Back to sermon search

Full transcript

For our final study, then, we turn to movement three, as I have called it, beginning in chapter four, verse seven. We shall not need telling now that, however you analyze the Epistle of John, no one of its major divisions will prove to be a watertight compartment containing only things peculiar to itself. The very reverse is true. In all his major divisions of the epistle, John constantly repeats one or two basic, fundamentally important themes. So today we shall abstract from this final movement those two themes that have particularly occupied us throughout this week. The theme of life in the family of God, and the opposite theme of the world. Much detail again we shall have to leave, though I trust I have covered it, or some of it, in the notes. So then, in this movement three, once more, John will talk to us about life in the family of God, and at great lengths urge upon us our duty to love one another. Only this time, his peculiar a- a- aspect is that he tells us the resources that are available for us, by which we may love one another, and says so at the very beginning, beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Secondly, John will talk to us, as I have said, about the world. Only not now about its seductive attractiveness, as he did in chapter two, nor particularly about its hatred of the family of God, as he spoke in chapter three. This time he talks to us about the world and the great difficulty it places in the way of actually fulfilling the commandments of God. And seeing to love one another does mean that we must keep the commandments of God, then the world is going to make it difficult on times for us to love one another in the family of God. But here John talks to us from his special angles, not only of the difficulty that the world places in our way, but of the resources and secrets at our disposal for overcoming the difficulties that the world puts in the way. So first of all, then, the basic principle of loving. Beloved, says he, chapter four and verse seven, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God. God is no Pharaoh asking the Israelites to make bricks without straw. God certainly requires of us who are members of his family to love one another, but not without the love to do it with. The love wherewith we love one another does not come from us, it is supplied by God. Let us love one another, for love comes from God, and everyone who loves shows thereby that he has been begotten of. So God it is who provides the love, and God it is who is busy in our hearts perfecting the expression of his own love. Look at verse twelve, if you will. No man hath beheld God at any time. If we love one another, God abideth in us, and his love is perfected in us. That is, as we make our unsteady beginnings and efforts at loving one another, God, who is supplying the love that we used to love with, is perfecting not our love, but his love. He is in the believer. All the great reservoir of his love is available to the believer, and God himself is engaged in perfecting his own love and expressing his own love through the believer. So far from asking us to make bricks without straw, the same God who commands us to love one another is in the believer developing and expressing his own love through that believer to others. The standards of God's love, of course, are immeasurably high. So let us notice the first little section from verse seven, which begins, let us love one another, to verse eleven that says, beloved, if God loves us thus, we also ought to love one another. Here then the example of God's love and the principles that are involved in God loving us. Would you notice that the two verses nine and ten are not just repetitions, but different sta- statements of different sides of the question, and in beautifully logical order. First of all, says John, herein was the love of God manifested, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. And secondly, herein is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Two statements about the love of God, but not needlessly repetitious. One is telling us of the manifestation, the demonstration, the outward exhibition that God made with which to express his love. Then the second verse tells us of the costs involved in showing his love like that, and the principles upon which God's love works. And we notice, first of all, then the practical, active expression of the love, and then, if you might call it, the theory behind the love. That is a delightful order, isn't it? We see it at the human level. Here are father and mother, and they love their child. They themselves are in difficult circumstances, but they talk it over as they plan the career of their child, and they express their love for their child in giving him the very best that money can buy, their money can buy, and the very best education, and so forth and so on. They demonstrate their love to the child, and the child sees the demonstration of the love. What the child doesn't always see ba- is what went on behind the scenes and what it cost mum and dad to demonstrate their love like that. And perhaps now, when he's a baldy old thirty five or more, sitting back in his armchair one night with a furrowed brow, counting up the cost of loving his own children, his mind goes back and he says to himself, you know, I didn't appreciate it like I should have done. I never realized what it cost old mum and dad to to do what they did for me. Yes, because the exhibition comes first, and then we who are on the receiving end begin to perceive the costs involved behind the scenes. The exhibition of God's love. Herein was the love of God manifested, that he took the initiative. He didn't, so to speak, stay aloft on his throne and issue words merely, but taking the initiative, he sent his son into our world. He made the contact. He sent his son. His only begotten son, or his only son, that we may live through him. It would take a greater theologian than I to peer behind the implications of that great adjective, God's only Son. And what that relationship was between Father and the Son, so wonderful, so mysterious, so unique. But see what the verse is saying, the exhibition of God's love is that God takes that only Son and gives