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Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Certain

A Study of 1 John

This is my seventeenth and final look at the little book of 1 John. We badly need this book in a world where atheism and agnostic convictions are dominating popular philosophy; where the bankruptcy of liberal Christian theology has undercut much of the church; and where progressive evangelicalism is eroding many pulpits. The church has always had threats from within and from without. And the book of 1 John helps us keep our heads clear and our hearts strong.

My basic companion in this study has been the second edition of the excellent commentary by Colin Kruse. It’s part of the Pillar New Testament Commentary Series. One more time, I’d like to share the hypothesis that Dr. Kruse presents for the occasion of the writing of this letter.

The apostle John spent the latter part of his ministry overseeing the churches in and around the city of Ephesus. It was there that he wrote his Gospel—the Fourth Gospel, which we call the Gospel of John. Apparently there were a large number of cultural Christians in the congregations, and they reacted critically to John’s description of Jesus Christ as being totally human, totally divine—the God-Man who died and rose again to provide atonement for our sins.

We know from the early church historians that one of these critics was a man named Cerinthus who had some strange views about Christ and opposed the apostle John. We also have from Ignatius a description of a belief called Docetism [doe-SEE-tism] that taught that Christ’s body was not truly human but was a phantom or perhaps the projection of a celestial substance, and therefore his sufferings were not real but only appeared that way.

When these church attenders read John’s Gospel, they begin exiting the churches in droves. It created a crisis, especially for those who remained. And John wrote these epistles—1, 2, and 3 John—in response.

In 2 and 3 John, he asks the leaders of the churches to welcome the teachers that came from him and to reject the heretical teachers. But here in 1 John, he wrote to reassure those who remained in the church to not be rattled but to be reassured.

The key verses are 1 John 2:19 and 20: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going out showed that none of them belonged to us.  But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.”

This is why the overriding theme of 1 John is reassurance. John wants to strengthen us in our faith and keep us from being rattled by those who fall into error and false beliefs. He tells us that we are right; that we have eternal life; we are the ones who know the truth; we have overcome the evil one; we know Him who is from the beginning.

This little book is difficult to outline, but it’s clear that the first four verses of the book are a prologue, followed by an introduction that goes from chapter 1, verse 5 to chapter 2, verse 11. Then John gives us a poem or song of victory in chapter 2, verses 12-14. And beginning in verse 15 he enters the real body of the book, comparing those who are wrong with those of us who are right. 

That brings us now to the final paragraph, so let’s read it together—1 John 5:13-21. The phrase “we know” is repeated here over and over. I’ll try to enunciate that for you as I read.

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.

16 If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them. 19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. 20 We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

21 Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

John was telling his readers here—you and me—that we should not be rattled by anything, but we should stand by what we know is true. We can break this down into four categories.

1. We Know We Have Eternal Life

First, we know we have eternal life. Verse 13 says: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 

This is the purpose statement of the book of 1 John, and it is similar but different from the purpose statement of the Gospel of John. Every book of the Bible has a different purpose. John states his purposes at the end of his Gospel and at the end of his epistle.

Near the end of the Gospel, in John 20:31, John said, “(I have written these things) that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.”

Near the end of his epistle, here in 1 John 5:13, John said, “(I have written these things) to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life…

The Gospel had a saving purpose; the epistle had a reassuring purpose. We are saved by believing the facts in the Gospel; and we are reassured in our salvation by embracing the facts in the epistle. The first was written that we might have eternal life; the second that we may know that we have eternal life.

Some said, “The blood makes us safe; the book makes us sure.” That’s the kind of pattern we have in John’s writings.

Some years ago, a lady in our church said, “Well, I hope I’m saved and going to heaven, but I don’t think we can really know for sure until we die.”

Inspired partly by her comment I prepared a sermon in which I suggested that we could be certain we’ve been born again because we have a birth certificate.  When we are born, our names are recorded in the county of our birth and we are given a birth certificate.  Likewise when we are born again, our names are recorded in the heavenly records (which the book of Revelation calls the Lambs Book of Life), and the Word of God becomes our personal birth certificate.

Notice how clearly this is stated in 1 John 5: And this is the testimony (the facts, the record, the reality, the way it is):  that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life… I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. 

There’s an old song that says:  “Jesus loves me, this I know; / for the Bible tells me so.”  

Our assurance of salvation is not based on how we feel at any given moment. It’s based on the unchanging Word of God.

In his book, How to Begin the Christian Life, George Sweeting suggests that doubting our salvation is like a prisoner who has been pardoned by the Governor.  A guard brings him the document, and there it is, signed and sealed.  Suppose you ask the man, “Have you been pardoned?” he will say, “Yes.”

“Do you feel pardoned?” we ask.

“No, I don’t.  It’s all so sudden.”

“But if you don’t feel pardoned, how do you know you are pardoned?”

“Oh,” the man replies, “it tells me so right here.”

The Bible does not use vague or nonspecific language regarding our salvation.  It doesn’t use terms like maybe or might or hopes-to-be.  It says will and shall and is. So we know we have eternal life.

2. We Know God Responds to Our Prayers

Second, we know God responds to our prayers. The next verse says: This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 15 And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him.

Notice the conditional statement. This is something that John added to clarify what he had written in John 16:23. Back in his Gospel, John quoted Jesus as saying, “Very truly, I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in My name.”

Now John adds that God answers those prayers that are according to His will. That’s an incredible praise item, because we don’t want Him to answer prayers that violate His will for us. I might pray, “Lord, I need that promotion at work. Please open the door for me.” But the Lord might have a much better position for you six months out, and the current opportunity would spoil something much better. So we pray, adding, “Your will be done.”

Jesus taught us that in the Lord’s prayer: “Your will be done….”

In the Garden of Gethsemane, He Himself prayed, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”

James said, “You ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Prayer is the means by which the will of God is actualized in your life.

And as we pray, we should pray for those who are struggling spiritually. Verse 16 goes on to say:  If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. 

In other words, we sometimes look at a fellow Christian and we know they are backsliding. They have fallen back into old habits. They’re neglecting their quiet time; they’re skipping church; they’re falling back into some addiction; they’ve let themselves become cynical or bitter; they’re exhausted and losing their temper; they’re getting too physically involved with their girlfriend or boyfriend; or whatever it is.

Pray for that person and ask God to convict them and lead them back to the pathway of the victorious Christian life.

Now, we come to the most difficult verse in the book of 1 John. John goes on to say: I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. 

The only safe way to interpret this is within the context of the whole letter. John is undoubtedly talking about these deserters. They had rejected the person of Christ. They had rejected Him as the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. And that is the sin that leads to death—the rejection of Christ.

What John seems to be telling these Christians is this: “Right now during these critical times, don’t focus your prayers on those who have left and who have rejected the Gospel. Pray for your brothers and sisters who remain, that they will be strong and confident and steadfast. Pray that they will live the victorious Christian life.

This is very similar to what Jesus prayed in His High Priestly prayer in John 17: “Father… I have revealed You to those whom You gave me out of the world…. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are Yours.”

This doesn’t mean we should never pray for the lost. The apostle Paul said in Romans 10:1, “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.”  

There are times when God burdens our hearts to pray for an unsaved person or for the unsaved masses of some nation or region of the world. But in this present crisis, John told his faithful church members, focus your prayers on each other and keep each other strong.”

Verse 17 goes on to say: All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.

What is the sin that does not lead to death? It’s the sin that has been covered with the blood of Christ. What is the sin that does lead to eternal death? It’s the sin of willfully rejecting Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice for our sins.

So we know that we have eternal life, and we know God answers our prayers.

3. We Know We Are Shielded from the Evil One

Third, John says we know we are shielded from the evil one. Look at verses 18 and 19:

18 We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the One who was born of God [Jesus] keeps them safe, and the evil one cannot harm them. 19 We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Here John is repeating what he said in chapter 3 and adding to it. In 1 John 3:6, John said, “Whoever abides in Him does not sin.” When we are walking in full agreement with Christ, abiding in Him, we are being sanctified. We are growing in righteousness. We may not reach a state of sinless perfection in this life, but we are shielded from the penalty of sin and from the deadly attacks of Satan.

Verse 19 is perhaps the most dramatic verse in the entire Bible about Satan. We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

The whole world! The whole academic world! The whole geopolitical world! The whole entertainment world! The whole military-industrial world! The whole world of politics! The whole world of religion. The world of the media. Everyone on this planet except you and me! Everyone except the children of God. We are children of God and the whole world is under the control of the evil world. It is the shield of Jesus Christ and His blood over our lives that keeps us safe.

4. We know the Son of God Gives Us Understanding

We know we have eternal life. We know God answers our prayers. We know we are His children in a world that is under enemy control. And finally, we know that the Son of God gives us the understanding we need to know Him and to be true to Him. Look at verse 20:

  20  We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

The Gospel of John begins and ends with a declaration of the divinity of Jesus. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And John 20:28 identifies Jesus as our Lord and our God.

In the same way, the epistle of 1 John begins by saying, “We proclaim to You Him who is the Word of Life.” And it ends by saying that Jesus Christ is the true God and eternal life. The word He has as its closest antecedent is the name of Jesus. This is one of several places in the Bible that refers to Jesus using the word “God.” In the Greek, the word for God is Theos, and the word for Lord is Kurios. In the Greek New Testament, both terms were used as a divine title. Both terms referred to God.

Normally the New Testament writers used Theos for God the Father and Kurios for Christ. In this way, they distinguished the two members of the Trinity. But sometimes the New Testament writers broke this unofficial rule and referred to Jesus as Theos, making it unmistakable that He was and is and always will be God.

Conclusion

Now the book ends with a little postscript. The final verse says: Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

That seems like an odd way to end the book, but let me give you a couple of renditions that help us see it as a fitting conclusion.

The Living Bible says: “Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. Amen. Sincerely, John”

The Message says: “This Jesus is both True God and Real Life. Dear children, be on guard against all clever facsimiles.”

And with that, we have taught through every verse of 1 John and its overriding message: Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Right. 

The post Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Certain appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Zechariah Zone #3

Are Supernatural Beings Patrolling the Earth?

A Study of Zechariah 1:7-17

Background

This is the third episode in our studies into the book of the Old Testament prophet Zechariah. His book is next-to-the-last in the Old Testament. It comes right before Malachi, which comes right before the Gospel of Matthew. 

Let me summarize the background. After the Babylonian invasion and the fall of Judah and Jerusalem in 587 BC, the Jewish survivors were deported to Babylon. Their capital city and temple had been destroyed, and they had lost their nation. But some seventy years later, the emperor of the new Persian Empire encouraged a remnant of Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. All of this unfolds in the book of Ezra. 

About 50,000 Jews returned and they began reestablishing worship, repopulating their homes and rebuilding the temple. But the local Palestinians there opposed them; the military and political picture changed, and the rebuilding of the temple was stopped for nearly 20 years. Then a new king named Darius assumed the throne and the situation relaxed. Two prophets—Haggai and Zechariah—showed up to encourage the remnant to resume the rebuilding of the temple. Zechariah was apparently the younger of the two, and his book is a record of the visions he had and the sermons he preached.

The book of Zechariah has been called the “Apocalypse of the Old Testament.” His strange visions and specific prophecies tell us a great deal about the End Times and about things still coming on the earth. 

In the last two episodes I gave you a fuller explanation of the background and we looked at his introductory remarks in Zechariah 1:1-6. Now in this episode I want to move on to verse 7, which opens us to a series of visions unlike any others in the Bible. Not even the book of Revelation has such strange visions as we’re going to read in chapters 1 through 6.

This series of eight nocturnal visions came, one after another, during one single evening, which we can actually date—February 15, 519 B.C. I want to repeat that because we don’t have anything else like this in all the Bible. The young prophet Zechariah received a series of eight visions, one after another, during the night of February 15, 519 B.C. This was five months after the temple work had resumed. 

So with that background, let’s read the passage in Zechariah 1, beginning with verse 7.

Scripture

7 On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo.

8 During the night I had a vision, and there before me was a man mounted on a red horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in a ravine. Behind him were red, brown and white horses.

9 I asked, “What are these, my lord?”

The angel who was talking with me answered, “I will show you what they are.”

10 Then the man standing among the myrtle trees explained, “They are the ones the Lord has sent to go throughout the earth.”

11 And they reported to the angel of the Lord who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have gone throughout the earth and found the whole world at rest and in peace.”

12 Then the angel of the Lord said, “Lord Almighty, how long will you withhold mercy from Jerusalem and from the towns of Judah, which you have been angry with these seventy years?” 13 So the Lord spoke kind and comforting words to the angel who talked with me.

14 Then the angel who was speaking to me said, “Proclaim this word: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion, 15 and I am very angry with the nations that feel secure. I was only a little angry, but they went too far with the punishment.’

16 “Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there my house will be rebuilt. And the measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem,’ declares the Lord Almighty.’”

17 “Proclaim further: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘My towns will again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem.’”

1. Let’s Study This Passage

Let’s work our way through this glorious scene. Verse 7 says:

On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the  Lord  came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo.

This was five months after the resumption of the rebuilding effort on the temple and three months after Zechariah’s opening message in the first part of the chapter. This is one of the most intense series of visions in the Bible. As I said, Zechariah received a series of eight nocturnal visions that came one during the course of a single evening, and the first vision begins in verse 8.

During the night I had a vision, and there before me was a man mounted on a red horse. He was standing among the myrtle trees in a ravine. 

From what I can gather, these myrtle trees of ancient times were related to our crape myrtles, though they perhaps didn’t grow as tall as some of our modern ones. I have two pink crape myrtle trees in my yard and they’ve grown to be forty feet tall. They’re filled with beautiful pink flowers most of the summer. I also have some dwarf crape myrtles in my patio garden, including one that grows year round in a pot.

