Jesus and they say, at the John's baptism, we don't know. Remember? To me, that's one of the funnier passages in the gospel. You're not laughing. That's just because you've not studied it. I just think it's hilarious that they should have known this. They should have known this. But they chose to say, we don't know.
And you remember what Jesus said? He says, well, then if you didn't answer my question, I'm not going to answer your question. Really interesting. It's another occasion where he does the same thing in terms of the question. Remember that, I believe again, it was the Pharisees who came up to him and they said, Lord, Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Jesus knew that if he simply said yes, it would get him in trouble with some of the Jews who were really upset that Rome was having political domination over them. If he said no, don't pay taxes, it'd get him in trouble with the Romans. Remember? And so Jesus said, give me a coin. Somebody loans him a coin.
And Jesus asked the question. He says, whose image is on this coin? And they said, well, Caesar's. And you remember what he said? He rendered a Caesar what is Caesar's. He did to God what is God. Why was that a brilliant answer? He was not just simply saying you should pay taxes. Here's what he was saying. He was saying that you and I use the coinage produced by a secular government. We have a responsibility to pay taxes. We do have a responsibility to earthly authority. We don't have to smile when we pay taxes, but we should pay taxes. So if the likeness of the earthly ruler is on the coin and you use that coinage, you should pay tax. But more than that, he is saying, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, but render to God the things that are God.
What's he saying? You're in the image of God. This coin's in the image of Caesar. You're in the image of God. Give your life to God. You get to Caesar where it belongs to Caesar. But you give to God what born and so on. You see how he did that? That would be brilliant, right? Instead of getting stuck, if they say on the horns of their dilemma, and getting in trouble by either saying, yes, pay taxes or no, pay taxes, he made it a much bigger issue. Way beyond paying taxes. It's the issue of our lives. What are we going to do with our lives? We are to give our lives over to the Lord. We are to obey him. He is honored by our obedience.
Well, it didn't make a lot of progress this morning. At least they got us through verse six. I will be back in two weeks and we'll pick up at this point. Perhaps you'd want to read through first John chapter two and try to guess where we're going to go at that point. Let me close with a quick illustration that I hope illustrates some of what I've said this morning in terms of living the obedient Christian life. A man tells the story about needing to get new tires mounted on his car. And he said, the man who was mounting these new tires for me had no way of knowing that I am a mechanical engineer. As he worked, he asked me the question, do you know why I put half of the weights on the inside rim and half on the outside?
As a matter of fact, I do, I replied. The imbalance can be resolved to a point mass located in the plane of imbalance. is an equal mass is placed at a hundred and eighty degrees opposite and at an equivalent radius, then perfect balance will result. However, I continued, the plane of imbalance is located somewhere between the planes of the rims. By dividing the weight between the rims, you can approximate the ideal balance. The fellow stared at me for a moment and then said, Yeah, because if you don't, it'll wobble. You wobble.
You wobble. Boy, are I wobble. And I suspect that most of my wobbling doesn't have to do with weight so much. Doesn't have to do with little bees. That's good. Lord, thank you for your love to us today. Thank you for calling us into your family, providing a savior. who is now our intercessor. Thank you for forgiveness of sin. Thank you for the obligation that you place upon us to be obedient sons and daughters. Lord, help us to obey with joy. And there may be times when we can't initially obey with joy, but help us to obey anyway. Help us to grow in our faith and not to groan in lack of faith.
And help us, Lord, that we might find balance in being obedient. and serving the Lord Jesus Christ in this week. Would you bless your people as they seek to represent him and their part of your world that indeed others will take notice and see in their lives a love for you and a longing to obey you that is a contagious kind of thing. Dismiss us now with your blessing. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.