Sermon Tone Analysis

We must remember our conversion

John begins his address with the term “beloved” or “dear friends”.

This goes to show how much John cares about those he is writing too.

We have seen this all throughout the book of 1 John.

This deep seated love the people he is writing too.

We also see that John is again telling them he is not writing them a new command but rather an old command that they had heard from the beginning.

Beginning here has a two fold meaning one is that John is calling his readers all the way back to the beginning when God had give them instruction through Moses.

He is telling his readers that even then you were familiar with the message that I am telling you, to love your brother.

But he is also calling their memory back to when they first became christians saying that this message that I am telling you is the same message that brought you to faith in Christ.

It is the same message that Christ proclaimed while he was ministering.

Application:

It got me thinking about how easy it is to forget things.

I can recall many times where I will walk in a room on a mission to get something and then walk back out and have completely forgotten to get what I came to get.

I think distance can do the same thing.

I think back to when I was in college and how easy it was to build and keep friendships because you were constantly reminded to check in on them, or see how they are doing, or hang out with them.

But post college when I have friends in Illinoise or, New York, or North Carolina, we forget how much our friendships meant to us, how close we were.

We forget to check-in on them, not because we don’t want to, but distance makes us forget.

We don’t have those constant reminders of closeness and so we unintentionally grow passive.

You know or christian walk can be the same way, the farther away we move from when we first encountered the gospel we can grow comfortable in our faith because we “know” everything that we need to.

We can grow laxidasical in our walk because we forget what we were saved from.

We must remember our Conversion, we must maintain community with other believers in our local churches to help remind us.

We must engage ourselves in God’s word regularly to remind us what we were saved from, what we are still being saved from.

We need each other, we need God’s word, we must remember.

We must pursue our calling

John then continues to tell us that this command was also new.

Now we shouldn’t see this as a contradiction, but rather as a literary devise that John is using.

he is taking us back to where Jesus said in “A new commandment I give you: Love one another”.

He is showing the readers that this message that Jesus had given them was something that they could see throughout the entire narrative of scripture.

A new commandment I give you: Love one another

Then he writes, “the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.”

John again uses this imagery of light darkness.

we see that Jesus is the real light and he has already started to illuminate the darkness.

It is this idea of already but not yet.

That he has come to seek and save, but our salvation has not yet been fully realized because he is coming again.

Kruse, C. G. (2000).

The letters of John (p.

82).

Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans Pub.; Apollos.

Until then, we must pursue our calling.

John has instructed us that we are to love our brothers, we are to walk in the light, that Christ has already illuminated our darkness, and we also know from the gospels that we are God’s chosen vessels to carry his good news to the nations.

We must remember that Christ has made us new, he has cleansed our hearts, given us a new purpose and that we must pursue that purpose.

So as we fellowship tonight, lets be encouraged by each other, let us remind each other what our calling in, let us remind each other that God saved us from utter darkness and despair, and he has called us into a marvelous light.