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The World Overcome! | 1 John 5:1-5 (Mark Evans: 3-24-2024)
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In this sermon, the speaker discusses the topic of overcoming the world as a Christian. He starts by emphasizing the importance of genuine faith in Jesus Christ as the first step towards victory. He also highlights the significance of love for God and for fellow believers as vital signs of genuine faith. The speaker emphasizes that Christians have already overcome the world through their faith in Christ. The main point is that victory over the world belongs to Jesus Christ, and Christians can have confidence in this victory. If you have your Bibles, do make your way to the letter of 1 John as we continue on in this wonderful epistle and we start chapter 5 today. And so for our Scripture reading this morning and where we'll spend our time will be 1 John chapter 5, verses 1-5, 1 John 5, verses 1-5. These are the words of the God who has overcome the world. 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. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? While the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we indeed praise You for what we have just read that You through Your beloved Son have overcome the world doing that which we could never do. Father, we pray that this truth would fill up our hearts, that You would give us ears to hear, that You would give us the eyes to see. The victorious King, risen, ascended, seated at Your right hand and making all enemies His footstool. And we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. Many may be seated. Well, how do you overcome an enemy that you cannot see? How do you overcome an enemy that seems to be an unstoppable force with nearly unlimited resources? How do you overcome a foe that is as popular as it is powerful, a foe that you once loved and it loved you? How do you overcome an adversary that seems to have the entire world on its side? Because this enemy that I speak of is, in fact, you probably guessed, the world itself. How do Christians overcome the world? And perhaps you've never thought to ask yourself that question. All right, just think for a moment. If you were asked to jot down on a piece of paper and list out all of your enemies who would be on that list. Maybe certain people come readily to mind. Maybe certain groups come to mind. Or maybe you say, no, I have no enemies. I'm a perfect friend to everyone and everyone is a perfect friend to me. Well, consider God's Word lays out with great clarity that the Christian is always engaged in mortal combat with no less than three enemies. Those three enemies would be, firstly, the flesh, that is our fallen nature, our corrupt nature and our indwelling sin. The second enemy, of course, would be Satan himself and how his legions oppose God's kingdom. But the third member of this unholy trinity whose scripture says is the Christian's perpetual enemy is simply termed, the world. John has already spoken of the world in 1 John, remember from chapter 2. He told us to not love the world, namely, the lust of our flesh, the lust of our eyes and the pride of life. Well, this morning, the apostle John has even better news for the Christian in relation to the world because he says this morning that the ordinary Christian has already overcome the world. Not just that we should overcome the world, even better than that. The ordinary Christian has already overcome the world. How our victory over that enemy is already secure. So we'll see quite clearly how that the battle belongs to the Lord in every way. All glory, all honor of this victory goes to our commander-in-chief, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we'll walk through this short text in two parts, which is look firstly at the vitals of faith and secondly, the victory of faith with the very simple main point, which is that in Christ, Christians have overcome the world. So let's dive in. Firstly, we ought to notice John's order here, that before John speaks of victory, he first begins with the diagnostics of faith, what does genuine faith look like? And only after that, he speaks of victory. It's often said that success goes to the head. Victories inflate the ego, even as Proverbs says, a man is tested by his praise. So pay attention. John does not begin by declaring victory. No, he begins by saying, first things first, are you a genuine Christian? Are you really in Jesus Christ? Let's answer those questions first and only then can we speak of victory. And you see that truth right away in verse one. John's going to give us two of his favorite diagnostics of genuine faith. He says there, firstly, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. One of the great misunderstandings of modern evangelicalism is that man first believes and then he's born again. Man makes the first move. It's man who walks down the aisle. Man commits his life to Christ. He receives Jesus into his heart as his personal Lord and Savior, as the expression goes. And then he's born again. But notice John's order here. And let's pay attention to these verb tenses. Because John says in verse one, that belief in Christ is because man has been born again. That faith is the consequence, not the cause of new birth. Faith is the result of regeneration. That makes sense because as we are dead in our sins, God must cause new birth. He must perform his radical heart transplant, cutting out our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh. As John says elsewhere, God loves us and then we love God. And that is good news, isn't it? If my relationship with God hangs upon me making the first move, then I've got as much chance as does a corpse from