Untitled Sermon (3)

What is the hardest thing you have ever tried?

I looked up the 10 jobs with the highest fatality rate in the world care to take any guesses

Most dangerous Jobs In the World

Highest fatality rate.

1. Fishers and related fishing workers

2. Logging workers

3. Aircraft pilots and flight engineers

4. Structural iron and steel workers

5. Farmers and ranchers

6. Refuse and recyclable material collectors

7. Roofers

8. Electrical power line installers and repairers

9. Driver/sales workers and truck drivers

10. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs

I read recently that for a child to actually learn to walk proficiently it takes 1000 hours of practice.

But what about this statement that is in our text today.

Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. Is this even possible. There is a tension in our lives to actually think we can follow Jesus. What if we phrased in the term of goal.

What if we said we want God’s love to be made complete in us. Is that a little more reasonable?

When God finally got hold of me and said Craig, it is time to take things in a new direction I was open to it. I had been living the way I wanted to and there was not a good ending in sight. I had been living the way I wanted and there was ne freedom, only difunction. But when God got hold of me there was something new that I hadn’t had before. Hope.

So in my dysfunction I managed to get three other guys to leave town with me and attend a Bible School in Sask. It was the only Bible school I knew existed at the time so I thought my options were fairly limited. When I got there I jumped in with both feet. Into the library that is. I had never seen that many books on God and Jesus. I wanted to follow Jesus and know him.

It wasn’t all great though. I am a Reimer and that can mean stubborn. But God said that’s ok Craig, I can work with that. So a deeper process was started of what it means to follow Jesus, one baby step at a time. Sometimes I feel like I have come far, sometimes I feel like I am still the baby learning to walk, pulling myself up on the couch to get to standing. What about you?

We all have questions about what it means to follow Jesus. But what does that look like. To have love made complete in us what do look at, what do we do, how do we live, what do we think about?

The church in the passage we are looking at today had these same questions in the situations they were facing.

The author is John—the same person who wrote the gospel of John, the other two letters from John, and Revelation. This is the same John who was one of Jesus’ 12 disciples. In fact, John was probably the last living disciple of Jesus when he wrote this letter.

The audience is a group of Christian communities around Ephesus (MAP). Paul had planted these churches around 30 years earlier, at some point John moved to Ephesus to serve as a kind of spiritual mentor for these Christian communities.

And they needed John’s spiritual guidance, because they had been spiritually damaged by a group of fake Christian teachers. These teachers claimed to believe in Jesus—but they had fabricated a different Jesus. They also claimed to know God through spiritual enlightenment—but the results of this spiritual knowledge belied this claim. It was a group that has shaken and fragile and needed to be brought back to the heart of knowing Jesus.

(TNIV)

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

(TNIV)

1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Those who say, “I know him,” but do not do what he commands are liars, and the truth is not in them. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

Is God’s love being made complete in you?

(TNIV)

1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

John was speaking specifically to believers here. So if you aren’t a follower of Christ you can turn your ears off for awhile.

The point John is making here is that.

God’s grace and forgiveness should lead to obedience not sinning.

It talks about Jesus being an advocate here. He didn’t just inherit that position. He won it through living among us, struggling the way we struggle, showing incredible miracles and teaching taking the punishment for yours and mine sin by dieing on the cross, and then rising from the dead. And making a way for us to be called children. That is the gospel the good news.

Atoning=used in pagan lit to appease a god. So if things were going really bad, your grass wasn’t growing or you had to many cats in the house, or your horse went lame. You would go to your local temple and offer a prescribed sacrifice to that God to try and make them bless you. To remove the punishment you thought you were going through and bring good times.

The sacrifice then became the punishment for you. It atoned for whatever you thought might be wrong.

With us we have this nasty condition called sin that we deal with everyday. Christ takes action to remove sin, take the punishement and restore relationship. He atones for our sin, he takes the punishement we deserve for our sin on to himself. But there are some conditions that we have to meet.

But if we want to know him how do we work this sin out of our life?

3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands.

Following the standards that Jesus has laid out for us.

Now when you think commands what do you think about?

Rules, regulations, sports, board games.

His commands are not burdensome.

(TNIV)

3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

A lot of what we think of when we hear commands is we think rules to be followed to appease God. I’m following you so that you can smile on me and make my grass grow. But what sets following Jesus apart from all the other religious systems in the world is that it is based on a realitionship. We don’t follow rules so that we can appease, that’s religion and it based on that system we talked about of appeasing the god’s.

With Jesus following his commands is about knowing him. It is about having a relationship with him.

When it says let no lie touch your lips, it isn’t simply a command. It is based on the character of God.

We usually stop at the command, but do you want you kids to simply stop at your commands, don’t you want them to know where that command comes from.

Command---principle---person

Protects from provides for

That knowing is not just mystical but also practical because we are following the life of the historic Jesus.

We have come to know him if we keeps his commands.

Notice in the promise he makes in

He offers forgiveness. But sometimes we take that forgiveness for granted. Now before you laugh and reveal yourself as a fan I want to warn you that I am going to bring up a popular comedian. His name is Larry the Cable guy. I can’t say for sure because I only watched about 5 minutes of his routine but he probably considers following god like a set of rules.

