Date: 2 March 2025, 9.30 am
Speaker: Ps Luwin Wong Sermon Text: 1 John 3:19 – 5:3
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TRANSCRIPT
One of the things you want to do when buy a Rolex to is to ensure that you got the real thing. You can never be too sure, because there are plenty of counterfeit Rolexes around trying to pass off as the real deal.
So here’s how you tell if your Rolex is authentic rather than counterfeit. Here’s how you can be confident that what you have is the genuine article.
Check for sound. Put the watch to your ear to hear if there is any ticking sound. Real Rolexes are completely silent. That’s news to me. I thought ticking sound was the heartbeat of a watch. I remember in primary school, my watch didn’t have second hand, so I was always checking my watch to hear if it’s still ticking. If my watch goes silent, I immediately go “eh, spoil already ah?” Apparently, real Rolexes don’t tick.
Check if the second hand moves smoothly. There should not be a jerky movement.
Feel the weight of the watch. It should be solidly heavy. It should feel substantial in your hand.
See the overall construction of the watch. There shouldn’t be gaps, it should look perfectly put together.
Ensure that there is a serial number etched on the side beneath the bezel.
Check the quality of the packaging it came in. If you look under the box, and it says, “Made in China”, you might want to bring it back.
If it passes all these 6 tests, you can be confident that your Rolex is real and not fake.
All these steps are redundant for me, personally.
If I ever bought a Rolex, I can be pretty confident it is a fake. Three ways I can tell my rolex is fake.
The first giveaway is that I could afford to buy it. That’s a pretty obvious sign that maybe it isn’t an actual Rolex.
The second was that the shop keeper allowed me haggle over the price. I asked how much, he told me the price, I said, “No, what’s your best price”, and he lowered the price. Real Rolex stores, you ask for best price, they say, “Sir, it’s the only price”.
The third evidence is that I checked the Rolex website and discovered that, there is, in fact, no authorized dealership located in Bangkok’s Cha Tuk Chak market, where I got it from.
When something is of great worth, when a lot is on the line, when stakes are high, you want to be certain, you want to be confident, that what you have with you, is the real deal.
And what can be of higher stakes, what can be of greater worth in this world, and even in the world to come, than our relationship with God, our faith in Christ.
How can we confident of the authenticity of our Christianity? How can we be confident that we’re the real deal?
How do we know, how can we tell? What are the marks to look out for? This is the reason John writes our passage this morning to the church; that we can have confidence in our Christianity, that we might be confident before the Lord, on the day of judgment.
Before we get into what John says, why don’t we pray.
“Heavenly Father, Jesus your son is the pearl of great price, our surpassing treasure. And our relationship with him is too great a thing for us to be nonchalant or complacent about. By your Holy Spirit, show us, from your word, how we might be confident that he truly abides in us, we in him, that we confident before your throne on that great and awesome day.
In Jesus name we pray,
Amen.
John says this:
1 JOHN 3:19-24 19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; 20 for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. 21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; 22 and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
This is about reassurance, this is about having confidence before God, and the key to that is to keep his commandments.
Is this therefore a ‘works based righteousness’? In that we must obey in order to be saved. No, we are not saved by keeping the commandments. We are saved by Jesus Christ, by our faith in him, by union with him. Not by works.
John is not telling us how we can be saved. No, he is telling us about how we can be confident that we are indeed saved by Christ alone.
He can be assured, we can be confident, when we are keeping his commandment. And what is this commandment?
1 JOHN 3:19-24 23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
A two-fold commandment: believe and love. Believe in Christ and love one another, which in this letter, refers the fellowship of believers – the church.
This is the commandment: Have faith in Christ and love the church.
What happens when we keep his commandments?
24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us,
Alright people, complete the sentence logically.
24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us,
“…by keeping his commandments.” That would be the logical conclusion, would it not?
A perfect parallel. Interesting, in ends this way:
24 Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
It’s almost as John is attributing our obedience, our keeping of God’s commandments as a work of the Spirit in us.
And a bit further down in today’s passage, John reiterates what we have just heard him say:
1 JOHN 4:16-18 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
Again, it is about confidence before God, it’s about not being afraid, and we see commandments at play again, believing in what God has done through Christ, and loving others. With love being the emphasis here.
We pull the various threads together, and what do we see we see three key ideas.
We have the idea of Confidence, of Commandment, which is two-pronged: Faith and Love, and we the Spirit.
Once again, we have the idea of Confidence,
1 JOHN 3:21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God…
1 JOHN 4:17 …so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment…
The idea of Commandment,
1 JOHN 3:23 And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
1 JOHN 4:21-5:1 …And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.
The idea of the Holy Spirit.
1 JOHN 3:24 And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
1 JOHN 4:13 …By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
Confidence, Commandment, and Spirit.
We pull all these small ideas together, and we get the following Big Idea:
We can be confident before God on Judgment Day, when we… Believe in Christ… And Love the Church… For this is the Spirit’s work in us.
Let’s look at each element in greater detail.
Let’s start with Faith. Believe.
The apostle is as concerned about what we ought believe, as he is concerned about what we ought not to believe.
