Good morning. You may be seated. Welcome to Mars Hill. We’re in the middle of our series in the book of 1 John. So if you got a Bible, you can go to 1 John 2:28, and we’ll finish this up this summer and do Genesis in the fall and really excited about that. Just pray that all comes together well.

So, Father God, we love you. We thank you for a chance to get together to study the Scriptures that you’ve given for us. Lord Jesus, I pray that first of all today we be able to discern whether or not we really do know you and whether or not we really do indeed belong to you. I pray that we all would walk away from here knowing where we’re at and having a deep desire to be more like you, to be with you in the end, and to be with you today, preparing for that end.

Lord Jesus, I ask as well that you would send us the Holy Spirit so that he would do his work of informing us and instructing us through the same Scriptures that he inspired to be written, and God, I pray that as we study that you would encourage us, that you would allow us to see your involvement in our life, and for those of us who perhaps don’t know you, that we would be compelled to reconsider the life course that we have chosen and that we would consider the Lord Jesus and the goodness that he brings and the love that he shares and the work that he’s done, and that you, Lord Jesus, would be the center and sum of our teaching today, that you would be the focus of all of our hearts and minds, and that, ultimately, as we walk away from here, we would all indeed be closer to you. We ask that in your good name. Amen.

As we get into 1 John 2:28, John is going to deal as a really brilliant pastor with the human problem, and that’s problem. Have you noticed that, you know, the planet is a pretty good one, right? Like if you had to choose between our planet and the other options, it seems like we got the best one. We got a good one. It’s pretty good. We can swim, fish, hunt. If you’re a vegetarian, there’s berries and stuff. I mean this is a good planet. It’s a good planet.

So the planet’s good, and you would think in a planet this good, that if you went somewhere in the planet, that you would have a good life, and it would be a good place to be, but the problem is when you get there, there’s people. Have you noticed that people, pretty much everything, they ruin it? People are the one variable that if we could extract it from the earth, it seems like everything would be better, right?

It’s not like all the police are chasing down the monkeys, you know, because they’re stealing stuff and killing people and battering their spouse. You know, it’s not like all the psychologists have all their appointments filled up with cats who do terrible things to other animals and don’t why. Really, we’re the problem. I was thinking about it. If you read the paper, that’s where all the bad stuff usually has something to do with somebody as a general rule, and people are terrible.

I would use the words that I would like to use, but those are cuss words, but you know what I’m talking about. People are terrible. Have you noticed that? I mean is this just sort of universal truth that people are bad? That they’re bad, that’s why we have locks and guns and cops and therapists and if you open up the phone book, the vast majority of everything in there is businesses, organizations, corporations trying to keep people under control because they’re out of control, trying to prevent people from doing things that they naturally would do, but we don’t want them to do because it’s awful.

Okay, that would indicate to you that despite the billions of dollars we spend and all the organizations we build and all of the police that we arm and all the jails we construct and all of the wars that we fight and all of the guns that we load, that still, it’s not any better. People are still terrible. They do terrible things to one another, and occasionally, they do something nice, and we give them a prize because we’re so shocked, right? “Like you’re a nice person. We’re gonna give you a button or you get to write a big check and be on the news. Like that person didn’t kill somebody. We should give them a button.”

And we just expect people to be terrible, and I tell you this, too. Some of you are optimists. “Just get over that. You’ll be so disappointed. Just give that up. Let that go, and be a pessimist. Expect the worst so if something good happens, you’re happy, and if not, you’re ready, okay? You’re ready.” Now the interesting thing is that no – everybody is trying to figure out how to fix us, right?

Everybody’s trying to fix the bad people, but the problem is nobody knows why we’re bad. Nobody knows what happened to make us bad. Nobody knows why we persist to be bad. That is exclusively the jurisdiction of Scripture. The Bible is the only thing that tells us where sin comes from. Actually, it gives it a name, sin. Tells us where it comes from, Satan and from in our own fallen hearts, and it tells us how to get away from sin and how to conquer sin and how to live differently than just being ruled by sin and Satan all the time.

As we get into it, John’s gonna talk about this and practically, he’s gonna get real pastoral. This sermon could get kind of intense. It could get a little brooding. It could get a little convicting, okay? So in the middle, I’ll tell you stories about my cute two-year-old son to give you a little interlude, but other than that, pretty much I’m expecting most of this to be a little tense, but I want you to stick with me. I want you to look at the human problem, not just the human problem, but your problem, my problem, our problem.

Why is that we rebel against God? Why is it that we sin? Why do we not trust God? What is wrong with us and how do we fix it? So he jumps in. He says – he starts with good news. 1 John 2:28, “Now dear children” – these are friends of God – “continue in him” – These are Christians, right? They’ve met God. They need to continue with God – “so that when he appears, you may be confident, unashamed before him that is coming.”

What he says is this. He’s saying, “You know what? Sin is gonna continue. It doesn’t matter how many wars we fight, how many dollars we spend, how many organizations we found. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do anything, but I’m saying that sin is just gonna continue. People do terrible things indefinitely. Some of you have lost hope. You look. You say, “I give up. I don’t vote. I don’t help. I don’t serve. I don’t care. I give up. It just doesn’t seem what we do, the world is a mess. People are a mess. I give up.”

Some people lose hope. Other people maintain sort of an eye of optimism. That’s why I love college freshmen. College freshmen are the last great optimist. “I’m gonna get a sociology degree and change the world.” No, you’re not, but you know because there’s other people with sociology degrees, and your prof tried to change the world, gave up. That’s why he’s your prof. He just gave up, right? Like, “Forget it. I’m gonna go to the freshmen because they’re dumb enough to pay. You know, they’ll think this will help.” You know, that it’s just gonna continue.

People keep sinning. So you’re left between this pessimism of “Oh, it’s hopeless” or this optimism. “We’re gonna fix it. Didn’t work. I give up,” and what we’re left with is a realism that says, “You know what? Sin is gonna continue. People will be broken and crooked and flawed. Bad things are gonna happen because people do bad things to one another until something dramatic, cataclysmic happens, and that’s the God comes. That’s what he says right here, that he is coming.

That’s the Lord Jesus. Until Jesus shows up and takes over and deals with sinners and saints and redeems everything and straightens out everything we’ve been in the process of making crooked. Until that day happens, there will be sin. There will be folly. There will be death, but what do we do in the meantime? Do we labor as optimists saying, “We don’t need Jesus. We can fix it.” Do we labor as pessimists saying, “Well, no. It’s beyond hope. Just get cable TV and sit there until Jesus gets back. There’s no need to get up because you can’t’ fix anything.”

What John is gonna give his people is this intense realism that until Jesus shows up, he’s still at work on the earth through this. It’s not that Jesus isn’t’ here. He’s here present working through our hands, speaking through our mouth, and caring through our hearts. So until he comes, we’re his masters. We’re his representatives. We are his children here representing him, and so our lives really do matter. We can’t just give in and give up, but we also can’t labor with the hope that we will fix everything apart from his coming.

