Stop Spitting In The Soup
Notes
Transcript
Passage- 1 John 5:1-3
Attention-
A young boy in Korea was a houseboy for some American soldiers. Sometimes they thought it was funny to play harmless jokes on him. They would tease him. They would tie his shoe strings together. They would lock him out of the house.
Eventually they realized that their practical jokes were not viewed as funny by the boy so they apologized. He said, “That’s okay, I will stop spitting in your soup now.”
Introduction-
I want us to remember as we come to these verses that they are part of a bigger context.
I am wanting to share with you what may or may not be what you have normally read into these verses
I want to draw out for you what I believe John is teaching
Main truth-
Here in these verses John is commanding love.
He is not asking
He is commanding
He is commanding based on the truths of God’s Word
He is also commanding that we develop within our lives a love that will come as naturally as breathing
Transition #1-
What is being taught? (Explain the passage and draw out the 1st century truth)
The firs thing to notice in these verses is the declaration once again of salvation by faith in the person and work pf Jesus
Whosoever believeth…speaking of the one who puts their faith in a thing or person
Where is the faith placed?
Jesus…the man from Nazareth
What about Him?
That He is the Christ…John has earlier dealt with the Christ being the chosen one of God
This is similar to 1 Samuel 16 when David is anointed king of Israel.
David is the chosen on
Here the anointed or chosen one is Jesus
Based on His being born of God
Being the Son of God meaning that Jesus was the only one who could live a sinless life and being able to make atonement for our sins.
We have regularly dealt with the gospel in this epistle.
That Jesus came and died for us to be able to exchange our sins for his righteousness
That our falling short of the glory of God is made up in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross of Calvary
What does John say about those individuals?
Remember back in 1 John 2:9-10 where we discussed hating our brothers versus loving our brothers and that it wasn’t about a one time event or even a phase that we go through…but whether or not it is our habitual response.
Like what I like to refer to as a knee-jerk reaction
Some would say a gut response
John is reverting back to those verbs
How do we know we are loving our siblings in Christ
When it is our natural resonse…it is our knee-jerk reaction
We love before we even realize we are loving
It comes as natural to love someone else as prayer does to Paul in 1 Thess 5:17
The same with keeping the Lord’s commandments
It is habitual
It is natural
Now before we get to what I think is a highly important couple verses let’s spend a minute on this word commandments
Before we understand what John means by commandments I want us to see how the word is used
And as they came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying, Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again from the dead.
And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.
The word precept here is the same as our word command in 1 John
For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
The word give here is the same as our word command in 1 John
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
What was the point of this short survey? This was just a few of the almost 100x this word is used and each time it refers to someone in authority giving a task to those under their charge
In our military that could be refered to a commissioning
And in Matthew 28:20 believers are given a commissioning
And I do not believe it is a far stretch to see that John here is refering to the three most important commands in the gospels
1- Love God
2- Love others
3- Share the gospel
Think about where we have been.
The first chapters deal with the person and work of Jesus on the Cross
Chapter 2 the commandment was old and it was yet new…love your brother
Chapter 3 “behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us”
Yet using the example of Cain John gives us the reality that what comes out of us is what is in our hearts
3:17 whoso has the worlds good yet shuts up his bowels of compassion, how dwelleth the love of God in him.
Chapter four…remember, the love chapter (Far exceeding 1 Cor. 13)
Love God
Love others
Love your enemies (false teachers)
We ought to love others the way that God loved us
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
What is the command, or commission, here?
Love that if you love God you will love others
Chapter 5:4-5 victory comes by way of faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus
So…verses 2-3, can I take liberty to say that the word commandment could be synonomous with commission
Read verses 2-2 and add commandments/commission
When we give a cursory reading of this or when we take these verses out of context we are creating an atmosphere for legalism
What John is stating here is not that you have to obey all of God’s commands and that you have to do it with a smile
Transition #2-
How do we understand this in our context? (Bridge 1st century truth to today)
Johns goal in chapter four and the beginning of chapter five has to do with the formation of righteousness in the life of believers
When we get to 5:3 I ask this question....what is it that produces righteousness?
From my reading and study I see two choices
1- The first possibility, that I reject, is that the law produces righteousness.
Is the law one of the factors in a larger equation
Absolutely
But the Law in and of itself can no more produce righteousness in the believer than it can forgiveness in the unbeliever
I have often heard this phrase when it comes to this ideal of the Law producing righteousness
Rules without relationship produce rebellion
What does all this point to then????
