Sermon Tone Analysis

Good Morning!

We are in our Series in the Epistles of John… this morning we are going to be looking at our identity as children of God…Identity and security has become a major issue in todays world…

Do you remember the days when passwords were easy… You could have one password for everything… Now you need a bunch of passwords and they can’t just be letters or numbers… When you create a passwords today you have at least one number, some symbol, uppercase letter.... Then when you’ve got your password you have to confirm you are a person not a robot/ computer signing into your account… You have these picture frames where you have to identify how many streets signs… in the picture… so complicated… Why all the security?…

well it comes down to identity theft?

Unfortunately, identity theft is happening more and more frequently in the modern, digital age.

These some recent statics on frequency and cost of identity theft.

1 Billion Personal records leaked in 2014 Alone

Identity theft on the rise - 2007 10.2 Million - 2015 there were 15.4 million

5.8 Billion in Tax fraud paid out by the IRS

There are 19 Victim Every minute.

Cost of average victim is $ 500 and 30 hour in lost time.

John is the beloved disciple of Jesus and he writes to believers as his children… One of the concerns he has for the church is that they would loose their true identity… — In fact one of the phrases that comes up with frequency in the Johannine epistles is this idea of being “born” of God … John uses the phrase 12 times in the book of 1 John alone.... and about the same amount in the Gospel of John.

In the gospel of John chapter 3, John gives the account of when a Pharisee named Nicodemus seeks out Jesus secretly at night - He comes under cover of night to to ask Jesus a burning question about His identity.. Nicodemus recognized that Jesus was more than the average Rabbi… there was something Divine about him.. lets pick up on this in John 3:w..

Nicodemus comes with an identity question to Jesus…basically asking him if he is the son of God....

But Jesus didn’t answer Nicodemus question directly -

He didn’t say Yes, I am the son of God....

Rather Jesus says, Unless one is born again he cannot see the Kingdom of God…

Which caused a little confusion because Nicodemus took this literally and asked - how can a man go back into the womb again… Jesus explains that being born again - regenerated made alive by the spirit of God… The reason I believe Jesus answer this ways is because in order to understand truly the identity of Jesus as the Son of God ... you need to be born again… Jesus says you must be Born again...

There is only so far the science and reasonis going to take you..the searching mind will not come to understand the things of God.... outside of grace of God.. Part of the reason is that sin acts like a blind spot…

THOMAS Aquinas was considered th greatest theologian in the Middle Ages..

He was called the doctor of angels…he lived at a time where scholars were fascinated with Aristotle who explained the entire universe through observation and reason…it was the dawn before the enlightenment where the emphasis on reason threatened to undermine Christian beliefs.. Aquinas believed that both faith and reason were fountains that came from God.. however only faith can show us who God really is..

According to Aquinas.. .

“A sign of the human deficiency in understanding the divine is the fact that philosophers cannot come even to understand human affairs without error.

Therefore, it was necessary for God to deliver divine truths by way of faith, told to human beings by the God who cannot lie.”

Aquinas

In other words an unregenerate mind cannot fully understand God it has to be coupled with the grace of God.. Jesus didn’t avoid Nicodemus question… just answering it in a different way.

Jesus in essence is saying to Nicademus in order understand fully who I am you must be born again.

Being born again is part of the Christians identity… Just like natural birth we accepted Christ we were born into the Kingdom of God… the result of the New Birth is that we are sons and daughter of God...

This is exactly what is going on in our text… John is concerned that these relatively New Christians know their identity as being born of God….

They lived in a world where there were those who were against Christ.. last week our text that said in the last days there would be many anti-Christs… spirit of those who are against Christ in the world… What he was talking about

The the sect called the Gnostics who came preaching a another Gospel… … Basically there were two errors… those who followed the letter of the law… then those who said they were above the law...

The Gnostics were the spirtual elites that taught special knowledge and what it did was created an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy on the part of the Christians… These teachers taught that they had a special annointing… to know God..

John counter this teaching by saying you have annointing and from the Holy One… It’s annointing that came when you accepted Jesus as your savior… through the new Birth.

The best way to combat our own insecurities and feelings and inadequacies is to dig deep into the Truth....To be honest one of the biggest problems that we have as Christians is that of identity theft...

T/S John make s it clear that we are to identify as Children of God…What does it mean to be born of God?

We going start in 1 John 2:28..

What does it mean to be called the Children of God?

T/S Being Children of God means we have

1.

Confident because we are known by the Father.

a.

When Jesus returns or Appears we will have confidence/ boldness to stand before him… As children of God we will stand before him with complete confidence.

John uses pastoral language when he addresses the church… He is coming along side them and help to understand the privilege of sonship… He tells them that everything in the last days is moving towards the return of Christ and one day we will all stand before God… But for those who are believers this is going to be awesome because we will stand before God as Children of God…

I don’t know about you but as a parent my heart is full when I have my family around me....

We know children well, good the bad the ugly… When the relationship is good there is no judgement .... full acceptance… that’s the joy of being fully known by God.... Johns says when Christ appears we will not have to shrink back in shame.... Why because you are Known… You are honor and the privilage of standing before God as his Child..

