1 John: God is Greater than Your Conscience

My name is Russ Masterson.

I'm the pastor here at Redeemer.

We welcome you.

We're glad you're here with us.

Whether you're one of our regular folks and you've been with us for a while or a short period of time, or whether you are new to us here at Redeemer, maybe it's your first time.

We're just glad you're here with us.

What we like to say every single week, hopefully without fail, is that we are we are more flawed than we originally thought.

We're more broken than we originally thought, more sinful than we originally thought, but we are more loved by God than we could ever dare to dream.

And we know this concretely in the person and the work of Jesus Christ for us.

And that's what we say every single week.

Hopefully that's what I will say today as we work through this passage, which has a whole bunch of different stuff for us to get.

But I love this passage, and I think it's an amazing passage.

I've been excited about it all week.

About 10 years ago, a friend of mine took me to Israel, and I got to stand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

This is the Sea of Galilee right here.

This is a northern Israel.

So different stories in the Bible.

You may read about the Sea of Galilee, and that's that sea.

Now, maybe you haven't been to that sea, maybe you've been the Caribbean Sea.

Maybe you've been to the Caribbean Sea.

Here's a picture of the Caribbean Sea.

We would all love to be there.

Maybe some people are on fall break of our church, and maybe they're there and we're jealous of them.

We'll see those pictures somewhere, I'm sure.

And one day there's another sea I want to go to.

Here's another sea that I want to go to.

Can anybody name this?

Geography for 100?

Mediterranean.

Aegean.

I heard somebody say Mediterranean.

It looks like the Mediterranean, but this is the Aegean Sea.

So that's the sea between Greece and Turkey over in that pocket of the world.

That's on my bucket list.

So I mentioned these seas because when you stand on the shore of them, or maybe just a big lake, maybe you've been to Lake Altoona, right?

Okay, we'll count that.

So maybe that's that's as far as as we've gotten.

That'd be okay.

So when you stand on the shore of a big body of water, or you swim in it, what is clear, and it's just very clear, it's just basic, is the sea is bigger than you are.

Now here's a quote by Martin Luther coming from our passage this morning.

This is what he said.

This is a theologian from Germany a few centuries ago, and here's what he said based on our passage this morning, what I just read to you.

Even if our conscience makes us faint-hearted and presents God as angry, still God is greater than our heart.

Conscience is like one drop.

The reconciled God is a sea of comfort.

Now I nerded out a little bit this week, and I found out that if you added up all the water and all the seas of the entire world, it would be 1.332 billion cubic kilometers.

Okay?

That's all the seas, all the water and all the seas.

And then here's some eardrops I got out of our kitchen cabinet this morning, and maybe you can see it.

I'll just, okay, there is, okay, right there.

There it was, right?

That that's that's what a drop is 0.05, 0.05 milliliters.

Just a drop.

One drop in comparison to the waters of the seas.

God's comfort to us, even when we don't feel it, is like the water of the seas in comparison to one little drop of negative conscience that we so often have.

All right, that's gonna come back around for us.

Let's look at these verses.

1 John 3.11.

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another.

Now, if we remember verse one of this chapter, chapter three, we've been talking about, we're sort of like seeing this thread through 1 John.

And 1 John 3, 1 says, look what lavish love the Father gives to us.

Okay, so if we think about that, look what lavish love God has for us.

And then John says a little bit later on, 11 verses later, hey, by the way, from the beginning, you remember this, that we should love one another.

So we get this, our first point.

Our first point is this love received from God empowers love given to others.

That's how we love, that's how we're able to love.

It's how we're able to love without judgment or self-righteousness.

Verse 12 says this.

This is John using a negative example, what not to be.

He says, we should not be like Cain, good advice, who was the evil one and murdered his brother.

And why did he murder him?

Because his own deeds are evil and his brother's righteous.

So Cain, if you remember the story in Genesis 4, Adam and Eve's boys, Cain, in jealous hatred, he kills his brother.

And John says, Don't be like that.

Maybe you want to write that down.

Good advice.

And the point here is see, if you know you're loved, then the righteous deeds of your brother or your sister don't threaten you.

See, that's often how we react, isn't it?

That's often how I react, right?

Like my brother or my sister or my friend has something or is something I am not.

And instead of being able to go, like, hey, that's amazing for you.

It threatens me because I'm insecure.

