Confident Christians
Epistles of John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 1 viewHow can you be confident about your relationship with God? In this passage, we see that we can be confident that we know Him through our obedience to His commands (Love God), confident we are in Him through our service to others (Love Others), and confident we are victorious through the testimony of God's Word (Worship/Praise).
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By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;
but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:
the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.
Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.
On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.
The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake.
I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
INTRO: How confident are you that you will enter heaven? (Maybe you are not so confident....? ) Well, let me ask it this way: Do you love God? If we look at your actions alone, would others know that you love God?
Jesus said that this is the greatest command. Let me remind you of His words in Matt. 22.
And He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
“This is the great and foremost commandment.
“The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Jesus was quoting the Scriptures found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and Leviticus 19:18 (Hopefully you know these by now!)
We know these are important commands and we know that in order to follow them, we have to flesh out what this looks like in our life. We also tend to wrestle with the tension between God’s Law and God’s Grace, and sometimes get confused.
Some folks believe that God’s Law is irrelevant because of God’s Grace. But, I’ll argue that Scripture does not teach that. Actually, I believe it’s God’s Law that shows us our need for God’s Grace and it’s God’s Grace that enables us to love God’s Law. After all, it’s God’s Law that reveals His righteous character.
ILL: I think if you look at your home, you’ll see what I mean. We have rules for our kids to follow. They are meant to protect them and teach them. But, and this might surprise you, they don’t keep the rules perfectly. When this happens, they receive discipline, but they also receive grace or mercy. They are our kids, not because they follow the rules, but because they are our kids.
But, when they do follow the rules, it demonstrates that they love and honor their mom and I, and when they imitate what we’ve taught them, it shows that they are abiding in our model.
Our kids are confident that they belong to us. As Christians, we can have that same confidence that we belong to God. And not only that we belong to God, we can also have the confidence that we belong in this church. And in that confidence and belonging, we will embrace the mission and faith that unites us.
The message this morning is titled Confident Christians. In our time together, I hope to show you how you can know that you belong to God and His family, and am prayerful that before we leave this place, God’s Spirit will refresh and ignite your soul with a holy passion for His Kingdom.
As always, there is a sermon guide available in the bulletin for you to use to take notes and to reflect upon in your quiet time later this week and with your life group. Let’s dive in.
The first thing I want to show you is that:
We Can Be Confident That We Know Him (3-5a)
We Can Be Confident That We Know Him (3-5a)
Let’s read 3-5a (READ)
The Scripture is pretty plain here- Do you keep God’s Commandments? Do you honor God’s character and authority? Do you KNOW God? If you really know Him, then you see Him as sovereign king over all creation and as a result, you will obey Him. But if you disobey Him, then you do not acknowledge Him as the God He is.
Let me reword the point this way: We can be confident that we love God (Greatest Commandment) if we obey His commands.
Jesus said it this way:
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
Now, let me address something here: We must grasp that love is not an emotion. Love is action. So are words like “honor” and “respect”. You cannot simply say you love someone and have no action that supports your words.
Wives, help me out here. If your husband says he loves you, but treats you poorly, do you believe him?
No! You’d call him a liar- that’s what John is saying (READ v. 4)
In contrast, (READ v. 5a) If you keep God’s commands, it demonstrates that the love of God is complete or mature in you. This is a reflection of your love, for without the proper motives, we find ourselves bound to repeat the mistakes of the Pharisees.
So, let’s lean in a bit more: We have to recognize that our intentions to obey have to be coupled with training on how to obey. This is at the center of our mission as a church.
I want you to turn in your bibles to Matt. 28:18-20. We’ve looked at this many times- it’s called the Great Commission or the mission that Christ left His followers (that’s you and me) to do until He returned. Let’s look at it:
And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Do you notice that line, “teaching them to observe all that I commanded you...”? That word ‘observe’ is the same word that is translated ‘keep’ in our passage. Our mission, in part, is to teach others how to love Christ; teaching them to keep His commands.
Do you know Christ? Do you know how to love Him? Listen, if you are wrestling with this, then you need to be discipled. A great place to start is to get into a small group.
How can you be confident that you know Christ? This will be revealed in your response to Him. Keep His commands. How can we make disciples who are confident that they know Christ? Teach them to obey His commands with pure intentions.
John shows us that in our obedience, we can have confidence that they know Christ. Next,
We Can Have Confidence That We Are In Him (5b-6)
We Can Have Confidence That We Are In Him (5b-6)
(READ)
There is a distinction that John seems to point out here between knowing Christ and being in Christ. Now, I don’t think the two can be totally separated, but the difference is in our fellowship with Christ. John says that this confidence stems from our walk being modeled after Jesus’ life. So, how does that look?
