John like any good teacher tests his students. So far we have been given a test about the nature of Christ, and the reality of sin.

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1 Introduction How do you like tests? 1. Why is the Bible not a book? (It is many books.) The word, 'Bible' comes from a Greek word Biblia which means, "books". 2. What is the shortest verse in the Bible? ("Jesus wept.") John 11:35 3. How many books are in the Bible? (There are 66 books in the Bible with 35 authors. A Bible is sort of like a library of books.) 4. What is the longest chapter in the Bible? (Psalm 119, it has 176 verses) 5. What is the shortest book in the Bible? (2 John, it has only 13 verses) 6. The Bible has now been translated into many languages. It can be read in nearly half of the 5,445 languages of the world. a. The Old Testament was originally written in what language? (Hebrew) b. The New Testament was originally written in what language? (Greek and Aramaic-one or both answers count.) 7. How many words are there in the Bible? (773,692 words.) It would take you 70 hours to read the whole Bible aloud. John like any good teacher tests his students. So far we have been given a test about the nature of Christ, and the reality of sin. In this epistle we are given a doctrinal test, and a moral test to determine if we are really in relationship with God, and fellowship with God. The test question is- How do you know you are in fellowship with God? Another way to pose the question; What evidence is there that you are in fellowship with God? The answers are simple and evident; 1. The first evidence of fellowship with God is obedience to His word. 2. The second evidence of fellowship with God is submission to His will. 3. The third evidence of fellowship with God is love for the brethren. Bible Jeopardy The Answer is We Keep His Commandments (v.3) 1

2 "Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments." (1 John 2:3, NKJV) How do you know you are in fellowship with God? Let s think about the question. Some people never ask this question. What do you mean fellowship with God? I talk to God all the time! Do you know God? Are you interested in knowing the purpose of your life, the meaning of your life, the significance of your life? Have you experienced real love, real joy, real life, real forgiveness of sin? Do you have assurance of salvation? If God really exists, and if you can know Him, and you don t know Him, you are missing out on life itself. You also face the certainty of experiencing His judgment. We must know God. J. Budziszewski talks about things we cannot not know. One of the things we cannot not know is that there is a God. The atheist would take exception to my statement. I would concede part of the atheist s argument that man can never know if God really exists by his own ability to reason, or energy or effort. I would concede the atheist s argument that the efforts of men to penetrate and observe and evaluate the so called spiritual world is fraught with danger, misrepresentations, fraud, and that so called spiritual beings who offer information or knowledge are suspect. Human beings live in a physical world. God is a Spirit. If we can know God, God must come to us, God must bridge the gap, God must reveal Himself, in an unmistakable way that only God could do. That is the claim of Christianity. God became a man and revealed Himself to us. God sent His Son Jesus Christ into the world, the living Word. Christ came into the world to declare the truth about God. No man has ever gone to heaven and returned to the earth with an accurate message about God. No one except Jesus Christ. "No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven." (John 3:13, NKJV) John the apostle gives us a series of tests or proofs or demonstrations to satisfy the skeptic and the doubter and bring comfort to the believer. If we are to know God, we must know Jesus Christ His Son whom He sent. God has revealed Himself through Jesus Christ and through Christ alone. The test is stark and uncompromising; we know God if we keep his commandments. Knowing God is 2

3 evidenced by our hearfelt desire to obey him (Italics in the original; The NIV Application Commentary; Gary M Burge; p.97). Burge points out that John s statement is calculated, he stresses the issue of obedience towards those who boast in knowing God. The Greek word for knowing is gnosis and almost certainly describes a religious disposition. The Gnostics were famous for desiring knowledge that would lead to enlightenment or mystical revelation (see Burge p.97). We are left with the contrast again, the pathway to salvation for many is the freedom from ignorance, but John reminds us again, the pathway to salvation is freedom from sin. If the pathway to God comes from mystical experiences or esoteric knowledge then mundane matters like morality and earthly obedience can be easily dismissed. The Gnostics were not interested in sin, insensitive to sin, and therefore insensitive towards their need to be forgiven. When John says, we know that we have come to know Him ; he is not describing a moment of enlightenment, the verb is a perfect tense verb; which describes a past experience with ongoing consequences. Knowledge for John is rooted in the real experience of having met the living Lord Jesus Christ. For the Christian obedience is like an automatic reflex. If a person claims to know God and have God in their life and rarely if ever submit their activities of mind and life to the Lord, they have every reason to doubt their salvation or at least their fellowship with God. What are God s commandments? Are we to think that this refers to the Old Testament Law and the Ten Commandments? I think John tells us what he has in mind; "And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment." (1 John 3:23, NKJV) If you do not believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, you cannot really know God. We begin to believe God s commandments when we believe in Jesus. In order to know God we must love one another. Love covers all the commandments of God. "Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law." (Romans 13:8-10, NKJV) Do you want to know God? You may speculate, contemplate, meditate, enter into heated debate, but unless God reveals Himself, you are simply left with the fruit of your imagination. 3

