The Image Part II

1. Last week I spoke of instructions where the pictures did not accurately portray what the finished product was supposed to be.  We spoke about the first 2 chapters of John’s first letter and how John addresses the issue of making our walk match our talk, or making our image portray what the finished product is supposed to be.  This week we will pick up where we left off and listen as John explains for us the difference between “The World” and “The Kingdom”
2. Explain “The World”
   1. In the Bible “The World” is Satan’s system for opposing the work of Christ on Earth.
   2. It is a world characterized by selfishness and greed and those who are a part of this world system will hate anyone or anything that gets in the way of their acquiring the desires of their hearts. It is a world that is upside down relative to the Kingdom.  In the World, people are used and things are valued.  In the Kingdom things are used and people are valued.  The World is “Every man for himself”, “Get while the getting’s good”, and “He who dies with the most toys wins”.  The Kingdom is selfless.  Love your neighbor, pray for those who persecute you, and place the needs of others ahead of your own.
   3. The World doesn’t understand Jesus and doesn’t want to understand Jesus. “He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.  (John 1:11-12)
   4. Because the World doesn’t understand Jesus, they don’t accept Him either. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means when He speaks. (1 Cor. 2:14)
   5. Because the World doesn’t accept Jesus, they will not accept you either. “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.  The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. (John 15:18-19)
   6. Ultimately, what the world is about is a rejection of God’s sovereignty. God designed this world to work in a particular way and prescribed the way that humans should behave in order for the world to work according to His plan.
   7. Remember the word koinonia from last week? It means to agree with someone. If God sets the rules and we agree with Him that His rules are right then we have fellowship with the Father because we are agreeing with Him.  Even if we should slip and occasionally disobey the rules, in confessing our sins we are agreeing with God and restoring our fellowship.
   8. Unfortunately, the World does not like to have anyone tell them what to do. If following God’s law is inconvenient, or comes at personal cost the World will find excuses and justifications for their choice to break the law, but what they are really doing is disagreeing with God.  This law doesn’t work for me so I am going to ignore it.  Now that they disagree, fellowship is no longer possible
3. John has given us four reasons not to love “The World”
   1. Because of what the world is
      1. In John 12:31 Jesus called Satan “The Prince of this World”. The way the world works is completely contrary to the way God planned for it to work.  John makes it clear that we cannot have fellowship with the world and fellowship with God at the same time.  We must choose one or the other.
   2. Because of what the world does to us.
      1. God created the world to be a wonderful place, full of good things; in fact, the Bible describes the world before the entry of sin as “Paradise”. The many pleasures of this world were created by God to bring joy to His beloved children and when these things are enjoyed within the context of God’s plan they are good and right and holy, but the world takes these things out of the context of God’s plan and overindulges, or hoards, or twists them into something else until they are no longer good and right and holy, then they become a stumbling block.  Believers are not immune to the removing of the good and the right and the holy from the context of God’s plan and when believers choose to love the things of the world, then the love of the Father is not in them, because they have chosen to break fellowship by deciding that this rule doesn’t work for them.  Satan uses the joys that God Himself designed to entice us away from God and into the world.
   3. Because of what a Christian is
      1. Note the forms of address John uses to his audience: Little Children, Fathers, Young Men, Little Children.  Little Children (Literally “Born ones”) refers to all believers.  When we place our trust in Jesus we become part of God’s family, but we are as little children.  A new believer doesn’t have the benefit of years of experience with the Holy Spirit guiding, leading, and teaching.  A new believer is unlikely to have spent much time studying God’s word or being mentored by more mature believers.  The new Christian should NEVER be satisfied living at this stage.  Just as falling in love fills us with a desire to develop a deeply personal relationship with our beloved, so should the discovery of God’s love for us move us to a desire of a deeper personal relationship with Him.  This involves time spent in the Word, time spent in prayer, and time spent learning from other believers.
      2. The Fathers are the mature believers, those who have spent time in communion with God through prayer and study of the Word.

• The Young Men are those who are not yet mature believers but who are learning to use God’s Word to overcome the world.

