Sermon Tone Analysis

SERMON ON “WHO ARE THE CHILDREN OF GOD”

You might be wondering why I am up here on a Sunday night giving an exhortation on 1 John as I am not one of the regular speakers on Sunday night.

This past Spring, I took a Greek class from New Geneva taught by Bob Rumbaugh on Greek Exegesis.

The objective of the class was to write an exegesis paper on a passage on 1 John and then preach on that passage on Sunday night.

What I mean by exegesis is the process starting with the Greek Test by which a person arrives at a reasonable and coherent sense of the meaning and message of a biblical passage.

Bob allowed us to pick our passage and I picked John 2:28-3:10 on the Children of God.

The reason I picked this passage was because it included these verses.

SHOW slide

No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

7 Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; 8 the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning.

The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil.

9 No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

(New American Standard)

The part I want focus on right now is these verses that are underlined.

In verse 6 you will see it read “No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him” The verb “sins” is in the present tense.

Which means from just a casual reading and not comparing it with any other Scripture it sounds like if you sin you may not be abiding in Christ.

I had become a Christian in 1972 while I was in college.

And back in those days we only had 3 Bible Translations that evangelicals used.

We the King James, the Revised Standard Version and the New American Standard (Not the Updated One) and all three of these translations are not as helpful as some of the other modern translations when it comes to helping us understand this verse.

We had no NKJ, NLT, ESV or NIV.

And a friend of mine showed me the verses on the screen.

Now this was back in the day of slide rules, land lines only and IBM punch.

Cards.

We didn’t even have study bible then other than Schofield Reference Bible.

We couldn’t figure what these verses meant but it seemed we were violating verses 6, 8, and 9 because we were still committing sins.

As we will see tonight the modern translations like the ESV help us understand these verses better.

But as it was, these verses seemed to attack the assurance of salvation that we had.

And what is ironic as I studied these verses later, these were written to give the Christian the assurance of eternal life.

When Bob gave us the opportunity to pick a passage, I wanted to include these verses.

FLIP

And as most of you probably know, for the last several weeks we have been looking at 1 John on Sunday night.

Just for a little review,1 John was written to several churches by the Apostle John that were struggling with false teachers.

The big problem was the false teachers had advocated a form of Christianity that was different than that of the Apostle John.

The crisis had reached point that the false teachers had left the church, but were still in contact with its members.

This communication created confusion among the believers.

The believers started to question whether they knew God, or they had eternal life or they were in the truth.

The Apostle John is writing them to a careful statement of apostolic understanding of Christianity to show where the deceivers deceived and to confirm to the believers what it means to be child of God and to know you have eternal life

In 1 John, Bible commentators see three ethical tests that John is presenting to know that you have eternal life.

The first test is theological: we must believe that Jesus is the son of God, the Christ come in the flesh.

Bob Rumbaugh talked to that last week

The second test is moral: we must obey the commandments of God, (which we will look at tonight)

The third test is social: we must love others, which Pastor Sean covered this this three weeks ago when he preached that good theology makes good lovers

In our passage, we will look at this evening is The apostle John addresses what it means to be a child of God.

The specific error the false teachers had been proclaiming was that a Christian could know all his sins were forgiven and yet knowingly continue in sin.

This sounds pretty good.

When I was younger man, I remember a Mormon missionary telling me that Mormons offered more in their religion than other churches.

What I told him, the problem wasn’t what he was offering, but the problem was the Mormon religion was untrue.

This is what the false teachers were offering, something that sounds too good to be true, because it isn’t true that your sins can be forgiven and you can keep sinning.

This is what the Apostle John is correcting in this passage.

He is going to explain who a child of God is and who is isn’t.

And by knowing that.

the readers of this letter can have assurance of that they belong to God and will spend eternity with him.

So after this long introduction, we are going to look at three things:

1.

How does a child of God live?

2. The test to determine who is a child of God

3. What does “not to continue in sin mean”.

FLIP SLIDE

And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.

29 If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so, we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

F 2 Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.

5 You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.

F 7 Little children, let no one deceive you.

Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous.

8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. 10 By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Pray

Before we get to the first main point, there is an observation I would like to make.

As we read this passage, something becomes very apparent.

There are two groups of people being described.

The first group children of God (3:1, 10) and the second group are the children of the Devil (3:8, 10).

The Apostle John is going to explain who’s who to his readers who God’s people are and who the Devil’s people are.

This concept of two different people groups (one for God and the other against God) appears back in .

After the sin of Adam and Eve, God first addresses the serpent and says in The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

More literally, offspring refers to seed.

Clearly, her offspring in 3:15 refers to Jesus who will crush the head of the serpent, but there could be a corporate meaning to it (meaning her offspring to include those \ for God, as well as those of Devil’s offspring against God).

The Apostle John wants his readers to know there are two sides, God’s children and the Devil’s children.

The first main point we will look at are how does the child of God live?

1. F ABIDE IN CHRIST In 2:28 the child of God abides in the Son (in Christ).

As children of God, Christians we are commanded to abide in Christ.

This word “abide” has appeared 7 times in chapter 2 already and appears two more times in this verse.

This Greek word for abide is used primarily used by the Apostle John in the NT.

The word “abide” means to continue in a relationship with Jesus.

This relationship characterized by 1) trust (believing that God has our best interests at heart, conforming us to the image of his son), 2)prayer (communicating with God), 3) obedience (obeying God’s commandments, last week in Sunday school, pastor Sam mentioned how he knows God better when he obeys him) and 4) joy, joy not of ourselves any longer but our joy is Christ.

The apostle John explains this abiding concept also in : Abide in me, and I in you.

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

These words “abide in me and I in you” illustrate how we are united to Christ.

By being united to him we have access to grace to whereby we can bear the fruit of the spirit, love, joy peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and self-control.

Apart from Christ we can do nothing.

2. F WITH CONFIDENCE Because we abide in Christ, we can have confidence and not shrink away from Christ at his coming.

(2:28) I remember as a child I did something wrong that caused my mother to say, wait till your Father gets home.

I knew that judgement was coming and it would not be on my side.

But for Christians, we have been justified in Christ’s work and declared not guilty.