Living the Life Series: The Test of Fellowship
Scripture Reference: 1 John 1:3 - 6
Introduction
Last week’s game between the Washington Redskins and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was an awesome game. It appeared in the first half of the game that the Redskins had showed up to play having got out to an early 13 – 7 lead. It appeared as though the Super bowl champs of last year, the Bucs were going to be played like chumps in this present year, by the Skins.
But that was before half time, after half time was a different story with what appeared to be a different Bucs team. We don’t know what was said in the locker room, but it was translated into excellent play on the field.
We don’t know what new plays he introduced in those brief 12 minutes in the visiting teams locker room, but its impact was felt with 28 unanswered points. They beat the Skins in their own backyard.
Today, this Sunday, for you is half time. You have come from the field called the world. The playing may have been rough and the opponent was sure enough tough. You have come in with the sweat of sin all over you and the dehydration of the spirit within you.
Some of you come in here with your head hung low and your heart heavy because it doesn’t look good out there. Others have coming upbeat because where you were playing things are looking pretty good.
Some of you your uniform (the armor of God) has seen some better days. But let’s be honest some of us didn’t play this past week. Just be warned, your number will be called.
I pray that the play called in here from the Scriptures will translate into you being victorious out there. My prayer is that something in here will impact you in such a way that you will go out there (school, work, neighborhood, etc.) and win knowing that although we are the visiting team we still have the advantage.
Greater is He that is in us, then he that is out there. I have been trying to get across to you that God has done so much for us so that we can live and not die. That is the lifestyle; the choices that we make ought to lead us to live the life God intended for us to live.
He wants us to live in contradiction to how the world lives. The world in general is walking the death march. God has given us life in abundance not for self-satisfaction, but for His-satisfaction. Growth is taking place in you when it is a lot less about you and more about Him.
But you are asking, Pastor, how do I know that I am living this life? And I will answer, it all goes back to how’s your fellowship with God and your relationship to sin.
Transition
Last week we learned some exciting things that sonship with God and our fellowship with God has brought us. First, our sonship and fellowship assures us that Christ was the real, legitimate expression of God’s love towards. We then picked up on the fact that this acknowledgement from John to us helps us to have the fullness of joy.
The sonship and fellowship in God makes clear the legitimacy of Christ existence in both body and spirit, the fullness of joy, and the light of God shining upon us as we walk with Him regularly being cleansed by the blood of Jesus from every sin.
We found that you cannot say that before Christ you had no sin and after Christ you have not sinned because John made it clear that that would make us deceivers and liars.
But if we confess, that is stand in agreement with God that what He declares is wrong --- is wrong, then there awaits us forgiveness and cleansing from every wrong.
And in the act of living as God has spelled out in the Scriptures, then when we would sin again, Jesus pleads for us before the Father. Remember, He is the one who took God’s wrath against our sins upon Himself, and brought us into fellowship with God in the first place.
Now after all of this John foresees a question that will be raised by the recipients of this letter. The question: How do we know if we really know God? One translation of the Scriptures puts it this way, “How can we be sure that we belong to Him?”
John is going to give the answer in the twenty-nine verses of chapter two to that question by presenting seven tests. The first test is covered in verses three to six. See if you can pick out the test as I read the verses again (Reread – 1 John 2:3 – 6). Did you see it?
The keeping of Christ’s commandments evidences the proof that one really knows God. That is by looking within yourself, are you really trying to do what he wants you to do?
I. Obeying His Commands (v. 3)
A. We Know Him
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.
The know in verse 3 is very interesting because it is connected in a covert way the idea of knowledge obtained by experience. This knowledge that we know Him is knowledge gained by experience day by day, experiential knowledge gained from the experience of keeping His commandments.
Watch this, you can’t know who I am if you have never hung out with me on a regular basis. If you judge me by a one-time experience then you only have information at that moment in time. But that piece of information at that moment cannot tell the story of who I really am or what’s in my heart.
Nobody can know you just by talking to you one time or hanging out with one time. Here is another thing to add to the equation, can’t no one really know you from someone else’s experience with you. What someone else tells you about another still does not qualify knowledge by experience.
John is informing us of this, that we can really know God by spending time with Him regularly and one the ways we spend time with Him is by keeping His commands.
Keeping His commands helps to provide the experience of knowing God because it is in the keeping of those commands that he reveals Himself more and more.
“We know Him” is egnôkamen auton. The verb is perfect in tense, referring to a past complete act having present results. That is, if we are keeping His commandments, we know that we have in time past come to know Him with the present result that that state of knowing Him is true of us in the present time.
Listen, I what I knew about God when is helping me in my right now…
One teacher put it to his student this way, “Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in doing so you will, in good time, discover the hidden things which you inquire about.’ To know about Christ, to understand the doctrine of His person and work is mere theory; we get to know Him and to know that we know Him by practice of His precepts.
Listen, you can have the understanding of God by hanging out with Him just today, but you will never really know Him if you don’t experience this on a daily basis.