1. Unlike the “Born Ones” teknia of verse 12 the Children of verse 14 is neaniskoi or youths, and implies a level of immaturity.
2. These represent the Christian family but how important it is to be one who is reaching for spiritual maturity!
3. Wiresbe says “No Christian who has experienced the joys and wonders of fellowship with God, and of service for God, will want to live on the substitute pleasures that this world offers.”

1. Lastly, because of where the world is going. Those who have no fellowship with the Father are lost.  For those who never turn to the Father, their loss will be sadly permanent.
2. I’d like to interject a thought here because one of the great sticking points of the Christian faith is the idea that a perfectly loving God could condemn people to an eternity of misery. There are two things that I would like for us all to remember.  The first is that a person choosing to live according to the ways of the world, who chooses to live a life of selfishness and greed, would NEVER be happy living in God’s kingdom.  As Rev. David Cotton once said in a brilliant sermon on this subject:  “Ultimately God gives every person exactly what they want.”  The second thing I would like for us to remember is strictly my opinion, but I believe the Bible supports my opinion.  On the day that God reconciles the world to Himself we will all stand in open mouthed astonishment at the rightness of His judgements and the depth of His grace.  Ultimately God will be completely fair, and there will be no one who will be able to say otherwise.

4. The author now turns his attention to the conflict between truth and error.
   1. “Faith in a lie always has serious consequences; faith in the truth is never misplaced… A person who is real builds his life on truth, not superstition or lies.” -Wiersbe
   2. He introduces “The Antichrist” and uses the term to describe three things
      1. A spirit in this world that opposes or denies Christ
      2. The false teachers who exemplify this spirit
      3. The actual person who will be empowered by Satan to lead the final world rebellion against God

1. There are two forces at work in the world today
   1. The spirit of truth as taught by The Holy Spirit
   2. The spirit of evil working by the energy of Satan
2. Three identifying features of the false teacher
   1. He departs from the fellowship
      1. 1 Jn. 2:19 “These people left our churches, but they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left, it proved that they did not belong with us.”
      2. Real Christians are in fellowship. They share the same Holy Spirit and the same divine heart and there is a desire to share with one another.  Even though we may be very different, the desire for fellowship is still paramount.  Most people who know me well know that I am fascinated by politics and that I have very strong opinions that are the polar opposite of the opinions of some of my closest friends, but friends we remain because the bond that we have in Christ is so much stronger and so much more important than all of that worldly stuff.
   2. He denies the faith
      1. When the message begins to skew from that which the Spirit teaches us it true it may be time to take a very careful look at what the teacher is teaching
      2. I once read a paper that was written by a man who was an expert on counterfeit money. When the Secret Service taught him about counterfeit money, they didn’t use any counterfeit money!  They used only real money because only when a person is thoroughly familiar with the real thing is he or she able to recognize the fake.  So it is with believers that having a solid knowledge of Jesus that comes from study of the word, time spent in prayer and communion with God through the Holy Spirit, and learning from other believers will make it possible to spot the phony.
      3. There is no shortage of false teachers today. There are people preaching hateful words, people teaching us to denigrate others, people teaching us that God wants us all to be millionaires.  These may be messages that some people want to hear, they may be messages that some people would like to believe, but one thing they are not is the Gospel.
      4. Which leads us to the third thing, They try to deceive the faithful  Another great Wiersbe quote, though not from the 1^st John book:  “If Satan can keep a Christian ignorant, he can keep him impotent”
         1. If Satan can succeed in breaking our fellowship with the Father, then we lose His power to identify error and to resist sin. This is why maintaining fellowship is critical for the Christian