him that we might live, sharing, what if one may so describe it, the most precious thing God has, that eternal life that was with the Father, sharing his very life with us, sending his only Son that we may live. I mustn't, I suppose, compare great things with small. I remember at one stage, however, being charged to drive a, a three or four-year-old year old niece of mine from her parents to visit her, uh, from one parent to visit her mother, who was staying with her in-laws up aloft in Britain somewhere. And the infant, uh, was given a whole large bag of sweets to convey to sundry of her cousins the other end, you see. But it was a long journey. Sweets being sweets, you see, there are different things in this world, aren't there? I mean, there are stocks and shares, what use are they? But a bag of sweets to an infant of three or four, it proved irresistible, you know, and while I was ki- I was bent on driving, every now and again just one sweet came out, and then just another sweet came out. I'm afraid by the end of the journey there were no sweets left. Had there been stocks and shares, yes, the whole box full would have been left. And God had what to God, if we may so speak, was precious beyond all else, his only son. This is the demonstration of his love, the exhibition of his love, that he shared him with us. He sent him into our world that we might live through him. But behind that exhibition, John tells us, were costs immeasurable. So that now he says, herein is love. This is not now so much the exhibition, but the principle of loving. Now he lists the difficulties that we had put in God's way, the difficulties in the way of his loving. First of all, we had not loved God. And that's putting it mildly, because the fact is that we did the very opposite. While we were distant from God and cared not to know him, while some of us were kicking him on the shins in our rebellion. Oh, see what he had to overcome in order to love us. Not only was it our surliness, but John reminds us that in order to make it righteous for him to have anything to do with the likes of us, let alone to love us. God had to send his son as a propitiation for our sins. That God might be just and remain just, and yet be the justifier of him that believes in Jesus. I say it reverently, but God had a reputation throughout his whole universe and any other universes there are, a reputation to maintain for righteousness and holiness. How could he truck and trade with sinners like that? And he found a way that he might love us righteously. And all this time John has been making these remarks. These remarks are sandwiched between two exhortations. John is not merely telling us about the love of God, he is setting us the standard according to which we are to love one another. Brethren, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another like that. Taking the initiative. Showing and demonstrating, in spite of the cost, and in spite of the antagonism of the other side. You say, how should I ever love like that? Where should I get the love from? But John has answered our question. That is how God loves you. And now he's going to tell us that that is the kind of love that God has placed within you, that through you it might go to others. So now in verse twelve, he begins another subsection of his letter. Shall we notice in verse twelve the phrase, no man has beheld God at any time, followed up in verse fourteen by the phrase, and we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. No man, God, John says, has beheld God at any time. In the Gospel of John, as Dr. Stott points out, when John uses that phrase, no man hath beheld God at any time, John follows it in the gospel by saying, yes, but the only begotten Son that is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared. Now, in the epistle, John begins with the very same phrase, no man hath beheld God at any time, but instead of adding the only begotten Son has declared him, now, if you please, John assigns that privilege to us. No man has as- beheld God at any time, but God is dwelling in us and bringing to perfection and full flood his love through us. God is declaring himself in and through us. Not then our desperate attempts to dredge up from love, some love from somewhere. About the stupendous fact that God dwells in the believer. The God who loves this kind of love. And is wanting to express himself as he did through Christ, so now to express his love through us as his personal channels. So that if we love one another, it is God that ab- is abiding in us, and his love is being brought to its full flood in us. But how do we know that that is true? And is not a lot of imagination run riot? Well, we know it is true, says John in verse thirteen: Hereby know we that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his spirit, and we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the savior of the world. So whereas God has not been seen, no man has beheld God at any time, yet, says John, we have beheld something, and in our turn we proclaim what we have beheld. What have you beheld, John? Well, actually, John has beheld a human figure, Jesus Christ, crucified on a cross. Well, thousands of people saw that and passed by wagging their heads. They never saw in it what John saw in it. Millions of people have heard of it since. They've never seen in it yet what John saw in it. As John looked at that crucified figure on a cross, suddenly there rose up in his heart a tremendous revelation of what was happening there, and he saw with awestruck wonder, why this is God sending his son to be the savior. And at the very moment he saw it, it was inevitable, of course, that his very heart was set aglow with a new light and a new significance and a new wonder. You cannot see that without your very heart being changed and moved and lit up, as it suddenly dawns on you what the significant of this, significance of this thing is. What's happening on that cross is God sending, sending his son to be the savior of the world. This is what happens to every believer. Saint Paul put it in his own words, didn't he, when he said how he woke up to this, the son of God loved me and gave himself for me. How do people come to see that? Why, John has just told us. Because