Gooding, David: 10 – Our Love for God

Now let's begin this session by reading the verses that we have to consider. Beginning to read in chapter uh four and verse twenty. If a man say, I love God, and hate his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment have we from him, that he who loves God love his brother also. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten of God. And whosoever loves him that beget, loves him also that is begotten of him. For this is the lo- uh, hereby, hereby we know that we love the children of God when we love God and do his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is begotten of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. And who is he that overcomes the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three agree in one. Those of you who may happen to have an older translation, such as the Authorized Version, will notice that I have not read a verse that appears in your translation, a verse that says that whereas the spirit and the water and the blood bear witness on earth, there are, in addition, three who bear witness in heaven. And you may wonder why, in my reading, I have left out that verse. The simple answer is that that verse was never any part of what John originally wrote, nor does it occur in the manuscripts of the New Testament until exceedingly late times. It was an addition that came into the manuscripts and into only a few of the manuscripts. It's not an original part of God's holy word. In leaving it out, therefore, we are not taking away from Holy Scripture. We are merely returning to what John wrote and what the vast majority of the, uh, uh, variable manuscripts themselves read. Now, in this session, I propose, uh, good ladies and gentlemen, to talk for a ma- remarkably short time. Unless you should think by way of surprise that this is a miracle or something, let me explain that it is deliberate on my part. The reason why I shall be talking for a short time and giving you much longer discussion time is that this, these few verses contain an exceedingly important topic. And a topic that, whereas it is important for us all to grasp, is exceedingly important for our younger brethren and sisters to grasp. It is the topic of overcoming the world. And while at first sight, perhaps that sounds a little bit simple, yet it would be important for us all to know exactly what this means, because here, if anywhere, is a something that has exceedingly important practical implications for our daily living. And therefore, it would be good, wouldn't it, if this morning we could get a very clear concept in our minds on this practical topic of overcoming the world. We shall need to grasp clearly, shall we not, what the Bible says, what the Bible means when it talks of overcoming the world. What exactly is the world? And what does it mean to overcome the world? Is this talking about the valiant missionaries who go abroad and overcome the superstitions of the heathen and get people converted, which things the majority of us don't have to do at home because the neighbors both sides of us are believers to start with. Or is overcoming the world something different? What we mean by the term overcome the world. Apparently, this one of the secrets of overcoming the world is, according to verses four and five our faith, and our faith in particular that Jesus is the Son of God. And many of us may want to know what's that got to do with the question of overcoming the world. Normally, the preachers exhort us to notice that when the Bible talks of having eternal life, it stresses the fact that we have to believe the Lord, that is, not believe merely some fact about him, that Jesus is the Son of God or that he died, but that we have to believe him. He that believeth on the Son has everlasting. And they stress the point that many people there are who that believe that Jesus is the Son of God, but they don't yet have eternal life because they've not learned personally to believe him and to commit themselves to him. But here is a verse that talks to us about an exceedingly important practical thing, this matter of gaining victory over the world, and instead of talking in terms of our personal faith in him, he that believeth on the Son overcomes the world, it seems to talk in terms of a proposition. The secret of overcoming the world is he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God. How it does it come that believing a proposition that Jesus is the Son of God is the secret of overcoming the world? And then, of course, if it is so vitally important, uh, to our overcoming the world that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God, we may well want to ask our passage, well, what evidence is there that Jesus is the Son of God? Why should I believe that Jesus is the Son of God? And if it were an appropriate thing for me to do at this stage, uh, for my own benefit as well as yours, I would love to be able to come around to you individually and say, get up on your hind legs, please. Now, would you tell me, why exactly do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Why do you believe? And if you were woken up at six o'clock in the morning, knocked on the head with a brick, and said, now tell me straight, why do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? I wonder what reason would come out tumbling out of your head and mouth first. Why do we believe he's the Son of God? I know one of the reasons why I believe he is, that's because my mother told me so. It's a very good reason for believing. And my