And so it gives us this intense realism of how we’re to live our lives as Christians here in a fallen, broken, crooked world. He goes on. Then, he says that then we can be confident and unashamed before his coming, and that’s our goal. Do you guys feel that Jesus is coming back? I don’t know when, and don’t – when I say that, don’t get all scared like, “I got to get bottled water and can goods and hide in the basement.” You know, like – you know, I’m saying Jesus is coming back.

He came once. He’s coming again. They waited thousands of years to come the first time. Like the first promise of his coming is back in Genesis 3:15. They wait thousands of years. He comes. Now the promise is that he’s coming again. We’re waiting, and it’s been almost a couple thousand years. So we’re waiting again, but he’s coming again just as he came the first time. Now when he comes, he will judge sinners and saints. He’ll make all things new.

He will separate people who love him from people that don’t love him. There will be heaven and hell as eternal consequence for whether or not we’ve loved him, and he will straighten everything out. What John says is this: In the middle of life and sin and folly and death and our own struggles and toils and problems in our culture and nation, the one thing that we need to keep in the forefront of our horizon is that Jesus is coming back. Now we don’t know when, but we know who and we know why. Jesus is coming back to undo all that sin has destroyed and defiled, and what he says is that in the middle of this life, we need to just act and conduct ourselves as children of God in such a way that should he show up today, we’re not ashamed, but we’re confident that we are loved by God, and we’re not ashamed of the life that we’ve lived in his name.

How many of you right now, if Jesus came back and showed up at your house with a clipboard, “Hi. Sit down. How have you been doing?” “Oh, I would tell him I was gonna go get a ham sandwich and be back in a minute, sneak out the window, and run for my life, but he’s omniscient. He knows I’m really in a corner on this one.” You know, you got to ask yourself. You know, it’s almost as if you should conduct yourself as if Jesus were present because he might be, and the truth is he sees everything. So in one sense, he is always present.

So like we’re living life, and then, Jesus shows up. Oop, everybody look. Look holy. He sees our lives. You need to know that. This is important because the majority of the world doesn’t know God. They don’t live like people who know God. They want to have you join them in sin. If you don’t know that Jesus is coming and that you want to be confident and unashamed in his presence, you will give up your love for God and your life will be reflective of that.

If you know that he is righteous and that he is Jesus, holy and sinless and good, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. What he says is this: Christians act differently than non-Christians. Did you know that? Did you know that? Some of you say, “I know a Christian that acts just terrible.” That’s not a Christian. Some say, “I know a duck can’t float, doesn’t quack, doesn’t have a bill.” That’s not a duck. That’s an aardvark. I don’t know what that is, but that’s not a duck.

You know, God goes in. Holiness comes out. That’s a Christian. God doesn’t go in and sin come out. That’s not a Christian. If you know that he is righteous, you know that you should be righteous because he has made you righteous. Okay, we’re gonna get into this a little further. He continues in Chapter 3, Verse 1. “How great the love of the Father is ____.’’ Say, “Well, how do I be righteous. Do I got to do a lot of stuff to make God happy? Is he like middle management?

Is he out there with a clipboard keeping score? No, you are made righteous by the love of God. You act righteous by the love of God. God loves you. He forgives you. He lived a sinless life in your place, the Lord Jesus did, that he died for your sin. He rose. He took your sin upon himself. He gives you his righteousness, right? 2 Corinthian 5:21, “God made him who knew no sin to become sin so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.”

He took my sin. He gave me his righteousness. Now because of the Father’s love, through the Son’s death and resurrection, the righteousness of God has been given to you and I as a gift through the love of God. Do you know you’re loved? It’s a really sad world when people are running around just wanting to be loved, and they don’t know that they are. They don’t know that God is love. They don’t know that God loves them. They don’t know that God demonstrates his love for us in this. We are yet sinners. Christ died for us.

The whole point of Jesus is the love of the Father has been given through the love of the Son so that we might become the children of God. Do you know that? You say, “How can I be righteous? I’m not good.” You don’t need to be good to be righteous. You need to be loved, and it’s God’s love that then makes you righteous. It goes on. “That we should be called children of God.” Isn’t that great? How many of you don’t have a Dad, don’t know your Dad, don’t like your Dad?

How many of you knew that God is a Father, and he loves you, and he adopts you into his family as his children? Paul’s great language in Romans, you’re adopted into the family of God, that God is your Father, and God is a Father who loves you, cares for you. He’s for you. He’s a good God, and that is what we are. What a great declaration. Mars Hill that is what we are. We’re the children of God. We are the children of God. We’re loved given the righteousness of the Lord Jesus.

The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Now how many of you have become Christians and a non-Christian friends or family members think you’re nuts? Okay, you may be, but there’s another kind of nuts I’m talking about where you don’t live like you used to live. You don’t live like everyone else lives. You don’t think like they think. You don’t act like they act. You don’t speak like they speak. You’re different. That’s what it means to be holy.

Holy means you’re different without being sinful. It’s other. You’re different. That’s what he’s talking about here that maybe you were a person who used to go out and get drunk with all your buddies, and you became a Christian. You said, “I don’t get drunk anymore. I still want to be friends.” They say, “We don’t get it. What’s wrong with you?” Maybe you’re the person that was a pervert, and you had some sort of sexual sin. You became a Christian, and then, you stopped having that sexual sin.

You just put that to death. You said, “I’m not doing that anymore.” They say, “What are you doing, man? I thought you loved that. You’re all about that. You know, this is what you were. This is what you did. This is who you are. Be true to yourself, man.” It’s like, “No, but myself has changed. What I used to like, I don’t like. What I used to do, I don’t do. What I used to want, I don’t want. God has changed me. My desire are different. My appetite is different. You know, I don’t used to like – I used to like doing things that, now, I’m really embarrassed by, and I don’t want to do them anymore.”

And then, what happens is your family and friends that you would anticipate would encourage you and say, “Well, great. You met Jesus. That’s awesome. Good for you.” They go, “What is wrong with you? You’re not one of those Bible thumpers. You’re not going to Mars Hill. You don’t have the Ghost, do you? You’re not one of those born-againers.” You know, they just think you’ve lost your mind. Now what you need to be careful of in that point, friends, is not that you get defensive or antagonistic.

You don’t say, “Well, you’re stupid. You’re dumb. You know, hell’s gonna be hot. You know, pack some sunscreen. It’s gonna be terrible.” Because they don’t understand us because they don’t understand Jesus. How many of you have had a friend? You became a Christian. They weren’t yet a Christian. They thought you were nuts. They didn’t understand you. They became a Christian, and they’re like, “Oh, I got it.” That’s how it happens.

Don’t allow it to become personal. See there is propensity among Christians to either give in to the way that everybody else thinks and acts and speaks, the non-Christian way of life thinking, “Well, I just want to be accepted. I want to keep my friendships. I want to” – but no. That’s a sin. If he’s righteous, we need to be righteous. The other is that we get mad and angry and get all personal with people who disagree with us because they’re not Christians.