Here we need to say something about an honor and shame culture.

Western culture today is largely not an honor and shame culture, but in the hierarchy of ethical values in the ancient Near East and in the Jewish world, honor and shame were right at the top of the value hierarchy, as high up there as even ‘truth’ as opposed to ‘error’ was.

Ancient Near Eastern people would rather die than be publicly shamed, and indeed they were prepared to die for the honor of their kin group or their tribe or their people or their faith.

It’s an honor and shame culture.

So when the author says that the goal here is that you may appear unashamed before Him at His coming and He will say to you, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” he is appealing to one of the basic leitmotifs of the culture.

Where does this confidence come from?

John tells us that it comes from righteousness that comes with new life or being born again.

Being born again means what is implanted in you is something the Holy Spirit, the nature of God, the DNA of God … It’s the divine nature.

It’s his spiritual DNA, because as it grows in you, you develop the family likeness.

You become children of him.

You develop family resemblance.

It’s his DNA.

The NT never admits the possibility of human beings becoming “deified” rather the Bible tells us that we “participate in the divine nature a

It goes back to the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit… You have an anointing from the Holy One.... It’s Romans 8:16 that tells us, The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

The Holy Spirit is the inward witness of sonship… John gives those who are born again of the Spirit of God a command it’s written in the imperative form…John says Abide in Him.

The word abide means to continue or to rest in something.

The book Hebrews 4 tells us that there is a rest that remains for Gods people and strive to enter into that rest… its the same idea of abiding — there is a freedom that comes from rest… for example… When you rest, when you put your work down, you are saying, “I am not a cog in a machine.

I am not a slave to the materialistic society in which I live.

I am not a slave to the identity system of my society.

I am not a slave to the identity my society demands of me.

Rather, I am declaring my freedom of my identity in God.

I am not a slave.”

Because of the interdependant nature of our relationship of resting in being know by the father ---one of the evidences of being born of his spirit is practicing righteousness… In spiritual formation we talk about being and doing… John connects the dots for us… we need to abide or rest thats Being in Christ.. - Put practicing righteous is doing speaking of actions or our lifestyle.

John is not preaching the Righteous that came out of the the protestant Reformation, “justification by grace through faith”—we get right standing with God and it doesn’t have anything to do with our being righteous.

John is not dealing with that.

He’s not really dealing with conversion.

He’s dealing with the life of those who were already Christians and the necessity for them to live in the right way, to live out the gospel in a righteous manner.

John Stott says it like this

“A person’s righteousness is thus the evidence of his new birth, not the cause or condition of it.”

Stott

For John Right behavior is the result of right belief… The practical living out of the Christian faith is never far from John’s thinking..

His logic - True Children of God have been born of God…and because God has a righteous character ----so it would be natural assume that his Children will do the right thing.

So, Righteous living is a confirmation, an ethical expression, of an already existing relationship with God.

Our lives, as children, resemble our Father’s righteousness

T/s We also should be people who have righteous character, but not just righteous character—we should do righteous deeds… John wants us to take time to contemplate to understand the ramorfoqrcation of being children of God...

T/s What does it mean to be called the Children of God?

It means we are...

1. Confident because we are known by the Father.

2. Confident because we are loved by the Father.

1 John 3:1 is one of those verses that is worth commiting to memory..

When I memorized this verse it was in the KJV Behold what manner of the love the father has bestowed us that we should be called the Son’s of God…

The first imperative in our text was the command to abide… Now John uses a second.. and it’s the word behold or in the esv.. the word see..

John says don’t passover this quickly.... take some time to comprehend the magnitude or the degree to which God went too.. demonstrate his love… in order that we now have been adopted into God’s family… as sons and daughters of God...

To be called children of God is means that God himself has chosen us to be in his family… I want you to be part of my family.... Fully embraced and loved unconditionally… you and I have become the object of his affection… This is where we sometimes run into a little trouble… when it comes to unconditional kind of love.

Sometimes it is pride, which demands to prove itself worthy of the love of God before it will receive it.

Sometimes it is unbelief, which cannot trust the love of God when it sees the hurt and pain of life.

And sometimes it just takes time for a person to come to a fuller understanding of the greatness of God’s love.

When John says behold what manner of love — he is saying that that the love of God is both knowable and visible.”

Linguistically its written in the perfect tense — meaning it something that has already taken place in the past… God’s love has already been displayed towards us… Scholar Westcott tells us that “the love is not simply exhibited towards believers, but imparted to them.”

Westcott

… The implications is that love is not only demonstrated to us but given to us through sonship — We are called Children of God…

This is beautiful especially in the face of false teaching that brought up the sense of being inadequate (not measuring up).

Just in case there is any doubt - John stresses the fact they are indeed the children of God.. he adds the phrase… vers 1 .... that we are sons of God and adds “and so we are.”

That is solely there for emphasis… Get it into your heart and mind… deep down… inside.

Stott captures this original sense when he writes,

“The Father’s love is so unearthly, so foreign to this world, that [John] wonders from what country it may come>”