The tests of righteousness

Introduction

Confirm you know God by the way you live.

Message

Someone can know they have come to know God as they examine their life and see that they are keeping His commandments (2.3-6).

Consider mindset

‘Keep’ - watch, guard as a prisoner (2.3)

Knowing God always results in obedience. Always. At times stumbling, but always .

Knowledge (ginosko) has to do with experience, covenant relationship, fear and obedience (2.4).

Isaiah 11:2 “And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”

You can learn and experience God without being terrified until hearing the words, “Fear not.”

Someone who never changed at conversion, needs to be converted (2.4).

Through this we develop a complete love for God (2.5).

John 14:15 ““If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (reverse phrases)

John 14:21 “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.””

John 14:23 “Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Leads to especially love our brothers and sisters in the church.

Galatians 6:10 “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

“Greet one another with a holy kiss”

Final test, he who says he dwells with God, out to walk like Jesus walked (2.5c-6).

Jesus kept all the commandments of God, even the “unnecessary.”

Somone can know they have come to know God based on whether they violate the instructions of Jesus (3.4-10).

“God loves the sinner but hates the sin.”

Divorces the person from the sin. Treats them separately.

Psalm 5:4–5 “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers.”

The person goes to hell, not the things he did.

To live with careless lawlessness is to disregard God’s ways.

‘Practices’ - willful, habitual sin

Hebrews 10:26 “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,”

Jesus came to die in the war against sin and Satan, how can his people treat it lightly (3.5)?

Since Genesis 3.15, there has only been two options (3.7-10).

Conclusion

“The Bible clearly divides mankind into the saved and the lost, those who are going to be with God and those who are going to be shut out from His presence eternally, those who are going to heaven and those who are going to hell. It is in the Old Testament and it is here in the New. Our Lord Himself taught it. It is everywhere” - David Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

“If you are going to heaven, you had better begin to live like it now, and if you are going to die like a Christian, you had better live like a Christian” - A.W. Tozer.

“If you have no wish to bring others to heaven, you are not going there yourself” - Charles Spurgeon.