walking out of his grave. Secondly, John also says in verse one, that everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. Now remember, we're thinking in terms of vital signs of genuine faith. To use again the morbid analogy, say you come across a fallen body and you've got to determine, is this person alive or dead? Well, you probably know to check some really basic vital signs. Does this person have a pulse, a heartbeat? Are they breathing? Is their skin warm or is it ice blue, right? You don't need a medical degree to discern these things. Well, here's John with his first spiritual vital sign, that was faith in Christ. And now you can add the second vital sign and you could put it in one word, the word love. How do I know I have genuine faith? Answer love. But that may sound almost too easy, too commonplace. Even as the famous Beatles song went, it's easy, all you need is love, love is all you need. Because love is a word that we love to mangle and mutilate beyond all recognition. The world's definition of love is something like affirming whatever makes a person happy. Even one of the movies this year that was nominated for Best Picture had the line a couple of times that went like this, quote, I'm happy if you're happy, I'm happy if you're happy. Well, that's a good definition of the world's perversion of love, why it's now considered hateful to not affirm all the sins and lusts of our present day. Well, John gives us the proper understanding of love here. And you see his flow chart goes from the vertical love of God to the horizontal love for man. And the first one says, if we love the Father, then we will love those who are born of the Father. You could say that negatively, that it's impossible to love the Father without loving the Father's children. Kids, you know this, kids, when you're born, you're born into a family, right? Kids, when you're born, you get assigned to you. Here's your father, here's your mother, your grandparents, likely a number of brothers and sisters. They just show up and you're told, here's your family, they're going to love you and you are going to love them in return. And how much more so is that the case with your spiritual birth into God's family? Because perhaps a second great misunderstanding of modern evangelicalism is our penchant for individualism, that it's me and Jesus and Jesus and me, right? And this individualism shows itself in all kinds of ways, that many professing Christians now do not regularly attend church, nor do they think that that is a problem. They don't become members of a church, but they remain isolated and alone. But this is to live a lie, as if you're an only child with no siblings to be loved on and to be loved by. And of course, the New Testament knows nothing of this category. We are born from God, and that means we are born into a family. If God is our Father, then by definition, if the word Father means anything, then God has children in the plural. God is very good at being fruitful and multiplying. He has many children. And so as we're born again, we are born into the family of God. And so the most natural thing in the world is for this supernatural family to love one another. And so those are the vital signs of new birth, faith in Christ and love for Christ's family. And so you're right to ask yourself, is that me? Do faith and love characterize my life? Right, we might be tempted to think that the signs of Christian maturity are things like our intellectual grasp of certain doctrines, our memorization of certain creeds, our outward conformity to religious standards. And of course, those things do have their place. I would not diminish their importance. But over and over, John's priority, his premium question is, do you love God and do you love God's people well? Could you look at your life and visibly, tangibly, objectively see love? And friends, you need to know that John is for you. This is not a trick question. John is not trying to set us up for failure as if he anticipates the Christian to say, well, you got me. I guess I actually don't love God and I don't love God's people. I guess I'm just a fake Christian after all. Now, to be clear, John will absolutely call out the loveless Christian and declare him to be a fraud. But in the main, he's trying to encourage you. He's trying to prod you along to greater confidence, greater maturity in the faith, not greater levels of self-doubt. And you can see that very encouragement bloom in verse 2. Hear this language, by this we know that we love the children of God. You can nearly hear it in his tone, that yes, you really can truly know that God is at work in your life, that God is who he says he is, and I really am the new creation in Christ that God's word says that I am. As I see the fruit, I am confident of the root. And so verse 2 continues, and notice now we go back in the other direction from horizontal love back to vertical love, kind of perfect circle. Verse 2 says, we know we love God's children when we now love God and obey his commandments. It's what we've seen throughout the letter, that the two great commandments are inseparable, and that only by loving God utmost can we rightly love our neighbor. So to the person who says, well, what really matters at the end of the day is just the people, John would say, no, friend, your loves are not rightly ordered. For instance, for a husband to love his wife best, he must love her second to Christ. For a wife to revere her husband well, she must above all fear the Lord. Unless we define love as a feeling, an emotion, a sentiment, John shows us in this verse, here is what love looks like, how love expresses itself, in one word, obedience. It's just as the Lord Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. The