In the Bible, myrtle trees were popular during the Feast of Tabernacles when the Jewish people made outdoor booths to live in during the course of the festival. The Feast of Tabernacles was great fun, especially for children. Everyone moved outdoors and camped in little booths to remind them of the wilderness wanderings of their ancestors. There seemed to be an association between myrtle trees as God’s blessings and guidance on Israel.

So a valley full of myrtle trees would be a pleasant picture, one tinged with grace. There among the trees was a red horse with a man sitting on it on it. Most commentators picture this as a roan colored or reddish-brown horse. I’ve tried to draw this scene using stick figures and you’ll find my crude drawing on the blog that accompanies this podcast. When you find strange visions in the Bible, it sometimes helps to sketch them out on your notepad.

Behind him were red, brown and white horses.

These horses, too, presumably have riders. So follow the visualization. The prophet found himself in a valley filled with Myrtle Trees and there was some kind of military patrol there. In Bible times horses were almost exclusively a military machine. People rode mules or donkeys in civilian life, but horses were almost always associated with armies and military endeavors. So the riders on the horses represented a military squadron of some sort. The horses are of different colors, but there’s no indication that the different colors had significance. 

If you know the book of Revelation very well, you know that four horses and horsemen appear there too—the four horsemen of the apocalypse in Revelation 6. The apostle John perhaps got his imagery from Zechariah, but these are not the same horses and horsemen. This vision stands on its own. Zechariah saw a reconnaissance patrol gathered among myrtle trees in a moonlit valley.

Now let’s go on to verse 9:  I asked, “What are these, my lord?” The angel who was talking with me answered, “I will show you what they are.”

Trying to keep track of the angels in this vision can get a little complicated. But it seems to me that there was an angel standing beside Zechariah like a tour guide. On my sketch I call him by this designation here—the angel who was talking to me. Zechariah wanted to know about this angelic patrol and the angelic tour guide said, in essence, “You’re about to find out.”

10  Then the man standing among the myrtle trees explained, “They are the ones the  Lord  has sent to go throughout the earth.”

Now Zechariah sees another person in his vision—a man who is standing in front of the myrtle trees. He isn’t on a horse. He is standing as an authoritative figure. Apparently the man on the red horse who led the squadron reported to him. So he looked over to Zechariah and Zechariah’s angel and explained, “These are the ones the Lord—Yahweh—has sent to go throughout the earth.

The English Standard Version and the New Living Translation and several others say, “They are the ones the Lord has sent to patrol the earth.”

So this military contingent was not a Jewish patrol squad or a Persian squadron. This was a group of supernatural beings whom the Lord sent out to patrol the earth. This is an angelic patrol. And the implications of this are very great. This passage implies to us that there is an angelic grid around the world and that angelic forces are constantly patrolling the earth.

I’ve often wondered if that doesn’t explain some of the unidentified flying objects that our military pilots have spotted. We’ve all heard there is a secret division in the Pentagon studying these unexplained arial phenomenon. This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if some of the UFOs aren’t angelic reconnaissance squadrons that are constantly patrolling the earth. That’s nothing but hypothesis; just a curious thought of mine. But the fact that angels are patrolling the earth is biblical, and we see it here more clearly than anywhere else in the Bible. 

We do have other interesting cross references. In Job 1, the sons of God—the divine counsel—came to present themselves before the Lord and the adversary came with them. The Lord asked him where he had been, and he said, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth in it” (Job 1:6-7). The same Hebrew language appears here as in Zechariah 1.

In Matthew 26:53, Jesus said He could have called twelve legions of angels to deliver him from the Romans.

And Hebrews 1:14 (ESV) says about angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.”

In Daniel 10, Daniel prayed about something for three weeks, then an angel appeared to him and told him God has issued an answer to his prayer on the first day, but there was some kind of spiritual conflict in the heavenly places that delayed the answer. Listen to this intriguing passage in Daniel 10:12-14 (NLT): The angel said to Daniel: “Don’t be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day you began to pray for understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your request has been heard in heaven. But for twenty-one days the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia blocked my way. Then Michael, one of the archangels, came to help me, and I left him there with the spirit prince of the kingdom of Persia. Now I am here….”

And don’t forget that God is called the Lord of Hosts, that is, the God of the Armies of Heaven.

Ephesians 6 talks about “evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and…evil spirits in the heavenly places” (verse 12 NLT).

Clearly there is a lot going on all around us in the unseen atmosphere of earth, with both good and evil angelic forces patrolling the world and apparently sometimes engaging in combat.

I’m certain this is just as true today as it was in the days of Zechariah. There are unseen angelic patrols going throughout the earth today, in and out of the rooms of the White House, monitoring what’s happening in the Kremlin, watching the events in Ukraine and Israel and points beyond. They have no trouble sneaking into North Korean airspace or onto China military bases. An unseen realm exists that is parallel to the visible realm.

Who was this commanding angel standing among the Myrtle Trees to whom the squadron was reporting? In the next verse He is called the Angel of the Lord.

10 Then the man standing among the myrtle trees explained, “They are the ones the Lord has sent to go throughout the earth.”

11 And they reported to the angel of the Lord who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have gone throughout the earth and found the whole world at rest and in peace.”

This I take to be the preincarnate Son of God. We frequently seen Him in the Old Testament as the Angel or the Messenger of the Lord. The word “angel” means “messenger.” In the Old Testament, the Messenger of the Lord sometimes speaks for God and He sometimes speaks as God Himself. Theologians call this a Christophany. It is an appearance of God the Son prior to His birth in Bethlehem. Jesus Christ is, was, and always will be God Himself—the Second Person of the Trinity. He is the Person within the Trinity who represents the invisible God in visible form.

John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is in the closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known.”

Dr. H. C.  Leupold, in his commentary on Zechariah, wrote, “The Angel of the Lord had not been appearing to men for a long time. In the days of the patriarchs, in the Exodus, and the days of the wilderness wanderings, in the time of the judges, even until David’s time and Hezekiah’s, He had gloriously manifested His presence. Now after 200 years He appears again.”

Dr. Leupold calls Him, “The Second Person of the Trinity appearing in angelic form.”

In essence, then, this angelic patrol has circled the earth and are reported to the Angel of the Lord what they have found. Verse 11 says:

And they reported to the angel of the  Lord  who was standing among the myrtle trees, “We have gone throughout the earth and found the whole world at rest and in peace.”

You would think this would be a good thing, wouldn’t you? But it left Israel in a bad place. Israel was still under the thumb of the Persian Empire, and most of the Jews were still scattered around in Babylon and elsewhere. The nation of Israel was still dispersed among the nations, and the small remnant of Jews who had returned to Jerusalem were being harassed by the local Palestinians who lived there. The existing world order had the Jews in a very bad state. So the Angel of the Lord—God the Son—is going to ask God the Father about this. Look at verse 12:

12  Then the angel of the  Lord  said, “ Lord  Almighty, how long will you withhold mercy from Jerusalem and from the towns of Judah, which you have been angry with these seventy years?”

  13  So the  Lord  spoke kind and comforting words to the angel who talked with me.

God the Father has some encouraging things to say. And you and I find the same is true. When we come to the Lord with our distresses He speaks kind and comforting words to us. I’ll say more about that a bit later.

14  Then the angel who was speaking to me said, “Proclaim this word: 

The angel who was standing beside Zechariah heard what the angel of the Lord said and he turned to Zechariah and told him, “This is the message you’re to pass on to the remnant as they continue building the Second Temple.

This is what the  Lord  Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion,  15  and I am very angry with the nations that feel secure. I was only a little angry, but they went too far with the punishment.’

Let me interpret that for you. The Lord was saying, “The nations of Israel and Judah descended into such wickedness that I let surrounding empires discipline them. But Babylon went too far. I am committed to the survival and flourishing of the nation of Israel. It’s my plan for world history. The nation of Israel is going to play a pivotal role in the first and second comings of the Savior into the world.”

16  “Therefore this is what the  Lord  says: ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there my house will be rebuilt. And the measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem,’ declares the  Lord  Almighty.”

In other words, I am promising you that you will be successful in what you are doing. My temple will be finished and my city of Jerusalem will be established. The temple will be built, and surveyors will enlarge the city limits. Verse 17 adds:

17  “Proclaim further: This is what the  Lord  Almighty says: ‘My towns will again overflow with prosperity, and the  Lord  will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem.’”

The Jewish remnant had been working themselves to exhaustion trying to rebuild the temple and repopulate the land, even though they no longer controlled the land. It was occupied by the Persians and surrounded by hostile actors. But their presence was crucial for the continuity of the nation of Israel, and the work they were doing would lead to a glorious victory for Israel in which the nation would be restored, the towns would overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will dwell once again in Jerusalem.

These promises will be fully realized in the future, after the Tribulation and the Battle of Armageddon, when the Lord Jesus establish His Millennial Kingdom. I’ll talk more about that in the next episode. The continuity of the Jewish story was vital, and these workers would be blessed for their efforts; and their efforts would be blessed with ultimate success. Though they didn’t realize it fully, their temple was being built for the Messiah who was, even now in this vision, standing before them in angelic form.

Conclusion

There are three takeaways from this vision that are very relevant to us in our own time.

First, God Has a Pivotal Role for the Nation of Israel as it relates to the history of the world and to the future. The parallels between ancient times and our own are stunning. Israel is back in their land, harassed by their neighbors, viewed negatively by much of the world, fighting for her survival, and many there want to build the temple—which we call the Third Temple, the one that will be present during the tribulation. The times of Zechariah reflect our own. We’ll talk more about this as the series unfolds.

Second, God Also Has Angelic Squadrons Patrolling the Earth. When this remnant of workers realized they had an angelic patrol on their side, it must have rallied their spirits like never before. As Charles Spurgeon said, “I do not know how to explain it; I cannot tell how it is; but I believe angels have a great deal to do with the business of this world.”

And not just angels! Angels are one kind of supernatural being; they are messengers. But there seems to be more species or kinds of supernatural beings. Psalm 82 (ESV) says, “God has taken His place in the divine council; in the midst of the Elohim (or supernatural beings) he holds judgment.” God seems to have created a supernatural group of divine or supernatural beings to rule over the world. In Psalm 82, the Lord was unhappy with the way they had handled themselves. 

In Genesis and Revelation we have a group of supernatural beings called Cherubim. In Isaiah 6 we see the Seraphim. In the Gospels we encounter a group of supernatural beings called demons. The apostle Paul talked about rulers, authorities, and powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

There is a supernatural grid around this planet and supernatural forces that travel around the world and throughout the universe. One day the invisible will become visible to us, but for now we need to remember that God has patrols of good and powerful angelic forces protecting us. This should be very comforting to us as believers. Psalm 91:11 says, “He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”

Third, God Has Kind and Comforting Words for Us. Verse 13 says that He spoke kind and comforting words to His people, and He still does. We need to feel His kindness and to receive His comfort in the kind of world we have. And whenever we open the Bible, we find His kind and comforting words.

Just last night I read an article by Chaplain Timothy Bohr, a major in the U. S. Army Reserve. In 2003, he was deployed to Iraq and assigned to the Blackhawk helicopter battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division. One day they got a call that a Chinook helicopter had been shot down, and Chaplain Bohr’s battalion was sent out as a first response team to secure the crash site and provide medical aid. They came back with wounded and traumatized soldiers.

Late in the day one of the medics pulled Chaplain Bohr aside. This medic had saved the lives of a dozen soldiers that day, but he was shaken. The two men went outside into the cool desert air and leaned against a Humvee ambulance.

“Chaplain, I saw some things today that I haven’t told anyone about. But I need to talk to someone. Would you be willing to listen.” The man began to describe the condition of the bodies he had worked on, the smell of the burning crash site, the suffering of the victims.”

The two men wept together, their arms around each other, and Chaplain Bohr spoke these words into the man’s life: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.”

Kind and comforting words to a man in great need. And then Major Bohr went to his own quarters and recalled the words of Psalm 139: “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast” (Psalm 139:7-10).

Kind and comforting words, just when we need them—that’s one of God’s greatest gifts to us. Let’s drink in His Word daily and always listen closely to what He wants to say to us every morning and every evening in the war zone of this earth.

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Zechariah Zone #2

Overtaken By the Word of God

A Study of Zechariah 1:1-6

Introduction

Last week we started a study of the strange Old Testament book of Zechariah. It’s easy to find because it’s the next-to-the-last book of the Old Testament. You have Zechariah, Malachi, and then Matthew. So you can find the Gospel of Matthew that opens the New Testament and go backward through Malachi and you’ll come to Zechariah.

The name Zechariah means “Yahweh Remembers” and it was a popular name in the Bible. Two dozen men have this name. The two best known are this prophet in the Old Testament and the father of John the Baptist in the New Testament.

This Old Testament prophet showed up in Jerusalem shortly after Haggai began preaching and the two of them worked side-by-side to encourage the Jewish remnant who had returned from Jerusalem to resume rebuilding the Second Temple. In summary: The nation of Judah became so vile and reprehensible that God allowed the Babylonians to conquer the nation, destroy the First Temple—the one Solomon had built—and to export the Jewish survivors to Babylon where they lived for 70 years.