father, he told me so as well. That's an exceedingly good reason for believing, but is it enough? Because that simply raises the question, why did they believe he was anyway? So these are practical things, and as I say, I don't propose to talk long about them, uh, because it seems to me very important, eh, that in your discussion groups these matters should be fully aired, and people be free to probe and ask, as you say, what does it really mean? But let me begin my observations by, uh, pointing to the context. If a man say, I love God, so the passage begins. For hitherto John has been talking about the love of God, not only manifested in the giving of his son, but now the love of the invisible God manifested through the believer. So that when the believer loves his fellow, it is the living God loving through him. And that this love in the believer's heart, love for his fellow, love for God himself, is a sign and evidence that the love of God is reaching its full expression, its goal. And one of the things that it does is to glee- give the believer confidence in the day of judgment. But then we come, as frequently in this epistle, to the question, now if a man say I love God, well now, by what test shall we decide whether his claim to love God is genuine? For if he loves God and hates his brother, he's simply a liar, says John. For he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And that's a healthy reminder, isn't it? Because sometimes we can work up in our hearts all sorts of emotional feelings that might give us to think that they are love to God. But, you know, our hearts being as naughty and deceitful as they are, it mightn't be true love of God at all. It might be love of myself, or even love of the nice cozy feeling that I have that might disappear in the face of reality. You'll see, if you see the Rock of Gibraltar from your roadside cafe or your packet tour hotel in the morning mists, it looks nice and beautiful, soft, doesn't it, when the mists around it, aha. Another thing, if you go to knock your head against it, you'll find it isn't quite a nice, cozy bit of cotton wool. It's a hard lump of rock. And sometimes our emotions can deceive us. We're full of nice, kind feelings which we think are loving God, but when we meet the hard rock of our fellow believer, we find loving him is a very different thing altogether. You'll see. But if I say I love God and I don't love my brother, then I'm not really loving God anyway. And I need this check upon my emotions. Uh. Moreover, verse twenty one tells me that I have a positive commandment to love my brother. And verse, uh, one of chapter five adds this fact, that if I am begotten of God, if I am a child of God, and God is my Father, I'm one of his children, then if I love my Father, I shall love any other child of his that he has begotten. Eh, the question then arises, how do I know when I'm loving the child of God? If I'm under these duties to love the children of God, to love all my father's children. How do I know when I am loving and when I'm merely being soft and sentimental? And the answer comes back in verse two: hereby know we that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. True love of my fellow Christian will not oblige me to break the commandments of the Lord. It is not loving my brother, is it, if for his sake I break a commandment of the Lord. For loving God, again, is not simply a sentimental thing and a matter of feelings only, but this is the love of God that we keep his commandments. With that, I suspect that the flow of the argument is fairly obvious to us, and I come now to this other matter that we mentioned. True love of God, our love for God, means keeping his commandments. John proceeds to tell us that his commandments are not burdensome. Keeping the commandments of God for a believer isn't, or at least shouldn't be, penal servitude, hard and difficult and burdensome. It ought to be, didn't it, as the norm in a believer's life, that we speak like Paul spoke. I delight in the law of God, in the inward man. Yes, God's commandments are right. My intellect approves. My emotions approve. I delight in it. And really, I want to do them. I will to do this good. We still may have to admit, like Paul did, that in spite of that, we don't always do what we should. But the commandments of God, keeping them, says John, is not a burdensome. Why isn't it? Well, he gives, uh, now his reason. Whatsoever, he puts it in the neuter, for he's thinking not so much of us as persons, but about that marvelous life and nature that God has put within the believer, and whatsoever is born of God, says he, overcomes the world. So now we arrive at our topic. And you will remember in the course of these weeks, we have thought about this many times. In each of the three major sections of the epistle, we meet the twin themes of the family of God and then the world. And in the first section, it was the world in all its seductive attractiveness that, uh, comes to us and tries to get our love and affection and to draw our love away from the Father. And we needed to be told that if any man loved the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Then in the second section that we considered last week, things took on a more sinister air. The world not now in its attractiveness, but rather in its serious demonic origin. The origin of its character, it is of the evil one, and will therefore, as John says, frequently turn to hating the believer because the believer is of God. Now, in this third section, here we come once more to