This discussion is leading us to the second of our options
2- Righteousness is brought about by our response to God’s abundant love
When we understand that all that John is talking about from 4:7-5:3 is premised on 4:7
This is the foundation for our relationship with those we disagree with 4:1-6
This is our foundation for our relationship with God 7-10
This is our foundation for our relationship with others 11-13
This is the foundation of the Gospel 14-16
This is the foundation for our future hope 17-18
This is the foundation for our relationship with other believers 19-21
What commandments/commissions are we to keep and not see as a burden?
LOVE
Love God
Love other believers
Love unbelievers with the gospel
Just LOVE
That love will manifest itself in some rules
Rules are not wrong and the use of rules in and of themselves will not produce hypocrisy, legalism, or rebellion.
Law alone without the love that comes from God through us produces these things.
Love, guided by law when necessary produces righteousness
Turn with me to Romans 7 and keep in mind what John has been teaching.
Verse 6…we are dead to sin and delivered from the law to serve in the spirit…in something new/different
Verse 7 …is the law unimportant....NO
The law is vitally important…it is how we know what sin is verses 12-13
14-23 this is the battle that we see Paul fighting
I want to but i do't do it
I don’t want to do it but I still do
This is the result of striving to develop righteousness with the Law
Frustration and failure
That leads to hypocrisy and legalism
7:25-8:39 what is the answer? the Law of God
What does Jesus declare to be the two greatest commandment?
Love God and love others!!!!
What commandments is John refering to in 1 John 5:3-4
Matthew 22:36-40
The shemah in Deut 6:5
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
…to love the Lord your God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might
Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.
Jesus then says that all the Law and prophets hang on these two commands
What is he saying
If you do not have love for God and others it doesn’t matter what the rest of the Bible says
You missed the biggest part of the picture is you “do” everything the Bible says but do not have love
1 Corinthians 13:1ff
You are saved by the gospel, you are kept by the gospel, and you are grown by the gospel…what is the heart of the gospel? Love
So if the love of God saves, keeps, and grows you why turn back to the Law?
Continue on in love (my summary of Galatians)
I tend to think of it this way...
Biblical love is the steering wheel and Gods commandments are the guard rails
We cannot drive up against the guardrails all the time, we need to use the steering wheel to guide us
The more you develop the ability to use the steering wheel the less you need the guardrails
The more we learn to use biblical love the less we need the commands of Scripture
If you are here this morning and you are afraid of God because you might make a mistake
If you are afraid of God because you can’t keep His rules
You need to come to a proper understanding of who God is and how he produces righteousness in our lives
Transition #3-
How do we live this out in our context? (Application of the biblical truth to us personally)
How should this change my thinking. (Mental understanding and/or reasoning?)
We develop righteousness when we transform the way we think about God and His justice
His justice is holy and perfect
It has at it’s aim sin
If we have the righteous blood of jesus as our atonement we are no longer his aim
His aim for us now is to mature us through love
We need to transform our thinking about others as well.
How does God view others
Maybe in your mind it depend on if they are saved or not
What does John 3:16 teach
That God loves all
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
There is nowhere in Scripture that would give us an opportunity to bypass love
Whether to the saved or unsaved
To those who treat us well or those who don’t
One of my children had an issue with another child they were playing with
They responded wrong…harsh
They wanted me to understand how wrongly they had been treated and each time I acknowledged that wrong
But my consistent response was that just because they wronged us does not give us the right to do wrong
We understand this as we guide our children
Then we grow up and this principle gets warped in our minds because we are dealing with adult issues
Friends the principle is still the same
Two wrongs do not make a right whether you are 5 or 55
We need to develop a way of thinking that it becomes habit to love
When it is a habit to love it is no longer grievous/burdensome
It may seem a pretty big task
But start by understanding how much God loved you…even before you were lovable
I don’t want to offend but when it comes to God loving us have any of us become lovable enough that Jesus can step aside now
No, in and of ourselves we are no more lovable than what we would see as the worst of sinners
It is only by God’s love that we are lovable
So why then are we so quick to switch the standards on the horizontal level
Conclusion
Review-
God is love...
We are to love
We are to develop the habit of loving
We too often respond like the Korean boy and love when others love us
We love when its expedient
We love when it’s convenient
Call to action-
Let me close and summarize it this way
If God loves them then we are to love them as much as God does.
Closing song-