Then Emperor Cyrus rose to power and allowed a remnant of the Jews to return and to try to reestablish a Jewish presence in Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple. The work started, but it ran into so much opposition from the local Palestinian residents of the day. When Cyrus died in battle, his son took over the Persian Empire and that added to the chaos and resistance. The Jews continued going to work building their own houses and repopulating the land, but the temple of God remained an unfinished shell of a building for eighteen years. Then King Darius rose to the throne and conditions changed. Haggai and Zechariah showed up and encouraged the people to resume building the Second Temple, and their sermons were so powerful that the Temple construction resumed and was completed with great joy and fanfare.

Now let me tell you three more interesting details about this.

First, we think Zechariah was a young man. There is a verse in chapter 2 that suggests that possibility, and we’ll look at it in a future episode. But it has traditionally been thought that Haggai was an older man and Zechariah was a young man, and they were working side by side.

Second, although Zechariah’s ministry was very successful, his life ended when he was murdered. He is the last Old Testament figure to suffer martyrdom. We don’t have any account of his death in the Bible, but the Lord Jesus spoke some blistering words to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23. He said, “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar” (verses 33-35). 

So the first Old Testament martyr was Abel in the book of Genesis, and the last was the prophet Zechariah, who was murdered on the grounds of the very temple he had encouraged the people to reconstruct.

Third, the book of Zechariah is very odd. The first half is full of strange apocalyptic visions and the last part is filled with sermons about the last days. And so the book of Zechariah has been called “The Revelation of the Old Testament.” 

Scripture

Zechariah was a prophet of encouragement, but he begins in a strange way, with the subject of the anger of God. If you went to your neighbors’ house to encourage them, would you start talking about the wrath of God? But that is often a logical starting point.

1 In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berekiah, the son of Iddo:

2 “The Lord was very angry with your ancestors. 3 Therefore tell the people: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the Lord Almighty. 4 Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the Lord. 5 Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?

1. The Anger of God

Zechariah begins his messages of encouragement with the subject of the anger and wrath of God. His first spoken words were: Yahweh was very angry with your ancestors.

That seems a very unusual starting place. If you want to encourage someone, do you sit down and read them passages in the Bible about God’s wrath and anger?

Well, maybe. Zechariah wanted them to understand why they were in their current predicament so they would better know how to get out of it. And this is an interesting place to discuss the whole subject of the anger and wrath of God. Understandably, critics and skeptics say, “Your God of the Bible is just like the gods of Greek and Roman mythology, always losing His temper and working out of annoyance and irritation and resentment and violence. How can He be a God of love and always be so angry?”

Those are not bad questions, but we do have very good answers.

The Bible doesn’t hesitate to speak of the wrath of God. I’ve already quoted from a blunt sermon by Jesus Christ who called His critics a bunch of snakes who were going to hell. 

Romans 1:18 says: The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.John 3:36 says: Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.Nahum 1:2 and 3 says: The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The Lord takes vengeance on his foes and vents His wrath against His enemies. The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm….Psalm 7:11 says: God is a righteous judge, a God who displays His wrath every day.

In his classic book, Knowing God, Dr. J. I. Packer devotes an entire chapter to this subject. He wrote: “The modern habit throughout the Christian church is to play this subject down. Those who still believe in the wrath of God (not all do) say little about it….”

He discusses this for a while, and then writes, “Clearly, the theme of God’s wrath is one about which the biblical writers feel no inhibitions whatever. Why, then, should we? Why, when the Bible is vocal about it, do we feel obliged to be silent?”

And then a bit later, Packer makes this critical point: “God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to moral evil.”

That’s a very important way of understanding this. When we are talking about the wrath of God, we are talking about a right and necessary divine response to moral evil. Packer asks, “Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in His world be morally perfect?”

In the entry on this subject in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, there’s a very helpful sentence: “In the biblical portrayal the wrath of God is not so much an emotion or an angry frame of mind as it is the settled opposition of His holiness to evil.”

Well, the level of evil had become very great in ancient Judah and Israel. Sexual immorality was the norm; idolatry was everywhere; the kings and the government were corrupt; the priests were corrupt; there were vile images in the holy temple. In many ways, it prefigures our nation today. And the beginning point of change is to recognize that God is going to adjudicate all this. He is going to judge evil. That’s what happened to the Jewish people, and so Zechariah begins: “The Lord was very angry with your ancestors.

My friend, Keith Getty, along with Stuart Townend, wrote a wonderful hymn entitled, “In Christ Alone.” 

Last summer the modern hymn “In Christ Alone” made headlines for its lyrical references to the wrath of God and atonement theology. A hymn committee with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) wanted to add the song to their new hymnal, Glory to God, released this fall. But in doing so, the committee requested permission from the song’s writers, Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, to print an altered version of the hymn’s lyrics, changing “Till on that cross as Jesus died/the wrath of God was satisfied” to “Till on that cross as Jesus died/the love of God was magnified.” The songwriters rejected the proposed change, and as a result the hymn committee voted to bar the hymn…. This was the second time a hymnal publisher attempted to change the same lyric. 

2. Return to Me

But after that one sentence, Zechariah told the people what to do. Look at verses 3 and 4:

  3  Therefore tell the people: This is what the  Lord  Almighty says: ‘Return to me,’ declares the  Lord  Almighty, ‘and I will return to you,’ says the  Lord  Almighty.  4  Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the earlier prophets proclaimed: This is what the  Lord  Almighty says: ‘Turn from your evil ways and your evil practices.’ But they would not listen or pay attention to me, declares the  Lord . 

God is not only a God of wrath and justice; He is also a God of love and mercy and forgiveness. He opens the door for us to be forgiven and to have a relationship with Him. 

In coming chapters, Zechariah is going to tell us that this will be through the agency of a man who will:

Come and live among the Jewish people (2:11).Become a servant who will cleanse people from their sins (3:8).He will remove the sin of the world in a single day (3:9).He will be Joshua or Jesus, who will serve as both King and Priest (6:9-11).He will be called the Branch, which has sprouted from the stump of Jesse and He will sit and rule on His throne (6:12-15).He will be the cornerstone (10:4).He will enter Jerusalem on a donkey (9:9).He will proclaim peace to the nations (9:10).He will be a shepherd who saves (9:16).But He will be struck and His sheep scattered (13:7).He will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (10:12).The money will be thrown down (10:13).The money will be paid to the potter (10:13).The Shepherd-King will be pierced (12:10).He will open a fountain for the cleansing of sin (13:1).In the future, His feet will descend to the Mount of Olives, just as the nations of the world are attacking Jerusalem in the Last Battle and save His people and establish His kingdom (14).

This is Jesus Christ in the book of Zechariah. Even His name is prefigured in the priest—Joshua—was also crowned as a king, uniting the priesthood and the monarchy. Joshua is the Old Testament form of Jesus. We’ll look at each of these passages in future episodes.

But for now, what would you say if I asked you this question? What person in the Bible or in all of human history was Jewish, who came to live among His own people, who was a servant who, on a single day, would provide cleansing for sin; who is named Joshua or Jesus; who is both priest and king; who is called the Branch and the Cornerstone, who entered Jerusalem on a donkey and proclaimed peace to the nations? Who is this person?

He was a good shepherd who was struck down, betrayed for 30 pieces of silver that were thrown onto the temple floor and used to buy a field from a potter? Who is this Shepherd King who was pierced, whose death opened a fountain for the cleansing of sin?

Who is this strange person who will return one day, His feet descending onto the Mount of Olives at the climactic moment of a violent battle in which the nations of the world are surrounding Jerusalem. Who will save His people, assume His throne, and rule over a Messianic kingdom unlike anything the world has ever imagined?

This Joshua, this Jew, this servant, this priest, this king, this branch, this cornerstone, this shepherd, this martyr, this man whose own veins provide a fountain filled with blood – this man of prediction and prophecy is the Lord Jesus Christ, whose birth was still roughly 500 years in the future.

But this is why the Lord can say to you and me: Return! Come to me! Return to Me and I will return to You. Do not be like the hardhearted and stubborn. I invite you to come.

3. Overtaken By the Word

There’s one other phrase I want you to notice, the one about being overtaken by the Word. Look at verses 5 and 6:  Where are your ancestors now? And the prophets, do they live forever? 6 But did not my words and my decrees, which I commanded my servants the prophets, overtake your ancestors?

The word overtake is worth underlining in your Bible. It means to catch up with someone. I believe Zechariah was harkening back to Deuteronomy 28:15, which says, “If you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all His commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you.”

Psalm 40:12 says, “For troubles without number surround me; my sins have overtaken me.”

Proverbs 10:24 says, “What the wicked dread will overtake them.”

You can’t outrun the consequences of your sin. If there’s an area of immorality in your life, it will sooner or later overtake you. If you continue to persist in some bad habit, one day it will catch up with you. The Bible says that our sins will find us out. And here Zechariah reminded his listeners of how the judgment of God overtook their ancestors. 

But there’s another way in which we can be overtaken by the Word of God. Deuteronomy 28:2—the same chapter that talks about the curses overtaking the disobedient—also says, “All these blessings will come and overtake you, because you obey the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 28:2 CSB).

Isaiah 35:10 says of the Redeemed: “Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”

Just as those without Jesus Christ will be overtaken by judgment, all those of us who do know Him will be overtaken will blessing, with gladness, with joy. We are not yet fully experiencing all that God has planned for us, but one day all His promises will be fulfilled and all His goodness will catch up with us.

Conclusion

The last sentence of the paragraph says, “Then they repented and said, ‘The Lord Almighty has done to us what our ways and practices deserve, just as he determined to do.’”

Zechariah reminded the people of the repentance option. To repent of something means that we say to the Lord, “I’ve been doing things my way; now I’m going to do them your way.”

That was where Zechariah started his sermons of encouragement. He encouraged people to remember what had befallen their ancestors. He reminded them of the wrath of God. He reminded them of how sin can overtake them. But he also reminded them of the repentance option—the wonderful opportunity to say, “Lord, I’ve been doing things my way; now I’m going to begin living for the one who…

Became a servant to cleanse me from sin, to be my King and Priest, to be my Shepherd; the one who entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey, who was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, who was pierced, who was struck down, and who opened a fountain for the cleansing of sin; the one who is coming again for me.

Let’s make up our minds to live so that all His blessings overtake us in due time.

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The Zechariah Zone #1

Where To Go When You Need Encouragement

A Study of the Book of Zechariah

Introduction: A certain man volunteered at a large and beautiful zoo. He showed up five days a week and his job was to walk around the park all day greeting visitors and answering questions. In that way he got a lot of exercise, a lot of sunshine and fresh air, and he was able to interact with people all day long. His shirt had a patch on it that said, “Zoo Crew” and he was full of smiles and encouragement. For the first few weeks, he wandered around following his nose. Everywhere he went, people stopped him with questions or comments, and he never failed to answer with a smile. But after a few weeks, he developed a regular pathway and he explained why. He said, “I start in the reptile house so I can get them over with—they’re creepy. Then I proceed to the lions and tigers and bears, because they are ill-tempered. By lunch I’m with the monkeys because they are foolish and funny. I walk past the zebras but they are skittish and stand-offish. But I always end my day by walking through the aviary because the singing of the birds cheers my heart and I end my day with their encouraging songs. 

Then he said, “It’s a lot like life, isn’t it. Some people are creepy. Some are ill-tempered. Some are foolish and funny. Some are skittish and stand-offish. But some of them leave you with a song.

We call that encouragement, and today I want to begin a series of studies into the strangest encouragement in the Bible. His name is Zechariah, and he’s what we call a minor prophet. He isn’t minor in his importance. The minor prophets simply have shorter books than the major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Isaiah, for example, has sixty-six chapters; Zechariah has fourteen. But they are filled with the strangest passages of encouragement in all the Bible.

Background

In order to understand the strange book of Zechariah, we need to know about him and his times and his ministry. If you don’t understand the background of Zechariah, it’s impossible to interpret his strange visions and sermons. So this is the story….

In the book of Deuteronomy, God made an agreement with Israel, the nation He chose to produce a Messiah and Savior for all the world. If the people honored and obeyed Him, He would fight their battles, meet their needs, and bless their land. But if they dishonored and disobeyed Him, He would remove His protections and provisions.

Over time, the nation became increasingly evil, and some of the Old Testament accounts of what they did are shocking to read. The people descended into wickedness, until finally, in 587 B.C., the vast Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar overwhelmed the nation of Israel, burned its capital, destroyed its temple, and deported its people into refugee camps in Babylon. And the country remained desolate for seventy years.

In the meantime, Babylon itself was defeated by the Persians, and the Persian Emperor Cyrus became the most powerful man on earth.

The Remnant Returns

Then, in fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah, God moved the heart of Cyrus to allow some of the Jews to return to Jerusalem and restore their city and rebuild their temple. This happened in 539 B.C. The story of this is told in the Old Testament book of Ezra. So as background for our study of the writings of Zechariah, let’s begin our study in Ezra 1:1:

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the  Lord  spoken by Jeremiah, the  Lord  moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:

2  “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

“‘The  Lord , the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah.

There is an amazing archaeological confirmation of this policy by Cyrus, and you can see it with your own eyes in the British Museum. It’s called the Cyrus Cylinder, and it’s a clay cylinder dating from the time of Cyrus on which it boasts of the king’s policy to repatriate displaced people and restore their temples and sanctuaries. The Babylonians had forced their defeated peoples to relocate to another area, and Cyrus reversed this policy and told people they could return to their homeland. The Cyrus Cylinder does not single out the Jews; it just states the policy for all defeated peoples. But it corresponds perfectly to what we read here in Ezra, even to the date when it was created—539 B.C.

In his specific proclamation to the Jews, Cyrus said:

  3  Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the  Lord , the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them.  4  And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.’”