4 I tried to know God through mysticism and spiritualism, and altered states of consciousness. The Question is Who is the Professing Man? (v.4) "He who says, I know Him, and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." (1 John 2:4, NKJV) If a person really knows God, then they are willing to hear from God. They not only speak to God but listen to God. If they hear what God is saying and do the exact opposite of what God is saying they either (a) are not listening to God or (b) listening and in rebellion refuse to do what God has asked. John has no sympathy for such hypocrisy and duplicity. He calls them liars. Does that sound harsh? We have already learned that the denial of sin is the evidence that truth is not in that person. We now learn that the absence of obedience also means that truth is absent. We have to remember what John means by truth. To John truth describes Jesus (John 14:6); truth describes the Holy Spirit (14:17); truth describes the word of God (John 17:17). Therefore, John is here not simply saying that someone who fails to obey has missed the point; instead such people are seriously disconnected from God (Barge; p.98). What has God said about Himself? Jesus asks us to believe in Him. Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me (John 14:1). In John chapter 8 Jesus says Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins (v.24). In John chapter 8 Jesus told the religious leaders Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death (v.51, v.52b). There were those who did not understand what Jesus was saying. (v.43) Why do you not understand my speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me (vv.44-47). Jesus told the religious leaders the truth. Now John tells Christians the truth. The Question is Who is the Obedient Man? (v.5) 4

5 "But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him." (1 John 2:5, NKJV) The profile of the Christian is obedience to the word of God. John links obedience and spiritual maturity (vv.6-8); obedience and the life of Jesus (vv.6-8) and obedience and love (vv.9-12). The person who knows God s Word and keeps God s Word knows and loves God. Do you see the relationship between obedience and knowing and loving God? Look carefully at the expression keeps His Word. The verb tereo means primarily to observe or observance. But in this context it seems to mean much more. There is a quality of longevity, it implies duration, perseverance, to observe diligently, to guard carefully, to suddenly realize a truth and protect it (see Barge, who quotes Raymond Brown s The Epistles of John; p.98). Keeping God s Word must mean more than simply obeying the rules, but a zealous desire to cling to God s will and God s word and God s heart. truly the love of God that is... our love for God reaches perfection or becomes mature. I suspect John is reminding us of how our response declares love and loyalty to God. The word perfection probably refers to the maturation of the steadfast believer. The love of God probably refers not so much His love for us, but rather our love for Him. We live in a world where love is largely viewed as attraction, which when the feeling passes, may be directed elsewhere. We rarely think of obedience and love as choices, work, something that may cost me my freedom. We want to love the Lord but we are afraid that loving Him will limit our freedom. How does anyone know anyone? You draw near to them. You study them, you learn from them. You begin to understand their will, their desires, their wants, their likes, their dislikes. You ask them about their thoughts and you observe their behavior. Few things bring greater heartbreak than when a parent hears a child scream, You don t know me. You have no idea who I am. For the parent who loves their child, the right response is; Wrong. I do know you. You don t know me. If you knew me, you would know that I love you; you would know that I have spent my life teaching you, instructing you, guiding you, modeling right and wrong. I taught you right from wrong. When you do what is wrong you pretend like we never talked, you don t really know me. 5

6 We give example to our children in an imperfect and inconsistent fashion. Jesus gives us a perfect example. The Question is Who is the Responsible Man? (v.6) "He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked." (1 John 2:6, NKJV) There is a practical obedience and a principled obedience, but now John talks about the performance or non performance of that which the believer is held responsible. We might think of this as the obligation of obedience. Paul wrote that we should follow him as he followed Christ. John here speaks of the example of Jesus. Jesus gives us an example of sacrifice and,love. Chuck Smith used to remind us that Jesus is far more than an example. Jesus is our power to walk. Jesus is first redeemer before He is our example (see 1John Notes: An Outline For Expository Preaching; p.15). "For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth ; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously;" (1 Peter 2:21-23, NKJV) The word walk is peripatein. The verb construction is a continuous action it means we keep on walking. If a person says he abides in Christ he must be a responsible person. The word ought means debt, obligation, constraint. The person who professes Jesus Christ, who claims they know God, are obligated to walk as Jesus walked. How did Jesus walk? Believing and trusting God; Worshipping and praying to God; Fellowship and communing with God; Giving and sacrificing for God; Seeking and following after God, Teaching and telling others about God Loving and caring for others just as God said to do; 6

7 Obeying and observing all of God s commandments. John s view of church is very different from what we see today. Those who fail the tests are liars, the truth is not in them, they live in darkness, they are blinded. In John s day the church was still an underground movement, that had to stand together or die. Perhaps it was the jeopardy of his situation that gave his ecclesiology such urgency (Barge; p ). We sometimes are tempted to neglect obedience and affirm grace. John MacArthur in his book The Gospel According to Jesus. What Does Jesus Mean When He Says, Follow Me (p.16) The gospel in vogue today holds forth a false hope to sinners. It promises them they can have eternal life yet continue to live in rebellion against God. Indeed, it encourages people to claim Jesus as Savior yet defer until later the commitment to obey Him as Lord. It promises salvation from hell but not necessarily freedom from iniquity. It offers false security to people who revel in the sins of the flesh and spurn the way of holiness. By separating faith from faithfulness, it leaves the impression that intellectual assent is as valid as wholehearted obedience to the truth. Thus the good news of Christ has given way to the bad news of an insidious easy-believism that makes no moral demands on the lives of sinners. It is not the same message Jesus proclaimed. Conclusion It is an obvious error for all to see in those ministers of the Church who make such a wide gulf between their preaching and their living. They will study hard, to preach exactly and yet study little or not at all to live exactly. All the week long is little enough time to study how to speak for two hours; and yet one hour seems too much time to study how to live all week. They are loath to misplace a word in their sermons; yet they think nothing of misplacing affections, words, and actions in the course of their lives. Oh, how curiously I have heard some men preach, and how carelessly have I seen them live! -- Richard Baxter, Leadership, Vol. 7, no. 2. 7