1 JOHN 4:1-3 1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
Don’t believe everything you hear “in church”, or “at a Christian conference”, or even “online”. You need to be discerning, you need to test, because just like there are many fake Rolexes out there, many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.
When John speaks of spirit in this context, he does not mean that evil spirits have possessed the false prophets. He speaks of spirit with a lower case, “s”, referring to the human spirit.
The human spirit is that which motivates and animates one’s thoughts and behavior and speech. And a person can find that motivation in the darkness of this world or in the light of Jesus Christ. The spirit with which we speak, the spirit of our words, can either be worldly, or be godly. It can be Christ-affirming or Christ-denying.
These false prophets speak with a worldly spirit which denies our Lord Jesus Christ.
He carries on:
1 JOHN 4:4-6 4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
How do we tell whether someone is false prophet? Whether he speaks from the Spirit of truth or the spirit of error. Whether they are speaking from the world, or whether they speaking from the Word?
John says, do they listen to “us”, that is the apostles. The authorized messengers of Christ. Do they listen to the apostolic word, do they stick to the apostolic gospel.
In today’s context, the question becomes, “is their teaching, their preaching, based on the scriptures, rooted and grounded in the word? Or does it come from somewhere else – the somewhere else, of course, being the world?”
And the reason this is important is because it can be tricky to tell false prophets from faithful teachers apart. In chapter 2, John refers to these false teachers as the antichrist.
In movies and literature if there is antichrist figure is obvious to the viewer, and to the reader. He will look the exact opposite of a good guy, shrouded in darkness, a permanent scowl on his face, maybe even horns on his head.
But antichrist does not mean “the opposite of Christ”. It means in the Greek, “another christ, or a substitute Christ”, or we can say, “counterfeit Christ”.
Meaning they have a resemblance to Christ. They can appear godly, they can sound spiritual, they can even have religious titles bestowed upon them.
That’s the first thing to note about these false teachers.
26 I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.
They are deceptive counterfeits. In order for a counterfeit to be deceptive must look somewhat like the real thing.
These counterfeits aren’t fooling anybody.
Wanna drink mountain view? Play game child? Dave body soap? Use a Samzong phone?
When you buy these products, you know you are buying a fake. Nobody’s saying, “I thought it was Mountain Dew”.
For counterfeits to be deceptive, they must resemble the real thing rather closely.
So how do we tell that they are not genuine article?
They preach from a different “spirit”, that is –
they do not hold to the apostolic teaching of Jesus Christ.
The bible does not constitute the content of their teaching.
When Kian and Kianna were 8 years old, we took a holiday to Australia. And on Sunday, we went to church, and we thought, “we’re in Australia, let’s check out Hillsongs”.
So we attended the worship service at Hillsongs, and when we got out, I asked Kian, how did you find the sermon? He said, “Good, I could understand what he was saying, but not enough bible”. Right, not enough bible. Even a child could tell. Why? Because the focus was not on teaching the text.
Which is not to say it was false teaching. It was shallow, but within the bounds of orthodoxy, but without a concerted emphasis on the word, it can so easily veer off into worldly thinking, worldly values, worldly wisdom, with only a veneer of Christianity.
Let me give you a sampling of the most famous preachers in the world today.
Joseph Prince, arguably the most listened to preacher in Singapore, maybe Malaysia, some say Batam.
”Whatever your vocation is, you are destined to reign in life because Jesus is Lord of your life. When you reign in life, you reign over sin, you reign over the powers of darkness… so far so good… but hear this, you reign over depression, over poverty, over every curse, and over every sickness and disease. You reign over the devil and all his devices.”
There is no doubt elements of biblical truth in what he said, but reigning over depression, over poverty, over every sickness and disease? Where’s that from?
Which verses? These things are not promises found in the bible. These things are desires found in the world.
Joel Osteen, pastor of one of the largest churches in America.
“Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into you spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.”
I have no idea where he’s getting this. You can read the bible cover to cover and I can confidently say you will not find in it the concept of having “victory spoken over your life”, and receiving them and igniting “seeds of increase on the inside”.
I have read through the bible several times over and I no idea what he’s referring to. It’s not from the word. These are ideas designed to entice the world, they are from the world and of the world.
Paula White, newly appointed head of the White House Faith Office. The President’s spiritual advisor. In an interview in 2007, she said this: “Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan”.
Well, that is the gospel according to the World. Love yourself, be true to yourself, be yourself. It is not the apostolic gospel.
5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
You are either from speaking from the world, or listening to and teaching the apostolic word. That is how you tell truth from error.
I want stress this because I don’t know what has happened to mainstream Christianity in Singapore that the Bible doesn’t seem to be front and centre of our faith. You might say, well to be fair, the bible isn’t the centre of faith. Jesus is the centre of it all.
Yes, of course, but Jesus according to whom? Is it the Jesus of the bible, or Jesus conjured from our worldly imagination?
I was skimming through the Salt and Light website a few days ago, and an article published that day was titled
“How do I discern God’s will for my life?”
And I read it, and at the end of it, I went, good advice, but something’s missing.
So I used the search function and I typed in “Bible”.