Nothing was more important to the Jewish people than rebuilding their temple. I don’t think we can even realize what it meant to a Jewish person in those days. For seventy years, there had been no offerings for the forgiveness of sins and no visible presence of God for the nation. Now that was about to change.

5  Then the family heads of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and Levites—everyone whose heart God had moved—prepared to go up and build the house of the  Lord  in Jerusalem.  6  All their neighbors assisted them with articles of silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with valuable gifts, in addition to all the freewill offerings.

King Cyrus also provided financing and returned to the Jews many of the vessels that had been looted from their original temple—the Temple of Solomon.

This has been called the Second Exodus. In the first Exodus, God delivered His people from Egypt to the Promised Land; and now He was leading them from Babylonia to the Promised Land. The Lord always finishes what He starts. And by the way, that includes you and me. Philippians 1:6 says, “He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Now let’s continue with Ezra, chapter 2:

2  Now these are the people of the province who came up from the captivity of the exiles, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had taken captive to Babylon (they returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to their own town,  2  in company with Zerubbabel, Joshua)….

Zerubbabel was the political leader of the group, and he was named the Governor of Jerusalem. He was of the family of David so he had royal blood in his veins. Joshua was the high priest. This is not the Joshua who led the Israelites into the Promised Land the first time; but this is another Joshua, who helped lead the Israelites into the Promised Land a second time. His grandfather had been the High Priest of Israel when the Temple had been destroyed. Now the grandson was going to restore what his grandfather had lost.

Try to picture this exodus of about 50,000 people packing their belongings, saying goodbye to their friends, and starting on a migration back to their homeland. They had about eight thousand horses and mules and donkeys, and more than 400 stubborn camels. The trip was nearly 900 miles and took four months. But imagine their joy when they saw the remains of Jerusalem ahead of them!

The Temple Rebuilding Begins

Let’s continue in chapter 3:

3  When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, the people assembled together as one in Jerusalem.  2  Then Joshua son of Jozadak and his fellow priests and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his associates began to build the altar of the God of Israel to sacrifice burnt offerings on it, in accordance with what is written in the Law of Moses the man of God.

Up on the Temple Mount was the rubble of the destroyed Temple of Solomon. In front of the Temple had been an enormous altar on which the sacrificial lambs and other animals had been sacrificed. The first act of the remnant was to restore and rebuild this altar. They felt enormous guilt, and the only way to atone for the guilt and find peace with themselves and with God was the blood of the Lamb—which is also true for us today, our Lamb being the Lord Jesus.

If you ever look back at your life and beat yourself up because of past guilt or sin or failure or shame, you are miscalculating the power of the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ. We have an altar and we have a sacrifice and we have a total victory.

Now, verse 3 introduces the fact that there were other people who had populated Jerusalem and Judah, and so the arrival of the Jewish remnant was an obvious point of tension. It’s the same way today in Jerusalem. You have Jews and Arabs living in the same city, and it’s still a source of tension.

  3  Despite their fear of the peoples around them, they built the altar on its foundation and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the  Lord , both the morning and evening sacrifices

The passage goes on to say that the Jewish settlers started observing the Jewish calendar again with all its feasts and festivals, and then they proceeded with the next phase of their plan—the rebuilding of the temple. They purchased cedar logs from Lebanon, which were floated down the coast of the Mediterranean sea to the port of Joppa and brought overland to Jerusalem, drew up the plans, gathered the other materials, and look at verse 8:

8  In the second month of the second year after their arrival at the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, Joshua son of Jozadak and the rest of the people (the priests and the Levites and all who had returned from the captivity to Jerusalem) began the work. They appointed Levites twenty years old and older to supervise the building of the house of the  Lord .

Verse 10 says:

10  When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the  Lord , the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the  Lord , as prescribed by David king of Israel.  11  With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the  Lord :

“He is good; His love toward Israel endures forever.”

And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the  Lord , because the foundation of the house of the  Lord  was laid.  12  But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy.  13  No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people made so much noise. And the sound was heard far away.

I’ve always thought this is one of the most emotional and poignant scenes in the Old Testament. The older people who remembered the glorious Temple of Solomon wept because this new enterprise was so small and inferior to what they remembered; but they were also weeping because at least the Temple was being rebuilt. And the younger people who had no such memories were enraptured with their project and their vision for the future.

The Temple Work Ceases

But now the Jews run into real opposition. Look at chapter 4:

When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the  Lord , the God of Israel,  2  they came to Zerubbabel and to the heads of the families and said, “Let us help you build because, like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Esarhaddon king of Assyria, who brought us here.”

3  But Zerubbabel, Joshua and the rest of the heads of the families of Israel answered, “You have no part with us in building a temple to our God. We alone will build it for the  Lord , the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, commanded us.”

4  Then the peoples around them set out to discourage the people of Judah and make them afraid to go on building.

Someone said that of all the tools in the devil’s toolkit, none is as effective as discouragement. I wonder about your level of discouragement. The thing is, we can be discouraged about so many things that it’s hard to overcome it all. We can be overwhelmed with discouragement. Ninety-five percent of your life could be going well, but the one area that discourages you can affect one hundred percent of your morale. We get discouraged over our children; over our finances; over our jobs; over our health. Some people like me step on the bathroom scales every morning to check our weight, and we begin the day discouraged.

A very great part of spiritual maturity is developing an immunity against discouragement. The only way to do that is through the truths of Scripture and its message of the sovereign control of our God over every detail of our lives.

Deuteronomy 31:8 says, “The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”Joshua 1:9 says, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”1 Chronicles 28:20 says, “Be strong and courageous, and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you or forsake you until all the work for the service of the temple of the Lord is finished.”2 Chronicles 20:15 says, “This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.’”Ephesians 3:13 says, “I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged….”2 Corinthians 7:6 (NLT) says, “God…encourages those who are discouraged.”Psalm 42:11 (TLB) says, “Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be upset. Expect God to act! For I know that I shall again have plenty of reason to praise Him for all that He will do.”

You and I have to be diligent and vigilant against this crippling emotional disease called discouragement. If you are discouraged right now, find some of these verses and repeat them. Shout them aloud. Trust in the Lord and expect Him to work it all for good. And you can know that you will again have plenty of reason to praise Him for all He will do.

Well, the rest of Ezra, chapter 4 describes the political opposition by the local residents against the Jews. They resorted to threats, to bribery, to accusations, and to political and military pressure. And finally they forced the Jews to stop work on the Temple.

Ezra 4:24 says: Thus the work on the house of God in Jerusalem came to a standstill until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.

That ends chapter 4, and between chapters 4 and 5, there is a period of eighteen silent years. Eighteen years when the Jewish remnant went about their lives, building their houses, getting married, having children, establishing their jobs, and walking beneath the unfinished construction of the temple.

I’ve been in foreign nations many times and seen half-constructed buildings abandoned. Sometimes you see it in this country. Often it’s a concrete shell with weeds growing around it and rubbish collecting around it. It’s a depressing scene. Someone had a dream; they planned a building; they invested their money; but for whatever reason they were stopped in the middle of the project and the concrete or cinder blocks look bare and deserted.

That’s the way the temple looked for nearly 20 years. In defense of the remnant, King Cyrus had died on the battlefield and his much darker and more oppressive son, Cambyses (Kam-by’-sis), plundered the Holy Land and used Gaza as a staging area for his war with Egypt. His death paved the way for Darius to become emperor and that’s when the prophets Haggai and Zechariah began their ministry.

Ezra 4:24 says: Thus the work on the house of God in Jerusalem came to a standstill until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.

The Prophets Appear

But now, let’s go to Ezra 5.

5  Now Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the prophet, a descendant of Iddo, prophesied [preached] to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them.  2  Then Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Joshua son of Jozadak set to work to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.

Two prophets showed up. These two men felt the call of God to do something. They gathered the people and began to preach to them. And a revival broke out—a revival of the work for the rebuilding of the temple. And Zerubbabel and Joshua—the governor and the high priest—got stirred up again, and so did the people. And they marched up that hill, cleared away the debris, jump started the work, withstood their enemies, and built that temple. In the next chapter, it is completed and dedicated.

What’s amazing is that the book of Ezra does not tell us one word that was spoken by either prophet. What could they have said that so stirred up the people? Wouldn’t you like to have a transcript of their sermons!

Well, we do!

What they said is recorded for us in the books that bear their names—the book of Haggai and the book of Zechariah, right at the end of the Old Testament. 

For example, let’s turn over to Haggai, chapter 2: 

On the twenty-first day of the seventh month, the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 2 “Speak to Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, to Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of the people. Ask them, 3 ‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? 4 But now be strong, Zerubbabel,’ declares the Lord. ‘Be strong, Joshua son of Jozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,’ declares the Lord, ‘and work. For I am with you,’ declares the Lord Almighty. 5 ‘This is what I covenanted with you when you came out of Egypt. And my Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.’

I can’t tell you how often I’ve gone to that passage when I’ve been discouraged, when my work for the Lord seemed to me like nothing.

Haggai and Zechariah are the prophets to discouraged people, especially people who become discouraged in the work to which God has called them to. In the New Testament, Barnabas was called the “Son of Encouragement” because of how he encouraged God’s people. In the Old Testament, Haggai and Zechariah were the sons of encouragement. If you don’t realize the background for these books in the minor prophets, you’ll never be able to draw out the lessons we need.

That’s why I want to begin a study of the book of Zechariah. He is the strangest of all the prophets. He has odd visions, dramatic messages, and apocalyptic information to give. In this book you’ll see a woman flying through the air in a basket, and you’ll learn the details of the Battle of Armageddon. The book of Zechariah has fourteen chapters, and every one of them is rich.

But the purpose is to give us encouragement in our own day. 

Conclusion

So many times in my 47 years of pastoral ministry I’ve gone to Haggai and Zechariah for encouragement. I’ll give you just one closing example. Like the Israelites who thought their new temple was such a small and unworthy replacement for the vast temple of Solomon, I’ve sometimes looked at my work and it seemed so small and unimpressive. But I would go to Zechariah 4:10—“Do not despise the day of small things.” And just above that verse is the one that says, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” The temple of Zerubbabel, which we call the Second Temple, was being built for Jesus Christ and one day it would possess greater glory than that of Solomon for the Lord Himself would minister there.

And I came to realize there is small or insignificant work where God is concerned when it is done, not by human might or power, but by His Spirit.

And, encouraged, I went back to work. 

So where do you go for encouragement? Sometimes you go to Haggai and Zechariah, and in going to them you are digging into the riches of the Word of God.

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Why Do We Pray?

A Simple Sermon from Psalm 86

Introduction (Verses 1-2): Why pray? Psalm 86 is packed with answers to that question. The Psalmist begins with his primary thesis in verses 1-2: Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy…. You are my God. It’s as simple as that. But the author of Psalm 86, King David, wasn’t ready to leave it at that. Having stated his thesis, he wanted to expound on it. He wanted to explain the various ways in which we are poor and needy and in which we need our God through prayer.

1. We Need Joy (verses 3-4). Verses 3-4: Have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to You all day long. Bring joy to Your servant, Lord. These words were penned by a man suffering discouragement. Before anything else, he needed God to help him emotionally. Later on, David will pray about the people trying to kill him. But here at the beginning he’s more concerned about his internal spirit than his external situation. If your joy is AWOL, deal with it ASAP. We can do anything if we have the joy of the Lord in our hearts.

2. We Need Forgiveness (verses 5-6). The Psalm continues: You, Lord, are forgiving and good… Listen to my cry for mercy. Over time, our feelings of guilt can weigh us down. Some people are tormented by their past. But when we confess our sins and failures to God, there is instant forgiveness, total forgiveness, and permanent forgiveness. No sin can withstand the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus Christ.

3. We Need Help (verses 7-10). David continued: When I am in distress, I call to You, because You answer me.This man needed help that only God could provide. How often we find ourselves in similar straits. Dr. Howard Hendricks told about a crisis in the early days of Dallas Theological Seminary. The school had no money to pay its bills, and that morning the founders met to pray. Harry Ironside prayed, “Lord we know that the cattle on a thousand hills are Thine. Please sell some of them and send us the money.” About that time, a tall Texan in boots strolled into the office. “I just sold two carloads of cattle over in Fort Worth,” he said. “I feel God wants me to give this money to the seminary.” The secretary took the check to Dr. Chafer, who, turning to Dr. Ironside, said, “Harry, God sold the cattle!” (Howard Hendricks in
Stories for the Heart, compiled by Alice Gray (Portland: Multnomah, 1996), 27).

4. We Need Guidance (Verse 11). The Psalm continues: Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness…. When we earnestly seek God’s guidance in prayer, He knows how to lead us step by step. Here’s an example. When she was 16, someone gave Betty Greene a ride in an airplane and she fell in love with aviation. At 20, she offered a special prayer to the Lord, saying, “God, I’ve never heard of anyone who used flying to help spread the gospel message, but if you want me to fly for you, show me how to make it happen.” When World War II broke out, she joined a small group of women military pilots who flew support missions. After the war, she learned of a need to transport missionaries into the interiors of difficult nations. On February 23, 1946, she embarked on the first Missionary Aviation Flight in history, taking missionaries from Los Angeles to their station in Mexico. Arriving in Mexico, the head of Wycliffe Bible Translators, Cameron Townsend, asked Betty to take him into the interior to a jungle camp, and she did so. She almost singlehandedly began the historic ministry of missionary aviation and became the first missionary aviator in history (Taken from a variety of sources, including www.maf-uk.org/story/betty-greene-the-first-ever-maf-pilot, and William and Randy Petersen, 100 Amazing Answers to Prayer (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 2003), 206-207). She asked the Lord to guide her life and to teach her the way to go, and, step by step, year by year, He did so. He has promised to do the same for you.

