A. How many of you can identify this building? What is it? You’re right…The Alamo.
1. More than 2.5 million people a year visit the 4.2 acre complex known worldwide as "The Alamo."
2. Most come to see the old mission where a small band of Texans held out for thirteen days against the Centralist army of General Antonio López de Santa Anna.
3. Although the Alamo fell in the early morning hours of March 6, 1836, the death of the Alamo Defenders has come to symbolize courage and sacrifice for the cause of Liberty.
B. While my brother, Steve, and his family were living in San Antonio, we went and visited them and we also visited the Alamo. (Unfortunately, it was closed the day we tried to visit)
1. One of the things that strikes everyone immediately is the size of The Alamo.
2. It is amazingly small compared to the big place it has achieved in Texas and American history.
3. I’m told that around the walls are portraits of Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, and others associated with what happened there.
4. Near the main entrance is a painting with an inscription that says, “James Butler Bonham – no picture of him exists. This portrait is of his nephew, Major James Bonham, deceased, who greatly resembled his uncle. It is placed here by the family that people may know the appearance of the man who died for freedom.”
C. Brothers and sisters, our world needs a clear vision of God and the difference He makes in human lives.
1. Since there is no picture of God for them to see, we are called to be his presence in the world today.
2. We are supposed to “greatly resemble” Him so he can draw people into His kingdom.
3. This is both our privilege and our possibility!
D. With this in mind, let’s turn to the text and examine it.
1. In most of John’s exhortations that we have witnessed thus far, we have see that he has two goals.
2. The first is to expose those who distort the truth through their false teaching and sinful living.
3. The second is to reassure those who are staying the course in faithfulness to his teachings about Christ.
E. Last week we looked at John’s explicit denunciation of his opponents – He called them antichrists.
1. In today’s text, John’s goal is to build up his followers, strengthening their confidence before God.
2. For sure, he cannot set aside the threats of his opponents, and so he does address them some in today’s section, but the thrust of his message is to decrease the vulnerability of his followers by shoring up their assurance.
3. So, John’s goal is not to instill fear or threaten his followers with losing their salvation.
4. In 3:2 he says clearly that they are children of God right now.
5. Rather, he wants to encourage them to stay on the course in which they are already confirmed.
F. This passage is constructed in an interesting fashion.
1. Nine times the subject of the sentence is “everyone who” which is then followed by a Greek participle.
2. If we set aside the one that begins 3:3, then we end up with four antithetical pairs with the same structure and opposite themes.
29b – Everyone who acts righteously - has been born of God
(3a – Everyone who has this hope based on him – makes himself pure)
4a – Everyone who acts sinfully - is really doing sin
6a – Everyone who abides in him - does not commit sin
6b – Everyone who commits sin - has never seen him
7b – Everyone who acts righteously - is truly just
8a – Everyone who acts sinfully - belongs to the devil
9a – Everyone who has been born of God - does not act sinfully
10b – Everyone who acts unrighteously - does not belong to God
G. Now we are ready to begin reading today’s text from the Apostle John about our status, our empowerment, our security in Christ – truly our privileges and possibilities.
1. Here is his starting-point: “And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” (2:28)
2. Confidence and not shame at his coming? Boldness and not fear?
3. Is that how most of us have been taught to think of Christ’s return?
4. Oh, it will be a frightening and terrible event for those who have resisted and battled against God!
5. But that’s not how it will be for God’s family for whose sake Jesus died, for whose sake he lives now to intercede and to empower (cf. Rom. 5:8-11).
6. Jesus won’t be returning to condemn his followers but to claim them, not to evaluate but to elevate!
H. I know this isn’t the scene of Christ’s return from popular novels nor from evangelistic preaching.
1. But I think that the best way to draw people to God is not to tell them how scary hell is, but to tell them how great God’s love is.
2. Fear has been way oversold as a motive to holiness!
3. More often than not, it is at best a short-term motivation for buying fire insurance and an utter failure as a lasting motivation for holiness.
I. Some of you are familiar with the musical Man of Lamancha.
1. It is the story of Don Quixote, the weird character who jousts with windmills and envisions himself as a knight slaying dragons.
2. The most poignant part of the musical is his relationship with Aldonza.
3. She was a woman of immorality, the town prostitute, and to many, just human trash.
4. To Don Quixote, however, she was Dulcinea – a new name that means “Sweet One.”
5. The townspeople would howl with laughter when the crazy knight called her by so tender and flattering a name.
6. But he never relented. To him, she was always and only “Dulcinea.”
7. He loved her with a pure love that was unlike any she had ever known.
8. He refused to see her as others did.
9. Near the end of the musical, Don Quixote is dying; Aldonza is with him.
10. When he has taken his last breath, she begins to sing “The Impossible Dream.”
11. It is an inspiring song that dares the human spirit to dream, to soar, to achieve.
12. As the last note of the song fades away, someone shouts, “Aldonza!”
13. And the woman stands up and defiantly says, “My name is Dulcinea!”
14. She had been transformed by the kindly love of a would-be knight.
15. The woman utterly without self-respect had come to believe she was a lady – a lady who deserved to be treated with dignity.
J. Brothers and sisters, although we used to be “Aldonza,” God has declared that we are “Dulcinea.”
1. John declares that we are lavishly loved by God.
2. We are in Christ. We are a temple for the Holy Spirit.
3. And if life has labeled us unflatteringly, God’s voice calls us, “My precious child!”
4. If you have been taught to label yourself “loser, unlovable, worthless drunk, hopeless addict, sexual pervert, hypocrite church-member”, or whatever else, hear John speak of the confidence you are entitled to have as someone who has been born from above.
K. First of all, our assurance in Christ is the simple fact that we have been bought by his blood, that we have been given a relationship with the Father through the one and only perfect Son of God.