5. Reasons for Holy Living
   1. God’s love for us is so great that he reached out to us while we were His enemies and called us to His side. He gives us the right to be His beloved children for no reason other than the fact that He has chosen to love us.
   2. Our forgiveness was not cheap. It came at the awful cost of Jesus’ death on the cross.  He suffered horribly, but did so willingly and gladly because He loves us so much.
   3. He gives us the Holy Spirit to guide and instruct us. This is actually God becoming a part of our everyday life.  He is always there.  If we can’t feel His presence it’s because of us, not because of Him
6. Yes and No
   1. Have you ever been so excited about something or so happy about something that you just jumped up and let out an exultant “Yes”. My son Joe and I have both been known to scare the living daylights out of Jackie with a resounding “Yes” when the Mets do something good.  Unfortunately for us Mets fans but fortunately for Jackie, that doesn’t happen often.  The day that Joe and Caitlyn invited Jackie and me to their house to break the news that Caitlyn was pregnant with Jackson I raised both hands in the air in exaltation and let out a jubilant “Yes”.
   2. On the flip side of things, 2 summers ago Jackie and I lost a good friend, someone we’ve known since we were kids. I read the Facebook post from his sister that he had passed and shouted NO pretty much as loud as I possibly could!  Jackie asked me what was wrong and I had to break the news to her resulting in the same response from her.
   3. Yes and no can be much, much more than just agreement or disagreement. Yes or no can actually be something felt deep within our hearts.
   4. Jesus isn’t looking for a lukewarm, uninspired “yeah, I guess so” from us. He wants that arms raised, exultant, emphatic, resounding YES that comes from deep within our souls. He wants a yes that’s more than just intellectual assent.  He wants a yes that comes from our hearts, our minds, and our will.
   5. And when that is the yes that we give Him … that is when we become real. That is when our walk begins to truly match our witness, and when our witness begins to becomes truly effective.  That is when our image begins to portray faithfully what the finished product is supposed to look like.
   6. The praise team started learning a song at Thursday’s rehearsal and I really wish we had been ready to sing it today. These are the lyrics to the chorus of Chris Tomlin’s “Your Heart”:
      1. At the end of the day I want to hear people say My heart looks like your heart, My heart looks like your heart. When the world looks at me, let them agree, that my heart looks like your heart, My heart looks like your heart.
   7. How does your heart look today?

The Image Part One

Rev. Rack is off this week and next week so I will be filling in.  Looks like y’all get amateur hour for the next two weeks.  I’m going to do something just a little different this morning.  I’m going to forgo the reading of the Epistle lesson before the sermon and actually have the reading as part of the sermon.  I hope that’s OK with everyone.  Now if you’d please join your hearts with mine in a much needed prayer.

Gracious Father:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our rock and our redeemer.   Amen

I have worked in retail for a LONG time.  I started out in the electronics industry, first working in a stereo shop and later working with tv, video, and eventually computers, and one of the things that I used to do (Geek that I am) was, when new merchandise came out,  I would read the owner’s manual…  all of it.  I found it productive because it helped me to remember the important facts associated with the piece and also helped me to understand its capabilities.  Now in those days virtually all of the owner’s manuals were written and printed in the USA.  Eventually the Japanese, I guess to save money, started writing and printing the manuals themselves, but it is entirely fair to say that the majority of the folks that were beginning to write these manuals were not native English speaking people and this resulted in varying degrees of fractured language in the manuals.  As time went on, manufacturers began using more and more pictures in their instructions and fewer and fewer words.  As most of you probably know, today’s instruction manuals and installation guides may possibly be ALL pictures and no words.  Take this thing that looks like this and attach it to that thing that looks like that with this little thingy that looks like this….

A few years back I had to assemble a very large and very expensive display for some vinyl flooring.  Fairly early in the assembly process I came to a piece….  Both sides were finished, it fit into the display both ways, but the piece was asymmetrical so clearly it mattered which way it went in.  I looked in vain for a picture that showed how it was supposed to fit but not one picture in the entire manual, from start to finish, showed clearly how it was supposed to be installed, not one.  I had a 50/50 chance, so I guessed….. wrong.  I didn’t realize it though, until the rack was completely assembled and I was ready to add the samples.  Now the samples were supposed to turn like pages in a book, but the place on the top of the rack where the pages were supposed to be attached weren’t at the top of the rack, they were at the bottom.  I had to take almost the entire display apart and reassemble it.  By the time it was done and the samples were added this two and a half hour job had taken me six hours to complete.

The reason that I had so much trouble with this was that the images in the manual did not accurately portray exactly what the final product was supposed to be.

Have you ever spoken to a friend, an acquaintance, a relative, a neighbor, or a co-worker about Jesus?  How’s THAT for a segue?  Sorry, I never took the segue class for preachers.  I’ll make it all make sense in a minute; I promise.