But if we are secure in the lavish love that God has already given to us, then the righteous deeds of our brother or sister and what they have going on and what they got and what they received and who they are and who's applauding them, and all of that, we just say, hey, that how good for you.

And see, this is how the imperative of the love, you should love one another, the imperative to love, the call to love, the mission to love, whatever language you want for it, the imperative to love is being empowered by the indicative that we are already loved.

So you are indicated to you, you are loved by God.

It's lavish, it's to you.

And if you get that, as we get that, and we grow in the awareness of that, we are empowered to love our brother and sister and not sit in judgment or self-righteousness or feeling like we're not as great as them.

We're empowered.

Verses 13 through 15.

Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.

We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers.

Whoever does not love abides in death.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

So this is strong language, and a lot of last sermon kind of bridges into here.

So I'm not going to repeat last sermon.

You can listen to the last sermon.

But point number two is this coming out of these verses.

We are called to be people of conviction and people of love.

This is what John is doing.

It's amazing in this letter that he's giving to us.

This is a gift.

It would be so easy to read over.

It's almost like you don't pick up on it until you sit in this book for a while and you start to hear his conviction against what's going on in the false teaching of a group of people who have left their church in this community and is causing chaos.

And John is a person of conviction, and he is fired up on this, and he will talk about it.

And at the same time, he is a person that is saying, hey, you you should love.

We should love, not just in word, but in deed.

And this is such a gift for us.

We don't have to give up love to hold on to a belief about an issue.

And we don't have to give up belief on an issue in order to give love.

Both the extreme conservative and the extreme liberal makes this issue dualistic.

Meaning, if you do one of these, have a strong conviction on an issue, you can't do the other.

Or I want to love my brother or sister, or love that person, so I can't have a strong conviction.

The extreme conservative and the extreme liberal, they both say you can't do both these at the same time.

You've got to pick.

Either let go of your belief and love, or hold on to your belief and you can't love them.

It's just not true.

We get to be a people who have convictions on issues, and get to be a people who never withhold love to real people, not stereotypes of people, but real people who are not perfect and hold very different opinions and beliefs than us, and maybe have chosen different life choices and life paths.

We get to do both.

This is what John is doing.

He's writing with such conviction on issues, and at the same time, he's saying, love people, love your brothers, love your sisters, love, love, love.

Verse 16.

By this we know love.

That he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.

Point number three is this: when something in the world takes hold of your heart, it also closes your heart.

When I was 13 years old, I began to buy truck trader magazines.

Was anybody in the truck trader magazines?

Maybe you're about my age.

Okay, so truck trader magazines, you got them at the gas station, Brad.

I bought them at the OneStop.

I don't know where you bought yours.

Shell the Shell Station.

And it was all the ads.

Now it's online, Auto Trader and Truck Trader, it's online.

But it was the magazine, and you got it, and it was like newspaper quality, and it had everybody in the whole region, the truck they were selling.

I was 13 years old, and I'd buy this truck trader, and I had a highlighter, and in the evenings I'd sit on my couch and I would thumb through the truck trader, and I'd highlight all the good deals, and slowly I was building up my knowledge of what truck I wanted and what pricing and what mileage and what it had, and I was learning all about the different trucks, and I determined that what I wanted was a Toyota, and I've talked about this before because I still dream about this truck, mind you.

I would go, if I could find this truck, I would go buy this truck.

There was a 1985 Toyota 4x4.

Do you remember the truck in Back to the Future?

Does anybody remember the truck in Back to the Future?

Okay, that's kind of what it was.

It was amazing.

From the age 13 to 16, I cut grass.

I saved up$2,500.

My mom matched$2,500 at$5,000, and we went out and we bought a Toyota 4x4 truck, and I love that truck.

I put big tires on that truck.

I put a CD player with detachable face on that truck because that was a big deal, and you took the face off, you put it in your pocket when you walked around.

Somebody's gonna steal it.

Big is a big deal.

A pioneer detachable face.

I washed it, I waxed it, I armored it.

I love, I love that truck.

And looking back on it, it it was not just a truck, was it?

You can tell by me talking about you're like, this is beyond truck, this is beyond material, right?

It was my value, wasn't it?

It was my value.

It was my statement to my high school of how I wanted to be seen and known.

And if it was between loving that trot and loving a person, oh you better believe I was gonna choose the trot.