1. But secondly, our assurance arises from the transformation that comes from learning how to participate in the life of the church that God has provided for our growth in righteousness.
2. Look at verse 29ff, “If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.”
3. We must be very careful with this paragraph.
4. Some of us have had it interpreted for us in legalistic terms rather than as John wrote it.
5. This is not a text about how the lost get saved. No, it is about how the saved learn to live their new status.
6. This is not a statement of the ground or condition of being born from above? No, it is a description of the lifestyle that bears witness to being born from above.
7. The “righteous” person who “does right” is no more and no less than the Christian who is learning to live in the light of obeying the commandment to love his sisters and brothers.
8. This dream text for legalistic teachers is obviously a nightmare text for their gullible pupils.
9. But this is not a “legal text” about getting saved; it is a “relational text” about the obvious truth that those who are loved by God, and who have the hope of being made like Him, want to prepare themselves by purifying themselves, just as he is pure.
10. Because we have new identities in Him, we have to learn how to live as changed people.
11. Because we cannot do it alone, the Holy Spirit is the empowering agent for spiritual metamorphosis in us.
12. And “metamorphosis” – the word we use to describe a lowly caterpillar’s change into a lovely butterfly – really is the correct term.
13. As God transforms our personalities and behaviors, we become living witnesses to his divine power.
14. The security we have as God’s children has enabled transformation to become a reality in our lives.
15. Aldonza is being transformed into Dulcinea.
L. Now, to the degree that strife, division, and hatred are allowed to infiltrate the family of God, Satan gets a foothold to challenge both God and those he is in process of transforming.
1. So the deceivers and false teachers whose reinterpretation of the gospel John knew about were particularly worrisome to him.
2. They did, in fact, introduce strife, division, and hatred into churches. In doing so, they revealed their demonic parentage.
3. Look at verse 4ff, “ Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” (3:4-10)
4. How has the devil sinned “from the beginning”?
5. In the paragraph that begins with verse 11, John will speak of the hatred of Cain for Abel.
6. Just as Satan seduced Eve and Adam to sin in Eden, he also pursued that first human family after its expulsion from the garden.
7. He succeeded in getting Cain to commit murder!
8. The Son of God was revealed to destroy and reverse hatred and murder into love and righteousness.
9. And the specific righteousness John has in mind here is the promotion of healthy relationships within the church.
10. So the question “Do you love God?” is reduced to “Do you love God’s children”? Sometimes we try to make religion so complicated!
M. The story is told of a third-grade Sunday School class whose teacher had built her lesson around the fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.”
1. As she developed her lesson, she asked, “We’ve been talking about our mommies and daddies, but does anyone know a commandment about brothers and sisters?”
2. One little girl’s hand shot into the air, and she said, “You shall not kill.”
3. She was more on-target than either she or her teacher may have realized that day!
4. The righteous commandment of God is that we are to love one another, and Jesus himself taught that anger toward our brothers and sisters makes us guilty of murder (Matt. 5:21-22).
N. Is John saying in this passage that real Christians won’t sin? Well, the truth of the mater is that we will certainly sin against each other.
1. We will get angry. We will judge motives. We will let our tongues get out of control.
2. In our families, in the workplace, in serving together through the church – we are fallible enough that we will sometimes offend and sometimes take offense.
3. What John said at 3:9 does not contradict what he had already written at 1: 8 and 1:10.
4. In the first chapter of this epistle, he has already acknowledged that Christians sometimes commit sin.
5. To deny as much would be both to deceive ourselves and to call God a liar.
6. So when he writes in chapter 3 that people who have been born from above “do not sin” and “cannot sin,” he is saying only the obvious: Christians do not pursue sin, make excuses for sin, nor defend our failures and sin.
7. To the contrary – especially in the matter of our relationships with one another – we confess our failures and seek reconciliation.
8. We may be guilty of wrongdoing against one another and live through periods of alienation from one another.
9. But hearts in tune with God will eventually break over such things and move back toward one another.
10. Otherwise we would be guilty of the sort of conscious, deliberate, and persistent sin for which there is no forgiveness (cf. Heb. 10:26).
O. The movie, Forest Gump, is a rather raw movie, and for that reason I wouldn’t recommend it, yet it has some profound lessons.
1. At one point in the movie, Forest, the retarded and physically handicapped man is thinking back to his first day of school.
2. The little boy with a marginal IQ and braces on his legs suffers the sort of cruel rejection other kids can remember from classmates.
3. Nobody on the bus is willing to share a seat with Forest.
4. Then a pretty, blonde-headed girl says, “You can sit here if you want.”
5. Forest recalls, “I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life, she was like an angel.”
P. If John is right, and I believe he is, then as Christ’s people we have tremendous privileges and possibilities.
1. We can become the kind of people who make room on the bus for one another, who bear with one another’s failures, who overlook one another’s peculiarities, and who intervene lovingly to rescue one another from sin.
2. We become like angels – God’s “ministering servants.”
3. We are privileged to – from the security of our own salvation – stand in the light of God’s love in order to reflect it to others.
4. We have the possibility of being done with sin, and being pure like Him.
5. We are God’s children and His love has been lavished on us.
6. We can become children who “resemble Him greatly.”
7. Praise God for these privileges and possibilities!
Q. Are you ready to embrace and pursue these privileges and possibilities?
1. If you are not yet a Christian, please know that God loves you and is calling you.
2. If you are a Christian, then please know that God loves you, too. He believes in you. He is not done with you yet , so don’t give up on yourself, and don’t give up on others.
3. Let’s embrace the privileges and possibilities that are only found in Christ Jesus.
(Resources: The NIV Application Commentary on the Letters of John; Rubel Shelly. “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”)
