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Hello, Good Morning, and welcome to Confessors of Christ Church this morning.
Illustration: Gossip: Did you hear that so and so said this or that,
Did you hear that as well?
No? Oh I heard this instead.
Oh no, you didn’t hear that, I thought for sure it was this.
And they go round and round trying to figure out what was being said instead of going to the person who actually said it.
Instead of going to the source, we go to whoever and whatever is closest to us.
Dare I say, that we do this with Scripture as well.
Today we come to a section of Scripture that can be a little difficult to interpret but I’d like us to journey through its interpretation together.
Interpreting this text correctly is vital to our assurance of faith.
A wrong interpretation of this text can lead to disastrous consequences, some that we are seeing before us today.
Our goal for today is to not only grasp this text but I want us to discover its application.
How are we to live out what is being said this morning?
Being that our text has been, continues to be, and will continue to be misunderstood,
I also want to make it a secondary goal to show how we work through scriptures to understand what the author says.
Now, here at Confessors of Christ Church we believe in what is called Sola Scriptura.
This is the Latin phrase for Scripture alone.
To give you a quick spoiler, we are going through the 5 Solas as a Bible study early next year, and I’m really excited for this study.
So, what does Sola Scriptura mean?
It means that we get our understanding of God, our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of Salvation, from God’s Word Alone.
We do not look to a Pope, we do not look to a denomination, we do not look to a prophet, we do not look to a teacher, we look to God’s complete Word.
The Scriptures are our standard.
Paul wanted to make sure we understood this as well when He wrote to Timothy and the Spirit preserved it for us today.
This leads us to know that Scripture is from God and what we use to teach, correct, train and reproof.
This also means that we would do well to know how to interpret Scripture.
Here’s a question for you: Have you ever heard someone say, well that’s your interpretation of what the Bible says?
Does it mean that we can’t really know what the author meant and God inspired?
Should we really go around and get everyone’s opinion and be fine if they contradict each other?
No, we shouldn’t do that,
We should seek to understand what the author meant through proper hermeneutics and the power of the Spirit.
What is hermeneutics?
We discussed this during our Doctrines of Grace Bible Study and we will have one final study this coming Wednesday.
It’s not too late to jump in and catch up through our Youtube channel.
So, back to our question, what is hermeneutics?
We get a hint if we continue in 2nd Timothy.
It is rightly handling the word of truth.
Understanding it, interpreting it, and doing it correctly.
When rightly understood, Scripture will not contradict itself and will point us to God’s purpose and will.
Scripture will reveal to us God.
We begin by reading a verse or a section of Scripture and we try to see what the author’s intentions are.
We seek verses around the passage we are looking at in order to get its context.
We look at the entire book or letter to see if we can get the thrust or the purpose.
Then we test it to other writings by the same author and then the New Testament and lastly all of Scripture.
When it is especially difficult we try to find clear teachings on the same topic to help us interpret the more difficult teachings.
Today we are going to look at what John is talking about when he mentions an Old Commandment.
Then he is going to mention a new commandment.
This comes right after he tells us that the true believers will be those who follow Jesus’s commandments.
What does it all mean?
How does this Word from God transform us today?
Let us not delay and look at our text in hopes to unpack it and see what beauties and wonders will unfold.
Open your Bibles to 1 John Chapter 2 verses 7 - 11
Here we have a seaming contradiction along with fairly vague language.
John is writing no new commandment, then says he’s writing a new commandment.
John says he’s writing an old commandment that we already know of, but, at the same time writing a new commandment that we need to know.
John says this is a commandment from the beginning, but the beginning of what?
Time?
Life?
Generation?
John uses imagery language like light and true light along with darkness and walking.
How are we to interpret this?
John uses a term like brother, but what does he mean by this?
What if you don’t have a brother?
Lastly we see John talk of hate.
What does He mean by hate?
In the positive, what does John mean by love?
I will certainly answer these things, but I believe it will be beneficial if I not only answer them, but show you how I come to the answers.
Not only show you how I come to the answers but show you how applying these answers and how that changes everything.
So, let’s begin with the first verse and let’s discover what John is wanting to tell us.
So let’s see what we already know about who and what John is talking about to see if we can understand what he means.
John begins by addressing us as his beloved.
His greatly loved.
Early we see him use the phrase, my little children.
John is speaking to those who are believers.
He is speaking to Christians.
Whom He loves dealer.
John is not speaking to everyone, He is speaking specifically to those whom He has spent considerable time with already in this letter....
Who have tested themselves and found themselves to be in the faith, fully trusting, and relying upon Jesus.
We know this to be true based on everything John has already spoken of in this letter.
We can also know this to be true because of how John summarizes this letter.
The purpose and point of this letter is to give those who claim to be believers, assurance that we are believers.
So, we see that John is speaking to us who are believers....
So we have that as our initial context
Now, what does John want to tell us?
Do you remember our series on the 10 commandments?
A commandment is a divine authoritative command.
John isn’t changing anything, he’s not giving a new divine authoritative command.
But, John is pointing that this is a command that they have had from the beginning.
Now, a question arises as to what is meant by beginning?
He is telling us something we have had from the beginning and that which we have heard.
In one concept John has used this term to mean beginning of all things.
1 John 2:13 (ESV)
I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.
In a few verses from now John is going to speak of Jesus who is from the beginning.
This should remind us of John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word.
He could mean the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and the teaching and life of Jesus.
Let’s see if our next verse gives us context.
John helps us answer the question of the previous verse by showing us that this revelation that He is presenting is true because of Jesus.
Which would lead us to believe that this commandment that is being spoken of has to do with Jesus.
At this point we see that this commandment has to do specifically with Jesus and the life of Jesus.
The life and ministry of Jesus is what is bringing about this new commandment.
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