If you have, have you ever noticed that the first thing that happens is that people’s eyes glaze over?  Then they think to themselves with a thought that’s so loud that YOU can hear it “Oh boy, here we go”.  Then there’s this mystical, invisible substance that plugs the ears so they can’t hear a thing you say, and even if a word or two does make its way through the mystical, invisible substance, a fog envelopes the brain so that they can’t understand a word that you say.

I believe that there are two reasons why this happens.  The first reason is I believe that absolutely everyone has a fairly well defined idea of who it is that they think that God is supposed to be, or not supposed to be, and since there is no actual concrete, empirical evidence of the fact that God is real, they believe that their opinion is every bit as valid as yours.  “I’ll respect your beliefs if you’ll respect mine”.  Sound familiar?  It doesn’t matter whether or not their belief is rooted in historical fact.  It only matters that they believe it.  It doesn’t matter whether or not their belief is confirmed by personal experience with the miraculous.  It only matters that they believe it.  It doesn’t even matter if their belief makes sense.  They could believe that aliens came from the planet Ding Dong and told them that god is a Labradoodle named Ralph. Hey, I’ll respect your beliefs if you’ll respect mine.

The second reason that it happens is because people have lived, they’ve learned, and sometimes they’ve even paid attention, and when they see that there are hateful people that are preaching love. When they see that there are violent people that are preaching peace. When they see that immoral people are preaching purity, and that liars are preaching truth, well, they may not really know what the truth actually is, but what they do know is: this ain’t it.  They know this because the image that they are seeing is not accurately portraying what the finished product is supposed to be.

I’m a big fan of Warren Wiersbe.  Warren Wiersbe has a series of commentaries on the Bible that he calls the “Be” series.  Each book bears the title Be something:  “Be Patient” for the study of Job, Be Joyful for Philippians, Be Mature for James.  When I am leading a Bible study, or preaching on a particular passage, Wiersbe’s Be series book will be the first thing that I purchase in preparation, if I don’t own it already.  For the First Letter of John, Wiersbe named his book “Be Real”.  The First Letter of John addresses directly the issue of making the image accurately portray what the finished product is supposed to be.  It gives practical advice on how to live for Jesus in a way that will bring YOU joy and make your life an irresistible witness to the love and the grace, and the compassion of Jesus.   The wonderful Christian author Keith Miller once referred to this as “The music of the Gospel”.  Just as music draws the listener in with its beauty, so will a life that is striving to live faithfully draw people in with its beauty.  Francis of Assisi once said “Preach the Gospel, use words if necessary”.  If we are going to reach people with the Good News of Jesus Christ it’s nowhere near as likely to happen with our words as it is with our actions.

And so we are going to spend the rest of this week and next week looking at the First Letter of John, examining what we can do to make our image accurately portray what the finished product is supposed to be.

It all begins with Jesus!  John begins his letter by identifying himself as an EYEWITNESS to the life of Jesus.

1^st John 1:1 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.”

John is not rendering his opinion here.  He’s not waxing philosophic about life and love.  He is teaching what he personally learned from a Jesus that he heard, and touched, and knew.

John teaches that God is light and that in Him there is no darkness.  Now darkness and light cannot exist in the same space because light drives out darkness.  Every person has the freedom to choose whether to walk in light or to walk in darkness, but only those walking in the light have fellowship with the Father.  So what does it mean to walk in the light?  The word “Fellowship” used twice in verse 3 is the Greek word koinwnia (Koin-a-nia) which actually means to agree with or to have in common.  As sinners humans have nothing in common with God, but God in His grace sent Jesus to have something in common with us. When we trust in the work that Jesus did on our behalf on the cross, we then have something in common with God.  A starting point from which to build a life that is pleasing to God.

John then shares with us five reasons why we want to share in this fellowship, this koinwnia.

First we share God’s nature.  In sharing God’s nature His Holy Spirit becomes a part of us.  As we learn to hear the leading of the Holy Spirit we discover that He helps our minds to know and understand truth, He helps our hearts to love, and he leads our will towards obedience.  Not obedience out of fear of reprisal, not obedience out of seeking some sort of personal gain, but obedience that comes from AGREEING with God; obedience that comes from the fact that for us to defy God would be completely foreign to our nature.

