Prove it-Week 3: Cycles

Introduction

Welcome to MDWK! My name is Cody Cauble and I am the student pastor here at Crossroads. If this is your first time here at CR we want you to feel welcomed in this place.

A few housekeeping things that I want to mention to you guys before we dive into the Scripture.

Treat everything here like it’s your own property and make sure to respect it. I’ve noticed that some of our pool sticks, ping pong paddles, and a few other things that we want to make sure that we are treating with respect so that we can continue to use them. If we continue to break these things we will have to restrict the ability to use them.

This also goes for the bathrooms. Last week the bathrooms were being used inappropriately (This came personally from our resource officer that came to me personally). Again, just treat the things here like you would your own and we shouldn’t have an issue.

Last thing, make sure if you’re walking in or out of the building, for safety purposes please use the front door so that we can make sure you guys are safe while you’re on CR church campus. We are working on putting together a Rec. Adult team so that you guys can play volleyball, gaga ball, and on the open field beside the volleyball court. We should be able to roll that out in the next few weeks!

Okay! I hate having to make those comments but sometimes we have to to make sure we are respecting everything here and making sure you guys are safe while you are under our care.

Open your Bibles to 1 John 2:3-11. Have you guys ever felt the tension between works based salvation (when you do good things in order to be saved by God) and a faith that works (because I am saved I now do what God says because I love Him)? This is always a weird balance because we all want to perform for God. We want to do good things in order that God will be happy with us based on our performance. But that also leads to legalism and a works based faith and a feeling of condemnation every time you mess up and sin against Him again.

To Know Him is To Love Him and to Love Him is To Obey Him

The truth is, if you are constantly going against the Word of God and disregarding the conviction of the Holy Spirit, your assurance of faith is going to constantly feel like a question to you in your own mind and in the minds of those around you. Obedience reveals the genuineness of our faith, the authenticity of our confession, and the maturity of our love.

You will know that you know God

42 times John uses the word “know” in this letter. This word “know” doesn’t just carry the idea that you “know of God” in a sense that somebody has told you about him so therefore you know WHO HE IS. No, it is an experiential “know,” which means because you have personally experienced Jesus and His loving forgiveness and grace you “know” God from a firsthand encounter with and ongoing relationship with the God of the Universe. Just as John would say in the beginning of this letter “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have sen with our eyes, which we looked upon, and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.”

Ultimately John is saying that you can’t experience and know the love of God and walk away UNCHANGED. You can’t

The word “keeping” conveys the idea of guarding. We should GUARD God’s commands as a precious treasure and as we do so, the treasure of our assurance of salvation strengthens with it. David starts off the first Psalm with this “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the LAW OF THE LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” And in Psalm 119:9-12 “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes!” And finally in verse 47 “For I find my delight in your commandments, which I love.”

Because I know Christ in all of His beauty I delight in obeying Jesus. Obedience is a natural response of the believer when reflecting on what Christ did for you.

This doesn’t mean that we are without sin, OR that if we do mess up then we are disqualified as God’s children. Remember what John said right before this passage “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” And “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

The desire to obey and our decision to obey gives us certainty that we know God.

Keeping God’s commands isn’t a condition for knowing God but a sign that you do.

Your delight and pleasure in God Himself will overflow into a delight and pleasure in God’s commands.

Obedience Cycle- Illustration: The more I know God the more i love God, the more I love God the more I obey God, the more I obey God the more I know Him. Link to working out-The more I work out the more I feel good (sleep, mobility, energy) which makes me want to progress in working out which makes me feel better which makes me change my diet which makes me feel better which makes me want to keep eating healthy. It’s a cycle.

Like Father, like Son. Like Savior, like saint.

John uses the word ABIDE or REMAINING 23 times in this letter. Let your WALK match your TALK. We want the REAL, we want the TRUTH.

God saved us not just to take us to heaven, but He saved us that we might be conformed into the image of His perfect Son! If God was through with us when we received salvation for the first time, the only people that would be left on earth right now would be people who don’t know God.

Cross reference to prove out remaining in Christ. John 15:4-5 “Remain in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in Me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.” 1 Corinthians 11:1 “Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ.” Ephesians 5:1 “Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children.” 1 Peter 2:21 “For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in His steps.”

Know that you don’t do this on your own strength! Abiding in Christ is the KEY that enables me to live like Him. You don’t have to be like Him to be assured, you want to be like Him and are assured.

To Love God is to Love Others Like Jesus Loved You

John is really good at simplifying the Christian life. John says Know Jesus, Obey God, and Love Others. The truth is this: Rightly loving God equals Rightly loving others. You can’t separate these two truths.

God’s Love is with you from the time of salvation

Again, you don’t have to do this thing on your own. Whenever you begin following Jesus and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your heart and life, you have the love of God in you. Your ability and capacity to love others comes from the power of the Holy Spirit! What’s really cool is this commandment to love isn’t an optional stage two in Christian growth, but in the commandment to trust Jesus also comes the commandment to love, in the power of trusting Jesus, and be changed into a loving person.

John seems to contradict himself by saying that this is an old commandment but then turning around to say that it’s a new commandment. And he links the two by saying “At the same time.” He says that because what he wrote and heard from Jesus in John 13: 34-35 says “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” which points to an even older commandment in Leviticus 19:18 “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

God’s Love is Seen Most Truly in Jesus and YOU

John says this “At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is TRUE IN HIM and IN YOU. John is telling us that God’s love is true in Jesus, it is true in us because “the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.”

In Christ the command to love one another is strengthened, deepened, expanded, and given a depth of meaning and understanding never seen before His coming. And NOW that SAME kind of supernatural love is being SEEN and EXPERIENCED in those who love Him and abide in Him.

Like the infomercial-BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE!

Perfect love revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has dealt a death blow to darkness. Darkness is on the run and it cannot outrun the light! Let me say that again DARKNESS IS ON THE RUN AND IT CANNOT OUTRUN THE LIGHT! In fact, the darkness is already departing and the true light of Jesus already shines! The light of the world has come. The King of light and love is already reigning, and the fullness of that reign is just around the corner.

Love is not new. It is as old as God (God is love) and rooted in the law of God. Yet it is new to us in conversion and new in its depth in Jesus. It is new in experience, emphasis, expression, and endurance.

God’s Love Exposes Darkness of Hatred

John gives us a STRONG difference between those who are in the light and those in the darkness. Those who love and hate. Verse 9 is pretty much saying “If you are in the light and experiencing the life of God, yet you continually hate your brother, only one conclusion can be drawn: You are still in darkness, the realm of spiritual death and moral corruption. You still belong to the Devil.”

But John flips that and says: “If you are consistently loving your brother, you continually abide in light and give evidence that you have the life of God in you.”

Verse 11 returns to those that are in darkness: If you continually hate your brother, four things are true for you:

You are spiritually dead

You live and walk in darkness

You don’t know where you are going

You are blind

In the darkness of spiritual death there is the absence of love and the absence of God in our lives and tragically you don’t know it until God wakes you up, gives you a new heart, and you experience the love of Jesus that radically changes your life.

Application

Take Inventory of Your Life

Do you trust God and Obey Him or are you just faking it?

Do you love others or do you have hate in your heart?