Victory

Testament reading this evening comes from the book of 1 John, chapter 5, beginning at

the first verse.

You can find that in your pew Bibles on page 1023, 1 John 5, starting at the first verse.

Let's give our attention to the reading of God's Word.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves

the Father, loves whoever, has been born of Him.

By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are

not burdensome.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has

overcome the world, our faith.

Who is it that overcomes?

Who overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Here ends the reading of God's Word.

Please pray with me.

Father, we thank You for Your Word.

Write it on our hearts.

Lord, I am a poor and sinful man, and I pray that You would correct my words, that I would

only speak Your words after You.

Holy Spirit, I pray that You would cause us to grow closer to You and to understand

Your love and experience Your love more fully as the result of this sermon.

All this we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, we all reach that stage of life where we realize that things are changing.

And I think I've been grappling with that for the last couple of months.

So, I used to work for a ministry called Harvest USA, which actually was started in part by

10th Presbyterian Church about 30 some odd years ago.

And a co-worker from Harvest USA came to visit me here at the church back in May.

And we sat in my office, and she asked if she could pray for me.

And she started out, Lord, as Tim and I enter this season as senior saints, this final season

of our ministry on earth.

And I said, whoa.

I'm not quite ready for that.

And then last night, my wife Susan and I were having a time of fellowship with our neighbors.

And we have two neighbors.

Well, we have many neighbors.

We have a family across the street that have five kids.

And four of their five kids were there last night.

And their 16-year-old son was talking about some work that he was doing at a retirement home.

And he talked about old people.

And he qualified old people by saying, you know, around 60.

And I had to correct him and say, Josiah, 60 isn't old.

But all that to say, I've begun to become a little more aware of my age

and the pitfalls of growing older.

One of the things that I think I realized, too, is that the way in which I grew up

and the things that I learned have changed a lot during my lifetime.

So, for example, when I went to school, 45 or so years ago,

I went to school.

50 years ago, back with the Brontosauruses and the Tyrannosauruses, Rek'sai,

we learned how to write letters.

And we didn't write letters on a computer.

We didn't type out letters on an iPhone.

We wrote letters on lined paper, this lined paper that had chunks of wood

and it's so big that you got splinters as your hand went across the page.

And the goal was for you to learn how to write letters.

And the goal was for you to learn how to write a personal letter to someone else.

Because there was a time in human history when personal letters were the primary way

that people communicated with one another other than face-to-face communication.

So, if you're a certain age, you might remember what the elements of a personal letter are.

There's the date.

There's the recipient's name and address at the top.

In which corner?

The right corner.

Oh, I'm sorry, now I forget.

Because it's been so long.

There's a salutation.

There's the body of the letter.

There's the closing.

And there's your signature.

And in the days before low-cost instant telecommunication via cell phones and video calls and email and social media and texting,

writing these long-form letters was an art form.

It was a way that people could communicate.

It was a way that people could wax eloquent.

It was a way that people could really share what was on their hearts.

Well, most of us don't do that anymore.

A CBS News survey of a couple of years ago revealed that 52% of American adults said that they had not sent or received a personal letter in the last five years.

17% of them had never sent or received a personal letter.

Be that as it may,

the text we examine this evening in 1 John is a letter.

And it is a letter that did not arrive in the recipient's hands in the form that we see it in our English Bibles today.

When John wrote this first of his letters,

he wrote it long-form.

He wrote it in something called scripta continua,

or luxio continua, rather,

which is just a series of continuous characters.

There were no word breaks.

There were paragraph breaks,

but no word breaks.

And there were no chapter and verse designations.

It just started with what we see as chapter 1, verse 1.

It went all the way through the end of chapter 5.

And it was meant to be read and listened to in one foul swoop.

The way that we digest our letters today,

this letter, I should say, today, is somewhat different.

As you know, we've been working through 1 John since spring.

And I think we have two more sermons left after tonight.

But as we break it up into these little chunks,

we lose some of that fluidity.

We lose some of the thrust and the meaning and the form

of what John intended,

his original hearers to experience

as they listened to this letter read beginning to end.

An American New Testament theologian

from the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

someone older than me, Ernest DeWitt Burton,

suggested that John's thought in the letter

kind of moves in circles,

kind of like a coil-shaped spring,

where John repeats certain ideas gradually

and uses that repetition

to advance his narrative,

to advance his thought.

Essentially, John says the same thing

in slightly different ways

in order to emphasize his core point.

And then he connects that point to another point,

all working toward his denouement,

his finale,

at which point the relationships

among all these concepts are revealed.

And that's where we find ourselves tonight

as we begin chapter 4.

Chapter 5.

Chapter 5 is the beginning of John's denouement,

where he weaves together the main points

of his letter so far,

and his hearers hear the rich relationships

among the various topics that he's revealed.