Second, that we may have JOY!  Joy is not related to circumstance.  On the very night that Jesus was betrayed, a night that His anguish was so great that he literally sweat blood, this is what he said to His disciples “These things I have spoken to you that MY JOY might remain in you, and that your joy might be full”.  Sin promises joy, but ultimately sin is the cause of all of the world’s miseries.  The only real joy comes from walking in fellowship with a loving and gracious God.

Third, that we might not sin.  John is bluntly honest about sin.  “If we say we are without sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  God’s answer to our sinfulness is the continual forgiveness of our sins as a result of the prayers of Jesus, our advocate before the Father.  In Jesus our sins are forgiven, but better even than that is the fact that by fixing our attention on Jesus, and walking in obedience to His Word, we have a power to resist sin that would never be possible without His help.

Fourth, that we will not be deceived.  Satan seeks to mislead us with half-truths and false promises.  He offers a substitute faith and a substitute salvation but the Holy Spirit is our teacher and those who learn to follow the Spirit’s leadings will learn discernment.  Wiersbe says “(The Spirit) is our protection against ignorance, deception, and untruth”.  A faithful life is characterized by Spirit led discernment.

Fifth, that we may know that we are saved.  2^nd Peter 1:16 says “We have not followed cunningly devised fables”.  Through the eyewitness of the disciples we are following what they KNEW to be true.  Again Wiersbe says “These men, almost all of whom died for their faith, did not give their lives for a clever hoax of their own devising as some critics of Christianity will assert.  They KNOW what they have seen”.

The three great themes of the first half of John’s First Letter are Obedience, Love, and Truth.  Being made in God’s image, we were given a mind, with which to think, a heart, with which to feel, and a will, with which to make decisions.  If we are to live a life that’s real; if our lives are to be an image that portrays accurately what the finished product is supposed to be; then we must involve all three of these things; our intellect, our emotion, and our will.

1^st John 2: 3-11 “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.  But if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.

Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.”

In the Greek, the word “New” is not neos (Neos) which means chronologically new, but kainhn (Kai-nain) which means “fresh”, or as modern advertising would say “New and improved”.  This passage is not saying that there is a new commandment that we didn’t know.  It’s saying that the commandment that we already know is enhanced by the understanding that we obey the commandment not out of obligation, but because of who we are in Christ.

Now let me just say that this whole loving your brother and your sister thing is not as easy as it sounds.  Oh sure, it’s a wonderful thing to love your family and friends, at least most of the time.  When someone loves you, when people are pleasant and friendly and share your views and opinions it’s easy to love them, but when people are rude and arrogant, argumentative and unlovable, loving them becomes a real challenge.  So how do we love these people?  This isn’t something that we can do on our own.  We need to focus our thoughts on Jesus and we need to love others because we love Him, because He first loved us.  We need to find ways to be loving even when we don’t feel particularly loving.  A few years back I learned a prayer that I began repeating to myself every time I felt like having an unloving outburst (Or sometimes AFTER having an unloving outburst), but the point being to fix the mind on Jesus and allow His love to become my love.  The prayer is

“Father, if this person does not know you, please help them to understand the nature of your love and the depth of your grace, and if they do know you then please fill them with a sense of your presence”.

This is a prayer I’ve said A LOT, and I mean A LOT!  And how am I doing loving my brothers and sisters?  Well, it’s hard to tell because I live on the Jersey Shore, and every summer…….. every summer we are inundated with rude, arrogant, unlovable people.  But I work on fixing my mind on Jesus and I work on making this a part of who I am.  And when I fail, which is often, I fall on God’s grace because I know that He is faithful, even when I’m not.

But please understand that my faithfulness here is important; it matters, and so does yours!  It matters because it’s only by fixing our eyes on Jesus that we won’t be the hateful person preaching love.  It’s only by fixing our eyes on Jesus that we won’t be the violent person preaching peace, or the immoral person preaching purity or the liar preaching truth.

Here’s the deal…  We have found an impossibly extravagant love in Jesus.  We have found grace and compassion beyond our wildest expectations.  We have found undeserved forgiveness and we have found a friend who is transforming our lives bit by bit and struggle by struggle into a people who are capable of living lives that reveal the music of the Gospel.

If we are truly walking in the light, then our lives will reflect our words and the image that we live will begin to portray that which we have been called to be.  Amen.