It will be helpful again to look briefly at Jesus’ model. I’ll just give a few examples. First, we’ll begin in
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
“If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.
“For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.
“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
Let’s reword our point in light of Jesus’ example.
We can have confidence in our fellowship with Christ because we love others (2nd Greatest Commandment).
How do we love others? If you remember, I told you love is action. The action that Jesus modeled so often is service. By serving others, we demonstrate our love for them. Again, this love in action is our response to Christ.
That’s part of what we do as a church; local, domestic, and international missions serve the practical and spiritual needs of others. Volunteering on a ministry team is serving the body, and loving others. But this is also for you to take to your home, your work, and wherever you go! You are equipped through serving here so you can more confidently go and love your neighbors by serving them.
How do you know that you love God and love others? You obey His commands and serve others.
How do you know that you love God and love others? You obey His commands and serve others.
These two great commands that Jesus articulated to be the foundation or framework on which all the law and prophets hang help us to see the depth of our love for God and others. When we are obedient to God’s law and are serving others, we can have confidence that our lives reflect God’s character or as John says, that we are in the Light.
These are not new commands… but there is a new understanding for the church.
This is what John is telling the church in v. 7-11. Listen to his words. (READ)
Did you catch the ‘new’ part in v. 8?
The new part is that we have a model. The King has come; His Kingdom has been inaugurated. What He has commanded us to keep in the law, Jesus kept perfectly. Thus we have a model in Christ on how to love God. Paul explains it this way:
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Likewise Jesus modeled what is was to love others. Jesus gave this as a new command so that we could see that loving others means loving like Jesus loves.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
How did Jesus love His disciples? He served them. He washed their feet. He taught them. He prayed for them. He gave His life for them. As Jesus taught,
“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus showed us how to love, so that we could know that we are loving both God and neighbor properly. And that ought to give us great confidence in our Christian walk. There is one final confidence that we can have. That is:
We Can Have Confidence That We Are Victorious (12-14)
We Can Have Confidence That We Are Victorious (12-14)
Look with me to v. 12-14 (READ)
John is using some repetition here, I believe, to emphasize this point. If we think back to the message last week where we looked at the Gospel Applied (v. 1-2), we can see that John is telling the church that it is in Christ that we have ultimate confidence.
Let me tell you, folks - I love God and I love others, and I don’t know about you, but I do not love perfectly. In fact, I fail daily to keep God’s law, which demonstrates my love for Him. And I fail daily to serve others- sometimes out of my sinful pride.
If you are like me, listen here:
The confidence of my salvation; my adoption, my eternity is through the promise of God in Christ who forgave me on the basis of HIS character and obedience! My response to that is the pursuit of obedience and service, grounded in love and worship.
The same God who laid the foundations of the world in the beginning, stretched out His arms to receive you and me. My sins are forgiven because of what Christ did!
And that same God who offers forgiveness has ALREADY defeated the enemy! When Jesus was on the cross, He said “IT IS FINISHED!” Folks, we may be fighting to live a Christian testimony, but we are not fighting FOR victory, we are fighting FROM victory!
This is our celebration song! In response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we sing and lift our hands because GOD has given us a SURE VICTORY! We testify because we have been redeemed! Set free from our sin and shame!
Listen to Revelation 12,
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying,
“Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night.
“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.
The BLOOD of the Lamb and the WORD of their testimony… That’s our confidence.
So, HOW does this apply to the church? Let me show you how the framework of the church aligns here to provide space and opportunity for you and I to respond to God:
BECAUSE OF JESUS - We GATHER to give praise (worship times), we group up to GROW in our understanding of God’s Word (SS, life groups, bible study groups), and we GO to serve others (missions, personal evangelism, committees/ serving teams).
Individually,my life and your life AS A TESTIMONY and RESPONSE TO the GOSPEL, looks like: Regularly Gathering to Praise God, Actively Engaging in a discipleship Group to grow, and Consistently GOING to serve others.
This is HOW we begin to fulfill the Great Commission. It starts here with you and me. Do you love God with all your heart, mind, and strength? Do you love your neighbor as yourself?
Friends- let us be confidently carrying out God’s Mission; let us be confident Christians.
LORDS SUPPER
Discuss: On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you in your Christian walk? Why?
Discuss: If your life is a response to your comprehension of the Gospel, what does it depict to others?
Discuss: What are the three life-responses of a confident Christian? Talk about the framework at LRBC that enables these responses to be demonstrated.