“You don’t understand. You’re stupid. You going to” – no. What he says is this. He’s saying that just as the Father has loved us, we need to love people. We need not do what they do and think what they think and say what they say, but also, we need not take it personal when they don’t understand who we are because if they knew Jesus, they’d totally understand us, and the problem isn’t that people don’t understand Christians. It’s that people don’t know Jesus, and if people knew Jesus, then they would totally understand Christians.

So our goal is as Christians should never be to get people to understand us, but to get people to meet Scripture because once they do, everything all will fall into place, and they’ll totally know where we’re coming from. He goes on. “Dear friends, now we’re children of God, and what we’ll be has not yet been made known.” Again, he’s got eternity on the horizon for us. What he’s saying is this: That one day, Jesus will come back, and he will right every wrong. He make all that is crooked, straight, all that is dirty, clean. He will fix it all, and that includes us.

Now he takes that overarching general principle here, and he becomes very personal with it. What you and I will be if we are indeed Christians has not been made known. Isn’t that great? Do you guys know what you’re gonna be like after you’ve died and resurrected like Jesus and your body is free from sin and the stain of death? Do you have any idea what that will be like? Because I don’t. I can’t imagine not sinning. I can’t imagine not being convicted because I didn’t have any sin to confess.

I can’t imagine working with pure motives that were tainted with pride or selfishness. Can you imagine finally being fully redeemed, glorified, done? See we have this impression that our sin nature and that fallen seed of rebellion from our first father, Adam, is our identity. “Oh, well, you’re a pervert. Well, you know, if that’s what you are, that’s what you got to be. Oh, well, you’re violent. If that’s what you are, that’s what” – we tell people things like this all the time.

Be true to yourself, and the great American morality is just be true to who you are. Well, the problem is who you are is wrong, and if you’re true to that, you’ll spend your whole life sinning because who you are, apart from God and apart from redemption, is wicked, and you don’t want to be true to that which is wicked, but people don’t know God. They don’t know that. People don’t even know what good and bad is. I can still remember being in high school.

They made this peer counseling group for high school kids because high school kids won’t talk to adults, but they will talk to kids. So who better to tell a 15-year-old what to do than a 15-year-old? I mean just – let’s just stack our ignorance, and then, we’ll have a huge pile of wisdom, and so they made me this counselor for high school kids, and the first thing it is they send me to a class, and I – it was so silly, but they’re teaching me how to counsel kids and this.

First thing you got to do, you got to give kids positive thinking. You got to give them good goals and objectives. So you got to tell them what a good person is, and then, they can be that good person. So they listed all these things. You know, self-control and no alcoholism and treat people with respect, and they listed all these things that actually are really, really good, and I finally just asked the lady. I said, “Have you ever met anybody like this?”

I mean I love this hypothetical. I love this hypothetical where I wake up tomorrow, and I’m tall and blonde and attractive. I mean I’m all for hypothetical, you know, but just realistically, like reality here on earth for the rest of us, have you ever met anybody that lives like this? And it was interesting. She said, “Well, not exactly, you know,” and I was like, “Okay, yeah, this counseling thing is gonna go a long way here,” but here’s the problem.

People who don’t know what they’re gonna be like in the end don’t know what to be like right now, and the reason we don’t know what we’re gonna be like, and the reason we don’t know what we’re supposed to be like in the interim is that we don’t know Jesus. Did you know that Jesus is a normal human being? We’re all abnormal. Did you know that? Jesus is eternal God, became a man. He lived a life as a perfect man. That’s what a perfect human being’s supposed to live like.

Everybody else is wrong. Okay, but we all get together, and we vote. We say, “We’re fine. We’re normal.” Well, that’s what abnormal people would do. Call a meeting and vote that they’re normal. Okay, that – right? That’s – that would be what an abnormal person would do. Jesus is normal. Everybody else is sinful and abnormal. He is sinless. He’s what a person is supposed to be like. You, when you become a Christian, you’re being conformed in the image of God.

You’re being made to be more like Jesus, and ultimately, just as he rose from death, you will rise from death, and you will be in his wake, and you will be imitating his pattern. Now what that means as well is when you hit that point where it’s all said and done, your identity as a Christian and your flesh, which is your seed of rebellion, will be separated. You are a human being with dignity, value, and worth apart from your sin and your rebellion, and in the end, through that death and resurrection, Jesus will take away that final flesh and rebellion, that seed of Adam that’s in us, and all that will be left is the image of the God and the child of God that we were made to be.

And what he says is, “It has not yet been made know.” You can walk over all of the earth. You can meet every person. You can find the best people, and they still don’t look anything like you will when God’s done with you. It’s where Jesus says, “No eye has seen no mind can conceive the good things that God has on the docket for us who love you.” Okay, that is faith.

Faith is trusting that, ultimately, life matters. We will see Jesus. We will be like him. We will be with, not that we will be God, but we will be human beings without sin who are in the presence of God, and the people who don’t know that, they live like the non-Christians because they don’t know where they came from. They don’t know where they’re going, and they don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing in the meantime, and that’s a life without hope.

He goes on to explain further. “But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is.” You will see Jesus if you love him. You will see him. Your faith will become sight. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 we’ll see him face to face. Guys, I want you to think about the fact of Jesus Christ looking into your eyes at the end of your life, and I want you to live your life in anticipation and preparation for that moment.

When Jesus comes back and he looks you in the eye, what are you gonna say? What are you gonna say? Will you say, “I know you’re righteous, but I just wasn’t down with that. Sorry.” He says to me, “In the end, many will come to me. Say, ‘Lord, Lord, here’s our _____,’ and he will say, ‘Depart from me. I never knew you.’” Others will come before him, and he will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest.” Right now, if the Lord Jesus came back and he looked you right in the eye and he said, “How’s it going? Do you love me? Is your life reflective of my work and your heart?” What would you say?

Could you be confident and unashamed? “No, Jesus. I know you love me, and I’m not ashamed. I don’t have a perfect life, but I tell you what. My life is under your word, and I have seen the power of your goodness, and I’m a different person, and life is better than it was, and I’m not ashamed.” That’s why I always do this with my kids. When they sin, I make them look at me. “Okay, look at me. Did you whack your brother with a hammer?” “Uh, no, didn’t do it.” “No, look at me. Did you whack him?” “I didn’t mean to.” “No, look at me.” “Yeah, I whacked him.”

That’s that whole issue. You’re gonna see Jesus, and it’s not gonna be – it’s gonna be intensely personal, guys. You were made by the Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ came to live and die, to rescue you from yourself. You now live, but his coming again, you will see him face to face. He’s gonna look you in the eye and the conduct of your days and quality of your life matters because you’ll give an account before him, and he says, “Everyone who has this hope in him, in Jesus, purifies himself just as he is pure.”

