FOUNDATIONS FOR PEACE

May 12-14, 2012
1 JOHN 3:11-20
6th Sunday after Easter
Pastor Tim Smith

11 This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. 16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. 19 This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence 20 whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER
Have you checked the tank on your gas grill lately? In 1 John, the Apostle wants us to check our spiritual tanks with three different tests: There is a moral text, a doctrinal test, and what we might call a social test. The moral test is obedience to God and God’s will. The doctrinal test is belief: Do I believe what the Bible says? And the third test, the social test, is love. Do I out my faith into action with love?

In chapters 1 and 2 John takes us through those three tests ending up with a warning about the Antichrist, but here in chapter 3 he quickly review all three tests again. Today we focus on the third test of love as John lays the test bare with an answer key: Compare what you’re doing with Christ and with Cain. Who are you closer to?

John reminds us that we have passed from death to life. We need to be reminded about this from time to time. That’s part of what worship and Bible study is all about: checking the tank and re-charging our batteries to remember that we’ve passed from death to life.

And John takes this easy comparison of Cain and Christ and uses them to show us the horizons; to remember that although there are a lot of grey areas in life and a lot of uncertainty, there should be no question in our spiritual lives who it is we trust for forgiveness and eternal life.

Cain belonged to the evil one, Cain murdered his brother—and in this passage, it’s easier to see John’s point if we set aside our own knowledge that we know the name of Cain’s brother, but that we keep calling him “Cain’s brother.” Why did Cain murder his brother? John tells us that it’s because Cain’s own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

We’re not told in the book of Genesis what was wrong with Cain’s offering as opposed to his brother’s. Cain is an enigma that should make us all uncomfortable. Cain is the first person we know of who ever made a sacrifice to God. Not his brother, not his father, but Cain. And later, God commanded that the same kind of offerings that Cain brought would be required offerings in certain cases for the Israelites, God’s chosen people. So if there was nothing wrong with the substance of his offering, then there was something wrong with the intention or the faith behind it.

But let’s get back to our comparison of Cain and Christ. Cain did the opposite of what Christ did. Cain offered an unacceptable sacrifice, and in his anger and jealousy he killed his brother—he took his brother’s life—because his brother’s offering was acceptable and good to God. If you remember, Cain was then marked by God out of God’s mercy so that no one would kill him to avenge his brother’s blood; to preserve Cain’s life.

Christ offered a perfect sacrifice—himself—and his love and compassion Christ laid down his own life in place of the lives of all his brothers—you and me, his brothers and sisters—to pay for the sins of all his brothers and all of mankind. We are sealed as Christians, bearing the mark, as it were, of Christ’s mercy in our baptism, to preserve our lives into all eternity.

Now: hold that thought. John isn’t just comparing Christ and Cain. He’s comparing Christ and Cain in our lives. He isn’t just letting us know which of those two descendants of Eve was a better man—that’s a no-brainer that almost everyone understands, although there actually are people in the world who think that fall of man was a fall “upward.” Let’s leave that thought for another time.

No; John is asking you and me to recognize which one of these two is living within us: Christ or Cain. And John’s real point of comparison is how they treated their brothers: How Cain treated his brother and how Christ treated all his brothers—which means all of us. If we have a brother or sister or neighbor or even a stranger who needs something, and if we have and love our material things so much that we’re unwilling to help—then, John tells us—then we hate that brother or sister and we’re exactly like Cain.

Maybe you hold a grudge and won’t hold out an olive branch. Maybe someone did something bad to you once and you’re not willing to forgive. Maybe someone did something bad to someone you love and you want to get some kind of payback for that loved one—or however twisted our soap opera lives get. God’s standard is simple and clear: Love.

Love begins with trusting the one who loved us. Love continues and grows by loving the people in our lives, whether they’re there every day or if perhaps they might be the people we see only once, at a stop light, at a restaurant, a visitor at church, a child crying on the sidewalk. We look after their physical needs if we’re able along with their spiritual needs. But love doesn’t say “I can afford to give you the Gospel for free but not a loaf of bread. Love says: “Both the Gospel and the bread,” and there will even be times when love says, “You need to hear the truth.”

There is a misconception in the world that showing love to someone means not hurting their feeling, or means that I always have to let their opinion take precedence over God’s word. But although love and respect go hand in hand, it’s really love and truth—as John points out—that need to run together, especially in spiritual matters.

