1 John 3:1-3
Notes
Transcript
See what God has done:
See what God has done:
Toby Newnum Vision Church, Mike Gradwell Continental Baptist Church, Pastor’s Jeff Goodman and Brandon Johnson @ The Springs Church.
We return to the 1st Letter of John. Page number
Beauty of preaching through scripture.
John is full of wonder because of the love of God in making us His children.
Behold!
Have you ever sat and contemplated the love of God?
For Christians: Think about what you were before you were converted into the man or woman you have been today?
For Non Christians: Have you heard of the
For Non Christians: Have you heard of the blessings of this God who would adopt you?
Adoption is not just a picture of God’s love towards us, it IS God’s love towards us. So much so that adoption in our world is viewed with much honor.
Think about all the movies you’ve seen where adoption of an orphan is the highlight and overarching theme of the story.
Annie
Lost things getting found is what the one true God is in the business of doing!
14 On account of this, I bend my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that he may grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner person, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (you having been firmly rooted and established in love), 18 in order that you may be strong enough to grasp together with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, in order that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14-
God revealing Himself as a heavenly Father is the source of truth that we derive all understanding of family on earth.
In Ephesians, Paul was using dimensional language to describe the love of God.
This is what John is pointing to!
Look!
Behold!
This love goes this way!
And it goes that way!
It’s deep and wide, it’s long and high!
It goes on forever into eternity!
This is the love that has made us children of God.
God’s love is what makes us His children, and the fact that we have been made His children is God’s love!
So children of God should be little lovelings.
People who have been radically changed and adopted into the family of the one true God who is Love.
If this has occurred in our life, it will look like something.
And it’s because of this that we see a contrast with the world.
Why the world doesn’t know us:
When we are adopted in to God’s family, we begin to look like Christ.
But for those who don’t know Christ, this is foreign. Some of you have had this happen in your own relationships.
Why don’t you come drinking with us now? You used to be cool
Why don’t you want to sneak off from work anymore it doesn’t hurt anybody?
Why do you tell me that you love me now?
One of the best testimonies of life change that I’ve heard was from a man who has discipled me.
Tell story of Steve telling his parents he loves them.
THAT’S Gospel living.
If Christ can die on the cross to restore your relationship with God, then our pride and comfort can die on the cross to restore relationship with our own family.
The responses to the evidence of you being in God’s family will be various.
15 For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task?
2 Corinthians
Talk about how Jesus was treated.
18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.
Why did they hate Jesus? For some it was because he wasn’t the conquering king they wanted.
They wanted a man to overthrow the Roman oppression.
For others, it was the fact that he claimed to be God, and proved it.
12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among people by which we must be saved.”
This is a grave thing to consider.
Is Jesus who he says he is?
Now John turns back to his listeners, those he calls his loved ones and children.
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.
Present reality unfolding in the present, revealed now and in the future.
Talk about the nature of words and how we attempt to illustrate supernatural concepts with systems of thought.
“It is one thing to suggest that God cannot be known exhaustively, or that He cannot be contained in any verbal system. It’s appropriate to admit that language can be used deceitfully and is subject to ambiguity, but if we are created in the image of God, it stands to reason that we are fit conversation partners for the God who began the universe by speaking.” Kevin DeYoung “The Clarity of Scripture” Basics 2013
And so we do use systems of thought and language to understand God.
And this short passage we are in today offers a rich meal of theological truth.
In this passage we finds the doctrines of Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification.
Some people just tuned out.
God didn’t make us to be brain dead, he made us to use our minds!
First of all, a doctrine is just a set of beliefs held by the church. In our church, we believe that for something to be a doctrine, we have to find it in the Bible.
Everything we know of God comes from his express revelation of himself.
So what are these big words?
Justification
Sanctification
Glorification
Time for a review of the balloon analogy because it’s so helpful.
Another way of thinking of this is from the perspective of an orphan,
Put yourself in the shoes of an orphan, living on the streets of an enormous city that is a giant slum.
Your existence is characterized by being taken advantage of by others.
The only thing that you truly own, the only thing that stays with you is the shame you feel for the things you’ve done to stay alive.
And then one day by no work of your own, a King from a distant land adopts you into his family. You are brought into His palace, given a new name “Child of God”, given a fresh set of clothes.
You protest, saying “Father, the things I’ve done, I can’t be in your family.”
“My son has paid your debt. You have a new identity. There is nothing under heaven or earth that can change the fact that you are now my son, my daughter.”
That’s Justification.
But God has not justified us only for our own benefit.
No Christ’s work on the cross paid for our sins that we might be justified for the singular purpose of God’s glory. And this glory is shown continuously through the lives of His children.
Going back to our orphan, now an adopted son, we are told, “Go tell the other orphans.”
Being a Christian isn’t lap of luxury living, reaping the benefits of unimaginable riches.
It is freedom living, free from sin, reaping the benefits of living in the house of the King. What are those benefits?
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law.
This the fruit of abiding in Christ that is enjoyed while living out our purpose.
16 So the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated for them. 17 And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age.”
17 And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age.”
We are to be about the business of finding the orphans on the streets of the city that we call our world and introducing them to the Triune God.
And while we go about this work we still bear t he mark of original sin. We still deal with what Paul calls the “body of sin and death.”
As we live, day by day, there is an ongoing conformity to who we are in Christ.
A daily dying to who we once were, and an ongoing, ever increasing embrace of who we are.
This is Sanctification. New clothes, same body.
For our adopted orphan we can imagine a conversation with the Father that might sound like a prayer you have prayed.
“Father, I want to serve you with all my heart soul mind and strength but I can’t because I still sin. Help me.”
To which the Father responds, “I have given you my Spirit to seal the promise of my imminent return to this city, when I will judge the living and the dead, and make you LIKE me.”
2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever he is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is.
The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary 1. Christ’s Future Appearing (2:28–3:3)
It is important to note this apostolic confession of ignorance. His earlier statement that the ‘anointing teaches you about all things’ (2:27) is not to be pressed literally. The Christian is not omniscient. The New Testament apostles, like the Old Testament prophets, knew what it had been God’s purpose to disclose to them, and no more (cf. Deut. 3:24; 1 Cor. 13:8–12). So here John confesses that the exact state and condition of the redeemed in heaven had not been revealed to him. This being so, it is idle and sinful to speculate or to pry into things which God has not been pleased to make known.
The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary 1. Christ’s Future Appearing (2:28–3:3)
The two revelations, of Christ and of our final state, will be made simultaneously. For then we shall ‘share in his glory’
17 and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer together with him so that we may also be glorified together with him.
This is glorification. New Clothes and New Body. Faith and Hope realized as all sin, sorrow, and pain is cast away forever by Love.
But for now, Faith and Hope remain. And this is where we finish for today,
3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
I talked to Dr Wretlind, and asked him about this verse. Who is the last He?
He informed me that the far demonstrative pronoun refers back to the first “him” in the verse who is Christ.
14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
The act of purifying ourselves is done as an act of hope, a hope that one day we will be like Him.
We have been saved from the penalty of sin (justification); we are being saved from the power of sin (sanctification); we shall be saved from the presence of sin (glorification).
Pray.