Those people who are looking forward to the coming of Jesus, those people are looking forward to heaven and knowing God. Those people, what they do in the meantime, they get ready. They purify themselves. See God is holy and righteous and good. We’re unholy and unrighteous and bad. So to get ready to be in his presence, we purify ourselves. We get cleaned up. You know, this comes out of the Old Testament concept of sin as defilement.

How many of you read the Old Testament? They have all these ceremonial washings and cleansing and all of these rules for cleanliness in the home and cleanliness on the body, and you say, “What’s that all about?” Well, they’re showing that we’re dirty, and that we need to be cleansed, and so purification was the Old Testament process where a dirty person would get clean. Spiritually, we’re dirty people, and God makes us clean through the death of the Lord Jesus.

How many of you have really even experienced this? You felt it when you sinned at some point. You just felt dirty. You felt disgusting. You felt defiled. How many of you, after committing a sin, maybe a sexual sin or getting drunk or whatever, you’ve literally taken a shower just because you feel dirty? Not that you are physically dirty, but your soul has been defiled. Your spirit has been defiled. You’re spiritually dirty, and you just feel it. You feel disgusting.

He says we need to be purified, clean. The way we get clean is through repentance, friends. I believe there are many doctrines that Christians are not proclaiming and practicing as they should, and I believe that perhaps chief among them is repentance. It is so common to tell you as the people of God to just love yourself and try without first telling you that you’re a sinner that needs to be cleansed before you’re of any capacity to honor God and serve him.

Here’s what it means as well. It tells us back in 1 John, “If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from our righteousness.” This is the purification process. The first thing that happens is that God, the Holy Spirit, convicts us of sin. How many of you have experienced conviction? You said or did something, and you just thought, “Oh, my gosh. That was wrong. That was terrible.” You’re convicted. It’s not condemnation.

Condemnation is to crush you. Conviction is to cleanse you. You’re convicted. Okay, then you move on to the next step, which is confession. You agree with God. You say, “God, I know the Bible. That was wrong. I shouldn’t’ have said that. I shouldn’t have thought that. I shouldn’t have done that. That was wrong. That was just wrong.” Maybe even have to go confess that to another person. Say, “I’m sorry. I should not have done that. I should not have said that. I’m not gonna defend myself. There is no excuse for that. I’m asking you to forgive me.”

The next step, then, is repentance. Repentance is things change. “I change. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t say that anymore. I don’t be that way,” and God’s grace and powers, it enables through the Holy Spirit. That was the topic of last week’s sermon to live this new and powered life. This is the process of purification, conviction, confession, repentance. How many of you, at the end of repentance, have actually felt clean? How many of you literally – I’d love to see some hands so that non-Christians can believe me on this.

How many of you have been through this cycle? At the end, you felt clean, refreshed, made whole like you got your first deep breath again? Like, you know, that’s dealt with. I don’t need to continue to do that and justify myself. I don’t need to get stuck in that same pattern. There’s new life for me here. There’s hope for me here. How many of you were liars? How many of you were thieves? How many of you were addicts? How many of you were perverts? How many of you were just arrogant? All of you. Me, too.

We’re all dirty. We all come with filthy hands, and because Jesus died for our sin, that’s the perfect sinless substitute because he rose in conquest of sin. He can cleanse us and purify us, and we can start over. Guys, I tell you what. There is nothing as a pastor that is sadder for me than someone who has made themselves dirty who continues to act dirty in an attempt to be true to themselves. That is American religion. That is American religion.

The religion of the Bible is that we don’t be true to ourselves. We be true to the Lord, and when we’re made dirty, we don’t continue to be dirty to stay consistent, but we get purified so that we could start over. That’s the essence of new life in Christ. Some of you don’t know that. You keep doing the same things year after year. You justify it. You blame others. You excuse it. You accept it as your identity. You believe it’s who you are.

Satan’s a liar. He’s told you a terrible lie. The truth is that you are a child of God. Okay, all Christians are children of God and that you’re loved, and that a clean, pure holy life is possible for you. He goes on. “Everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is law.” So now he’s gonna tell us what sin is. He’s gonna define sin. This is one of the most distinct verses on sin in the New Testament as far as a definition goes. Sin is the breaking of God’s law.

The Bible is filled with the demands and decrees of God. Sin is when we break it in word, thought, deed, doing what we shouldn’t do, failing to do what we should, doing the right thing in the wrong way with the wrong motive, speaking, acting in ways that are inconsistent with what God has said in his Word, which is consistent with his own character. Sin is the breaking of the law, but he gets deeper than that. He gets down to the motivation, and it’s the heart of lawlessness.

Okay, some of you don’t like anyone to tell you what to do. This is where children will not listen to their parents. This is where parents will not listen to their church elders. This is where church elders will not listen to the Scriptures. This is the United States of America. America is built on autonomy and anarchy. “I do whatever I want. I decide good and bad, right and wrong, and I do what’s right for me. You can do what’s right for you, but I will do what’s right for me, and who are you to judge me and who are you to tell me what to do?”

Isaiah says, “We each, like dumb sheep, have gone astray, each picking our own path and going off as we thought was a great idea.” That is American religion. Some of you think you’re smarter than you are. Some of you think you’re better than you are. Some of you think you’re God. You say, “I never said I was God.” If you don’t listen to him, you seem to think that you’re smarter and better than he is, and so you have replaced him with yourself, which would make you your own God.

Who makes the laws in your life? Who tells you what’s right and wrong? Who’s the umpire? Is it the God of the Bible or is it you, and if it’s you, then you are God. This is back to the very first temptation that was seduced to our father and our mother, Adam and Eve. You can be like God. You can know good and evil. You don’t need that God telling you what to do. You’re smart. You went to college. You know, you have ten books and a high-speed internet connection. You can do this all by yourself.

Okay, this is gonna get real heavy, and I’ll tell you a few stories here to give you a little interlude. I’ll tell you stories about my son, Calvin. My son, Calvin, is great. He’s two-and-a-half years old. I love him with all my heart, but he thinks he’s me, all right? That’s a problem because one of me is probably too many of us. Two is definitely an overabundance, and the one thing I’ve learned about my son is this: My son wants to be just like me.

How many of you fathers have noticed that? If you do something, that’s what your kids are doing for good and bad. Most of what drives you nuts about your kids is just an echo of you. Right, that’s the frustrating part. Like, “Oh, they drive me nuts when they act like me.” You know, like it’s like living with a version of yourself that got washed in hot water and shrunk down to a miniature size. Children imitate their father for good or bad. Okay, this is where he’s going with all this.

God is our Father. We are the children of God. What that should mean is we want to be like Dad. He’s loving. We’re loving. He’s holy. We’re holy. You know, he’s truthful. We’re truthful. We should want to be like Dad. That’s the point. That’s the point. Now I find with my son, and I’ll use my family as an example, not that I’m a perfect father like God is, but with my son, I’ve noticed that my son wants to be just like me, just like me.