John's final act of this letter,

the thought he wants everyone to leave

with its application,

is something that I hope we're going to begin

to uncover this evening.

And we've seen certain things

that John has wanted us to see and apply so far.

You might recall them from previous sermons.

Love God and love your believing brothers and sisters.

Confess your sin and trust in the atoning work of Christ.

Be alert for false teachers who distort the gospel

and try to lead you astray.

Rest in God's love through Jesus Christ.

But the ultimate message in 1 John is this.

Through the person and work of Jesus Christ,

we who trust in him have overcome the world.

We've overcome the world.

And that grace to overcome the world is rooted in love.

Another one of John's major themes in this letter.

God's love for us through Jesus Christ

and our love for one another in the church.

And so we'll look at tonight's passage using two points.

The burden of love.

And the victory of love.

First, the burden of love.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that 1 John is a long-form letter

was designed to be read aloud to its audience

from salutation to conclusion.

And because we only look at brief parts of the passage each week,

it's easy to miss the fact that John is building to a climax

as he crafts the letter with his hearers in mind.

In chapter 5, verse 1, for example,

when John's original audiences heard that everyone who believes

that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,

and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him,

they would be sensitive to the repetitious nature of these ideas.

Those core concepts have been repeated throughout the letter so far.

And others have been as well.

Jesus is the Christ, the one who promised to save and deliver his people.

Those who believe that Jesus is the Christ have themselves been adopted

into the family of God as sons and daughters.

And it's a natural outcome of being loved by God

to in turn love all the rest of our brothers and sisters in Christ

by reflecting that same selfless love into their lives.

So in hearing these three core concepts drawn together,

John's hearers would have been prompted to anticipate

the climax of his letter.

In verse 2, John reiterates the connection between loving God

and keeping God's commands and loving one another.

John tells us, are you certain you love one another?

Here's the proof.

You actively love God and obey his commands.

And in verse 3, John reminds us that the clear evidence of loving God

is that we keep his commands.

But then he goes on to say in the second half of verse 3,

and his commands are not burdensome.

His commands are not burdensome.

Now why would John go ahead and say that God's commandments are not burdensome?

Well, the only logical reason is that he would need to convince his audience

contrary to what they assume about those commands in the first place.

They must have assumed that God's commands were burdensome,

that God's commands to love God and keep all of his commands

and to love one another would be too much for them to handle.

Verse 1 marks the tenth and final time in this letter

that those mutually inclusive commands are mentioned.

Love God, love one another.

It probably would have taken the reader 25 or so minutes

to read 1 John aloud from start to finish.

And hearing the commands to love God and to love one another

ten times in that tight timeframe might have seemed repetitive.

And hearing me talk about them now may seem repetitive to you this evening.

Why?

Because perhaps you and I realize how short we fall

in faithfully carrying out these commands ourselves.

And maybe it irks us to be reminded so frequently

that this is what the Lord requires of us.

But repetition in the oral tradition,

such as in the oral dissemination of John's letter 15 centuries

before it was readily available in print, rather,

to Christians in their own languages,

repetition in the oral tradition is meant to emphasize the main idea,

to draw it out, to give it prominence

among all the other ideas surrounding it.

We do it today.

Why do we sing hymns with choruses and refrains?

Because we want to hear the same central idea in our ears

over and over and over again.

Why do we read parts of the service aloud as a congregation every week?

Elements like the Apostles' Creed or singing the Gloria Patria

or reciting together the Lord's Prayer?

Because we want the core of that gospel or doctrinal truth

over and over and over again in our ears.

Why do we memorize Scripture?

So we can repeat it to ourselves over and over again.

Repetition is one of the ways the Lord created our minds

and our hearts to be shaped and formed by truth.

But our hearts and minds are formed by whatever they're exposed to,

whether truth,

or a lie.

And so we come to the burdensome part of keeping God's good commands

to love Him and to love one another.

These commands seem burdensome to us

because we've been conditioned by lies,

by sin,

to want the opposite of these commandments.

Instead of loving God,

we want autonomy from Him.

We see Him as a threat to our independence.

We see Him as the sociopathic King George character

in the Broadway musical Hamilton,

singing a love song to the rebellious colonists,

promising to kill them if necessary with His love.

We see God as an existential threat to our authority

and to our self-priority.

I will ascend to the throne of my own life, we say.

The Apostle Paul tells us that

this is our most fundamental symptom of sin

that controls us apart from Christ.

It is the epitaph on the tombstone of our spiritual deadness

apart from the resurrection power of Christ Jesus.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 14 and 15,

for the love of Christ controls us

because we have concluded this,

that one has died for all, meaning Christ,

therefore all have died.

And He died for all that those who live

might no longer live for themselves,

but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.

In other words, Paul says that our core sin

is an all-consuming love of self.