very nature of love is one of obedience. That is how love shows itself and reveals itself. Of course, you can have a kind of outward obedience without love, that's certainly possible, but you cannot have love paired with disobedience. To walk in disobedience and claim the love of God is utter nonsense to John. Love and obedience always make a happy couple. And we should ask, well, why is that? Why does love obey? Of course, the very nature of love is outward. Love is not self-seeking. The direction of love is not inward, but outward and upward. We see it most clearly in the Lord Jesus who said, I always do what pleases my Father. But never was love more clearly displayed than when he said, not my will be done, but thine. And friends, this is the jewel of Christianity, that we do not offer up to our God a loveless obedience, as if God is our cruel overlord, our tyrant in the sky. All right, how often we fall into the mindset of the parable of the talent and that servant. Here's that servant who took his talent and he simply buried it in the ground. And then when summoned to give an account, he gives this smug, self-justifying response. Oh, you have what's yours. And he's asked, well, why did you not do anything? And he gives this answer, because I found you to be a harsh master, a cruel master. You see, there was no love. Because there was no love, there was no service. There was no life lived to the glory of God, only smug self-justification. But John has told us, perfect love casts out fear and true love obeys. And that is the sweetness, the adornment of the Christian faith. For instance, kids, you want to think of obeying your parents as an act of love. It's because you love God, you love them, that you obey. Wives submitting to their husbands is not only not oppressive, it is love. And likewise, when husbands love and lead their wives, what they're doing is nothing other than imitating the love of Christ. What does it mean to love your employees? What Colossians says, you treat them fairly and justly. You pay them their due. You give them a Sabbath rest. And we could go on and on. That's the shining pearl of Christian obedience, that God is not yanking our chains of slavery, cracking His whip to coerce us into obedience. No, our obedience is fueled by and compelled by love. And you see that very truth of love that obeys emerge in verse 3. He says this, this is love that we keep God's commandments. To attempt to keep the law apart from love is to not keep the law at all. It's as we just read from Deuteronomy. What does the Lord require? But to walk in His ways and to love Him. The law was not ever given as a list of just empty rules and vacuous morality. No, the very heart of it is love. Well, to persuade you further, John gives us a great motivation to obey in what you might call the weight of obedience. If you were commanded to lift an unfamiliar object, your first question might be, well, how heavy is this? You know, before I throw my back out, tell me how much does this weigh? And of course, one of the enemy's great tactics is to make God's commandments seem like an oppressive burden. The kids, you can recall from Pilgrim's Progress, the real burden is sin, right? What weighed down Pilgrim on his back was that burden of sin. Sin is inhuman. But Satan's trick is to make God's commandments seem like the real burden. This is, of course, as old as Eden. There God showered Adam and Eve with untold blessings. Here you go. Everything is yours. You may surely eat of all things. Glorify me by taking joy in everything, save this one tree. That is as light and as loving as it gets. And of course, the serpent comes and what is the lie? Your God is withholding something from you. Your God is not so good after all. He has placed this yoke upon you, preventing you from being the best version of yourself. And the more that you obey him, the heavier is your burden. And of course, the serpent spins that very same tale today that our flesh loves to hear. Give into your sexual lust, pornography, fornication. Give yourself over to the love of money. Have another drink. Give into the juiciness of gossip and slander. Take for yourself a full weekend and enjoy your Sunday doing what you want to do. After all, you deserve it. Lift off all these silly restrictions and be free, be liberated, be true to yourself. These are the whispers that the world loves to tell, that posture God's commandments as oppressive. Our Lord Jesus said, what benefit to gain the whole world but forfeit your soul? Well, the world turns that around and says, what benefit to gain heaven and forfeit all your pleasures here on earth? Well, friends, this is what makes the truth of the end of verse 3 so refreshing, so encouraging. John says, the commandments of God are not burdensome. What a truth. God's commandments are not a weight placed upon our soul, an oppression to our freedom. They are not stunting our growth. They are not robbing us of joy. They're not curtailing our happiness or preventing us from pleasure. God is not withholding good from us. In fact, it's just the reverse. What did Jesus say? Take my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. If you want a heavy yoke, then by all means, go for a life of disobedience and sin. There's the real burden. If you want a heavy yoke, go for man-made religion and legalism. But the commandments of God are holy and just and good. As the psalmist says, oh, your law, it is sweeter than honey from the honeycomb. It's the most human thing in the world to love God and keep His commandments. They are light. Now, you might be saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. My experience is it's often actually hard to obey