The other day, he put on my big flip-flop sandals and my ball cap and his sunglasses. He can’t wear mine because they don’t fit on his head. So he’s got these little Winnie the Pooh sunglasses that he thinks make him look like a tough guy, and he comes up. I’m studying in my office, and he comes up at home, and he gets my keys, my truck keys, and then, he just walks away, and he opens the door, and he leaves. I’m thinking, “Better go check.”

So I open the door, and I go, “Hey, Calvin. What are you doing, buddy?” He says – he’s trying to use my deep voice. He says, “Taking the truck to Krispy Kreme.” It’s like, “Well, actually, you’re not.” You know, and I was thinking at that moment as I was meditating on this verse, I was thinking, “You know what? I don’t want to discourage that. He’s just trying to be like his Daddy.” That’s a good thing. I want to encourage that. I want to encourage him to be like his Daddy, but he can’t drive to Krispy Kreme yet.

So what I need to do now is I need to establish laws in our home for him to obey, and if he obeys those laws, then our relationship is tight, and then, he can grow to one day be a Daddy, hopefully, you know. Hopefully, I’m a good Daddy, and he wants to be something like me. So then, I start making rules. I say, “Okay, Calvin. Here’s the deal. You have a good idea, but you can’t drive the truck without Daddy. So Daddy’s gonna make some rules to teach you to do the things that Daddy does so that you can be like Daddy.”

“Okay, Daddy.” “So here’s the rule. There’s no driving Daddy’s truck without Daddy. Rule number one,” but then, I put him in the truck, and I showed him how to start it, and he sat on my lap, and we drove up and down the street, and I let him steer, and I’m teaching him how to shift, and I’m teaching him how to drive. The rules are not without Daddy because you’ll die, and now, what Daddy didn’t do. I’m not as good as God. I didn’t make enough rules. I only made rules about Daddy’s truck.

I didn’t make any rules about Mommy’s Suburban. So my wife, a couple days later, goes to drive her Suburban. It’s dead. The battery’s dead. So she can’t go anywhere. So I come home, and I go to shove the Suburban out of the garage, which Suburban’s a big car, and I’m shoving. I’m thinking, “Man, this is a heavy car.” So I shove the Suburban out of the garage, and I jump start it with the jumper cables from my truck, and I get it fired up, and as soon as I do, the radio comes on. The windshield wipers come on. The flashers come on. The turn signals come on. The air conditioning comes on.

My son had climbed into the car, put the key in the ignition, and hit every button in the whole Suburban, including the emergency break, which I didn’t know he had hit until after I had shoved the Suburban out of the garage. I drug a Suburban out of the garage, and I looked at him, and I said, “Okay, new rules, right. New rules, the rule is no playing in Mommy’s car and no touching any buttons.”

Okay, now the thing with the parent is this: You can’t discipline a child for something you haven’t taught him. That’s where the laws come from. The laws are the rules. You can’t just walk in and this is when the child’s young. “Hey, what did I do? Hey, what did I do?” Well, no. You got to teach the children. “Okay, this is wrong. If you do this, then there’s a consequence.” That’s what God tells Adam in Genesis. “You can’t eat of this tree. If you do, you’ll die. That’s the law. Don’t disobey me here. There’s consequences.”

So I laid down the law. No going in Mommy’s car without Daddy. No hitting the buttons. No playing in the car. Lay down all the rules. “Now, if you do, you’re gonna get disciplined.” “Okay, Daddy. Gotcha.” “Okay, we okay, buddy? Good, good, good, good boy.” Two days later, my wife’s battery is dead. My son climbed in the car, hit every button in the Suburban, killed it again. I come home. I look at him. I say, “Who am I?” “You’re my Daddy.” “Good.” We’re starting with obvious questions trying to establish who’s in charge, okay.

“Who are you?” “I’m Calvin.” “Good, good, good. Okay, now Calvin. What did Daddy say about Mommy’s car?” He was all happy to answer my questions. “No going in the car, no hitting the buttons, no.” I said, “Did you?” He’s like, “Aw.” First, he’s thinking like we’re doing a little quiz. No, we’re not. We’re doing a little discipline. I said, “So you broke all Daddy’s rules. Now you got to get disciplined.” “Yeah.” So this morning. I get up, and he tells me, “I did not touch the car yesterday.” He tells me that every day. “Didn’t touch it yesterday.”

Now this is your – okay, parenting is nothing more than Christianity on a micro scale. That’s all it is. You give birth. God gives new birth. Okay, now you got a race in parents. First thing you got to do is make some rules so that the children doesn’t destroy themselves. Same thing with God. He makes the laws, says, “Obey my laws. Here’s the Bible. Here’s the laws. Don’t disobey the laws,” and the laws are for one reason. They’re to promote life. Okay, God wants to bless you. My whole goal with my kids is to – I don’t have a lot of rules, but my main rules are we sum it down to this.

I said, “Okay, what are the two rules?” I said, “Obey your Daddy and have fun.” Okay, those are the two rules in our home. Obey your Daddy and have fun, which means if you disobey Daddy, it’s no fun. Daddy’s rules are to create life and health in a place where Daddy can enjoy the kids. The kids can enjoy the Daddy. We can all have fun and a good time, and as soon as you break those rules, you end up destroying what’s good. You end up creating chaos where there should be order, and nobody gets to have any more fun because sin has come in.

You guys need to know that’s your heavenly Father. He gives birth to you, new birth to you. He gives you laws and rules to protect you so that then he can enjoy his relationship with you. Your goal should be to be like your Daddy, which means you want to obey your Daddy’s rules. That is the heart of God. That is God’s intention. Some of you hear a law. You don’t understand that the God that you are being spoken of about is a Father. You are his children, that you are in his family, and all of his rules are to protect you, and if you knew your Dad, you’d want to be like him.

That’s the whole point, and I think we take ourselves so seriously, so seriously, right? “I have a cell phone. I’m an adult. I have an internet connection. I can drive a stick. I’m very important.” You know, I think God’s in heaven going, “Those are my flip-flops. That’s my truck. You’re silly. You’re cute. You’re crazy, but I love you,” and I think we take ourselves so seriously, and I think when it says that God’s a Dad, and we’re his kids, do kids sometimes take themselves real seriously?

And is Dad going, “Oh, that’s funny.” You know, he can pee, and now he thinks he’s like semi-divine because he got his diaper off. You know, like it’s cute. I believe that God is a Father who finds us quite amusing. He thinks we’re a little silly. We’re like bare buns running around the house, and he makes rules to protect us so that he can enjoy a relationship with us. We can enjoy a relationship with him, but I’ll say this, too, guys. God’s intention – I want to be careful on how I say this. How many of you are perfectionists?