You and I want things our way,

and when we can't have it that way,

we sin to try to get it anyway.

Paul says we're all narcissists.

And that's why God's commands seem burdensome to us,

because the burden of being invited to love God

and to love one another is a direct assault

on our pathological self-importance.

The reformer John Calvin wrote this in his Institutes.

He said,

The godly heart feels in itself a division

because it's partly imbued with sweetness

from its recognition of the divine goodness,

partly grieves in bitterness

from the awareness of its calamity,

meaning God's judgment.

It partly rests upon the promises of the gospel,

but it partly trembles at the evidence

of the soul's iniquity.

It partly rejoices in the expectation of life,

but it partly shudders at the thought of death.

140 years later, the Puritan pastor John Owen,

in a sermon, exhorted his hearers

to be willing to die daily.

How, he asks rhetorically.

By exercising faith constantly in the sovereign grace,

the good pleasure, the power and faithfulness of God,

the soul is now taking its leave

of all that it knows by its senses,

all its relationships,

everything with which it has been acquainted up until now.

From now on, it will be absolutely eternally

unconcerned with them.

It's entering into an invisible world

of which it knows nothing,

except what it has by faith.

Both Calvin and Owen write about a deep division

in the heart of the one who believes in Christ,

Calvin talks about this great dichotomy of desire,

on the one hand, to embrace relationship with the Lord,

and on the other, to run and hide

out of fear of God's judgment,

shuddering, as he says, at the thought of death.

Owen speaks of the only way forward for the Christian

being to embrace the reality of death

to sinful desire daily,

and to cling to faith in God's love

through the work of Jesus.

The prospect of death is not a happy one,

and yet if we shudder in fear and never choose in faith

to put to death the sin that still resides in us daily,

we'll never experience the joy of new life.

And that's the burden of love,

the burden of God's love, anyway.

The only way to truly experience it is to embrace

what we all instinctively resist in our flesh,

the death.

And that's the burden of our dream of autonomy.

Without death, there's no life.

That takes us on to the second point,

the victory of love.

The Greek word hati, translated for at the beginning

of verse four, is an important word.

It's important because it establishes a causal connection

between John's statement and his word.

John says in verse three that God's commands

are not burdensome,

and the reason why they aren't burdensome.

And so John says that everyone who has been born of God

overcomes the world.

This is great news.

John has already established the fact earlier on

in the letter that Christians are born of God.

He says in chapter three, verse one,

see what kind of love the Father has given to us,

that we should be called children of God,

and so we are.

And if you have made a profession of faith in Christ Jesus,

if you know that he is the very Son of God,

if you know that he came to die a vicarious death for you

because you are a sinner and have no hope of having

any kind of positive relationship with God,

then you are a child of God.

As John says here in verse four, you are born of God.

If that's true for you, praise God.

That's great news.

But where's the freedom in the gospel reality for you?

Where's the victory?

Let me ask you.

Do you feel loved by God?

Do you feel victorious in your new life?

Do you have an intimate spiritual relationship

with your Father?

Do you experience joy?

I don't ask those questions accusingly.

I ask them because it's the typical experience

of the typical Christian that no,

they don't experience love or victory or intimacy

or joy with God on a consistent basis.

They don't experience it.

We don't experience it.

I don't experience it.

If you're a typical Christian, the seeming lack of a payoff

probably seems discouraging.

It might even seem disheartening.

Maybe you're tempted to think you're not really a Christian

in the first place or that God isn't real

or that there's no way that God could love someone like you.

I struggle with all those questions and those thoughts

sometimes myself.

What does John tell us in verse 4 that this is the victory

that has overcome the world, our faith?

My faith is lacking.

I doubt God's love.

I often feel far away from him.

I continue to struggle with temptation and with sin

and with unbelief.

I am one of the least joyful people I know.

And I do not love my brothers and sisters in Christ

consistently or well.

So where is the victory?

In 25 or so years of Christian counseling and pastoral ministry,

one of the things I've discovered about myself

is that the core sin of loving myself more than God

and more than my neighbors

is still deeply rooted in my heart.

It's fighting.

It's struggling to survive.

It's gasping for breath.

Although the work of Jesus on the cross has severed its aorta

and it is gradually losing strength,

it is losing it in a painfully slow fashion.

It's with me morning, noon, and night.

It tries to exert its influence over me

and it is certainly promising me things

that it knows that I want.

Jesus tells me to put it to death.

Take up your cross and follow me, he says.

But to be honest, part of me doesn't want to kill it.

I don't want to experience the pain of the cross,

the pain of death to which Jesus invites me daily.

And I'd be willing to wager pretty much anything

that you are pretty much like me.

You're divided.

You want to please the Lord,

but you also want to love yourself.