5. We Need Relief (Verses 12-15). The Psalm continues: Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God; ruthless people are trying to kill me—they have no regard for You. But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God. Not until verse 14 does David mention the distress that has prompted his prayer. He refers the situation to the Lord, then refocuses his attention of God. In my book, The Red Sea Rules, one of the principles is “Acknowledge your enemy but keep your eyes on the Lord.” We should pray about our problems, but it may not help to wallow in them, even during prayer times. We must pray about our problems, then turn our focus to the Lord who can solve them.

6. We Need Strength (Verse 16). Verse 16 says: Show your strength in behalf of your servant; save me, because I serve you just as my mother did. This verse tells us where David got his strength. It was from his mother. David’s mother showed him how to draw strength from God in prayer, and he followed that example all his life. What a legacy to leave to one’s children!

7. We Need Him (Verse 17). Verse 17: Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me. Someone said, “The chief purpose in prayer is drawing near to the heavenly Father.” I read about a little girl whose favorite story was “The Three Little Pigs.” Every night her father read it to her, and he became worn out with that story. One day he read the story into an extra cellphone on the recorder app and showed her how to use it so she could hear the story whenever she wanted. But she resisted the idea. When he asked why she said, “Because I can’t sit in its lap.”

Conclusion: Nothing replaces the experience of being with our heavenly Father, and when we pray we can imagine the Lord Himself coming down from heaven, descending in an elevator of light, sitting on the bench beside you, or beside your bed, or across the table from you, listening and communing with you. Imagine the joy of just being in His presence. We are poor and needy, but He is God. And that’s why we pray.

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Don’t Be Rattled; Just Overcome the World

 A Study of 1 John 5:4-12

Introduction

When I was in college, I was introduced to what was called the Victorious Christian Life. The idea was that God didn’t intend for His children to live defeated lives. We shouldn’t be overcome again and again by sexual sin, discouragement, greed, bitterness, and frustration. We shouldn’t have a Christianity that only comes alive on Sunday. We shouldn’t go around feeling Satan has the upper hand. We shouldn’t be useless or unproductive in the work. Instead, we can let Jesus Christ live His life and do His work through us by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Christ can be the Lord of everything in our lives. We can walk with Him in conscious joy every day. We can be overcomers.

Recently I was talking to someone about this, and he said that even in Bible schools and colleges, the professors and faculty feel the Victorious Christian Life is an archaic term. It is dated. It points back to a movement in the 19th and 20th centuries, and we need new packaging for these concepts. The idea of victory doesn’t resonate with people anymore.

I would like to remind those professors and faculty members of the verse we’re coming to today: 1 John 5:4: “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.” 

I’m not sure what has happened to the idea of victory. Even our American government seems to no longer believe in victory. The Greatest Generation does. They fought until their enemies yielded in absolute surrender. Since then, our leaders seem to want to fight to a stalemate or even to grudging defeat.

I’m reminded of what General Douglas MacArthur said in his famous farewell address to Congress: “Once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war,” he said, “there is no substitute for victory.”

The same is true for us personally every day. In the Christian life, there’s no substitute for victory. So let’s look at this powerful passage in 1 John, chapter 5, beginning with verse 4.

Scripture

4 …for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 

9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.

10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 

11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

1. Faith is the Victory (Verse 4)

When John said, “This is the victory,” the Greek word he used was nika (ni-kay). There’s a popular brand of shoes that chose this word for their branding—Nike. If you visit the Louvre in Paris, you can see one of its famous exhibits—Nike of Samothrace, the winged goddess of victory. In the Gospel of John, there was a man named Nicodemus. His name literally meant “Victorious One.” Our English names Nicolas or Nick come from this word.

The Bible teaches that durable and personal victory in life is only possible through the spiritual resources God offers. In verses 4 and 5, John said: …for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

In what way is faith the victory?

I want to take you to an obscure Old Testament passage that many people skip over. The first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles are made up of genealogies. The author of 1 Chronicles wanted to preserve the major lines of Jewish lineage, and so he devoted chapter after chapter to giving us one list of names after the other. But occasionally he stopped to make an additional comment about someone or some group—and these comments are very insightful. So look at 1 Chronicles 5, beginning with verse 18:

The Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh had 44,760 men ready for military service—able-bodied men who could handle shield and sword, who could use a bow, and who were trained for battle. They waged war against the Hagrites, Jetur, Naphish and Nodab. They were helped in fighting them, and God delivered the Hagrites and all their allies into their hands because they cried out to him during the battle. He answered their prayers because they trusted in Him.

Here were men going into battle, and they were well-trained. But they trusted in God and their faith in God gave them the victory. Faith was the victory.

In our own lives, we face a lot of struggles. We struggle with anxiety, with fear, with discouragement and depression, with opposition from non-believers, with temptation and with attacks from the devil. We face criticism and marginalization. We have emotional struggles. 

We don’t have enough wisdom, strength, or authority to overcome all the forces arrayed against us, but we cry out to God and trust Him. And somehow Jesus comes and brings to us the victory.

It’s not that we have faith in faith; it’s that the Lord is the object of our faith. 

My friend, the late Robertson McQuilkin, wrote a book entitled Victorious Christian Living, in which he said, “God Himself is the key to successful Christian living, and both He and His resources are available only to the person of faith. By faith alone we end and maintain a personal relationship that releases an unending flow of grace. This biblical faith is both a choice and an attitude. The choice is to obey; and obedience begins with repentance, continues with a yielded spirit, and proves itself in aggressive participation in using the means of grace and in eager affirmative action to be all that God intends.”

For me as a pastor, one of the biggest challenges for the first half of my ministry was wondering if my sermons were any good and if they were doing any good. I’d work all week on a message, preach it the best I could on Sunday morning, and another message on Sunday night. Going home, I would be tired. At one point, I was preaching three times every Sunday morning and a new message during the evening service. I didn’t really mind, but in my fatigue I often felt a sense of failure and defeat. “I can’t preach very well,” I’d tell myself. “In fact, that sermon was awful. I’m so embarrassed.” I’d always pelt my wife with questions about how she thought I did. And then with sheer determination I’d get up on Monday morning and start preparing two new messages—only to end with the same result.

That’s not exactly a picture of overcoming victory! Yes, I was faithful and hardworking, but defeated and crestfallen, week after week.

Then I found some great Bible verses God had placed in His Word thousands of years ago just for me. I found a lot of them, but for the sake of brevity I’ll just quote one—1 Corinthians 15:58 (NKJV): Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

The Lord said, “Robert, are you steadfast?” 

Yes.

“Are you immovable?”

Yes, I think so.

“Are you always abounding in the work of the Lord? Are you joyous, confident, and positive?”

Well, maybe not so much.

“Do you know that your work done in the power of My Spirit in accordance with My Word is never in vain? Not a single sermon, not a paragraph, not a sentence is wasted, even if you butcher every word and lose your train of thought and mix up your syntax and put old man Crocket to sleep? Do you really believe it’s not your ability but My power?”

Well, Lord, when you put it like that…

“Why aren’t you trusting Me and My words? Don’t you know that everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.”

Then I slowly began to learn to do my best, leave it with the Lord, rejoice that He uses me despite my limitations, and I pursued my ministry with a sense of victorious joy.

I don’t know if you can relate to that if you aren’t a preacher, but the general principle is true regarding every aspect of life.

In Romans 8, the apostle Paul wrote:

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 

The phrase, “more than conquerors,” is one Greek word, and if we transliterate it into English it is the word hyper-nika. It means to be hyper victorious or totally victorious. And Paul went on to connect this victory with faith—he used the word “convinced”—when He said: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

2. Our Faith Must Be Christ-Centered

(Verse 5)

And Paul’s last statement—Christ Jesus our Lord—brings us back to the first letter of John. In the passage that starts with 1 John 5:4, the first thing John says is that faith is the victory. Now he is going to advance his argument a bit and remind them that our victorious faith must be centered on one Jesus Christ.

Look again at 1 John 5, verses 4 and 5: …for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

If you’ve been following this podcast series from 1 John, you know that John was writing to his church members who had been troubled by a group of deserters who had left the church. In chapter 2, John said, They went out from us, but they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.

These were people who rejected the Christology that John had articulated in His Gospel, the Gospel of John. So here in chapter 5, John was saying, “The ones who left us are the defeated ones. But you who have remained true are the overcomers. Don’t be intimidated by the false teachers and those who ridicule you. You have overcome the world by placing your full faith in Jesus Christ. Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God can overcome the world.

3. Our Christ-Centered Faith is Verified by Each Member of the Trinity (Verses 6-9)

So first John tells us in verse 4 that faith is the victory. Then in verse 5, he tells us that this faith must be a Christocentric faith.

Now, as only he can do it, the apostle John is going to tell us that our Christocentric faith is based on the powerful testimony of the three most unimpeachable witnesses in the history of jurisprudence—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To keep the full context in mind, let’s read the passage from verse 4 to verse 9:

4 …for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 

9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.

What did John mean by verse 6? He wrote, This is the one who came by water and blood.

It’s really not a hard verse to interpret. The word “water” is clearly a reference to the moment when Jesus appeared at the Jordan River and He was baptized by John the Baptist. That’s when the Holy Spirit descended on Him, He was anointed for His ministry, He received the Holy Spirit without measure, and He began His three years of work.

In his Gospel, John used this same Greek phrase—by water or with water—to refer to Christ’s baptism. He used this phrase three times.

John 1:26: “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know.”John 1:31: “I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that He might be revealed to Israel.”John 1:33: “And I myself did not know Him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.”

When Jesus was baptized with water, the Holy Spirit came down and anointed Him, serving as the official beginning of His ministry. Now, think with me. What significant event occurred at the baptism of Jesus? At that very moment, God the Father picked up the heavenly microphone beside the throne and broadcast a message to earth. Matthew 3:17 says, “And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.”

Mark 1:11 said, “And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with You I am well pleased.”

Luke 3:22 repeats the same words.

In John’s Gospel, he adds an additional insight. God the Father spoke to John the Baptist, telling Him, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” John Baptist said, “I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

So the baptism of Christ is the event in which God the Father verified the divine and supernatural identity of the Son of God.

First John 5 continues: This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood.

Just as the ministry of Jesus Christ began with water, it ended with blood—His crucifixion for the sins of the world. Jesus Himself testified by the laying down of His own life. The water signifies the testimony of the Father; and the blood signifies the testimony of the Son.

Now, John adds the testimony of the Holy Spirit, saying: 6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 

At the baptism God the Father testified to the Son. By His death and resurrection, Jesus testified to Himself; and in the inspired writings of the apostles, the Holy Spirit testified—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all three are in agreement.

If you have an older version of the Bible such as the King James, which I used for many years, there is an extra verse in this chapter—verse 7, which says, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word [or Christ], and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.”

That verse isn’t in our newer versions. Apparently at some point in the transmission of the Latin Bible, a scribe or scholar thought John’s words were a bit difficult for laymen, and so he inserted a parenthetical verse of explanation, which wasn’t in the Greek manuscripts. This verse only showed up in later Latin manuscripts. This simply tells us that the understanding of church history has been that John is referring here to the testimony of Three, of the Trinity.

Our Christ-centered faith is confirmed by the testimony of three witnesses—the three most unimpeachable witnesses in the history of jurisprudence: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

4. This is Why We Have Full Assurance of Salvation (verses 9-12)

As we wrap up the passage, notice again its progression. Faith is the victory. This faith is centered in Christ. Our Christ-centered faith is affirmed by Father, Son, and Spirit. And finally, he ends his discussion by telling us this is why we have full assurance of salvation. Look at the remaining verses in this paragraph, starting with verse 9:

9 We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.

10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 

11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Conclusion

As a young adult, the ministry of the Navigators got me into Scripture memory. I would still recommend their Topical Memory System. I purchased a little packet of cards in a plastic holder that slipped into my back pocket, and every spare moment I pulled it out and studied the verses on the little cards.

Their key verse for assurance of salvation was 1 John 5:11: And this is the testimony. These are the facts. This is the truth. God has given us eternal life. And this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life—eternal life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Faith is the victory. It’s a Christ-centered faith, verified by every member of the Trinity. And that is why we can have confidence before God. That is why we have assurance of salvation.

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Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be An Overcomer

1 John 5:1-5

When I was a child, we sometimes played a box game known as Mousetrap. As you rolled the dice, you were able to put together pieces of a contraption in which one piece would trigger another, causing a chain reaction that eventually sent the cage down on the mouse. We’re all fascinated with chain reactions, and now there are all kinds of elaborate chain reaction videos you can watch as well as books you can buy about building your own chain reaction machines. Well, the principle behind chain reactions is simply the principle of cause and effect. We sometimes see the spiritual equivalent of this in the Scripture. For example, let me show you 1 John 5:1-5:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

1. Believe

Notice there are five steps in this spiritual chain reaction, and the first one is to believe. Verse 1 says: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God….

This is the simple Gospel, and it was the core of the Gospel of John. When I took a class about the Gospel of John in Bible College, the textbook was entitled John: The Gospel of Belief. It was John’s great theme. Matthew only used the word “believe” nine times in his entire Gospel, but John used the word 84 times.

When John tells us to believe it isn’t that we’re to believe in spite of the evidence, but because of the evidence. John presented Jesus Christ as both God and man, that He was truly God and He also became truly human, and that He died physically and rose again physically, and that the shedding of His blood forgives our sins. And when we believe Him, it means we acknowledge Him for who He is and we accept His Lordship over our lives.