God gives us his Holy Spirit. And God himself comes to dwell in our hearts by his spirit. Love, as the hymn puts it, love only knows love. It takes love to recognize it. And God's Holy Spirit dwelling in the heart reveals God's love to us and the significance of the death of Christ, so that we in turn start to proclaim it. Second, very natural reaction, how can you keep quiet about it? The law of God, I must confess, would never make me a missionary. Would it you? But I have too vivid an imagination. I think of myself setting forth to preach the law up your street, and I come to your door, and I knock on it, and here you come. Good evening, and what want you want? I've come to tell you to keep God's law. Well, no, I would never, I would never do it. I should be so afraid of what you would say. Oh, really? What, you? Come to tell me to keep God's law? The interview wouldn't get very far. I will come to tell you what I have seen. So will John the Apostle come to tell you what he has seen. Friend, have you woken up to the significance of what that means, that Jesus Christ nailed on a cross? The Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. And in my heart you will perceive the reality of now of what I say and what it means, because even as I say it, I'm thinking how that Jesus Christ died, sent to be the propitiation for my sin. And the love of God has not only reached me, but now is coming through me, as we have seen and bear witness in our turn along with the apostles about the love of God in the saving work of Christ. So whosoever in this sense shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, not as some mathematical or theological formula, but wakened up by God's Holy Spirit to see the significance of what he is saying, that this Jesus who died on a cross is God's son, dying there, sent to die for me. By such a man, God abideth in him, and he in God. So that John can add we know and have believed the God, the love which God has in us. It is one thing to come to know it. Many people have not got that far yet. But oh, the glory of being able to believe the love of God. And here, where many people need not our help, but the help of God's Holy Spirit, don't they? They know the theology of it, but life has wounded them so deeply with all kinds of scars and fears and guilt complexes, that actually believing the love of God, how difficult they find it. But John goes on to tell us that God's love has not known only been exhibited like this, and not only has he sent his spirit that we may perceive and enjoy it and then proclaim it to others. God is busy at work perfecting his love within us, bringing it to its full tide. Of course, it will eventually mean that his love to us and in us goes back to himself, and it will become our love for God. Uh, John is about to remind us that he loved first. We love, if we love at all, because he first loved us. But now John dwells for a moment on what God is aiming at in perfecting his love in us, so as he says, we may have boldness in the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. It is the desire of God that every believer shall have bold and certain assurance in view of the day of judgment. And have it while we are in this world. Do you notice the explicit statement? And this assurance is to rest on this, that God's love will bring us to see that as Christ already is, not as he was merely, but as he is in glory, so we are already while we are still in this world. Now, what can that mean? It cannot mean, can it, that we are morally and spiritually perfect already while we are still in this world. For in chapter three, John has told us that no, we, we still need to purify ourselves. It cannot mean, therefore, that we are morally and spiritually perfect. In what sense, then, are we now in this world already as he is in the Father's glory? Well, there are many senses in which that is true. Let me briefly rehearse some of them. Look back, if you will, to verse ten. This tells us of the legal side of our standing before God. God sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Now that is a word, as we know, is based on Old Testament thought and ritual, so that I'm going to trouble you once more this morning with a few slides to take us back to where God used his infant class lessons to teach us the basic meaning of these great theological terms. Propitiation, or as we sometimes have it in the Old Testament, atonement, is an idea especially associated with the Day of Atonement. And in Israel, among the many things that happened on the Day of Atonement, the central thing was this. Let's have a slide, please, if we may. Can we have it focused, please? Oh, it's... Ah, that's better, yes. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest came out here into the court and offered the sacrifice that was a basis for atonement. As the elders of the nation put their hands upon the heads of the victim and confessed the nation's sins over the head of that victim at that altar, the priest then took the blood. And the priest who had appeared here in the court publicly to put away sin by the sacrifice then retraced his steps into the presence of God, and he went through the door that normally hung there. Next slide, please. And came, of course, then to the veil that separated the holy place from the most holy. Now, normally in the year, nobody ever penetrated behind that. The reason being their sacrifices were not good enough. But on the Day of Atonement, exception was made, and as the priest came as the people's representative with the blood of the atonement in his hand, he passed through that veil and came into the most holy presence of God. Next slide, please. He has come on the sideways view through here and through this veil and into the presence of God before God's ark and the mercy seat. Next slide, please. And there in my model stands the priest in his white garments of the day of propitiation. He has sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat in the presence of God. Now, ancient Jewish legend has it that on the great Day of Atonement, when the high priest went thus into the very presence of God, they tied a rope round his middle and let it trail all through the tabernacle right outside to where the people