Okay, I don’t know what you’re doing at this church, but what we’re not talking about is you being perfect, okay, because there’s a difference between your Father making a rule and you defying it with a heart of rebellion – “Forget my Dad. I’m not gonna obey him,” – and you being an imperfect person. There is a difference between a sin and a mistake. Some of you walk around thinking that God wants you to be perfect, which means if you spill your coffee, it’s over. Spilling your coffee is not a sin. It’s a mistake. Now there are mistakes that are sins, but I guess I want to differentiate between a sin, which is the breaking of God’s rules, God’s laws, and a mistake which is human beings make mistakes.

Okay, I never discipline my children for mistakes, only for sin and rebellion. If my kid is going to put his plate in the sink and he trips and drops the plate and it breaks, I don’t discipline him. His heart was he was picking up his plate, and he tripped. That’s not a sin. That’s not a sin. That is not a heart of rebellion against me as his Father. It’s a mistake. Some of you grew up in homes where you got disciplined for mistakes. So when you hear God is a Father, you’re just cowering like he’s middle management with a clipboard, and if you do anything wrong, then he’s disappointed. That’s not God.

God is a Dad who thinks you’re funny, especially when you take yourself seriously, and providing you don’t have a heart of lawlessness that just says, “Forget you. I disobey you. I defy you. I won’t listen.” Provided you have a heart that loves your Dad and says, “I want to be like my Dad. I want to obey my Dad. I want to be close to my Dad. I want to enjoy my Dad.” If you should make a mistake that’s not a sin, guys, calm down. It’s all right. Okay, God doesn’t want you to be, you know, perfect in that you never lose your car keys. You never spill your coffee.

He wants you to be holy, which means you obey him and love him. I’ll give you an example. My kids. They won’t go to bed. Why is that? When you’re an adult, if somebody came and said, “Go to bed,” you’d be like, “Okay.” Like if you were in your cubicle at work and your boss came and said, “You’re cranky. Go take a nap. Here’s some cookies and juice.” You’d be like, “Yes.” You know, you would never have the child – the child response is, “No, no.” You’re like, “Cookies and a juice and a nap. Praise God. This is the job I prayed for.”

You know, kids don’t want to go to bed. I don’t know why. There’s nothing going on. They’re not missing anything. So my kids the other night, I got four kids. Getting them to bed is like herding cats. They just – they won’t get in line. They won’t. They just stall and they, you know, they got to pee 75 times and, “Oh, I forgot something,” and I finally – we’re downstairs. I looked at them. I said, “That’s it. I’m done. I’m your Father. I’m gonna tell you to do something. You’re gonna do it, okay?” And I meant to say, “Brush your teeth and get your buns to bed.” What I said was, “Brush your buns and get your teeth to bed.”

So my five-year-old son literally falls on the ground, grabs his gut. He thinks this is the coolest thing. My two-year-old son gets his toothbrush, one of those electric toothbrushes and sticks it on his rear just to mock me. You know, I made a mistake. You know, I mean it was like I made – and you’re gonna make mistakes. You’re not gonna use your blinker. You know, you’re gonna make a mistake. What we’re talking about here is the person who ignores God, who disobeys God, who just rebels against God. We’re not talking about the person who loves God, pursues God, and is just not perfect.

Okay, I mean I’ll say this. Jesus was perfect. Does that mean he never lost his car keys? I don’t know, but if he did, would he have ceased to be God? I don’t know, but I think sometimes you get this picture of Jesus like, “My car keys are here, and it’s, oh, I got an appointment at 7:30 and” – like he never once ever like tripped like walking to school. “Oop, oh, I didn’t – oh, I tripped over a rock. Oh, I’m not God anymore.” You know, I – Jesus Christ was a perfect man. I don’t think that necessarily means that, you know, he never took a bite of his breakfast and it fell off his fork.

You know, “Oh, now we lost God.” You know, because that is not the breaking of the law, and that’s not lawlessness. That’s humanity. You guys understand the point I’m trying to make here. Some of you are so intense. Go to bed. Take your nap. Get your juice. What God is looking for is that you would love your Dad. You would listen to your Dad. You’d obey your Dad. You’d trust your Dad. By grace, you would want to be like your Dad, and if you should cross the line by disobeying his Word, you would immediately purify yourself by bringing your sin to Jesus and getting back in relationship with your Dad.

That’s a Christian. That’s a Christian. He goes on, and in him is – but you know that he appeared to – he might take away our sins. Jesus is the one who takes away your sin. Here’s a great thing. Everybody in the world agrees there’s sin. We’ll use different words. People say, “That’s a dysfunction. That’s a disorder. That’s bad.” You know, we’ll use different words. It’s sin. The only person who could deal with sin is Jesus because he’s the only one who has no sin in him.

Jesus, God comes, lives without sin, dies for sin. We give him our sin. He gives us his righteousness. Our sin is dealt with. Guys, there is only one way you can deal with your sin. That’s Jesus. You might find a lot of people in groups and organizations that can point out your sin, but their answer will always be “You can fix it.” You can’t. The God of the Bible is the only one who can take away our sin. That’s what John the Baptist says. You know the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That’s the only way to get that sin taken away is Jesus’ death.

No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Once you meet Jesus, you change. There are Christians who obey God, live according to his Word. When they cross the line, they repent and come back. There are non-Christians who are lawless in their heart. They disobey. They dishonor. They disregard God. People who really meet God, it shows up in their life. Their sin goes away. Does it say they’re perfect? No because we’re not perfect.

It says in 1 John 1:8-10. “If we say we’re without sin, we make God out to be a liar because we’re all sinners.” He’s not talking here about perfection. He is talking, however, about progress. How many of you have seen sin in your life die? Things you used to be totally controlled by, you couldn’t keep them under control. Now they’re just dead. You’re not doing them. That’s what he’s talking about. The alcoholic becomes the ex-alcoholic. The pervert becomes the ex-pervert. The liar becomes the ex-liar. The thief becomes the ex-thief.

That Jesus changes you. Now some people say, “Well, he just – he forgives me.” Well, he forgives you and he changes you. He forgives you so that your sins are covered, and then, he changes you so you don’t keep doing that anymore. You change. What he’s saying is you can’t meet Jesus and keep sinning. You can’t because Jesus came to take away sin. It’s antithetical. It’s impossible. It’s inconsistent. “Dear children, do not let anybody lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous just as he is righteous.”

What he says is this: There’s non-Christians and Christians. Christians read the Bible, love God as their Dad, and they want to be like their Dad, and they want to do what their Dad says because their Dad is living and good and trustworthy and what he has is blessing and hope and joy. Other people come along and say, “Well, you could be a Christian who sins.” There’s only two kinds of people is John’s point: People who love God and obey him, people who don’t. There’s not a third category in the middle of people who love God, but don’t obey him.

I would say that a lot of “Christians” put themselves in that place. Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey him.” You can’t say “I love God,” and sin. I love God and lawlessness. I love God and rebellion. I love God and defy him. No, you don’t. Every time my children sin, I literally ask this question. I look at them when they disobey one of my house rules, one of God’s rules in our house. I say, “Who am I?” “You’re my Daddy.” “Do I love you?” They always say, “Yes, you love me.” “Do you love me?” See that’s the question.

