I.“Is my name
written there, on the page white and
fair
in the book of thy kingdom, is my name written
there?
... Lord, I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold;
I would make sure of Heaven, I would enter the fold.
In the book of Thy kingdom, with its pages so fair,
Tell me, Jesus, my Savior, is my name written there?”
A.
Do you remember that hymn written by Mary
Kidder 130 years ago?
1.
This girl from Boston, Massachusetts, was
blinded as a teenager but had her sight was restored to her
several years later.
2.
For some this song seems to sum up the goal
of our Christian journey.
a.
Two weeks ago, about 8 of the pastors in our
Russellville Ministerial Alliance, were having our monthly
meeting and some questions came up: just why do we meet? do
we have a purpose?
b.
One minister said, “My goal is that every
soul in Russellville would be saved?”
c.
What do you think about that? Why do we not
hear sermons about “being saved” from this pulpit?
B.
The third chapter of 1 John does take up this
question in the paragraph we study this morning, verses
11-18.
1.
He offers us an answer as to who among us
has eternal life!”
a.
Verse 14: “We
know that we have passed out of death into life, because we
love our brothers and sisters.”
2.
John continues the discussion in a second
paragraph, chapter 3:19-24,
3.
I am thankful he does so in the context of
love and obedience to God’s one central commandment
which we will look at next Sunday.
4.
For John you cannot talk about being saved,
about eternal life apart from loving each other in the name
and person of Jesus Christ.
5.
Again, as he did two weeks ago, he states it
so simply that it leaps off the page at us!
6.
He mentions “eternal life” two more times
at the end of this letter, in chapter 5:11 and13.
a.
There the gift and certainty of eternal life
is connected to belief in the name of the Son of God, just
as it is here in chapter 3.
7.
Only one time does John use the language of “being
saved,” in John 3:17. a. So I shall not use that
terminology either.
C.
What 1 John 3 says here follows the exact
pattern of John’s Gospel, chapter 3, where Jesus talks with
Nicodemus.
1.
In the Gospel our author uses the phrase “eternal
life” in connection with the “‘I am’” sayings of our
Lord:
a.
chapter 4, “‘the
gift of living water that wells up to eternal life,’”
b.
chapter 6, where Jesus is “‘the bread of
life,’” and Peter asks him, “‘Lord,
to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’”
c.
again, in chapter 10, where Jesus says, “‘I
amthe Good
Shepherd.’”
2.
In the Gospel this phrase is mentioned a
total of 7 times, the final one being in chapter 17, verse
3, in his farewell.
3.
So we have his two love letters, the Gospel
of John chapter 13-17, and the First Epistle. John’s
discussion of salvation occurs only in that framework of
loving one another the same way that God loves you and me.
II.
Our text this morning is also described as a
contrast between love and hate , one of the sets of
John’s radical theological opposites.
A.
In John12 is one of those mentions of
“eternal life” in the Gospel, and it is in terms of love and
hate:
“‘Whoever loves
their life loses it, and whoever hates their life in this
world will keep it for eternal life.’”
1.
Love means loving Jesus enough that you must
follow him, so that
2.
“‘where
I am, there shall my servant be also,’”
as one who “‘serves
me.’”
3.
Love
- service , and obedience– the holy three in
one for John!
B.
Is it not strange that these two– love and
hate– are discussed so frequently in the same breath in the
New Testament?
1.
It must be that they had a problem with both
feelings being present in their early church life just as we
do.
2.
The Sermon on the Mount: “‘You
have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor
and hate your enemy. But I say to you,
... [what?]
a.
“‘Love
your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that
you may be children of your Father who is in heaven.’”
(Matthew 5:43-44)
3.
Then Paul in Ephesians 5, his passage on
marriage insists that no man
hates his own flesh (his wife),
but nourishes it and cherishes/loves it, as Christ does the
church...”
C.
There is a great deal of hate in our world
today, and it is increasing.
1.
Those ominous lines in Rogers & Hammerstein’s
musical, “South Pacific” were written 60 years ago in 1949!
a.
“You’ve
got to be taught to hate and
fear, You’ve got
to be taught from year to
year, It’s got
to be drummed in your dear little ear,
... You've got
to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate...”
b.
The song does not say anything about being
carefully taught to love, though the musical is a love
story.
2.
The lyrics were severely criticized as
inappropriate for the film, but lyricist Oscar Hammerstein
defended them, and they stayed in.
D.
The consequence of FAILING to love is
that we become people who hate, we hate even our own flesh
and our own lives.
1.
And says John, hatred leads to the disastrous
consequence of murder!
2.
The Apostle’s mention of Cain is
intended to point to the evil one, Satan, who is either the
Antichrist or on the Antichrist’s side.
a.
In early Christian writings Cain is mentioned
as the archetype of one who hates, who turns angry and
becomes the father of murder.
3.
In the John, chapter 8, Jesus accuses his
opponents of having a father in the devil, of being
murderers!
4.
I looked up crimes of passion or hate for the
state of Arkansas.
a.
50 years ago, 1960, our state’s population
was just over 1 and 3/4 million. There were 1,924
violent crimes in Arkansas, defined as aggravated assault,
robberies, forcible rape.
(1)
only 156 murders.
b.
In 2007 our state’s residency had increased
by a third, or another 900,000 persons (2008
estimated population: 2,678,000), while the violent crimes
had multiplied by 800%, or 15,507 violent crimes.
