I.
Here is a twist on a story
that Ruth Graham, Billy Graham’s wife, tells of how
children were made.
A.God had
created the universe and God loved the things he had
made. But God had no one to share them with.
1.
In all the earth there was
no one like God, no one to say, “How beautiful it is!”
To have a companion on earth, God needed someone like
himself. So God made our kind of creature and in his
own image. God loved this man and woman that God had
created. God loved Adam and Eve so much that each
evening on earth, at the close of the long, happy day,
God came into the garden and talked with them, and they
walked together. And the man and woman answered their
Creator. It was the moment God had waited for since time
began.
2.
God decided to give the man
and woman the best gift God could ever think of. He gave
them a child who was also made in his own image.
II.“Beloved,
we are God’s children now.”
A.
God is speaking affectionately to his own children!
1.
And like the sheep in the
Gospel of John recognize their Good Shepherd, here the
children recognize and welcome God as their heavenly
Father.
a.
Not only are the believers
called children of God,” TEKNA THEOU,” but we are his
precious little children now today, Sunday, July 5,
2009, at 11:24 am!
2.
For the first time in his
letter John considers what it means to be children of
God, suggests Earl Palmer, former pastor of the First
Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California.
3.
Children are identified as the
primary audience of this letter.
a.
John also uses the first
person plural: “we.”
b.
He is also one of God’s
beloved little ones.”
4.Peterson
translates in “The Message,” “That's
exactly who we are: children of God. And that's only the
beginning. Who knows how we'll end up!”
5.
The story is told about two
brothers who lived in an English village. The two
brothers were very different, almost the exact opposite
of one another. One brother was kind and helpful, always
giving to others and doing what he could to improve
their lot in life. He always had a loving look on his
face and a kind word to share. His younger brother was
selfish and cruel. Even the dogs fled from his shadow.
This unhappy brother lived alone. One
particularly bad day the younger brother murdered his
good brother in a fit of jealousy. He was hauled before
the city judge who said to him, You have stolen the life
of the best friend our town ever had. He was the only
hope our poor had. I sentence you to wear a mask of
your brother’s face so others will not fear you. For the
rest of your life in the name of your brother, you must
do one good deed every day to someone you
meet. This murderer started out by hating
having to wear the mask of his brother’s face. As the
years passed, he learned to tolerate the mask. He was
forced to do many good deeds, which he at first
despised. Eventually the townspeople no longer
remembered what he looked like underneath the mask. One
day the brother begged the new judge in town to allow
him to remove the mask. The kind judge gave him
permission. But when he tried to remove the mask of his
brother’s face, he discovered that he no longer wore a
mask; his brother’s kind face had become his own.
B.“It
does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when
he appears, weshall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is.”
1.
John Calvin says this does not
mean we shall be “equal” to God, or Christ. There will still
be a great difference between God and us when we see God and
we appear in glory with our God.
a.
“But the ultimate aim of our
adoption,” says Calvin “is that Christ shall at last be
completed in us.”
b.
With the image of God now
finished, fully renewed, and without flaw in each of us, we
(shall) have eyes prepared for the sight of God.”
2. This insight of John Calvin
gives new meaning to Jesus’ healing of the blind.
c.
The people in the 9
th
chapter of John’s Gospel were asking the wrong question,
starting at the wrong end! It was not that the once-blind
man “is a sinner,” but he was given sight that God’s image
might be renewed in him to have the eyes to see God.
3.
This is the radical difference between you and me who are
the “children of light” and those who still live in sin as
the “children of darkness.”
a. someone else’s life
cannot reflect through them for they are caught
up in themselves and
their own selfish deeds.
4.
At
the great moment of the final judgment, God’s love in Jesus
Christ will be completed in you and me for all eternity.
a.
This is one of the great promises in all the
Bib
b. –that God’s love will
be renewed in us through Jesus so we will have
the eyes to see God as
he is!
5.
And there is a dramatic tension between “the pregnant now”
and the “not yet,” which John skillfully inserts into the
glue of God’s love!
III.All
along we have insisted on the inseparability of Jesus and
the Father. Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father, so
do not ask, as Phillip did, “‘Lord, show us the Father,
and we shall be satisfied’” (John 14:8-9).
A.To see is
to believe, to hear or listen is to know .
