A Father's Children
1 John • Sermon • Submitted
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· 12 viewsGod's relationship with is his children brings both blessings and expectations
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
When my oldest was being born, I met the most excited man I have ever met. He was absolutely giddy.
We were in the preparation room scrubbing up for the delivery of our children. He was at least 2 decades older than I was. I remembered that Abraham was older, so who am I to judge.
As we scrubbed at the sink, he poured out his joy. For years, he and his wife had tried to have children but nothing. Finally, with both in their mid-40’s, they decided it was not to be. They decided to retire early and see the world. He sold his business and they were making the transition to a childless life.
Then it happened. His wife became pregnant. They did not want to get their hopes up too much but all worked out.
He scrubbed his hands and said, “I never dreamed this day would come.”
That’s the way fathers are with their children.
And it is how God is with his children. He, in his mercy and grace, brings children into his family through his grace. And his house is so large he wants more children to care for.
But as with any family, there are “family rules.” And his are not hard to understand unless you choose to to misunderstand them.
In this lesson, John flips through God’s picture album of his kids and, as he reflects on God’s children lets them know of the family traits they bear.
Discussion
Discussion
The Relationship
The Relationship
Many see Christianity as a system of rules and regulations and rituals. Do precisely the pattern and that’s all God wants.
Oh, how mistaken is that thinking! God is so much more.
John tells us of a special relationship given to Christians.
See what great 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.
John sits back in amazement as he writes those words. He says “what sort of love does God have?” How amazing it is?
God “lavished” his love on us. It is a word that Indicates the most precious and expensive gift that someone receives, something far beyond compensation.
And John goes on to say that we are “called” children of God. It’s not just that we bear the name on a birth certificate. It is the statement of adoption. “This is my child,” is the appellation given to a newly adopted child.
John goes beyond that as well. He says, “and such is what we are.” It’s not just a name but the actual relationship that exists between God and his children. They are part of the family.
Fred Craddock tells the story of a vacation in Tennessee. He and his wife were having a nice luncheon, just to themselves, when an older man came up and started a chat. It’s one of those interruptions we patiently tolerate while wishing the person would leave us alone. He started asking questions.
“Where are your from?”
“We’re from Oklahoma.”
“What do you do in Oklahoma?”
“I am a minister.”
“What church?”
This went on until the man said, "I remember churches like that, “ as he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“I grew up in these mountains. My mother was not married and the whole town knew it. They whispered about her…and me. I felt shame, so ashamed. When I went into town, I saw people staring at me, as they tried to guess who my father was. I stayed to myself.”
“When I was a teenager, I started going to this little church. The minister was both attractive and frightening, with a chiseled face and a deep voice. I went to hear him preach. Something about him.”
But I as afraid I was really not welcome since I was “illegitimate.” But that’s not the word people used to describe me…it was worse.”
“So as the sermon was closing, I would get up and move toward the back. I was afraid someone would come and say, “what is your kind doing here?”
“One Sunday, as I made my way to the back to make a quick getaway, the aisle was clogged with people and I could not get out. Suddenly a big paw sat on my shoulder. I turned around and it was the preacher. I trembled. It was the minister. And I just knew what was next.”
“He started saying, “I know you…you are the child of...” And I knew that word would roll out next.”
“But he continued. ‘Well boy, you are a child of …Oh, I see the resemblance now…you are a child of God.’ He slapped my bottom with his Bible and said, “now go claim your inheritance.’”
When he finished his story I asked him, “What did you say your name is?
“Ben Hooper.”
Craddock then remembered that his father had told him that the people of Tennessee had twice elected as governor an illegitimate child. His name was Ben Hooper.
God not just claims us as his children, he makes it so with all the rights of inheritance as God’s child.
The Rights
The Rights
Every parent needs to have a will, regardless of the age of their children. When our parents passed from the earth, they left something for us, an inheritance.
God gives us an inheritance. It is ours by right of being his children. We are in the will.
What inheritance do we have as God’s children?
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
Here, John is painting a picture of what happens when physical life ends. Indeed, he believes the only life that matters is the spiritual one.
He speaks of a time “when Christ appears.” John was there on that mountain watching the ascension and hearing the angel say, “he will return as he has left.” This was John’s vision. The end of time and Jesus returns to claim his children.