the question of the world, not so much now in its attractiveness that steals our love, nor so much in its evil origin of its evil character, but in its opposition to the keeping of the commandments of God. You will not have to live very long in the world at large before you will find that it is a society that in many respects has been organized in such a way and on such principles as makes keeping the commandments of God an exceedingly difficult thing to do. The world isn't necessarily organized to make room for the commandments of God, and very often it's organized on plain the opposite principle, and keeping the commandments of God is going to be very difficult. Our businessmen know about it, don't they? I have a brother who was at one stage an agent for a manufacturing firm, and the principals of the firm came to him and they said, look here, Gooding, you'll have to join the Freemasons, old chap. No, he says, I don't want to. Oh, but you'll have to. Oh, how is that? Well, because you're losing us orders by not being in the Freemasons, you'll see. And we can't afford, our business, uh, can't afford it to have you going around and losing us orders because you're not in the Freemasons. We don't care about your religious beliefs, has nothing to do with us. Keep them if you want to, have them, but this is business. Organized in such fashion as to make keeping the commandments of God exceedingly difficult. And all sorts of things outward and more sophisticated and hidden in this sorry world, in the way it is organized, that in a practical sense makes keeping the commandments of God a difficult and unpopular thing to do. In some societies, permissiveness have gone so far, isn't it, that the young person who doesn't indulge in premarital, uh, uh, uh, uh, sex is thought to be odd. Yes. Queer. Because that's how the world at present is organized. So now, how do we overcome the world? John says in the first place, whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world. That is, it is a power of the divine nature within us to overcome. Like a little bird has no difficulty in overcoming the force of gravity. I do. I always have done, and somehow these days even more so, I find a difficulty, particularly in the mornings, uh, rising from the flat position to the upright position can become a bit more difficult than it used to be, you'll see. Yeah. Birds don't. It's in their nature, isn't it, to overcome the force of gravity. Whatsoever is born of God has it within its powers and its nature to overcome the world. But John, with his balance, now gives us another side to this secret. It's not only in our nature, but it lies also in our faith, our vigorous, living, vital, active, positive faith. He says our faith overcomes the world. In fact, he use two t- uses two tenses. In verse four, he says, ah, this is the victory that overcame. It has overcome the world. Referring doubtless to the time when initially we put our faith in the Savior, and the war was won, won forever. We changed over sides. We overcame the world. But then verse five reminds us that it is a constant thing. Who is he that overcometh? And now it's a present tense, the constant overcoming of the world. So we come to this secret then, it's our faith. But now notice faith about what and in what? Shall we notice exactly what it says and what it doesn't say? It doesn't say, this is the one that overcomes the world, the man or woman who believes that God has forgiven his sins. Now, he doesn't use that phrase, does he? But the overcoming of the world lies in this, that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. You see, good friend, it is true that if you have trusted the Savior, God has forgiven your sins. But let me remind you that if Jesus isn't the Son of God, well, then there isn't such a thing as forgiveness anyway. If Jesus isn't the Son of God, there's nothing in the gospel anyway. You may believe it, but you're believing a nonsense and an emptiness if Jesus isn't the Son of God. So this matter is basic. Everything else depends on it. To understand it, we should perhaps go back to John's Gospel, chapter sixteen, where our Lord introduced the topic to his disciples. He was about to believe them, uh, to leave them. He was about to leave them. And he said in verse twenty eight of chapter sixteen of the gospel, I came out from the Father and am come into the world. Again I leave the world and go unto the Father. His disciples say, well now, at last, now you're speaking plainly, do you see? And by this we believe that you came forth from God. For nothing less than this is what our Lord is claiming. Claiming not merely to be a prophet to tell us how to behave, he is claiming that there is another world out there, that he has come from that other world, from the Father, into our world, and presently he went from our world back to the Father. Says the disciples, we believe that. Do you really believe it, said our Lord? Do you really believe that? Let me tell you, gentlemen, he said, that the time comes very soon now when you will see me hanging upon a cross, rejected, tortured, crucified, and slung out of this world. And when that happens, your faith that I am the Son of God is going to be sorely test- tested. And what will happen is that when you see me like that, you will in fact desert me, and you will go back to your own homes. You'll say there's nothing in it after all. And some of you are going to be very frightened to come and stand with me and stand to lose everything you have in this world, your life included. Then