John put all of this down in his incomparable Gospel. He wrote it late in life, after the other three Gospels had already been published. He had some other stories to tell. He wanted to tell us about…

The wedding in Cana when Jesus performed His first miracle.Our Lord’s meeting with Nicodemus.The story of the Samaritan Woman.The man healed by the Pool of Bethesda.The Lord’s message about the Bread of Life.The raising of Lazarus.The washing of the disciples’ feet.The Upper Room message Jesus gave His disciples on the final night of His natural life.Our Lord’s great prayer in John 17.How Thomas went from doubt to faith when he saw the risen Christ.

The Holy Spirit had not moved Matthew, Mark, or Luke to tell these stories; they were for John’s Gospel. And all the way through the Gospel, we’re told that our responsibility is to come to Jesus in faith—to believe.

When John published his Gospel, he first circulated it among the churches in the area in which he worked. These churches included the seven churches in Asia—Ephesus, the main church, which had been started by the apostle Paul; and the churches in Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. 

But there were some people in some of these churches who rejected John’s portrayal of Christ. They didn’t believe Jesus was the Christ or that His blood was needed for the forgiveness of sins. We aren’t sure exactly what they believed, but from the book of 1 John we get some clues. The deserters:

Claimed to know God (1:6; 2:4; 2:6; 2:9)Claimed to possess some kind of sinless perfection (1:8-10)Denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, who had come in the flesh (2:22-23 and 4:1-3)Denied the power of Christ’s blood (5:6)Did not show love to those in the churches (2:11; 3:15; 4:8 & 20)Continued sinning (3:6)

We know from 2 and 3 John that these deserters weren’t content just to leave the church. They appointed traveling teachers to infiltrate the churches to spread their heresy. 

Who were these heretics? Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, wrote letters while on his way to Rome to be martyred, and he wrote very shortly after John’s day. Apparently he was concerned about people who had some of the same tendencies. Let me quote some of the words of Ignatius, who wrote about A.D. 107:

(I am) fully persuaded as touching our God, that He is in truth of the family of David, according to the flesh, God’s Son by the will and power of God, truly born of a virgin, baptized by John…, truly nailed to a tree in the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch…. For He suffered all these things that we might attain salvation, and he truly suffered, even as He truly raised Himself, not as some unbelievers say, that His Passion was merely in semblance…. 

There are some who ignorantly deny Him…and do not confess that He was clothed with flesh…. But mark those who have strange opinions concerning the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary they are to the mind of God. For love they have no care, none for the widow, none for the orphan, none for the prisoner, or for him released from prison, none for the hungry or thirsty….. 

Be deaf therefore when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David, and of Mary, and who was truly born, both ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died in the sight of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth; who also was truly raised from the dead, His Father raised Him up, as in the same manner His Father shall raise up in Christ Jesus us who believe in Him…. But if some affirm who are without God—that is, unbelievers—that His suffering was only a semblance…then why am I a prisoner…?

We can say in summary, whoever these false teachers were, they rejected the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was the true Christ, that He was true God who also became true Man, that He physically died and rose again, that He shed His blood for the forgiveness of our sins; and that He taught us to love one another. 

This controversy confused the true Christians who remained in the churches, and they began wondering whether they were really saved, whether they really knew God. So John wrote 1, 2, and 3 John to address the issue. The purpose of 1 John is to bolster the church with assurance that they are indeed those who are saved, who know God, who have overcome the devil. And also John gave them some criteria by which we can evaluate the claims of false teachers.

The purpose of 1 John, then, is to reassure us and to let us know that it is logical and sensible and intelligent to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God—the anointed one. When we believe, we attest to the truthfulness of something with our minds and we bring our lives into conformity to it with our choices. 

There’s a wonderful old Gospel song that says: “Simply trusting every day, trusting through the stormy way; even when my faith is small, trusting Jesus, that is all.”

2. New Birth

When we place our trust and faith in Christ, we are born again, and that’s the second part of this heavenly chain reaction. Look at verse 1 again: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.

The new birth is another one of John’s themes. He brought it up in John 3, when he quoted Jesus as saying, “You must be born again.”

Steven J. Lawson wrote a book about what it means to be born again. He said something that’s worth quoting to you. Dr. Lawson said about the moment when we’re born again:

“This is the greatest miracle God ever performs. Every other display of divine power is a distant second to His causing the new birth. We who are born again are never the same again. We are a new creation by the undeserved grace of God. The new birth begins the divine work of remaking each person into the likeness of Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Lawson opens his book by describing how this happened to him. When he was teenager he attended a retreat in the Colorado mountains. The speaker preached from John 2 about how Jesus turned the water into wine. Jesus had attended a wedding feast with His mother, and the hosts had run out of wine for the guests. Jesus had told the servants to fill six empty water pots with water, and Jesus transformed that bland, stagnant water into pure, sparkling wine. The speaker had said, “This is what Jesus must do in your life. He must take your dirty, dingy, stagnant life, polluted by sin, and transform it into the purest and best a person could ever experience.”

The man said, “This miracle by Jesus is a picture of the new birth that must take place in your life. This is what Jesus must do within you. You must be born again.”

At the conclusion of the message, the speaker had asked people not to talk to one another but to exit into the cool summer night and search their hearts. Steven said he walked among those pine trees and wondered about his life, about his relationship with God, and about the need to be born again. In simple faith there, alone in the Colorado mountains, he put his faith in God and trusted Jesus Christ as His Savior. In that moment a miracle occurred within him. The soiled water became sparkling wine, and his life was changed. He had been born again.

And, said Dr. Lawson in his book, “This is the greatest miracle God ever performs.”

I had never thought of the New Birth as being the greatest miracle of them all, but it makes sense. We simply believe that Jesus is God, the Messiah, the Christ, who became human to die and rise again for us, and by faith we are born again.

3. Love

And that leads to the next step in the chain reaction. As we believe and are born again, the Lord begins to remake us into the likeness of Christ. That means we begin to possess a certain 

heavenly quality within us which is called agape-love. Look again at verses 1 and 2:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.  2  This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God .

John has spent most of the previous chapter talking about this special agape-love, and we covered it very thoroughly when we dealt with 1 John 4. When we place our faith in Jesus Christ and we’re born again, the love of God begins to grow in our hearts—and it is first of all a love for Him and secondly a love for His children, for His church.

I want to point out one thing about verse 1. When John wrote, “Everyone who loves the father loves his child as well” is often misunderstood. I misunderstood this at first glance. We tend to think it means that if we love God the Father we will also love His Son, Jesus. Well, that’s true. But in the context of this overall passage, John is saying, “If you love God the Father, you will love His children—your fellow believers—too.” 

We grow into this. The moment we’re saved we aren’t yet mature enough to love others as Jesus does. We may not love our enemies, and we may not love our friends and family as we should. As I look back over my life and ministry, I can say that my greatest failures have always been connected with the fact that I loved God and others rather imperfectly. But this is an area of maturing growth. The Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, and fruit is something that grows and matures until it is all it should be.

4. Obey

And now John goes on to give us another cause-and-effect moment. Belief leads to the New Birth, which leads to love, and that leads to obedience. Let’s read all three verses and you’ll see how one thing leads to another: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome….

When we read the Ten Commandments, we find the first four are devoted to how we treat God and the last six are devoted to how we treat one another. Jesus and several writers of the New Testament told us that all these commands are fulfilled by genuine love. When we truly love God, we will not put anything or anyone before Him; we’ll not worship idols or take His name in vain; we’ll make time to worship Him. And if we truly love others, we’ll honor our parents, and we’ll not kill each other or commit adultery or steal or lie or covet what our neighbor has.

Jesus said, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commands”—to love God and to love others (Matthew 22:40).

Now, when we love God and obey Him out of love, we find that His commands are not burdensome. John makes this statement with all assurance: His commands are not burdensome.

We have two similar statements elsewhere in the Bible.

Deuteronomy 30 says: “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?’ Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?’ No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”And Jesus said in Matthew 11: “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

This is where we all sometimes have trouble because our fallen fleshly nature wants to rebel against obedience and we think that God’s rules are too hard. First, they are too difficult for the old person that we were before we met Christ; but they are not too hard for the Christ that lives within us. And second, I think it helps when we remind ourselves that we are happier and healthier when we obey, and that it’s no burden to obey. It is actually the normal life of the believer.

5. Overcome

And that leads to the final domino in this chain reaction—overcoming. Belief triggers the new birth, which triggers love, and out of love comes obedience. And obedience leads to an overcoming life. John goes on to say in verse 4:

4…for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Because Jesus Christ overcame the hold of death and the stone walls of the tomb, we can overcome—through Him—the hold of sin and the stone walls of our temptations and trials. He told us in John 16:33; “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world.”

Here in 1 John, the apostle John uses this word 6 times. He said:

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.Everyone born of God overcomes the world.This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

You may be saying to yourself: If I’m an overcomer…

Why did I lose my temper this morning?Why did I let my mind linger on sexual desire today?Why did that filthy word fly out of my mouth?Why am I so impatient with my wife?If I’m an overcomer, why can’t I get a handle on time management and personal discipline?

The very fact that you’re asking those questions and concerned about these things is evidence of the Holy Spirit within you. Don’t give up. Don’t be discouraged. When you fail and fall into temptation, confess your sins, get up, dust yourself off, and never give up the fight.

You’re not the real overcomer—it is Christ in you! And this is a process, a continual chain reaction of grace that continues throughout this life. 
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, 4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

The post Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be An Overcomer appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Your God Can Do Anything

Luke 1:37

Hormoz Shariat, the “Billy Graham of Iran,” is at the forefront of a secret revival occurring in the underground church of Iran. Several years ago, a woman he calls “Dana” began calling into his program, very angry at him. Dina was a high-ranking official in Iran’s Female Secret Police, and she persecuted Christians. One day she called the program to tell Hormoz she and her bedridden mother were going to kill themselves. Dina had grown disillusioned with Iranian corruption, and she was discouraged because cancer was destroying her mother’s body.

Hormoz responded, “Since you’re going to kill yourself anyway, why don’t you give Jesus a week? If He doesn’t answer a single prayer for you…then go ahead and kill yourself…. You have nothing to lose.”

Dina railed against him, but in the end she agreed to his experiment. Every morning she prayed to Jesus. Early on the fifth day, she heard footsteps in the house. She thought an intruder had entered because the only other person at home was her bedridden mother. Yet her mother stuck her head through the door and said, “It’s just me, Dina.”

Dina was shocked to see her mother walking through the house and asked how it could be. Her mother replied, “Last night after you turned off the light, I thought…I should pray one last time. Then I saw His face. Right there in my room…. It was Jesus…. I woke up a few minutes ago and realized I felt no pain…. Not only that, but I could move comfortably and felt so peaceful that I decided to try to stand up. Dina, I could walk… I feel well again.”

Dina not only turned to Christ, she has become a fervent underground evangelist who, along with her husband, have planted a large network of underground churches in Iran.

God considers nothing impossible, and we have that on good authority—from the angel Gabriel. In Luke 1:37, as Gabriel explained to Mary how the Holy Spirit would overshadow her and leave her impregnated with the Messiah, he added, “For no word from God will ever fail.”

Most translations follow the example of the New King James Version and say, “For with God nothing will be impossible.” The literal Greek awkwardly (to us) says, “Every thing will not be impossible with God.”

What Gabriel was saying is that no word that God speaks can fail to come true. Nothing is impossible for Him. The Lord is able to do anything and everything—miracles beyond our 

comprehension.

This isn’t Gabriel’s opinion alone. In Genesis 18:14, the Lord reassured aged Abraham that his elderly wife, Sarah, would have a baby, saying, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

The prophet Jeremiah grasped this truth when he prayed, “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah 32:17).

Job said, “I know that you can do all things” (Job 42:1).

Jesus summed it up, saying, “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). In Luke 18:27 

He said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

The apostle Paul said he was “fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised” (Romans 4:21). Our Lord, Paul said, “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). We have a God who “gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not” (Romans 4:17).

My favorite verse along these lines is Zechariah 8:6, when the Lord makes a set of promises to the remnant of Israel that they can hardly wrap their arms around His words. The Lord replied, “It may seem marvelous to the remnant of his people at that time, but will it seem marvelous to me?”

The Living Bible interprets this nicely: “This seems unbelievable to you—a remnant, small, discouraged as you are—but it is no great thing for me.”

What seems impossible to us is an easy lift for our God. In theological jargon, we call this omnipotence, which literally means “all power.” God possesses unlimited power, and the same Lord who spread out the universe like a canopy and created the earth like a spinning ball of water and dirt—He has infinite energy and He can do anything.

That is the Bible’s basic premise, but we have to understand a few things about this quality of omnipotence. There are four footnotes that we need to keep in mind.

1. God Theoretically Could, But Certainly Will Not, Act Contrary to His Nature.

First, God theoretically could, but certainly will not, act contrary to His nature. Remember, the Lord has other attributes, and all His attributes blend together so seamlessly that there are no gaps or cracks in His unified nature. For example, look at Hebrews 6:18: “God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.”

The operative phrase for our purposes is: “…it is impossible for God to lie.” In what way is it impossible? It is not theoretically impossible. I can lie, and if I can lie I’m sure God has the physical ability to utter a lie. But His omnipotence is seamlessly woven together with His righteousness, with His integrity, with His holiness. And He will not act contrary to His nature. That’s why it’s impossible for Him to lie.

In Psalm 89:34, God said, “I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered.” In other words, God will not act contrary to His Word and His Will.