Love and truth are like the two wings of a bird. Without truth, we won’t get anywhere, and a love that doesn’t tell the truth isn’t love at all. Truthful love will sometimes lead me to tell a friend, “I’m going to help you today by not giving you money that I know you’re going to spend on some vice—you’re going to smoke it, or drink it, or gamble it away, and instead I’m going to let you spend your lunch money on this thing you don’t really need so that you will go hungry and get a better perspective on your priorities. And that doesn’t mean I’m playing “God;” it means I’m holding up a mirror to your life in the same way I would hope that in truthful love you would hold a mirror up to mine.

And our lives don’t always hold up well to this test. Our lives are never perfect, and although God demands perfect and sinlessness from us, that isn’t a reason to despair or to give up hope or to retreat and look out for ourselves. He has put us in the world to do the work of looking after our brothers and sisters—everyone who touches our lives. And when we examine ourselves and see that we’re more like Cain than Christ, we need to remember who Christ is, and what he did for us.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. We love him for that—because his death means the payment for our sins is finished and complete. There is no payment for sin left that must be made up. There’s no interest, no entry fee, no initiation. God washed us clean—most of us didn’t even do anything at all to be baptized; it was done to us, even without our asking.

And Christ’s loving payment for our sins means that we have freedom to worship and serve him as a thank you for what he did. None of that is required, but it’s the way we show our love.

While we show our love for Christ, John wants us to remember something: Don’t be surprised if the world hates you for your faith. Don’t hold a grudge. Don’t try to get back. Don’t expect the world to come to a reasonable compromise. It’s not the peripheral things about Christianity that infuriate the world. Whether our pastors wear white robes or black robes, whether a choose to use one Bible translation or another, whether practice loving fellowship or closed communion – these are things that almost everyone in the world can take or leave. It’s Christ himself; it’s the release from the burden of guilt and sin that’s outrageous. But we would give anything up but that.

The forgiveness we have from Jesus is the most priceless treasure any of us possesses. The more we have; the more we understand it and embrace it, the more we will want to share it and give it away. Faith is a never ending spring that swells up and overflows, and that spring of truth and love, the spring of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is what we share and show to everyone around us. Through Jesus, we have passed from death to life.

And the peace of God…

1 John 1:1—2:2
Third Sunday of Easter
April 26th, 2009
Pastor Tim Smith

1 John 1:1—2:2
1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched– this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense– Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (NIV)

(1) Background of this letter (2) The centrality of Christ (3) The “other-ness” of any other teaching (4) The centrality of Christ.

John did not sit down one day thinking, “It’s about time for me to write the 62nd book of the Bible.” He had a purpose for writing this letter we call “First John.” And his purpose isn’t all that hard to find as we read even these first few sentences. There were false teachings in his congregation—maybe I should say “congregations.” We have reason to believe that John served the last thirty or so years of his life and ministry in the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor, beginning in the year 70 which was when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Since this letter isn’t addressed to any one group of people, it would appear to be written to several congregations, a “general letter,” read in churches all over that part of the world, because of a common problem they faced.

John wanted his people to know about that problem and to prepare them to handle it. But we’re going to notice something right away. John isn’t speaking to the false teachers themselves, and so he doesn’t spend time describing the false teaching. And as we meditate on these opening words of this letter, I won’t spend time describing it, either. Instead, John encourages his listeners – and today that includes us – in the all-important message of the Gospel. And the living Christ is the center of the gospel.

John begins this letter to Christians who, like us, are already believers. Like us, they already enjoy the fellowship of the Lord’s Supper, the comfort of Baptism. They had heard the mystery of the incarnation and the breathless grief of the Passion story. And what does he remind them of as he writes to them? He calls Jesus Christ, “Life.” He calls Jesus “the Word of Life,” and he even boldly proclaims Jesus as “the Eternal Life,” personifying Jesus as eternal life itself—we can’t separate eternal life from Jesus any more than we can separate our spirit from our soul.

Life, Word of Life, eternal Life – all of these things point to the Living Christ, and for John and his audience, living, we suspect, about 60 years after the ascension – this is the Resurrected Christ. We worship God, the God who is no myth, who is no mere saint, dead and buried and decayed. No, Jesus is risen. He lives. Just think of what that means for us.

That means, as John says over and over again, that we are in Jesus; we are in his light. We are not in the darkness. To be outside Jesus and outside the gospel of his forgiveness is to be outside of heaven; outside of eternal life.