certain commandments. Does not obedience require the denying of myself, indeed, even the dying to myself? How then is that not burdensome? And so you're right to understand this verse is not teaching that obedience is not costly, hard or difficult, that obedience does not require great self-denial. So in that sense, you could say obedience is difficult and it is demanding. But in the sense that the commandments of God come to you in and through Jesus Christ, they are light. Think of it. They are light because, firstly, your failure is not met with immediate death and condemnation. They are light because you have a new heart and the power of the Spirit working in you to obey. They are light because as we have the Spirit and as we have this newly found love for God, we have a desire to please Him that is real and genuine. And John Piper once said that people who feel hopeless in their sin just sin more. When you feel hopeless in your sin, you just keep on sinning. Well, you need to see, here's the Christian's great hope. The commandments come in Christ. You receive them as forgiven, justified, adopted, sanctified Christians born again to love them, to keep them and to obey them. That is light. So there are the vitals of genuine faith, quite simply, loving God, loving His people, keeping His commandments. And so let us now turn to the victory of our faith. It was the great Greek physicist Archimedes who once said, just give me a place to stand and I can move the world. He was fascinated by the truth that with just a lever and a fulcrum, he could seemingly move the world. Well, John does this one better in verse 4. It's not simply that Christians can move the world. Far better than that, he says Christians have overcome the world. Verse 4, everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. We've seen this verb overcome before, a Greek word for the Greek goddess Nike, which just means victory. So John says we have victored the world. Now you might say, wow, I didn't even know I was in this fight to begin with. I didn't even know there was a fight to be had. And so it raises the question of know thy enemy. What is it about the world that makes it an enemy to be overcome? Remember that by use of the word world, John does not mean God's good creation, right? For God so loved the world that He gave His Son. And of course, Scripture also speaks of world as a way of saying all that opposes God's kingdom. Satan is the ruler of this world. We're to not love the world. We haven't received the spirit of the world. We once followed the course of the world. And he could go on and on and on. And he could just bundle up all those uses of world and understand what we might call it as worldliness, the spirit that opposes all godliness. I think one author defined worldliness quite well when he said, worldliness is simply this, anything that makes righteousness seem odd and sin seem normal, anything that normalizes sin. And so you can see with that definition in mind, why you had better not underestimate the enemy that is the world. Just think of how much cultural infrastructure is in place that makes sin seem normal and righteousness seem odd. You might be familiar with the work of Aaron Wren. He's coined the term that Christians, that you and I, we now live in, quote, the negative world. And by that, he just meant it was not that long ago that Christianity was considered a moral good, a positive thing in America, that just three or four decades ago, Christian values and Christian norms were generally considered a good thing. So if you identified yourself as a Christian, right, you go to your community, your workplace, your social circles, and you say I'm a Christian, that's generally speaking well-received. But now in the negative world, in this current cultural moment, it's the exact opposite, of course. That for you to identify yourself as a Christian who holds to biblical truths, truths like one man and one wife, or a biblical view of justice that counters things like DEI or ESG, and not only will these not be well-received, they will be ill-received. The Christian will attract the ire, the rage of the world because sin has been normalized and that righteousness seems to be a strange thing. And just as a reality check, as we appreciate our church history, know that we are certainly not the first generation of Christians to live through such a thing. Many negative worlds, from ancient Rome to the Enlightenment to postmodernism, have come and they have gone. The important truth to see is that while negative worlds come and go, it is the church that endures, it is the church that carries onward, it is the church that remains stable and steadfast under the banner of her victorious king. And so let's feel for that fight. Let's hear John's word of truth in verse 4 once again. Everyone born of God overcomes or is victorious over the world. Notice that the means of victory is simply new birth. If you've been born of God, then you have overcome, right? You come out of the spiritual womb, here is your gold medal, right? First birthday, here is your prize. That's why in the fullest sense, this battle belongs to the Lord. God causes us to be born again and God causes our victory. So when it comes time to hand out the trophy and to give the crowning wreath, it will not be our name in the headlines. It will be the name above every name, Jesus Christ, the victorious one. The lamb who by his life, his passion, his resurrection, his ascension, he is the victorious one. And that's why this victory is described both, notice, something that is already completed and yet an ongoing reality. And notice how the first Nike of verse 4 is in the present tense, overcomes. The second Nike in verse 4 