The eye of faith sees what the physical eye cannot see.
First, we will be like him. Changes comes. We will be finally the spiritual being we should be.
Paul saw the same future vision.
who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
Our bodies, frail and failing, will be transformed into glory. Pain ceases. Death is in the rearview mirror.
For human beings who are Christian, the words are confusing as much as they are hopeful. The only body we have ever known is the one that bruises and bleeds. We watch wrinkles overshadow smooth skin as we age. We grow stooped with poor hearing. Our bodies wear out.
What they will be is never defined but as Christ lives eternally in whatever form, we too shall take on that form.
But there is more to it. We shall be like him in our character. The pureness of Christ will be the mantle which will be placed on our shoulders. Temptation flees and the sterling character of Christ becomes ours. It is a gift, something we cannot attain in any way.
But John goes on. We shall also see him as he is.
Think about what you know about Jesus. We see him as a baby in a manger, a twelve-year-old whose answers stump wise men. He is the miracle worker, the compassionate shepherd, and the one who suffers and dies on the cross.
Is our earthly vision of Jesus distorted?
I am always fascinated by something. As a boy you would listen to someone on the radio. All you had was a voice. And out of that voice, you created an image of what they were like.
You envision the man with the melodious baritone as a large, square-jawed superman.
Then, the bubble burst. They come onto television or appear live and you wonder, “that voice came out of that?” They are short with a pooch around their middle. They don’t match what your mind concocted at all.
That’s true of Jesus. He is so much more than the Bible class image we carry in our mind. One day, we we see him as he really is. The Son of God. The Savior. We will do as John described him in the prologue of his gospel.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Fleshly eyes will open with spiritual vitality. We will stand in front of God’s three-way mirror and see us as we really are and Jesus will take on fresh significance.
For John, he writes these words not to give theological insights. They are purely practical. We need to know the goal to be able to live up to our responsibility.
The Responsibility
The Responsibility
Most families have standards for children. In fact, healthy families don’t allow children to do as they please. It is a recipe for disaster in both present and future.
That’s true about God’s family.
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.
John takes on the issue of sin. In chapter 1, he acknowledges the possibility of sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
And yet, here he says no one who lives in him keeps on sinning. Is that a contradiction?
It is important to remember what John is battling.
The false teachers were promoting an idea that spiritual attainment has nothing to do with a moral life. If you scale the spiritual heights, you know all things. You are on a special plain. And since the body and soul are separate, what happens in the body does not infect the spirit. The logical end-of-the-road of that thinking is that sin can be engaged in, engorged in, and presents neither danger to the spirit or importance to a holy God.
It is this that John attacks with a full frontal assault.
And John minces no words.
Sin is lawlessness. It is taking a brick and throwing it at God’s picture window. It has that kind of thumbing your nose to God and his will.
Our world has dismissed sin with comforting psychological terms. Maladjusted. Mistreated. Victimized. Misunderstood. Take your pick of verbal dodges.
John has none of that. If you sin, you live outside of the law, like terrorist who cares not if he destroys the lives of men, women, and children. Sin takes out a 44 magnum and puts a cannonball hole through God’s will.
Second, sin spits in Christ’s face. Christ came to take away sin. To engage in it, expresses that whatever Jesus did, it was worthless.
Third, sin is not human but demon-driven.
The one 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.
Don’t excuse sin so easily, John reminds us. It is born of the devil and his desire. Sin is letting the devil lead you down the path. You become his slave.
So for John, sin is not just serious but sinister.
So why does in the first chapter does he seem to concede sin will come up in our lives but in chapter 3 says that if we live in him, we do not keep on sinning? We sin. We are not perfect. Is John excluding from God’s family those who commit any sin?
We know that sin is more than what we do. It also means what we don’t do. Have you ever not done all that God commands? Of course! Does that mean that we’re out?
It’s difficult but John is speaking of two different things in chapter 1 and chapter 3.
In chapter 1, he spoke of those teachers who said that since they were so spiritual, they could not commit sin. Their spirit was fine. And since God was only concerned about the spirit, what happened in the body was nothing. Therefore, they did not sin.