were standing. Of course, it's probably a yarn. They never did do any such thing, but it shows that the ancient Jews were aware of the significance of what was happening when the priest eventually came and stood in the presence of God. The priest was coming not for himself alone, he was coming as the representative of the people, and therefore the people saw it very clearly. The reception that God gave the priests would indicate the reception that God was giving to the people whom he represented. If God then accepted the priest on the basis of that propitiation, then the people outside knew that God had accepted them, and they could rejoice that just as their priest in the presence of God was accepted, so they who stood outside was it- were accepted. If, on the other hand, God, having surveyed the sacrifice, declared it was insufficient and that he could not accept this priest for all his sinfulness, then the priest would have died immediately in the presence of God. And the people, so the story goes, had tied the rope round his middle so that if he died, they could haul him out, and then, I suppose, run away as fast as their legs would carry them. Because again, what happened to him would happen to them. He had gone in as their representative. So the ancient story, but it imprints on our mind the wonder of this, does it not, that our blessed Lord has gone back to heaven as our representative, and as the Bible puts it, he now appears in the presence of God for us. Of course he is welcome on his own account, but that is not the point. He appears in the presence of God for us. And because he is our representative, we are taught to argue that the reception God has given to him, God gives to us, whom he represents. In that respect, then, legally, as he is, so are we in this world. May I ask you, have you any doubts about Christ's acceptance in the presence of God? Be careful how you answer it. Because if he is indeed your representative, then the welcome God has given to him as your representative is an indication of God's acceptance of you. The only thing that concerns me is, does God know that Jesus Christ is David Gooding's representative? Has God seen it? And would he change his mind if he discovered that Jesus Christ is actually representing David Gooding? Why, of course not. There's another very big sense in which, as he is, so are we in this world. Let's look to verse twenty of our chapter five. In the middle of the verse that says we know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his son Jesus Christ. In his great priestly prayer, recorded in John seventeen, our Lord Jesus describes what the situation is. He in us, we in him, together one in the Father. That is not some pious hope that one day may be achieved. It is the glorious fact that we are already in Christ, and therefore positionally being in him, if he is God's well-beloved son, then we are in God's well-beloved son. And we are God's beloved children. Oh, even more than that, for in the string context of our verse, what God is saying is that not only has he loved us and accepted us, and that we are in Christ, but the very love of God is in us, and God is developing it and training us to express it more and more, so that just as Christ shows out the love of God, so through us the love of God is being manifested. On all three grounds, we may have absolute confidence, fearless confidence, says John, as we face the future judgment. This then, the love of God, and how wonderful it is. And that love is now to work itself out through us coming back to God himself, and then spreading to our Christian brothers and sisters. And John follows with exhortations to help us to see that this love of God that we are to express is no merely vaporous, impractical thing. If we love God because he has first loved us, then we must love our brothers. Indeed, how would I know that the love, the feeling I have within me is genuine love of God? You'll know that, says John, by the fact that it will express itself, it's if it is the real thing, in love to your brother. For if you don't love your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen? And anyway, if you love Father, you love Son. And everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God. If you love the Father, therefore you will love the child. And then John reminds us that loving one another is not a mere sentimental thing. How shall I know I'm really loving my brother? Says John in chapter five. we know that when we love God and keep his commandments. I cannot say, yes, there is a plain command in Holy Scripture that I must do it, but now look, it would hurt the feelings of my brothers and sisters in Christ if I did it, it would offend them. So I mustn't do it then. It wouldn't be loving to do it. Oh yes, it would. True love of my brothers means loving God, and loving God means keeping his commandment. It is not love to my brother if for his sake I disobey God. But then John comes to a very practical thing. He is aware, like any Christian is aware, that keeping the commandments of God in this fallen, sinful world can be a very difficult thing. It is not merely that the world on occasions hates the believer, that can be true. But it is the way the world is set up, that if we have to live in this world, we are on times going to find it extraordinarily difficult to keep God's commandment. I have a bank manager, you never would believe it. I sometimes wonder what for, but then I do. And he is a good Christian man, and I remember his coming to me once and confiding in me the enormous pressures that his principles had brought to bear upon him. They wanted him, you'll see, to join some secret society whose pagan idolatrous rites are as bad as any that Jezebel ever urged upon Ahab. And if, of course, as a Christian man wanting to stand loyal to the unique deity of Christ, he didn't want to join any such pagan idolatrous society. Now, the principals of his bank weren't interested in religion, they were interested in making money. If he were in this society, he would gain a lot of influential business friends and bring in great hordes of money to the bank. If he refused to be in the society, he would lose them business. The businessmen, I repeat, weren't interested in