If you just think you know God then you will think that He is a hater, when He is really a lover.
If you just think you know God then you will think that He is only present in your good times when He is just as active in your tough times.
If you just think you know God then you will think that He is only concerned about the major things in your life when He is just as concern about the small things.
If I want to get to know you, I need to make myself available to you, reach out to you in a friendly way, and show an interest in you. But that will accomplish very little unless you are willing to reveal yourself to me. You are the key.
You decide whether or not I will ever get to know you. If you want me to know you, you will open up and tell me about yourself—what you are thinking, what you really believe, what you are feeling.
You will be yourself in my presence, that is, act in a normal manner consistent with your true personality. You won’t put on airs, wear a facade, mask your true self, or always put your best foot forward.
One reason some Christians enjoy so few genuine friendships is that they are afraid to let people know them, afraid they wouldn’t be liked or trusted if anybody knew the real person inside.
So they play the old game of cover-up. God is not like that. He wants to be known. He is confident that the better we know Him, the more we will love Him, trust Him, worship Him, and serve Him.
So He takes the initiative and opens up. He tells us about Himself. He reveals Himself to us. It has to be that way. There can be no personal knowledge of God unless He makes Himself known.
B. We Obey Him
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.
Now the word “keep” or “obey” in that verse speaks of something that all of us need to grab hold of. This is not just for information, but application as well. That word “obey” or “keep” in some translations means to “to attend to carefully, to guard, observe.”
The word does not merely speak of the act of obeying His commands, but of a attentive desire that we do not disobey any of them but on the other hand, that we obey them perfectly.
It should be our desire that we don’t miss God in anything that He asks us to do. And what He does ask of us we want to do it without flaw. This ought to be a continuous action on our part because we are of the family of God.
The term “command” in the verse does not point back to the law like the Ten Commandments give by God to the children of Israel in the wilderness, but it points to the instructions given by Christ to His disciples.
The term could mean “an order, charge, command, or precept.” The precepts (commandments) are those given by our Lord either personally while on earth or through His apostles in the New Testament Books.
Thus, a attentive guarding of the precepts of Christ, a consuming desire that they be honored, a passionate determination that they always be kept, is a proof gained from experience, that that person has come to an experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus and is at present in that state of knowing Him. This experiential knowledge is in contrast with and opposed to a mere theoretical knowledge of His Person.
4 The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him
So that means that verse four is the converse of verse three. That is, if you are not attentively guarding the precepts of Christ with a consuming desire that they be honored with a passionate determination that they always be kept, producing the experience that you now have of knowing Him, then you are lying about your relationship.
Let me say what I should have said a moment ago, if you say that you are experiencing God but don’t do what Christ tells you to do then you are lying about your relationship. Your experience is then illegitimate. He who claims to know God yet live in disobedience is a liar.
Your quality of life is built upon if you are living the way God wants you to live. You will never really know God if you do what you want to do with your life. Which brings to the table a question that must be answered by all of us, “Do we really want to know God?”
Illustration --- Have you ever met somebody who said that they know somebody famous?
C. We Love Him
5 But if anyone obeys his word, God’s lovec is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
Anyone destroys the teaching and thinking of the Gnostics who believed that special knowledge was only limited to the intellectual superior.
This message applies to anybody in here who is a Christian in general, but specially it doesn’t matter if you are a new Christian, an older Christian, an in between Christian; pastor, deacon, usher, musician, teacher, or hospitality worker.
If anyone obeys his word (continual action), will learn to love God more and more. It is in the act of consistently doing what He asks that my love grows. Don’t miss this verse seems to form an unbroken circle --- the more I do what He says, the more I love Him and the more I love Him, the more I’ll do what He says.
And when this happens then we know by experience that we are in Him.
D. We Live In Him
5 But if anyone obeys his word, God’s lovec is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
Underline the statement “live in him” in verse six. That phrase refers to more than just a position. When you say that you live in a house, you are not merely referring to the fact that you are a homeowner. In that house you stay, you sleep, you eat, you bathe, you rest, you communion with family members, you seek harmony there.
So John is saying that if we live in Him there must be more evidence than my salvation experience. There should be some evidence that I am a Christian. To live in the Lord Jesus therefore implies not only position, but relationship. It implies fellowship, friendship, dependence, harmony, communion.
It would be a mistake to equate the concept of being “in Him” as John uses it here with the Pauline concept of being “in Christ.” For Paul, the words “in Christ” describe a Christian’s permanent position in God’s Son with all its attendant privileges.
With John, the kind of relationship pictured in the vine-branch imagery describes an experience that can be ruptured (John 15:6) with a resultant loss of fellowship and fruitfulness.
Thus here in 1 John, the proof that a person is enjoying this kind of experience is to be found in a life modeled after that of Jesus in obedience to His Word. In short, 2:5-6 continues to talk about the believer’s fellowship with God.
Conclusion
What is the plan in the second half…we are challenged to know Him, obey Him, love Him, and live in Him.
The reciting of the 23 Psalm by the old man and the Seminary student…