2. God Will Not Perform the Logically Absurd

The second footnote is this: God will not perform the logically absurd. Sometimes this is called the “Omnipotence Paradox.” If you discuss the question of God’s omnipotence with skeptics, someone will probably bring up a question designed to confound you, such as…

Can God make a rock too heavy for Him to lift?Can God make 2 plus 2 equal five?Can God make a square circle?

This has been widely discussed since the days of Augustine and most theologians agree that omnipotence is not defined as the ability to perform what is logically absurd. I heard a lecture in which someone asked William Lane Craig about this and he replied: “Omnipotence is not defined as the ability to do that which is logically absurd. In one sense, to do a task that is logically impossible is not a task at all. It is just a self-contradictory combination of words. So it’s no inhibition of omnipotence to say that God cannot do what is logically impossible, and that’s the way most theists historically have understood it.”

Augustine of Hippo articulated this in the 400s, and it has been the general position of scholars ever since. But let’s say you disagree with this. Can God make a rock so heavy He cannot lift it? Yes. He can make such a rock, and then He can lift it. But none of this is a logical reality. Questions that are absurd in nature do not really threaten the reality of God’s omnipotence.

3. God Can Do Anything But He Doesn’t Do Everything

A third footnote when it comes to God’s omnipotence is to remember that while He can do anything, He does not do everything. When Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey on Palm Sunday, the people praised Him, saying, “Hosanna. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” The critics among the Pharisees told Jesus to quieten down the crowd, and Jesus replied, “I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out” (Luke 19:40). God had the ability to make the stones cry out in praise, but just because He could do that doesn’t mean that He did do that.

That’s important for us to remember when we pray. God can answer our prayers with miracles, but He doesn’t always choose to do that, which is why we live by faith and not by sight. We trust Him even when He doesn’t do the thing we think is needed at the moment. We trust Him to know better than we do and to keep His promise to work all things for our good.

The ultimate example of this is when Jesus prayed, “Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).

God certainly had the power to snatch Jesus back up to Heaven, and Jesus Himself had the power to call more than twelve legions of angels to deliver Him (Matthew 25:53). But Jesus nevertheless was nailed to the cross to provide eternal salvation and life for you and me.

4. God is Reluctant to Violate Our Freedom of the Will.

The final footnote is that God is very reluctant to violate the freedom of the will that He gave to humans. God could have made us so that we are programmed like robots to love Him and to always obey Him. But within the dimensions of His sovereignty and wisdom, He gave us a certain degree of freedom to choose how we’re going to live, to make our own choices. 

When the rich young ruler came to Jesus and our Lord called him to become a disciple, the young man turned away and left, for He wasn’t willing. Jesus could have snapped His fingers and turned the young man into a sort of puppet who had to turn back and follow Jesus. But our Lord knows that love and loyalty must be freely given, and so He didn’t exercise His omnipotence to do that. 

Conclusion

Those are four footnotes, but in no way do they diminish God’s infinite power or His ability to do anything and everything He desires. And it’s very helpful to know that His power empowers us. 

There are two passages about this in the book of Ephesians that I’d like to fuse together. The first is in Ephesians 1:19, which is one of the most underappreciated passages in the New Testament. Paul is praying for the Ephesians—and by extension for us—that our eyes would be opened to “His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead….”

God exerted power when He raised Christ from the dead, and that same power is available for us who believe. The other passage in Ephesians comes at the end of chapter 3, and it, too, is a prayer. Paul prays that out of His glorious riches God will strengthen us with power through His Spirit in our inner being…” and He “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:16-20).

So the God who can do anything—for Whom nothing is impossible—exerted omnipotent power when He raised Christ from the dead, and that same power is available to empower us in our daily living. It comes to us out of God’s glorious riches and is conveyed into our lives by the Holy Spirit who strengthens us in our inner being.

Along the way, we never know how God will use whatever we are and whatever we do for Him. In the late 1920s, a Presbyterian missionary named Robert S. Burris, set out across a section of China, and he carried 2,000 New Testaments in his luggage. Along the way he was surrounded by bandits who demanded his money. When they found he had only eighty cents in cash they threatened to behead him, but instead they took his luggage including all his copies of the Scripture. That night as Burris settled down and tried to sleep, he claimed Isaiah 55:11 regarding his loss, that God’s Word would not return empty but would accomplish what God desired and achieve the purpose for which He sent it.

Twenty-five years later, Burris was serving as pastor of a church in Canton, Ohio. He met a traveling missionary who had later worked in the same area of China, and the man showed slides of a church of 400 members where no Christian worker had ever been. How the church came into existence was a mystery. It’s also strange that every member of the church had a copy of the New Testament. The missionary admitted that no one knew where the Scriptures had come from. But Mr. Burris knew!

God’s wisdom and power are undiminished, and He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that is at work within us.

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Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Channels of His Love

A Study of 1 John 4:7-21

Introduction: Three years before he died C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves, based on a series of talks he had given over the radio. He pointed out something that has since been repeated many times but it still bears remembering. There are four primary Greek words for love. This is important to us because the New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. 

The first word is Storge (pronounced store’-gay). This is the kind of natural affection people in a family normally feel for each other. It’s being very fond of someone because you are familiar with them. A good English term is affection.

The second word is Philia (pronounced Phil-lee’-a). This is friendship love, and it’s easy to member because the city Philadelphia is named for this word and is supposedly the City of Brotherly Love. This is the kind of love you have for your friends and acquaintances.

The third word is Eros (pronounced air-os). The Greeks named one of their gods by this title, the god of love and sex. The idea is physical pleasure. We get our English word erotic out of this. Eros and erotic can have a negative connotation, but it’s also a word that describes the healthy physical love and pleasure that should exist between a husband and wife.

The fourth word is Agape (pronounced ah-gop’-a), and this is the kind of selfless love that only God possesses, along with His children with whom He shares it. It is the kind of selfless love that puts other people first, considers their needs, and seeks to meet them even at its own expense. It is the exact opposite of our human natures.

C. S. Lewis and many others have pointed out that all four of these loves are necessary for a good marriage. A husband and wife need Storge, or natural affection. They need Philia, or friendship for they should be each other’s best friends. They need Eros, or intimacy. And they need Agape, the willingness to constantly put the other before oneself. 

Well, in the book of 1 John, the apostle John is doing everything in his power to instill large doses of Agape-Love among his church members. To use today’s terminology, John was telling them that Agape-Love was the Secret Sauce of the church on this earth. And when I say “church” that includes Christian marriages and all the relationships we have with one another. We need massive doses of Agape-love.

The passage we’re coming to is one of the best descriptions of this remarkable attitude in the Bible and in all of theological literature. 

Let’s jump right into our passage today as we continue our study of 1 John. We’re coming to chapter 4, verse 7 and following:

Scripture

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Let’s articulate what John was saying.

1. Only those who are born again can convey God’s Love

First, he writes something very controversial. He tells us that only those who have been born again can experience and convey true love like this. Look at verses 7 and 8:

7  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  8  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 

There can be many other emotions that look like love. Affection. Compassion. Altruism. Attraction. 

Many people can experience and convey the other three kinds of love.

When you see, for example, a happily married couple who never go to church or read the Bible or follow Christ, they have apparently mastered Storge, Philia, and Eros. But they simply don’t know anything about the Agape love that comes only from God.

That’s why it’s such a shame when those of us who do know Christ don’t display Agape to the world. Only those who are born again can convey this kind of love.

2. Jesus Christ is the Ultimate Demonstration of God’s Love

Second, John tells us that Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of this love. Let’s go on to verses 9 and 10: 

9  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  10  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

John says this twice. He says it and he repeats it. The way God showed or demonstrated His love toward us is by sending His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins that we might have eternal life through Him.

The apostle Paul said the same thing in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

John 3:16 famously says, “For God loved the world so much that He sent His one and only Son….”

Wycliffe Bible Translators posted a story on Social Media about a 69-year-old woman named Enol, who spoke four languages and had read the Bible. But the Bible wasn’t available in her original language. When Wycliffe translated the Scriptures into her tribal language, she read John 3:16, and it suddenly became very personal and poignant to her. She had read the verse in English, but she said, “When I read John 3:16 in my own language…I realized that this is what God did for me. He did this for me. He gave His only son for me.” She  said, “This is very memorable for me [and] the only thing I will never forget in my life.”

I wish we could all have the sense of reading this and understanding it as never before.

3. We Have an Obligation to Personify God’s Love

In verses 11-12, John tells us that we have an obligation to personify this remarkable, self-giving, self-less, others-centered love of God. Let’s continue reading:

11  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  12  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

The apostle John was very interested in the invisibility of God the Father. He made several references to it in his Gospel.

In his prologue, John wrote: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known” (John 1:18).

In John 5:37-38, Jesus said to His critics, “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you.”

John 6:46, John wrote, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”

Now here in 1 John 4:12, John wrote, “No one has ever seen God.” But his point in this case is that other people can see something about God—they can see the personality and evidence of God—by the love they see in His people. When you love others with Agape love, it’s an expression or manifestation of God. It testifies of Him.

4. We Can Rely on God’s Love

Fourth, John tells us we can rely on God’s love. That’s the exact verb he used. Look at verses 13-16:

13  This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.  14  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  15  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.  16  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

Verse 13 again brings us the subject of the assurance of our salvation. Remember the background of the letter. A host of people had rejected John’s teaching about the person of Jesus Christ and had left the churches. They had ridiculed those who had remained true, telling them they were foolish and mistaken and wrong. But John said here, “God sent Jesus Christ as the ultimate expression of His love for you, and the Holy Spirit shows you that truth and illuminates it in your heart and reassures you that you are God’s child.” 

In verse 14, John reaffirmed that message: We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. In other words, you have my objective eyewitness testimony and you have the Holy Spirit’s eternal reassurance.

In verse 15, John repeated his great thesis: “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” There is no might or maybe or should or could or if or but about it. If you acknowledge that Jesus is God, that Jesus is Lord, then God lives in you and you live in Him.

And that brings us to that wonderful verb, rely, in verse 16: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 

The word “rely” means “to depend on confidently.” When we rely on God’s love, we realize we don’t need to fret or fear, to worry or anguish. We can just go through life resting in His love, which will always do what’s best on our behalf. 

In her book about spiritual disciplines, Jan Johnson wrote, “Before going to sleep, review your day and confess thoughts and deeds that were not motivated by love. Don’t drift off to sleep until you have rested in God’s love.”

When you are resting in and relying on God’s love, you are relying on:

His grace that provides all you need.

His mercy that forgives your failures and works with you to correct your weaknesses. 

His presence that never leaves you for a single second.

His wisdom that ordains your steps.

His Word that speaks to every need you have.

His infinite longevity, which guarantees the eternal life we have in Christ.

In his book of devotions, Alan Fading said that at certain moments in his life he has struggled to believe that God loves him. “I imagine I’ve done something (or failed to do something) that has diminished God’s care for me. Instead of letting God’s love displace my anxiety and fear, I let fear displace my confidence in God’s love.”

But, he said, he has learned to pray: “Father, may Your Spirit enable me to be more deeply immersed in the height, the depth, the breadth, and the width of your love for me. Help me to know your love even if I can’t fully comprehend it. Open my eyes to see your loving countenance. Open my ears to hear your words of affirmation.”

Alan went on to say, “And when I stop to listen, I sense the Spirit saying, ‘My Son, I enjoy you because I made you. You belong to me and I care for you. The Son has opened the way for us to enjoy unbroken fellowship, so make yourself at home in my love today. Rest in my love and then share my love with others who will cross your path. That is how you can have confidence of my presence in you and my love for you.”

5. We Are Christlike As We Embody God’s Love

Fifth, John goes on to imply that we are Christlike as we embody God’s love. Look at the last part of verse 16 and following:

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.  17  This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.  18  There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

The first three words of this section are a little bit shocking: God is love. John said exactly the same thing in verse 8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

When we study the entirety of Scripture, we can say that it’s wrong to insist that God is nothing except love. It’s not that this attitude of love expresses the totality of the essence of God. What John is saying is that God’s nature is a loving nature. He possesses true love and He expresses true love and He imparts true love.

In John 4:24, John said that God is Spirit. In 1 John 1:5, John said that God is light. Now he claims that God is love. John is simply giving us some of the infinite and wondrous attributes of God. When John says that God is love, He is not neglecting God’s other attributes. He is simply saying that the essence of the nature of God from before the beginning of the world—His limitless attributes and His infinite nature—includes the boundless capacity to love. It comes to Him naturally. He loves because He loves. He is loving because He is loving. He always has been and He always will be. And in that way, He loves you!

That means that when we abide in His love, we are becoming loving people. We become Christlike. In this world, we are like Jesus.

6. We Have No Assurance of Salvation if We Do Not Transmit God’s Love

On the other hand, if we do not rely on and express the love of God, we cannot have assurance of our salvation. Look at verses 19 through 21.

19  We love because he first loved us.  20  Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.  21  And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Conclusion

While I was researching for this sermon, I came across the story of a POW camp built to hold Nazi prisoners during World War II. It was built in the little town of Aliceville, Alabama, population 1,400. It was a town like the fictional Mayberry. The government built a POW camp that would hold 6,000 German prisoners. As you can imagine, the townspeople were bewildered by this invasion of Nazi prisoners. They knew how brutal and evil these men were, and they were told the ones being sent to Aliceville were among the worst.

On the day when the first POWs were due to arrive by train, the local policeman told the citizens to stay in their homes. No one was allowed in the street. But no one paid any attention to him, and the whole town turned out to watch these monsters get off the train. But what they saw instead were hundreds of frightened, beaten down, defeated boys. Many were scared and some were scarred or disfigured or seriously injured.