is in the past tense, has overcome. It's one of those already but not yet realities. If you know your war history, you know that D-Day was considered the decisive victory of World War II. June 6, 1944, we have won. But of course, the fighting still went on after June 6, 1944. And of course, it's much the same for the Christian life. We could say that our D-Day was the day the Lord Jesus rose up from the grave, defeating the powers of darkness. And by virtue of our union with Christ, he gives us that victory that just as David defeated Goliath and all Israel won, so too as the son of David defeats the dragon and all God's people win. So we need to know that the Christian does not so much fight for victory as you fight from victory. All right, Christian, you need to know, you know what the world does not know. You know the full story, that victory has already been secured by the risen Christ, that there is nothing that the world could do. The world's best tactic, sharpest instrument is death. That's the world's best choice. And you know that death has already lost its sting. Death has already been defeated. That's the very point of the second half of verse 4. As John outright defines this victory for us, you see he says there, this is the victory that has overcome. Notice the past tense. Not will, but has overcome the world, our faith. Now you can see why John is so concerned over genuine faith. Because victory hangs upon real faith. Only real faith overcomes. And maybe you say, well, finally, this is the one area I can boast in just a little bit. It is, after all, my faith. It's my belief. It's my trust that overcomes. But of course, as soon as we go down that road, the apostle Paul rebukes us, reminds us, saying, no, no, even your faith is just a gift. Grace to you by God, it is not of your own doing. And even more so, reminded that faith is only as good as what faith rests upon. Faith is, after all, in no way unique to Christianity. A lot of people have faith. It might be faith in a better, brighter tomorrow. Faith that things will work out. Faith that if I just believe in myself just enough, I can be a better person and try harder. The world celebrates faith in faith. Indeed, if you're here this morning and not a Christian, you should ask yourself, not do I have faith, but upon what? Upon whom is my faith placed? The question is not, will man have faith, but faith in what? John tells you exactly of the faith that overcomes the world in verse 5 with this rhetorical question. Who is it that overcomes the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? What makes faith so awesome, so powerful, is not the faith in and of itself. What makes faith so awesome is that it latches onto and receives the Son of God who overcomes the world. And so friends, as we close, let's lay up in our hearts two uses from this awesome text. Firstly, take on the easy yoke. Take on the easy yoke. We've seen this morning, God's commandments are not a burden. God is not our harsh taskmaster cracking His whip. And so that means our posture towards God's commandments is not one of groaning, of complaining. It's not that of having the suspicion that maybe, just maybe, God is withholding something good from me through His commandments. No, as Christians, we get to give God an obedience wrapped in love and joy. We don't think of loving God and obeying God as separate things. And this is incidentally a great help when it comes to parenting. As one theologian said, as parents, our goal is never for our children merely to conform to the standard. No, our goal is for our children to love the standard, that if we set the bar at mere conformity, we have set our sights far too low. We want for our children the very thing we want for ourselves, a loving obedience and an obedient love. So take on the easy yoke. Secondly, take on the world. Take on the world. How confident would you be if before walking into a fight, I tell you, oh, by the way, you've already won this fight. Yes, you still have to brawl, you still have to fight, but you've actually already won this fight. I trust you fight with greater zeal, greater courage, greater faith, greater hope. Christian, that is our position. We are to fight the good fight. There are beachheads to be taken. There are idols to be smashed. There are strongholds to be torn down. You need only look out on the spheres of politics or education or law or science or art or media, anywhere to see the world's worldliness at large. You need only look within your own heart to see the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. These are the fights to be had. These are the fights to be fought by the Christian. You might say, well, you don't understand, my faith is just so small. I've got the faith of a mustard seed. I'm hanging by a thread. Friend, good news, that is the faith that moves mountains. That is the faith that overcomes because it is the faith that receives the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who has already overcome the world. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we do praise You for the truths that You have revealed to us in Your Word, that You have already overcome the world, that as the Lord Jesus said, take heart, I have overcome. And so, Father, we pray we would simply do that, that we would draw all the courage, the strength, the hope that stems from the truth of the risen Christ, the simple truth that by faith we really are united to Him. We can say, He is mine and I am His. We even pray, Father, for those who do not have this faith. What do we pray? The very thing we just read, that You would cause them to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. We pray these things in Jesus' name, and amen.