In an article on “How I do I discern God’s will for my life”, how many times do you think the word “Bible” showed up? Zero.
I went, let’s try “Scripture”. Typed in scripture in the search bar. Zero hits.
Let’s try “Jesus”. Nada. Jesus doesn’t make an appearance.
Let’s be charitable, let’s try “Word”. Word shows up one time.
In a sentence that begins with “On rare occasions, we get a word in season…”
Is not concerning, people of God, when the Word of God is absent in our methodology to discern the Will of God?
Now, let’s be fair, I spoke to the author, I think she would say something like this, “of course the bible is important, in fact, it so important, I took it as read. I assumed the readers understood that bible is primary to discerning God’s will. I’m just giving them additional advice.
Fair enough. But read the New Testament epistles. Letters written by the apostles to churches, to Christians, some of them churches the apostles themselves have planted and pastored.
They assume the opposite. They assume the Gospel is no longer central, they assume the gospel has been neglected, they assume the Gospel has been forgotten.
They always reiterate, restate and remind the church of the word they have been taught.
It is that important. Because counterfeits abound.
You want to be confident that you know Christ, that you believe in Christ, that you are in Christ, make sure it is the right Jesus Christ, as revealed in the apostolic Gospel.
The command is to believe in Jesus Christ. Obey that command by believing in the right Christ, the biblical Christ.
We turn our attention now to the second imperative of the commandment. Love.
John gives love a comparatively a lengthy treatment.
1 JOHN 4:7-10 7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1 JOHN 4:11-12, 16-17 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
1 JOHN 4:19-21 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
From these verses, I want to distill five reasons for obeying the command to love one another.
WHY DO WE LOVE?
Because love is in our nature. Because God has set us an example. Because God’s love is our motivation. Because our love for others evidences our love for God. Because our love is our confidence.
Let’s take each one in turn.
Reason #1: Because love is in our nature.
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
Whereas strife and animosity are default settings in the natural man, it is not the case for the children of God. We born again of the Spirit, to bear the likeness of our Father, who is love. God is love. And those who are born of God find it natural to love the church.
The church is bride of Christ, meaning he loves her. If we are in Christ, if we adopted to be a child of God, we naturally love those whom he loves. And he loves the church.
Reason #2: Because God has set us an example.
7 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
17…because as he is so also are we in this world.
As disciples of Christ, we walk where he walk, we live as he lived, as he is in this world, so also are we.
God has shown us what love is, in the giving of his Son to us, God shown us the way of love, a life of love, that we live through him, live like him.
Reason #3: Because God’s love is our motivation.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
19 We love because he first loved us.
We love not because the church is lovable. Forget that. We love in the same way God loves us. God loved us, while we were unlovely, while we were sinners, while we were his enemies.
Perhaps you are thinking. Why should I love the church? The church didn’t love me.
Fair, I hear you. In my more cynical, indulgent moods, I feel that way about Hermon too. That’s where our belief of Christ in the flesh comes into play. The visible, tangible, incarnational, life of Christ in this world must be our guiding light. He died for us, he loved us to the point of death, for those who did not love him back, for those whose sins he bore he bore upon the cross.
We love because he first loved us. Look to Christ, look to the cross, for your reason to love.
Reason #4: Because our love for others evidences our love for God.
12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
Imagine going up to Dn Jiayi, and saying, bro, I love you, but I’m not too crazy about Rebekah and Ezzie. Those two, I cannot.
What do you think Jiayi would say? He’ll say, “Ugh, tell me about it”.
No, he’ll say, “That’s not how it works, Rebekah is part of me, Ezzie is part of me. You cannot say you love me, if you don’t love them. It simply cannot be the case. We are not separate entities. We are one.”
That is the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus that John records for us in this gospel, in John 17.
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me,
God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the church are one. Your claim to love God is only credible if you love the church. The horizontal and vertical dimensions of our love as Christians cannot be separated.
Fifth and final reason: Because our love is our confidence.
12 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.
Family of God, this is how we know our Christianity is the real deal, the genuine article, this is how we can confident before our God on the day of Judgement – because we love.
Let’s put it together.
1 JOHN 5:1-3 1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
Isn’t loving difficult? Isn’t love costly? Isn’t love sacrificial? How can it be not burdensome?
Yes, love is difficult, and costly and sacrificial, and it cannot be anything other than burdensome for the natural man.
But for those in whom the Spirit abides, there is a transformation in our hearts, a sanctification of our being. Such that love, while costly and sacrificial, becomes natural and desirable, rather than burdensome.
The key to loving therefore, is not to grit our teeth and do it, even though we dislike it? No abide in Christ, to rely on the Holy Spirit, to fix our minds on the love of Father.
1 JOHN 3:24 And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
1 JOHN 4:13 …By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
And as we live in this manner, a life convicted by the gospel, and effected in love for the church, our hearts can be assured that our faith is authentic, and we can stand confident before the Lord on that Day.
We can be confident before God on Judgment Day, when we… Believe in Christ… And Love the Church… For this is the Spirit’s work in us.
Isn’t that a blessed assurance to possess, isn’t that blessed way to live?
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