it will become exceedingly important, this question, am I or am I not the Son of God? For if I am the Son of God, you can refu- you can afford to lose everything you've got for my sake. But if I'm not the Son of God, you would be a fool to lose anything for my sake, wouldn't you? If I am the Son of God, you would be foolish not to sacrifice for my sake. If I am the Son of God, to go- bow to pressure, to go in with the world, to fail to commit the- to keep the Father's commandments, that would be foolish indeed if I am in fact the Son of God. The question will be, am I or am I not? And as it is in the times of our testing still, isn't it? You've got a career before you, my y- my young fellow Christian, you've got a career before you. How will you decide it? When the world puts its pressure on and frightens you, eh, eh, with the way it acts, and if you're going to obey the Lord, you've got to make great sacrifice. How will you overcome? Vital thing is, is Jesus the Son of God, or isn't he? If he is, then no matter what you're called upon to sacrifice for him, it's worthwhile. If he isn't, kick the lot out of the window. You say, how shall I know he's the Son of God? I suggest to you what follows now is not merely a description of him, but a description that provides us with the evidence that he is indeed the Son of God. Well, this we need to know, don't we? On what grounds do you, in fact, believe that Jesus is the Son of God? There is evidence galore, but now when days are easy and we're not called upon to make great sacrifices, maybe when we sit calmly and we have no pressure on us from the world, these are the times to get the evidence under our belt, that when the difficult days come and the decisions have got to be made, we've got something to get hold of. I believe he is because. This is he that came by water and by blood, not simply went by water and by blood, came by water and by blood. That is, when he came officially into this world, he was heralded by the official forerunner and baptized by John in the Jordan. I bear witness, I saw the Holy Spirit descend, and the God who sent me to baptize said, upon whomsoever you shall see the Spirit descend, this is the Son of God, this is he that baptizes with the Holy Spirit. The evidence of his official introduction by John the Baptist at Jordan. And similarly, he came by blood. John the Baptist announced, didn't he? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That is, when he first appeared on the stage officially, his forerunner announced that he had come to die. Now, this is an extraordinary thing for the only man that I ever know or heard of, that entered this world saying that he had come to die, and therefore the sins of the world. Do you know of any other? You doubtless have read of many prophets and, uh, and, uh, people that have begun religions. I think you've never yet met one save Jesus Christ, who entered this world saying he had come to die for the sins of the world. And there's a very good reason why you've never heard of anybody else, because if anybody else had said it, you'd ring for the psychiatrist, wouldn't you? And say the man's gone crazy. How could he die for the sins of the whole world? But that is precisely what Jesus Christ said he had come to do. And here he stands unique amongst men. One further piece of evidence. John tells us that at the cross, when our Lord's side was pierced, there came out blood and water. And Top Lady put it into hymn form, didn't he, saying, let the water and the blood from thy risen side which flowed be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power. How do I know Jesus is the Son of God? He came by water and by blood, coming to announce as Son of God he had come to die to take away the sin of the world. Ah, but secondly, I know it's true because he meets my need. Ah. How do I know bread is good? Because I get hungry and I find bread satisfies it. How do I know Jesus is God's son? He's the real thing. Because I have a need, and that need is the great question of the guilt of sin. How do I maintain my standards and yet get the forgiveness that I sorely need because I've broken those standards? Jesus Christ has the answer. He tells me not simply to be good. He comes with the answer to this profound problem of human existence. If I'm going to say sin doesn't matter, well, so society can go, go to boot if it likes. If I'm going to say that sin matters, then I'm in a difficult position because I have sinned. Where can I find the answer to my problem, how to maintain my standards and yet find forgiveness? At that level, Jesus Christ meets us. He came for this very purpose, to take away the sin of the world. And to that, the Holy Spirit witnesses, coming down on the Penti- on day of Pentecost, that this Jesus is risen from the dead and gone to the right hand of the Father and is indeed the Son of God. And at that same moment, that Holy Spirit come down on the day of Pentecost is a fulfillment of what John said originally, isn't it? How do I know that this Jesus is the Son of God? John he said, I baptized him and I saw the Spirit coming on him. And I testify this is he who baptizes with the Holy Ghost. How do I know Jesus is the Son of God? Because he not only died for me to deal with the problem of my guilt, but he gives me his Holy Spirit to empower my Christian living. All of three minutes extra. That is a great deal of good time, isn't it, that I've given you, but at the, by the time you turn around your chair, you will have a whole, one whole thirty minutes without any.