John says that sin is universal to human kind. He admits it.
In chapter 1, he speaks to them about the need to confess the sin and recognize it in life. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t ignore it. Get back on track as quickly as possible.
God’s cleansing for people who recognize their state and lives toward God’s standards receive God’s forgiveness. Those who ignore sin cannot find forgiveness.
In chapter 1, a person can be blind to sin and deny its existence.
But in chapter 3, he comes to the same false teachers with another idea. Habitual sin. For John, the present state of just sin, sin, sin, without worry shows they are living outside of the life of Christ.
Undoubtedly, the teachers presented an attractive proposition. God cares about your spirit, not about our flesh. Just let loose. Do as your please. Release the guilt because sin doesn’t count.
And for some, they were getting in the habit of the profligate.
In this case, John argues that habitual sin is incompatible with Christian living. Sin comes of the Devil, not God.
John is writing in this passage that sin is not impossible but incongruent with Christianity.
He appeals to the family resemblance.
No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
In God’s family, you don’t sin because of this curious thing called “God’s seed.” What exactly is the “seed” which shows us the incompatibility of sin with God’s family?
While we could go around the stump, it is best to let the Bible be its own interpreter.
Look at three other places where this idea is discussed.
He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.
Here the birth concept is given but the “seed” or origin provided. James says that the seed if “the word of truth.”
Peter goes down the same road as well.
For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
Again, the birth illustration is provided but here, Peter minces no words. The seed is the word of God.
And then, the words of Jesus.
“This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God.
In the parable of the sower, the sower throws out seed on four soils. While the soils differ in their receptivity, there is one seed…the word of God.
What keeps us from falling into the habit of sin is the constant connection with God’s word. The seed, the DNA of God’s truth becomes entangled in life and heart so the practice of sin cannot implant.
It speaks to the importance of listening to God’s will as recorded in scripture. It is not a collection of propositional statements to be agreed to. Instead, it is the lifeblood of the family of God. These are the standards that we uphold as a family. The keeping of the word is proof of it.
John does not hold us to some form of rigid perfection in our spiritual lives. Instead, he does show us that life in the family is ever watchful about sin and never accepts sin as routine but sees it for what it is—a moment of defeat.
Conclusion
Conclusion
God has taken the orphan wondering through the world collecting food from garbage cans and taken them into his family. We are those orphans and we are now in God’s family.
As John would say, “what sort of love does it show?”
So what does this great statement mean to us?
We are privileged. It is not because of our innate character that we are God’s children. It is his doing. He has taken us into his care, showered us with his love, and gave us a purpose for living as well as a destination of glory. I wonder sometimes if we don’t take our relationship with God for granted. It can grow routine and rote. It is at those times we should return to John’s words—what sort of love is it...
We are changed. Once, sin was part of our lifestyle. We never thought about it. We might feel bad because of some of its consequences, but not enough to break the habit. Instead, God says, “one day you will see yourself and my son fully.” We have something to look forward to. And our lives should be pure for the moment.
We are surrounded. The word of God is the seed of our lives. Out of it grows God’s good life. When we surround ourselves with truth, it confronts the issue of complacent sin. The more we are surrounded by the truth, the better children we become.
And, as John says, “God’s children we are.”
Mitch Albom wrote a book which was an autobiographical story. The book was called, Finding Chika.
After the devastating earthquake which leveled the poor country of Haiti, Albom got involved with an orphanage. So many children had been left orphans due to the sudden deaths of their parents. One year, he got a call from the director. There was a little girl named Chika who had come to the orphanage, after her mother died of cancer. The father was not known. But Chika had a problem. She had a terrible disease and there were not treatment centers equipped in Port Au Prince.
Something had to be done for this three-year-old girl. After long discussions and heart-wrenching nights, Mitch and his wife decided to bring her to Detroit where the University of Michigan had specialists. It meant she was going to live with them.
It also meant that he had to care for her. He took out loans to pay for medical treatments. He and his wife stayed up nights caring for her.
Her disease was dangerous and after so many treatments of years, Chika passed away.
We are like Chika. We are orphaned in a world and God comes to care for us, deal with our diseases and defects. And he loves us, in spite of what we were. Instead, he makes us something special—his children.