3rd
fastest growth among the states between 1960 and 2000.
5.
The American family household is also
the most violent institution in the nation, where most of
the murders and assaults occur.
6.
David Mace, a marriage counselor and author
of counseling manuals, has written that unresolved anger
causes distance that then leads to divorce in marriage. “The
relationship of being married generates more anger in the
average person than any other social situation.”
7.
If the church represents a cross-section of
our society, what then does that say about who we are as a
people of God,
a.
about the emotions we bring with us into this
building?
b.
Do you ever have a problem with anger?
c.
What do you do with it? If you do nothing, it
will turn to hate, even self-hate.
d.
The Bible does not condemn hate; it even
says, “Be
angry... but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your
anger”
(Ephesians 4.26).
III.John declares that whoever loves cannot
hate, who believes in Jesus Christ as God’s Son cannot hate,
in fact one who believes and has eternal life, cannot commit
sin!
A.
This is typical Johanine exclusive dualism.
1.
There is no middle ground, no
extenuating circumstances.
2.
The Christian community’s actions are done
only in love and righteousness and in the light. These
actions lead always to life and service to others,
a.
to those who do not have the world’s goods,
b.
to whomever we look on with our own eyes who
are in need.
3.
But the world’s deeds are done under cover of
darkness, or blindness,. They are done in hatred and
selfishness.
a.
Anyone who does not love–John dismisses as a
liar.
b.
Anyone in the church who does not love–John
says is a murderer!
st John which begins with verse
11 of chapter 3 is the start of the second half of the
letter. It is a new movement,
1.
like the symphonic composition with which
commentator Peter Rhea Jones compares John’s first letter.
2.
Here is a turning point: each section,
movement, is highlighted by these words, “the
message we have heard from the beginning.”
a.
And yet this is not only an old message but a
brand new message!
b.
It is a message of a new kind of love based
on Jesus’ own love for you and me as he laid down his life
for us,
c.
so we ought to lay down our lives for our
brothers and sisters,
d.
even those in desperate need who do not have
the world’s goods.
3. Each succeeding
verse, like a well-composed Hebrew poem from the book of
Psalms, repeats the message of the previous verse in new
language, often transposing the themes.
a. This is
the same scandalous topic the book of James puts
before the says fledgling church, and possibly why James
almost did not make it into the New Testament canon...
b. He
condemns the rich who “weep and howl” for the miseries that
are come upon their gold and silver, but who do not pay good
(page
3)
wages
to the laborers who mow their fields, who keep money back by
fraud.
c. Faith
without love and compassion and good works is dead and
worthless, insists James.
d. “Little
children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and
in truth.”
(i) Peterson in
“The Message,” says it this way: “My
dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's
practice real love.”
4. A few weeks ago, after we had a succession of
people asking for assistance in a few days, I asked Dana to
post a sign outside our church entrance that we had used up
our funds to assist the needy for the next two months. One
of our members correctly questioned the accuracy of that
statement. I was told, It sends the wrong message about who
we are. This person was absolutely correct. And we do have
a substantial fund to help the destitute.
5. Our new message
is an absolute Johanine assertion:
only those who love and serve Christ as a lowly servant, who
obey his commandment by believing in his name have have
“eternal life.”
a. Says
Peter Rhea Jones, so often you and I in the church, we are
the impoverished, the needy “within” seeking salvation and
the kingdom
b. There
are many of us “poor”, even in the most well-to-do church!
6. Think about
those few in the church who have taken John’s three-fold
message of salvation to heart: first, love, 2
nd,
to follow Jesus as a servant, and 3rd, obedience
to his commandment.
a. Those
few really did something to change their own lifestyle and
reach out to the needy and wretched of the earth.
(i) Florence Nightengale
(ii)
Louis Pasteur
(iii) those who worked to abolish slavery, like William
Wilberforce
(iv) Martin Luther King, Jr.
(v) Mother Teresa
7. His father Samuel
was bankrupt. The only thing Samuel could do was to
indenture his 13 year-old son to a pawnbroker in order to
help support his mother and his sisters. At this early age
he became well acquainted with those in the small towns of
England who lived in terrible poverty, their suffering
humility and degradation to which they were subjected. In
his two years of indentureship he also was converted to
Christianity.
a. After
his apprenticeship, he moved to London and joined up with
the Methodist Church. One day in 1865, he found himself in
London’s East Side outside the Beggar’s Pub, speaking to
crowds in the street. He brought the good news that Jesus
Christ loved these wretched people and it was to them he had
come with his message of salvation. His wife Catherine
Mumford helped him.
b. The
work was hard, harder than he had ever worked as a
pawnbroker or a Methodist minister, and he would 'stumble
home night after night haggard with fatigue, often his
clothes were torn and bloody bandages swathed his head where
a stone had struck', wrote Catherine. Evening meetings were
held in an old warehouse where urchins threw stones and
fireworks through the window. But his mission grew, and so
did the crowds.
c.
William Booth started an Army for Jesus Christ. He
believed he was a soldier commissioned in Christ’s
Salvation Army. William Booth
believed that the three 'S's best expressed the way
in which to show love to the 'down and outs': “First -
Soup; Second - Soap; and finally - Salvation.”
8. “Do
not love the world or the things of the world. If any one
loves the world, love for the father is not in you....the
world passes away, and the lust of it; but whoever does the
will of God abides for ever.”