1 John 2:12-17
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God’s Abundance
God’s Abundance
1 John 2:12–14 (ESV)
I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
John uses this phrase “I am writing to you” 13 times in this little book, he is very intentional, purposeful, focused. There are various ways these verses are interpreted, some see a distinguishing between groups of different ages, more see a distinguishing between spiritual maturities, that the child in their faith knows God in the simplest of terms - Father, the young adult in their faith is zealous and growing and battling, the father in the faith knows God most intimately and deeply; and perhaps there is some of that here; but I am not convinced that this was John’s primary intent.
It seems that John’s primary intention was to assure them of God’s abundant gifts to them.
I write because your sins are forgiven - just highlight in verse
I write because your sins are forgiven - just highlight in verse
The word for Forgiven means literally to send away, to separate, to leave. This separation is so strong that the word is occasionally translated as “Divorce.”
There has been a divorce between you and your sin. A chasm has opened in the ground and has separated you from your sin.
In the OT, when Aaron when into the Holy of Holies to act as the High Priest and atone for the sins of the people, he wasn’t actually atoning for sins, but he was simply picturing what Christ was going to do as our ultimate High Priest. God told him to bring a goat into the temple with him —>
Leviticus 16:21 (ESV)
And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness
The sin that once owned you, the sin that you can’t forget, the sin that you are battling today, Your sin has been sent out of the city of God, it is no longer even in the gates!
Psalm 103:12 (ESV)
as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
Do you know how far it is from the East to the West??
This isn’t like as far as China (East) is from America, East and West are Directions, they are infinitely far apart, no matter how far East you go it never becomes West. They can never connect, they can never be together.
God has taken your sin off of you, and has taken them as far from you as the East is from the West, infinitely far, never to be seen again.
Jeremiah 31:34 (ESV)
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
FINISHED SEPARATION!
1 John 1:7 (ESV)
The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
You have been divorced from sin.
One of the main ways the Bible talks about your life on this side of salvation is like this: “You have been divorced from sin . . . . . . . so stop acting like you’re still married to it, stop acting like God didn’t take that particular Wedding Ring in the West and fling it into the East.”
You have been set free from sin, stop acting as if you are still bound to it. !!!
Sin no longer has the power over you, sin no longer has you chained.
Forgiven to the ultimate degree!
I write because you know the Father, the One from the Beginning
I write because you know the Father, the One from the Beginning
Back to this mind exploding reality.
Kaleb did a great lesson on what this word KNOW means in the Bible, (pod, YT)
This is much more than knowing about, this is an intimate and relational word. It is the word used for sexual intimacy in a marriage. It is the word used for the way God knew Israel differently than he knew other nations. It is this relationship with THE BEGINNING ONE, that makes Paul say
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
Knowing this God is the treasure hidden in a field . . .
Matthew 13:44–46 (ESV)
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
The treasure isn’t just getting salvation, it isn’t just getting heaven, it is getting GOD Himself!
Justification/Salvation is transactional, you trust Christ and are saved, but KNOWING GOD is lifelong, in this room (which may be alluded to in this passage), in this room we are all over the spectrum of how much we know God. If you became Christ’s yesterday, you are in Christ just as much as the person who has been in Him for decades, but you don’t know him like they know him.
There is an excitement there when salvation isn’t just about getting heaven but about getting God, because getting saved, being washed, isn’t the end of the story and then you just sit around and wait to die, it is the BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY OF KNOWING GOD MORE! Not just knowing more about God, but knowing HIM more.
It is like marriage. I married Ariel August 4, 2012. Imagine if after the wedding, I was like, alright, we did it, I guess we just wait to die now. NO, THAT’S THE START OF IT! I know Ariel infinitely more than I knew her on that day, and many of you in here know your spouses infinitely better than I know Ariel today! You have rejoiced together, mourned together, fought together, and fought for each other, you have learned each other, you have become entirely different people together.
You got married, and then you began the dance together. “Dancing in the minefields”
You began the journey of KNOWING each other. All marriages don’t go that way, but this marriage to Christ is your true soul mate, the one for whom you were made.
Salvation is but the beginning of the beautiful journey and dance of Knowing God. The JOY and ADVENTURE of your life is to know God more and more.
It is also the differentiating factor between the lost person and the saved person, Jesus says in the end depart from me for I never KNEW you
So John writes perhaps the most encouraging words that can be written, YOU KNOW GOD!
((EXALT!))
Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all.
2 Chronicles 2:6 (ESV)
Who is able to build him a house, since heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him? Who am I?
Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.
Isaiah 57:15 (ESV)
The One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy
Isaiah 6:5
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am ruined... for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Jeremiah 10:10–13 (ESV)
He is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation...It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens...He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses.
Job 38- Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? When the angels sang together and shouted for joy! Who shut in the sea when it burst forth from the womb? Who has commanded the dawn each morning since days began? Who tells the winds which way to blow. . .
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
WHO ARE YOU???? WHO ARE YOU THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW HIM???
You infant speck of dust. You feather tossed by the wind. You puff of smoke that is here today and gone tomorrow.
You sinful selfish wretch. You Tower of Babel builder. You Golden Calf worshipper. You lustful covetous greedy prideful lump of clay. WHO ARE YOU!?
Who are you with your little concerns, your great and mighty problems, your empire building efforts, your bitterness toward how badly people have wronged you! WHO ARE YOU?
Who are you that HE is mindful of YOU!? Who are you that HE cares for YOU?!?
Repeat slide of verse bolding know the one from the beginning parts
1 John 3:1 (ESV)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
I write because you You are Strong and Victorious
I write because you You are Strong and Victorious
You have overcome the evil one.
If you Know God, you are in God, then you are strong and victorious over the devil and the world.
For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
You KNOW GOD, why fear the devil, why fear the world’s fears, why fear man and what man can do to you? YOU HAVE GOD! Why fear your own sin? Why fear your own weaknesses? You have God! THAT God!
Christ as your Advocate, Defense Lawyer, you win the court case!
Listen, it is not just that God is strong, (1 John 2:14 )
1 John 2:14 (ESV)
You are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
but that because you have God, you are strong. YOU ARE STRONG.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Not about accomplishing your goals, but it IS about enduring pain, it IS about toughness, it IS about Strength. YOU ARE STRONG.
Those that bow to God are given a sort of strength that cannot be had by any other means, the kind of strength that allows David to stand to Goliath when everyone else cowared, the kind that allowed Moses to part the Sea, the Kind that allowed Joshua and Gideon and so many more to lead smaller armies over larger armies, the kind that allowed most of the apostles and countless Christians to go to their torturous deaths with confidence and even joy. We have many early writings that talk about how the Christians would sing on their way to death.
THAT is strength. YOU ARE STRONG. Because you are God’s.
BECAUSE - the word of God abides in you!
1 John 2:14 (ESV)
You are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
This is a more significant reality than we often consider
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
1 Thessalonians 2:13 (ESV)
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God...which is at work in you believers.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
James 1:21 (ESV)
Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
I write because Your Sins are Forgiven, You know the One from the Beginning, You are Strong and Victorious
The World’s Emptiness
The World’s Emptiness
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Flesh. Eyes. Pride.
You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.
by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Why has he had to blind their eyes? BECAUSE IF THEY JUST SAW IT FOR A MOMENT THEN HE WOULD LOSE THEM FOREVER
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
CS Lewis Pig Slop Quote
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