religion. They couldn't care less, but they wanted him in that religious society. And he had to stand firm and took this decision to risk his whole career and any possibility of Of advancement advancement. in In order order to be loyal to the Lord Jesus and keep the commands of God. And any one of us could think of ten thousand and one illustrations. The way this world, by its attitudes, its standards, its atmospheres, its pressures, is not geared to make easy the keeping of the commandments of God, because the world isn't thinking about it anyway, and is not interested in the topic. So it's going to be difficult. What resource have we with which to overcome the obstacle? Two resources. In the first place, he that is born of God overcomes the world, says John. That is, the very nature that God has given him has within it powers to face the world and its opposition and its difficulties and overcome them. It is the very nature of the life of God. Secondly, the other. The victory, the power that our faith gives to us. But notice in what sense we are talking about our faith. We are talking about our faith in a doctrine, our faith that Jesus is the Son of God. It is that that gives us the strength to overcome the world. Now, at first sight, that is a little surprising. We might have thought that John said, look here, my dear fellow Christians, if you want to overcome the world, the secret to is to be full of the Holy Spirit, who gives you great power and energy to fight the wicked world. We do not readily think that it is doctrine that gives us strength to overcome the world. But here you will perceive the secret lies very much in a belief that. Who is he that overcometh the world, saith he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. What has that got to do with overcoming the world, anyway? It seems to me that the easiest place to begin when we think of this topic that so fills the Johannine literature, this matter of overcoming the world, the easiest place is to begin with our Lord's teaching on the topic, which you will find in the final verses of John chapter sixteen. Just before he went to the cross, we are told he assembled his disciples. And he summed up for them the significance of his whole person and mission. I came forth from the Father, he said in verse twenty eight, and am come into the world. Again I leave the world and I go to the Father. Yes, said the apostles, now we've understood. Glad you said it so clearly, Lord. You talked a little bit in proverbs earlier. How nice of you now to put it in words of one syllable. We've got it completely. You came forth from the Father and you're going back to the Father. Do you really believe, said our Lord? Do you not realize, gentlemen, that the R is very soon coming? When you shall be scattered, every man to his own things, to his own interests, to his own home, and shall leave me alone. Why ever was that? Why, because in a few hours they were to see him spiked to a cross. And the one they thought was the Son of God come down from heaven and about to go back to heaven in all his glory, they should see him spiked helplessly to a cross. It would be too much for their faith. Their minds would be filled with the direst doubts. Well, perhaps he isn't the Son of God after all. And if he isn't the Son of God, well, they did the instinctive thing, they went off home. They went to their own things, says John, to their own interests. What else? If Jesus is the Son of God, it matters nothing. That then is the issue. How many a young man in East Germany has faced the issue whether there is or is not to be promotion in his work? And it depends on whether he is vigorous in youth work for the Lord in his church, and if he is, never any promotion for him. How many a fellow believer has faced the prison camp and death for it? What fools they are, if Jesus isn't the Son of God. But he, if he is the Son of God, then we should be fools not to follow him and suffer what we must for him. How do I know he's the Son of God? With this we must cease. There is evidence, says John, for this is he who came by water and by blood. John is referring to the first chapter of his gospel, where when our Lord came, he came first of all by water, baptized by John the Baptist, and John Baptist tells us why he was baptized. I have come baptizing that the Messiah may be manifest to Israel, he says. And he who sent me to baptize told me that upon whomsoever I shall see the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, and I saw, and I bear record that this is the Son of God. He came officially, officially introduced by the Baptist at his baptism, marked out to be the one that should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with power. But he came by blood. For that same John Baptist, right at the very beginning, not after his cross, but right at the beginning of his official public ministry, proclaimed to the world at large, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He came to die. And stands unique in all the histories of men. The only one that entered our world claiming, credibly that is, claiming that he had come to die for our sins. How do I know the claim is true? I know it not only because it is unique and that he gave all kinds of evidence that he who made the claim fitted the claim. But I shall find the evidence in the actual power that it sets free in my life. This is he who, coming by water, was announced as the one that should baptize with the Holy Ghost. And thank God those who trust him find it a reality. He can impart God's Holy Spirit and give us the power to overcome the world. He was, he who was announced as coming to die did die. He died for us to release us from the guilt of sin. And as Paul would put it, we died with him. That we might find the way to a new kind of life and a new power in life. And thus prove by experience the doctrine we believe with our minds, that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. In that faith, we shall find the power to overcome the world and obey God, and in obeying God, love him and love our fellow members in the family of God. My apologies on this last occasion. I have sinned ever more than before. If I went on lecturing till next week, who knows when I should finish.