John as a Jew understood the power of the Hebrew word
“YADA.”
1.
The Hebrew term also means to
obey (the commandments), to do (love).
a. Whoever believes,
therefore, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God is an
active believer, a servant.
2.
In all of John’s literature: to hear is to believe, to
believe is to love, to love is to do.
a. Here is the third
and final movement of 1 John’s symphonic composition,
the movement that proclaims “God Is Love,”
(i) believing is
loving; one is born of the other. they are equal
b. Southern Baptist Peter
Rhea Jones at Emory University says the
First Movement is the
Movement of Light, for “God Is Light.”
c. The Middle Movement
the Movement of Righteousness.”
d. And finally, the “Movement
of Love.” [PAUSE]
3.
My friend, if you believe in your church and its mission,
you will also love the church, you will be a servant of
Christ in this church.
a. We will believe in one
another, love one another, forgive differences
b. We have had member who
decided to leave, to look for another church.
c. Instead of worry about those who left, we might
concentrate ourselves on being better children, on our
servanthood, our love.
(page 2)
B.
So 1 John again in his favorite manner of arguing or
convincing us offers us pairs, parallel items which
in one sense are parallel but in another sense are unequal,
each one of the pair sharing similar qualities but also
being uniquely different.
1.
The first pair: believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God
and being a child of God
2.
The second pair: the parent and child
3.
The third pair: love for God and love for one another
4.
Our author insists on the connection between being born and
being actually begotten or born from above of God.
a. between our
believing/our faith and being begotten.
5.
Recall that wonderful statement of Jesus to Nicodemus in a
secret night-time meeting, that Nicodemus, in order to
believe, must be “born from above” (The phrase, “born again”
is an unfortunate, incorrect rendering.)
a. Not only that but he
must now walk in the light,
b. live in purity,
(i)
moral purity
(ii)
the purity of love
(iii)
the purity of hope
c. keep from sin, for no
one who is born of God sins;
d. and finally have
confidence for the day of judgment, when we shall
appear in glory with
God and see God as he is.
6.
Nicodemus needs to read the first letter of John. [PAUSE]
C.
Dr. Moody Smith, from the Divinity
School at Duke University, observes that the Greek in 1 John
emphasizes “the motif of birth,”
1.In order to
participate in the new reality, the new creation that God is
bringing about through his only Son, we must have our birth
in Christ, thus our adoption in John 1:12.
2.
Surprisingly, Moody suggests that “the first and most
fundamental feature in false doctrines (heresies) has
to do with a false , unbiblical teaching about the person
and ministry of Jesus.
a. “Little
children, let no one deceive you.”
b. Truth also has to do
with love.
3. I
came across a powerful story this past week. It is called “The
Verdict Against God,” a play written about the love of
God right after World War II. It was written by a Lutheran
minister named Guenter Rutenborn. The setting is in
devastated and divided Germany, and the plot is to discover
who was to blamed for the terrible atrocities. The obvious
culprits are named: Hitler, the Jews, the bureaucrats and
the apathetic.
Suddenly a man gets up
in the audience and strides down to the
stage and says, “You are being
superficial. You’re not taking this case back to its
ultimate source: I’ll tell you who is really to blame. It is
God! Is not he the one who made this horrible world? Is he
not the one who entrusted all this power to unworthy hands?
It’s God’s fault.”
At first everyone is
shocked, but gradually the idea catches on and
the court agrees with the
verdict. God is found guilty of the crime of
creation, and the judge now
pronounces the sentence: “I hereby sentence
God to have to come and live in
this wretched world the way we humans
have to.” The 3 archangels,
Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, are sent to execute this
sentence.
As Gabriel starts to exit, he
turns and muses out loud: “When God serves this sentence,
I’ll see to it that he knows obscurity and shame.”
As Michael leaves the stage, he
muses, “When God serves his sentence,
I’m going to see to it that he
experiences fustration and insecurity.” He’ll
have no place to lay his
head.”
As Raphael makes his
way off stage, he is heard to say in a
determined voice, “When God
serves this sentence, I’m going to see to it
that he knows what it is like to
suffer and to die.”
(Pastor’s Story File,
3/93 - reprinted from “Clergy Journal 3/92) (page 3)