You want to love your brothers and sisters well,

but you want to make sure you're taken care of first.

So where is our hope?

Where is our victory?

The writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews 2, verses 14 and 15,

that Jesus, through his death,

destroyed the one who has power over death,

that is, the devil,

and has delivered all who, through fear of death,

were subject to lifelong slavery.

Let me read that again.

Jesus, through his death,

has destroyed the one who has power over death,

that is, the devil,

and has delivered all who, through fear of death,

were subject to lifelong slavery.

And that's our victory,

that Jesus broke the power of death over us.

You and I are afraid of what putting sin to death

in our lives will cost us.

You and I are afraid of being gravely disappointed by God.

You and I are afraid that loving others

will be unrewarding and will keep us

from getting what we want out of life.

And the faith of which John speaks as being our victory

is a faith in what is to come

because we choose to rest in what the Lord has done for us.

And it's not a passive faith.

It's very much active and it's growing.

One of the privileges we have

in loving one another in the body of Christ

is building up each other's faith.

Paul says in Ephesians 4.16

that we are meant to build one another up in faith,

in hope, and in love.

John ends this evening's passage by asking the question,

who is it that overcomes the world

except the one who believes

that Jesus is the Son of God?

That's a rhetorical question.

The answer has to be no one.

Only as we look at Jesus,

the one who submitted to the will of the Father,

the one who took on flesh and weakness

and became one of us,

the one who lived a life of perfect obedience to the law,

the one who suffered and died

in order to put death to death,

the one who rose again on the third day

in order to give us new life,

the one who is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters

and to share his inheritance,

with us all,

the one who gave us his spirit to transform us

and sanctify us

in order to fit us to him forever,

the one who laughs with us,

cries with us,

grieves with us,

laments with us,

hopes with us,

and encourages us in order to grow our faith,

the one who will one day return

to gather us to himself

and take away the tears from every eye.

Only as we look to Jesus

do we experience the victory

that John talks about

and rest in it.

Only as we look to Jesus

do we find the help

and the faith that we need

to keep God's commandments

and to live joyfully

as God's children.

My friends, I would be remiss

if I didn't say again

that when any

scripture writer talks about

what it means to grow in sanctification,

what it means to grow in repentance,

what it means to grow in Christlikeness,

and as John talks about here,

what it means to avail yourself

of this victory,

you and I can't do it on our own.

If you try to do it on your own,

you will fail.

And if you're a human being,

you have tried it on your own

and you have failed,

and you probably feel

like a failure as a Christian

because that's been your experience.

My friends, the Lord has saved us

into his body

that we would build one another up.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

who was a Lutheran pastor

and who wrote extensively

about discipleship

and about what it meant

to grapple with having

real relationship with God,

describes it this way.

He says,

the Lord has given us his word.

He's put it into the hands

and the mouths of men,

but he's given it to us

in order that we would share it

with one another,

that we would speak it

into one another's lives,

that the Spirit would use us

as his messengers

to proclaim the life-giving power

of the gospel to one another.

The New Testament writers

talk over and over and over again

about the need for us

to build one another up in faith,

to exhort one another

to the truth daily,

to remind one another who we are,

to hold up Scripture as a mirror

to one another

so that we would be able

to see ourselves in the midst of it

and see not only where we are,

where we fall short,

but where the Lord calls us higher

and gives us grace

to remain in his love.

We need to build one another up.

If we don't do that,

we are utterly failing as a church.

We can send 100,000 missionaries

into the world.

We can care for hundreds

of,

people dealing with homelessness

on a weekly basis.

But if we are not building one another up,

if we are not making kingdom disciples,

if we are not taking the steps

and taking the risks necessary

in order to be transparent

with one another

and to share our struggles

and our fears

and our experience of a lack of victory

with one another,

then we are never going

to experience that victory

in the first place

because we are never going

to receive the support

and encouragement

that the Lord intends

for us to receive

in order for it to become tangible.

And so brothers and sisters,

let's pray that the Lord

would make us that kind of church.

Let's pray that he would make us

those kinds of people

who would not only believe

the gospel ourselves,

but would be willing

to speak it

and live it out

in one another's lives.

Let's pray.

Our Lord and heavenly Father,

we thank you for your word

and we confess that it is sometimes

a hard word

because it sounds as though

you are offering us something

that it is impossible for us

to receive.

Lord, I pray not only

for my brothers and sisters,

I pray for myself

that we would all

experience the victory,

the strengthening of our faith

in Jesus Christ,

the strengthening of our desire

and resolve

to love you

and to keep your commands

and to love one another.

Lord, show us how

to spur one another on

at 10th.

Show us how to build

one another up in faith

in order that that victory

would become not only

more tangible,

but more powerful

and that we would, in fact,

overcome the world in Christ.

All this we ask in his name.

Amen.