The question is not the conduct or the morality. The question is the love and the faith in the Father. My kids look at me, and they’ll say – my son, like he cries every time I ask him this question he’s being defiant. He says, “Daddy, I love you.” “Okay, then obey me. Then obey me.” The issue is you can not continually, habitually disobey Dad and say that you love him and you want to be just like him. There is no such Christian. There is no third category of defiant, rebellious, lawless child that loves and honors and relates to the Father. There is not that kind of person.

A lot of people say, “Well, Christians are no better than non-Christians.” Christians morally conduct themselves differently than non-Christians. The problem is not everyone who says they are a Christians indeed are. We dealt with that last week. People come in to the church, say they’re Christians. They’re not, and it shows up in their lifestyle. If you have never seen change in your life, you have not yet met Jesus. If you have seen change in your life after meeting Jesus, you should have great joy that you are a child of God and that the love of the Father has been lavished on you, and you have been given the righteousness of Christ.

“He who does what is sinful is of the Devil because the Devil has been sinning from the beginning.” He gets to the origin of sin. It started with Satan who is an angel. You know, Satan is not equal to God. He was a created being. He was sinful and rebellious and proud. He was kicked out of heaven as a lawless lawbreaker. He disregarded God’s decrees. With him, went a third of the heavenly host. They’re now demons, and they’re in the process of recruiting people from this earth to believe their lies and to be involved as fellow servants of their mission to overthrow God.

Did you know that? That our war isn’t just flesh and blood. The problem is not just people. It’s powers, principalities, and spirits, that there is a world behind this world. Did you know that? Did you know that that world is only dealt through such things as truth and prayer? It’s not just a matter of out-arguing or out-legislating people? They are in league with Satan. There are two humanities: Those who love God and those who love Satan. There are two humanities: Those who obey God and those who defy God. There are two hearts in that humanity: One that adores God and one that despises him.

There is one that seeks to be under God. There is one that seeks to be God. There is one that feels most secure in the hands of the Father. There is the other that only feels secure under it’s own lordship, and there is one that leads to life. There is one that leads to death, and there are many ways that seem right to a man, but in the end, their death, and Satan is a deceiver. He’s a liar, and he’s a trickster, and his attempt is to get you to think that Jesus will be willing to forgive your sins without you ever being purified in walking with him in holiness.

It is the myth of the third way. There are only two: With God or against him. That’s what Jesus said. “You are for me or against me.” There is not a third way that I am for you, and you are against me. There is no third way. He tells us not to be deceived, that many will give us this argument. You can be a pervert. You can be a liar. You can be an addict. You can be a thief, and you can do that habitually as a lifestyle, and Jesus will love and forgive you while you despise and ignore him. There is no third way. You are for him or against him. You are with him or you are rejected by him, very simple, very simple.

It’s down to the question of who is God, him or you, and if you think you’re God, ultimately, Satan is your God, and you are a puppet, and he is a marionette, and your life will lead to death while you declare your autonomy, your success, and your power. It’s because that’s what fools do. They pronounce victory in the midst of defeat because they have believed lies. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the Devil’s work. The only way to have sin and Satan and folly die is if you purify yourself by taking your sin, folly, bringing it to the Lord Jesus. He died in your place. He takes your sin. He gives you his righteousness. It’s the great doctrine of substitution and atonement, and all of a sudden, you’re in the family of God.

You’ve been rescued, brought from death to life, from lies to truth, and from darkness to light. No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God seed remains in him. He can not go on sinning because he has been born of God. How many of you have seen in your life change? You met Jesus and you say, “I can’t keep doing this. This has to stop. I can’t keep saying this. This has to stop. I can’t keep thinking this. This has to stop.” That is evidence of the seed of God, the seed of faith, the beginning of what yet is to come with the coming of the Lord Jesus and the fulfillment of our salvation, that that has been planted in you, and now it has taken root, and it is growing as life.

On it hang the fruit of the Spirit. You become a person of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, that that seed is in you, and it is now starting to bear fruit. How many of you literally have seen this? How many of you are amazed at who you are? Some years ago, you would have never conceived that you would be the person that you are today. That’s me. I was looking in the mirror the other day. My wife comes in and she says, “What are you thinking?” I said, “I’m thinking, ‘Who’s that guy?’ This isn’t the guy I grew up with. The guy I grew up never even conceived of spending his free time reading the Bible and getting all giddy. You know, the guy I grew up with didn’t conceive of sitting around playing with his kids and having out with his wife as the best day of his whole life. I don’t know who this guy – this is a different guy.”

That’s that new creation in Christ. You can’t keep on sinning. You say, “I met Jesus. Something in me changed. My desires changed. My heart changed. My mind changed. Things can’t continue as they’ve been continuing. I yearn and long for change. I’m not gonna defend myself, excuse myself. I’m not gonna blame other people. I’m not gonna just claim to be a victim. I’ll claim to be the perpetrator of condition of my own life and a lawbreaker, and Jesus, I love you, and I want you to change me, and I’ve seen your work. It’s amazing. Let’s keep going.”

That is a child of God. Here’s the good news. He ends on a positive note. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the Devil are. Man, that really breaks it down to two teams, doesn’t it? God, Satan, where are you at? Say, “Well, I’m not a Christian, but I’m not with Satan.” Yes, you are. Yes, you are. You are. “I’m my own person.” Really? Do you know where you came from? Do you know where you’re going? Do you know why you’re here? Come on. We can know who the children of God and who the children of the Devil are. It gives us two criteria.

“Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God.” First, it shows up in their actions. Okay, you can’t have – and it’s not that we become good people, and then, God takes the good guys to heaven. We’re all bad people, lawbreakers, rebels, and sinners, and that God loves us and that makes us good people, moral people. I’ll go further, worshipers. What he’s saying is that God goes in. Holiness comes out, and if unholiness comes out, that’s evidence that God never went in. Your life should reflect the fact that you belong to God. We can know who the children of God and Satan are by their life and by their love.

“Nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” The mark of a Christian is love. People curse you. You bless them. People get bitter against you. You forgive them. People hate you. You embrace them. Love is the mark of a Christian. It is the supernatural ability that God gives that we just don’t have on our own, and it comes from the spirit of God. We looked at the Holy Spirit last week. Paul says in Romans – I think it’s the fifth chapter – that the spirit of God comes into us, and he brings the love of God with him.

Friends, your life changes and your love changes once you’ve met the Lord Jesus. You want to love God. You want to love people. You hate sin, and you want to change. That’s the heart of a true believer. Those are the moral and social tests of salvation. I’ll close with this. Just give it to you real practically. Today is a great day for me. Today is my 12th wedding anniversary, okay, my 12th wedding anniversary. I was 17 years of age when I met my lovely wife, Grace. We saw one another for four and a half years. Got married when I was 21. I’m now 33. We’ve been married 12 years. We’ve been together 16 and a half years.