After saying something very crude in his routine he inevitably

Lord I apologize right there and be with starving pigmies in new guinea.

I don’t know if he is aware of it but he is abusing god’s grace. Even if it is just a comedy routine.

But when we talk about confession we can’t avoid thinking about forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not mean we don’t need to obey. As followers of Jesus we are distinct in the world in that we are forgiven, we are also distinct in that we avoid sin.

Knowledge is what separates those who walk in the light and those who walk in darkness. But it is not just knowing facts but knowing the person of Jesus.

4 Those who say, “I know him,” but do not do what he commands are liars, and the truth is not in them. 5

Not following his standards seperates us from the truth completely.

There isn’t any wiggle room with this passage. We would like there to be but it just isn’t there. One of the things we forget when we read something like this is the urgency.

How we often read something like this in our heads is,

4 Those who say, “I know him,” but do not do what he commands are sometimes liars, and the truth is not in them all the time.

We make it a little bit easier.

You can call them Respectable sins

Sin is a spiritual and a moral problem that invades our lives. If we don’t work to deal with it along with Jesus it will contaminate every area of our lives.

We don’t live on an island spiritual ly or socially. Out attitudes, our words, and our actions, even our unspoken thoughts have impact on those around us.

When we sin, we rebel against God. It is an assault on what he has done in our lives.

As followers of Jesus we tend to have sins that we tolerate in our lives because we don’t think they are that bad.

But in a practical sense the worst sin of all in our lives is the denial of the subtle sins. Like pride and selfishness, lack self-control, Anxiety, Judgementalism, Envy.

So what hope is there. One thing to remember is that we address our sins in light of the gospel message.

Then we move into a life of obedience.

But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them.

The goal: Having God’s love made complete in us.

If anyone obeys his word

1. God’s love is made complete

2. We know we are in Jesus

If you had a somewhat emotionally healthy childhood your parents would require obedience from you. As children we interpreted it in a few different ways,

Maybe you thought your parents were out to make your life miserable, again if they were healthy that would be absourd. Maybe you thought they were completely worried about you and thought you would die every time you stepped out the door. If you were like my brother and I that would have been a possibility. That is why we did the dangerous stuff when…I should stop there and not give anyone ideas.

Maybe you thought they were just strict and unreasonable. What you can’t deny is that when you obeyed them you experienced more freedom then less. Freedom from a guilty conscious. Freedom from wondering what the punishment you would get the next time you saw your parents, freedom to be trusted by them, freedom to begin to gain more power over your life to make decisions.

But when you disobeyed you could see yourself quickly losing those things.

Obedience to God is deeper than just being worried about what the next punishment would be for disobeying. There is freedom in following God. There is freedom to become someone who loves well. Who experiences complete love.

John is thinking here that our love for God is what expresses itself in obedience. Love is parallel to knowledge.

How is your obedience factor?

This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

The Fight:

“What’s your problem? Temper? Impatience? Self-control? Sex? Being honest? Your thought life? Pride? Laziness? Self-centeredness? Everyone has skeletons, and they don’t always stay in the closet. You want to do right but you do wrong. You want to choose obedience but you choose sin. Sometimes you almost swear you were a split personality, a regular “walking civil war.” How to be a Christian without being religious

Folks as followers of Jesus we are in a fight that we cannot get out of. The problem is many of us fight in the shadows rather than together. It isn’t a wonder that many of us feel defeated by sin and think it would be easier to give up.

When we are at our lowest Satan comes up and slips his arm around us. “Face it: you’ll never be good enough for those people, or for God. Just give up and accept the inevitable. Besides, that thing you do doesn’t really hurt anyone.”

As we learn to live as Jesus lived we will begin to experience the victory over things that we hate in ourselves. Being a child of God begins to win over our own desire to sin and the influences that are there that tempt us through our own selves, the world and the devil.

Living like Jesus brings greater freedom not less.

So where do we start?

The five second pause.

Do a quick assessment of what the consequences will be. Would this action embarrass you later?

Even learn in those five seconds to offer up a prayer to God. “God, at this very moment I am struggling, Holy Spirit, control my tongue, stop my mind from dwelling on on that though. Don’t let that impulse have its way.” You will be surprised at how much that begins to work in your life.

Then it gives you time to make the decision to follow Jesus. To walk as he walked.

Without the Spirit of God at work in you, living as Jesus lived is impossible. By consciously submitting the Holy Spirit woks in us in the first moments of every decision. As we practice it we begin to see it happen more and more in a way that honours God.

The true believers life will be patterned after Jesus.

Live by Jesus’ word to have a relationship with him.

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You will not regret following Jesus. You will not regret walking as Jesus walked. Living as Jesus lived. When we do that God’s love is made complete in us. Even in our mess he shines his light through. If we repent, turn from our sin and confess it to him and learn to walk as he walked. Will you do that this year? Will you take that step. Will you take the five second challenge?

We are a church that is pursuing Jesus. Imagine what would happen if we as a community had god’s love made complete in us. Imagine what that would do among us and in Prince George. Think about it and commit to taking steps with Jesus.