An attitude went through the town no one had expected—compassion. The guard at the Aliceville POW Camp followed the Geneva Conventions to the letter and treated the prisoners with respect. 

One writer said, “Neither the officers running the camp nor the people in the surrounding town were following just the letter of the law alone. Rather, they started to follow the true spirit of the Geneva Conventions and were treating these enemy soldiers the same way they would want their own sons and brothers to be treated were they captured in the war.

“When the soldiers first arrived at the camp, they found fresh linens and shaving equipment waiting for them on their bunks. In short order, they were introduced to the twin American delicacies of peanut butter and sliced white bread. They were given so much ham and so much corn to eat that they couldn’t finish it all…

“Within a year the prisoners had three different orchestras up and running, using instruments donated by the local community. They opened a school where soldiers could learn anything from pottery to mathematics to almost any language you could imagine. They set up correspondence programs with local universities where they could earn college credit. They had soccer games just about every day. They had a newspaper. They had poetry readings and  theatrical productions.

“In other words, life was good for POWs in Camp Aliceville. According to one German soldier: they arrived in Aliceville expecting hell, but instead were greeted by heaven.”

In explaining it, someone said, “We love our enemies not because of who they are, but because of who we are.”

One of the prisoners later said he thought he was coming to America to be killed. At Aliceville, he was treated with such respect that he said, “If this was how America treated its enemy, then America is where I wanted to live. In 1956, he did return to America with only four dollars in his pocket, and a local church helped him establish his life.

In the years that followed, the town of Aliceville had several Friendship Days when the former POWs would return and everyone would celebrate together the power of the love and friendship they unexpectedly discovered in the middle of that terrible war.

I have to believe that there were many Christians and godly church members among the citizens of this Bible-belt community of Aliceville. I believe many of them had read the Gospel of John and the book of 1 John. They knew something about agape.

Only those who are born again can convey God’s love. Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of that love. We all have an obligation to personify that love. We can always rely on God’s love for us, and then as we embody that love we are growing more Christlike. On the other hand, we have no assurance of salvation if we do not transmit God’s love to others.

It seems to me, to sum everything up, that the more we understand the ocean of God’s love for us, the more the tide of love will arise in our hearts for others—and not just Storge love, Philia love, Eros love, but the ultimate love of all—the love that transforms—the agape love of God.

The post Don’t Be Rattled; Just Be Channels of His Love appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.

Don’t Be Rattled; Be Channels of Agape Love

A Study of 1 John 4:7-21

Introduction: Three years before he died C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves, based on a series of talks he had given over the radio. He pointed out something that has since been repeated many times but it still bears remembering. There are four primary Greek words for love. This is important to us because the New Testament was originally written in the Greek language. 

The first word is Storge (pronounced store’-gay). This is the kind of natural affection people in a family normally feel for each other. It’s being very fond of someone because you are familiar with them. A good English term is affection.

 

The second word is Philia (pronounced Phil-lee’-a). This is friendship love, and it’s easy to member because the city Philadelphia is named for this word and is supposedly the City of Brotherly Love. This is the kind of love you have for your friends and acquaintances.The third word is Eros (pronounced air-os). The Greeks named one of their gods by this title, the god of love and sex. The idea is physical pleasure. We get our English word erotic out of this. Eros and erotic can have a negative connotation, but it’s also a word that describes the healthy physical love and pleasure that should exist between a husband and wife.The fourth word is Agape (pronounced ah-gop’-a), and this is the kind of selfless love that only God possesses, along with His children with whom He shares it. It is the kind of selfless love that puts other people first, considers their needs, and seeks to meet them even at its own expense. It is the exact opposite of our human natures.

C. S. Lewis and many others have pointed out that all four of these loves are necessary for a good marriage. A husband and wife need Storge, or natural affection. They need Philia, or friendship for they should be each other’s best friends. They need Eros, or intimacy. And they need Agape, the willingness to constantly put the other before oneself. Well, in the book of 1 John, the apostle John is doing everything in his power to instill large doses of Agape-Love among his church members. To use today’s terminology, John was telling them that Agape-Love was the Secret Sauce of the church on this earth. And when I say “church” that includes Christian marriages and all the relationships we have with one another. We need massive doses of Agape-love.The passage we’re coming to is one of the best descriptions of this remarkable attitude in the Bible and in all of theological literature. Let’s jump right into our passage today as we continue our study of 1 John. We’re coming to chapter 4, verse 7 and following:Scripture7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Let’s articulate what John was saying.1. Only those who are born again can convey God’s LoveFirst, he writes something very controversial. He tells us that only those who have been born again can experience and convey true love like this. Look at verses 7 and 8:

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 

There can be many other emotions that look like love. Affection. Compassion. Altruism. Attraction. Many people can experience and convey the other three kinds of love.When you see, for example, a happily married couple who never go to church or read the Bible or follow Christ, they have apparently mastered Storge, Philia, and Eros. But they simply don’t know anything about the Agape love that comes only from God.That’s why it’s such a shame when those of us who do know Christ don’t display Agape to the world. Only those who are born again can convey this kind of love.

2. Jesus Christ is the Ultimate Demonstration of God’s LoveSecond, John tells us that Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of this love. Let’s go on to verses 9 and 10: 

9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 

John says this twice. He says it and he repeats it. The way God showed or demonstrated His love toward us is by sending His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins that we might have eternal life through Him.

The apostle Paul said the same thing in Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

John 3:16 famously says, “For God loved the world so much that He sent His one and only Son….”

Wycliffe Bible Translators posted a story on Social Media about a 69-year-old woman named Enol, who spoke four languages and had read the Bible. But the Bible wasn’t available in her original language. When Wycliffe translated the Scriptures into her tribal language, she read John 3:16, and it suddenly became very personal and poignant to her. She had read the verse in English, but she said, “When I read John 3:16 in my own language…I realized that this is what God did for me. He did this for me. He gave His only son for me.” She  said, “This is very memorable for me [and] the only thing I will never forget in my life.”I wish we could all have the sense of reading this and understanding it as never before.

3. We Have an Obligation to Personify God’s Love

In verses 11-12, John tells us that we have an obligation to personify this remarkable, self-giving, self-less, others-centered love of God. Let’s continue reading:

11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

The apostle John was very interested in the invisibility of God the Father. He made several references to it in his Gospel.

In his prologue, John wrote: “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made Him known” (John 1:18).

 

In John 5:37-38, Jesus said to His critics, “And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice or seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you.”John 6:46, John wrote, “No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”

Now here in 1 John 4:12, John wrote, “No one has ever seen God.” But his point in this case is that other people can see something about God—they can see the personality and evidence of God—by the love they see in His people. When you love others with Agape love, it’s an expression or manifestation of God. It testifies of Him.

4. We Can Rely on God’s LoveFourth, John tells us we can rely on God’s love. That’s the exact verb he used. Look at verses 13-16:

13 This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

Verse 13 again brings us the subject of the assurance of our salvation. Remember the background of the letter. A host of people had rejected John’s teaching about the person of Jesus Christ and had left the churches. They had ridiculed those who had remained true, telling them they were foolish and mistaken and wrong. But John said here, “God sent Jesus Christ as the ultimate expression of His love for you, and the Holy Spirit shows you that truth and illuminates it in your heart and reassures you that you are God’s child.” 

In verse 14, John reaffirmed that message: We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. In other words, you have my objective eyewitness testimony and you have the Holy Spirit’s eternal reassurance.

In verse 15, John repeated his great thesis: “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God.” There is no might or maybe or should or could or if or but about it. If you acknowledge that Jesus is God, that Jesus is Lord, then God lives in you and you live in Him.

And that brings us to that wonderful verb, rely, in verse 16: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. 

The word “rely” means “to depend on confidently.” When we rely on God’s love, we realize we don’t need to fret or fear, to worry or anguish. We can just go through life resting in His love, which will always do what’s best on our behalf. 

In her book about spiritual disciplines, Jan Johnson wrote, “Before going to sleep, review your day and confess thoughts and deeds that were not motivated by love. Don’t drift off to sleep until you have rested in God’s love.”

When you are resting in and relying on God’s love, you are relying on:

His grace that provides all you need.His mercy that forgives your failures and works with you to correct your weaknesses. His presence that never leaves you for a single second.His wisdom that ordains your steps.His Word that speaks to every need you have.His infinite longevity, which guarantees the eternal life we have in Christ.

In his book of devotions, Alan Fading said that at certain moments in his life he has struggled to believe that God loves him. “I imagine I’ve done something (or failed to do something) that has diminished God’s care for me. Instead of letting God’s love displace my anxiety and fear, I let fear displace my confidence in God’s love.”

But, he said, he has learned to pray: “Father, may Your Spirit enable me to be more deeply immersed in the height, the depth, the breadth, and the width of your love for me. Help me to know your love even if I can’t fully comprehend it. Open my eyes to see your loving countenance. Open my ears to hear your words of affirmation.”

Alan went on to say, “And when I stop to listen, I sense the Spirit saying, ‘My Son, I enjoy you because I made you. You belong to me and I care for you. The Son has opened the way for us to enjoy unbroken fellowship, so make yourself at home in my love today. Rest in my love and then share my love with others who will cross your path. That is how you can have confidence of my presence in you and my love for you.”

5. We Are Christlike As We Embody God’s LoveFifth, John goes on to imply that we are Christlike as we embody God’s love. Look at the last part of verse 16 and following:

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17 This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. 18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

The first three words of this section are a little bit shocking: God is love. John said exactly the same thing in verse 8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

When we study the entirety of Scripture, we can say that it’s wrong to insist that God is nothing except love. It’s not that this attitude of love expresses the totality of the essence of God. What John is saying is that God’s nature is a loving nature. He possesses true love and He expresses true love and He imparts true love.

In John 4:24, John said that God is Spirit. In 1 John 1:5, John said that God is light. Now he claims that God is love. John is simply giving us some of the infinite and wondrous attributes of God. When John says that God is love, He is not neglecting God’s other attributes. He is simply saying that the essence of the nature of God from before the beginning of the world—His limitless attributes and His infinite nature—includes the boundless capacity to love. It comes to Him naturally. He loves because He loves. He is loving because He is loving. He always has been and He always will be. And in that way, He loves you!

That means that when we abide in His love, we are becoming loving people. We become Christlike. In this world, we are like Jesus.

6. We Have No Assurance of Salvation if We Do Not Transmit God’s LoveOn the other hand, if we do not rely on and express the love of God, we cannot have assurance of our salvation. Look at verses 19 through 21.

19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.ConclusionWhile I was researching for this sermon, I came across the story of a POW camp built to hold Nazi prisoners during World War II. It was built in the little town of Aliceville, Alabama, population 1,400. It was a town like the fictional Mayberry. The government built a POW camp that would hold 6,000 German prisoners. As you can imagine, the townspeople were bewildered by this invasion of Nazi prisoners. They knew how brutal and evil these men were, and they were told the ones being sent to Aliceville were among the worst.On the day when the first POWs were due to arrive by train, the local policeman told the citizens to stay in their homes. No one was allowed in the street. But no one paid any attention to him, and the whole town turned out to watch these monsters get off the train. But what they saw instead were hundreds of frightened, beaten down, defeated boys. Many were scared and some were scarred or disfigured or seriously injured.An attitude went through the town no one had expected—compassion. The guard at the Aliceville POW Camp followed the Geneva Conventions to the letter and treated the prisoners with respect. One writer said, “Neither the officers running the camp nor the people in the surrounding town were following just the letter of the law alone. Rather, they started to follow the true spirit of the Geneva Conventions and were treating these enemy soldiers the same way they would want their own sons and brothers to be treated were they captured in the war.“When the soldiers first arrived at the camp, they found fresh linens and shaving equipment waiting for them on their bunks. In short order, they were introduced to the twin American delicacies of peanut butter and sliced white bread. They were given so much ham and so much corn to eat that they couldn’t finish it all…

“Within a year the prisoners had three different orchestras up and running, using instruments donated by the local community. They opened a school where soldiers could learn anything from pottery to mathematics to almost any language you could imagine. They set up correspondence programs with local universities where they could earn college credit. They had soccer games just about every day. They had a newspaper. They had poetry readings and  theatrical productions.“In other words, life was good for POWs in Camp Aliceville. According to one German soldier: they arrived in Aliceville expecting hell, but instead were greeted by heaven.”In explaining it, someone said, “We love our enemies not because of who they are, but because of who we are.”One of the prisoners later said he thought he was coming to America to be killed. At Aliceville, he was treated with such respect that he said, “If this was how America treated its enemy, then America is where I wanted to live. In 1956, he did return to America with only four dollars in his pocket, and a local church helped him establish his life.In the years that followed, the town of Aliceville had several Friendship Days when the former POWs would return and everyone would celebrate together the power of the love and friendship they unexpectedly discovered in the middle of that terrible war.I have to believe that there were many Christians and godly church members among the citizens of this Bible-belt community of Aliceville. I believe many of them had read the Gospel of John and the book of 1 John. They knew something about agape.Only those who are born again can convey God’s love. Jesus Christ is the ultimate demonstration of that love. We all have an obligation to personify that love. We can always rely on God’s love for us, and then as we embody that love we are growing more Christlike. On the other hand, we have no assurance of salvation if we do not transmit God’s love to others.It seems to me, to sum everything up, that the more we understand the ocean of God’s love for us, the more the tide of love will arise in our hearts for others—and not just Storge love, Philia love, Eros love, but the ultimate love of all—the love that transforms—the agape love of God.

The post Don’t Be Rattled; Be Channels of Agape Love appeared first on RobertJMorgan.com.