I’ve been with her half my life, half my life, and what I have found more than anything in a marriage is that I’m a sinner. Some of you are really concerned about marrying the right person. I would say focus more intently on becoming the right person to do that person a favor and give them someone that doesn’t drive them crazy. I have learned that in the course of this marriage that I am far more of a lawbreaker than I ever thought, and that the frustration between my wife and I is because she exposes things in me that I don’t want to deal with, and so then I, in times past, would get angry at her, would distance myself from her in the marriage because I just didn’t want to be a person that obeyed the Father in all areas and didn’t want to be like the Father, loving and forgiving and being patient and walking with and developing and taking responsibility for.

First couple of years of our marriage, I think it did quite a number on us quite frankly. I guess today what I would say is I’m not convinced that we would be married if I wasn’t a Christian, not that she would have done anything or left, but I would have ruined it because of selfishness and arrogance and pride, and me thinking that I was like God and I just knew everything, and what I’ve learned over the years, especially the last few years because the last few years for us have been, I think, definitely the most sweetest, is that, you know every week I get up and I tell you guys, and I have been now for almost eight years, that this is the Word of God, that it’s true, that if you love the Lord and you obey the Scriptures, and then, when you sin, take it right to Jesus and follow in his example, that your life will be blessed and it will be good.

Okay, I’ve told you that for years. I think in the last two years, more than ever, I’ve seen that confirmed as fact. Human beings sin against one another. My wife and I have, and we’ve seen what Jesus does. He died for that so we don’t need to kill each other. He takes that away so that we can have one another without the sin, whereas elsewhere, we’d have the sin without one another. At certain points where each of us is astray and we’re not serving and loving one another as best we can, I found continually that as long as we’re in the Scriptures and we’re reading, that God’s laws bring us back into that place where there is life and joy and health and purification and that God’s Word brings us back into the place that God blesses.

I know that some of you think that merely knowing a lot of Bible, you’ll live a really amazing life, and I guess as a guy who, even in his times of not loving his wife as he should, could have argued from the Great Text with you about the acts of Jesus of the original intent. It’s not enough just to have a good understanding of Scripture. It’s good to have a life that reflects a good understanding of Scripture, and I believe that what Paul – excuse me – Pastor John here has for us is he really wants you and I to look at our life, not to excuse ourselves like I have done, not to blame other people as I have done, not to justify ourselves, not to live as the world lives, to think as the world thinks, to act as the world acts, to speaks as the worlds speaks, but to look to the Father and ask ourselves, “What is my Dad like? What is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the perfect man, the example of humanity like? What would purification look like for me? What does repentance look like for me? What does the Word of God speak to me?”

And I tell you guys what. I mean I can honestly say this. I have believed since my conversion that the Word of God is true. More than ever, I am now convinced that it’s helpful. Still as true as it’s ever been, but now, helpful. There is no way that I would delight in my wife or my kids or this church were God not continually bringing me through repentance and arrogance and folly so that like a foolish kid, I could get back under the jurisdiction of Dad, the place that he blesses, to enjoy the life that he gives. I would just encourage you so much now.

I guess I would just implore you to not merely listen to the Word like James says and so deceive yourselves, but to do what it says. Do – am I with the Lord or against the Lord? Am I clean or dirty? Have I been purified? Am I trying to purify myself or have I brought my sins to the Lord Jesus who takes away my sin? Do I want to live a life with the Father? Do I want to trust that he is good and obey his commands? Do I want to live in that place that he can convict me so I can repent and be back into the place of joy, which is always the place that the Father intends for his children?

I just would compel you to investigate your hearts today, to look at your own life in a real sober assessment, but I don’t want to leave you there because you know what? Man, I’ll tell you. It’s amazing. There’s new life in Christ. That’s the point of the whole thing. I don’t care what you’ve done. It doesn’t need to be what you do. I don’t care who you’ve been. That’s not who you need to be. I don’t care what has happened. That doesn’t need to happen again. I don’t care what you’ve learned. There’s new learning. There’s new life.

There’s the love of God. There’s a fresh start. That is the beauty is that we can know who the children of God are and who the children of Satan are because we can love and live differently. What that means is we can love and live differently like Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father through the work of the Son. I want that new life for you. Jesus gives it. You’re gonna need to bring it to him. Okay, so we’re gonna give you this chance to savor the life that God has given you, for some to repent of sin, to begin their new life in Christ, for others to celebrate the change that they have seen, for others to repent of the change that needs to come.

We’ll sing and celebrate because we leave here with new lives in Christ. There is no reason anyone should leave here without more confidence in their salvation and be unashamed of their life because Jesus has forgiven them and dealt with it. We’ll partake of communion, which is remembering Jesus. It’s all about him. This is how it gets done. We will remember his body and blood in the communion. You can give of your tithes and offerings. You guys have been a very generous church. I thank you for that. If you’re not a Christian or a visitor, don’t give. For the rest, cheerful and sacrificial is what the apostle Paul says, and then, we’re gonna leave, and you know what we’re gonna leave here as? Children of God.

You know what we’re gonna leave here with? The love of God lavished on us. You know what we’re gonna leave here? Clean made pure, forgiven, and we’re gonna leave here to live and love differently because until the Lord Jesus comes, we go forth on his behalf, and so we want to go out there to live and to love, to give people a foretaste of his coming.

Lord Jesus, we look forward to the day when we see you face to face. God, we pray for our city and our friends and our families and our coworkers who don’t know you. We don’t look down on them in judgment, God, because we all have been in their shoes. We have walked in their path. We have committed their sins. We have partnered in their rebellion. Lord Jesus, thank you for taking our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh.

Thank you for opening our eyes to see the truth and our blindness. Thank you for loving us so much that you would humbly come into humanity and history as one of us to be tempted, to live, to die, to rise. Lord Jesus, thank you for your humility to stoop down and identify with us who have rebelled against you as lawbreakers and rebels. God, I thank you for your Word, that it points out those times and ways in which we are straying from you so that we might come back to our Father and enjoy intimacy with him and life forever in his presence.

God, I pray for us all that we would not leave here without having done business with you, that we would realize that the real problem, as Pastor John says, is sin that the sin is in us. Ultimately, we are really the problem and that the solution is not in us. It is in Christ, and in Christ, there is no sin, and so may we fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith. May we be confident that he is God and the only way to salvation and forgiveness of sin, and may we be unashamed.

May we live our lives in light of his truth. May we live and love as he did by the grace that he affords us so that we would be confident and unashamed at his coming, and so that we would know, God, that your laws, your Word is true, but it’s also helpful. It actually works, restores people to you, and restores people to one another in love. It makes a difference. God, it’s made a difference in our life. It’s made a difference in my life. I thank you for all of your continued goodness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.