Any other teaching, even if it mentions the name of Jesus, is not about Jesus if it denies the risen Christ. If we separate Jesus from the gospel of forgiveness and the resurrection then we separate ourselves from Jesus, and the gospel, and the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to eternal life.

Imagine the horrible consequence of being outside that wonderful sphere of Christ. Imagine what it would be like to be uncertain, to be terrified, to have the weight and burden and guilt of one’s sins hanging like some awful iron yoke around the neck, pulling us down, down, down until it finally drives us down into the ground, our faces right down into the dirt and the mud; so that we can’t get up, can’t move, and can’t even shout for help. All that’s left for a person outside that sphere of Jesus is to gasp, “Please help me,” in despair of ever helping ourselves.

Now that we’ve imagined it, let’s remember something terribly serious. There are people in our lives who feel that very thing. There may be someone listing to this sermon, perhaps in the pew right here today or at home watching this on T.V., someone who is only too well aware of the gruesome burden of their own sins.

What we don’t always remember is that when we try to chip away at the gospel of Jesus Christ, we put ourselves in danger of stepping outside that sphere of Christ ourselves, because whenever we take something away from Jesus, if we deny something about Jesus, or if we deny something about God the Father’s will in the world, we suddenly end up in such a strange position that our denial of some part of Jesus makes us responsible for some part of our sins. If we trust Jesus 100% for our forgiveness, we’re 100% forgiven, because what he did was sufficient for all of our sins. If we step out so that only 95% of me is relying on Jesus, does that make me 5% responsible for my sins? I hope not—that would damn me, because I can’t pay for the guilt of 5% of my sins. But in fact, Jesus’ blood covers all of our sins.

The specific problem in John’s congregations was similar to this: They were denying something about Jesus. And that’s something we can never do.

How easy to forget; how easy to try to step outside the beautiful sphere of Jesus, just for a moment; just for one sin; just for one swear word, just for one hour to blow off some steam. If ever we were to dare to step outside the sphere of Jesus, were would we be placing our trust? And it wouldn’t be that moment that would be the only problem.

Picture that like a child stepping for just a moment off the playground. Something distracts the teacher and the teacher’s aid, and a child wants to see what it would be like to just step out of bounds for a second. The second ticks by, and nothing happens. Nothing at all. Back in bounds, now, and forget about it, until the next time comes around, maybe the next day, or the next week. And then the child finds himself stepping off the school grounds more often, until it becomes a habit, and sin gets to be exactly like that kind of habit—because doing bad and getting away with it is addictive; there’s a rush that gets to be something the sinful flesh likes, which is exactly why it really is a battle to struggle against our sinful flesh. It doesn’t come naturally. It doesn’t make sense to the world.

Let’s step back into the sphere of Jesus and his forgiveness together in our hearts because I want to get back to that person who might be listening right now or who might be watching this later on TV who is wondering about their sins; suffering under that awful weight of guilt and the burden of sins.

The resurrected Jesus is proof that his death on the cross paid for all that sin. John gives five proofs of Jesus’ divinity and resurrection in the very first verse. The first is that he “was from the beginning.” The second is that “we—John and the other apostles—have heard him.” The third is that “we have seen him with our eyes,” the fourth that “we have looked at—inspected—him,” and the fifth, that “our hands have touched the Word of Life.”

This risen Jesus has wiped away all of the stain and the smear and the stench of our sins. There is no being condemned by God any more for you, because you are released from your guilt by Jesus.

The terrible iron yoke of sin is lifted. The lies of Satan’s accusations have been silenced by the truth of God’s own forgiving word.

How do we stay in the sphere of Jesus? How do we keep ourselves centered on the Living Christ, who is the Center of the Gospel?

Keep yourself in the word of God. Read a little bit of God’s word every day. I’m not asking you to sign up for our daily e-mail devotions, although if that’s what you’d like to try, we’re starting the Book of Esther in a few weeks. I’m not saying you need to start at Genesis chapter 1 and keep at it until you get to the last chapter of Revelation. But choose a part of the Bible that’s familiar, and read it again. Pick a gospel, and read that a little bit every day. Pick a letter of Paul, like Galatians or Romans, or reacquaint yourself with Genesis.

And in between reading, or after you finish a book, it never hurts to find your old Catechism, and read through it. Read it now, especially when the anxiety over having to have it memorized is gone, and you can read it to appreciate its simple, clear language.

Stay in the word of God. Stay in the true teaching of Christ Jesus. He is the one who brought you into his sphere; and he himself will keep you there. His life is your life. The living Christ is center of the gospel.

And the peace of God…