I mean, I was just I would've forget you.

I'm going with the trot.

And here's what John is saying.

It is true of me then, it's still true of me now, I still do it now.

When I use the world to feel valuable or to escape my shame, the world puts a tight grip on my heart.

That's just what happens.

If anyone loves the world's goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

It means that God's love is not an operation inside of you.

It doesn't mean you're not a Christian.

I mean God doesn't love you, it just means that you are not abiding in God's love and allowing that love to abide and manifest and come out of you toward a person.

So this is the point in the passage where you're like, ah man, John has been hammering us on love your neighbor.

The world is getting a hold of your heart.

I mean, it is like it is mission without grace.

Mission without grace is law, law condemns us.

And this is what's happening at this point in the passage is we can start to feel like, well, I just certainly don't do any of this.

You know, great, okay.

Verse 19 comes in, though, because John's probably feeling the same thing as he writes, by this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him, because we're gonna need it after everything we just read.

For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.

And he knows everything.

Beloved.

If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God.

So our last point is this is even our calling to love can create self-condemnation, but God is greater than our conscience.

So that word heart in this passage, it means the fountain, it's the center of your thoughts, it's the center of your affections, it's the center of your purposes and your will, it's your character, it's the inmost part of you.

And it's the place that stirs up both good and evil.

Now, if we jump back to our opening quote, and I didn't read all of it, here's the rest of it.

Even if our conscience makes us faint-hearted and presents God as angry, still God is greater than our heart.

Conscience is one drop, the reconciled God is a sea of comfort.

The fear of conscience or despair must be overcome, even though this is difficult.

It is a great and exceedingly sweet promise that if our heart blames us, and I would say, when our heart blames us, God is greater than our heart and knows everything.

God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.

Let me explain it this way.

We all know the number four.

We know the number four.

It's gonna pop up here in a second.

There it is.

We also know this.

Four is greater than two.

It just is.

Okay?

Just is.

We all know this guy.

This is LeBron James.

He is a beast on the basketball court, one of the greatest basketball players that ever lived.

He is like six foot eight.

He, I don't know how much he weighs, he's all muscle, he's amazing, and we also know this is true.

He is greater than me.

That was too much laughter.

I mean, I planned for some laughter.

At the peak of my high school, the peak of my basketball career, that sweet Anglo-Saxon Protestant boy, he's greater than I am.

You get the idea.

What John is laying on us here is in this lavish love that we have, verse one, God's greater than all the words of condemnation that you will hear, even from your own heart.

Even as this scripture says, love your neighbor, and you go, well, I don't do that all the time.

And some condemnation can begin.

Or don't let the world define you.

And you go, oh, uh-oh, you know, I had a truck one time.

And condemnation can begin.

Or, you know, messages like, you're not really enough.

Has your heart ever said that to you?

You're not really lovely.

You're not really smart.

You're not ever really gonna mean anything.

You'll never get rid of this guilt, you'll never get rid of this shame.

And John says, God is greater than our hearts.

He's saying, my belovedness is greater than my self-condemnation.

Because our belovedness is based in God's love and Christ's work for us that is outside of us and it is spoken and given to us in full grace, and it never fades, and it never goes away.

And the self-condemnation we have is based completely in our fickleness and finiteness and our imperfection and our sin.

Conscience is one drop.

The reconciled God is a sea of comfort.

Last few verses, verse 21.

Beloved, there it is, beloved, second time he's called us that.

If our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and whatever we ask, we receive from him because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

Now that's interesting.

Chapter 5 revisits that and clears that up for us, so I'm not gonna get into that now.

Verse 23, and this is his commandment that we believe in the name of the Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.

Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God and God in him, and by this we know that he abides in us by the Spirit whom he has given us.

So it doesn't mean every prayer will be answered.

Prayer is a connection to the Abba Father, who loves and accepts and listens to us.

Prayer is prayer, contemplation, even scripture reading.

Those are all practices.

They don't exist to make you beloved, they exist to remind us that we are already beloved.

And this brings us back to verse 1, which has been framing this entire chapter.

1 John 3 1.

I like the New King James version of this verse.

Behold what manner of love, I read it last week.

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called the children of God.

And what we said last week is we don't use the word behold a lot, right?

You didn't walk into the new brave stadium and you walked in and you saw that green, that unbelievably perfect green grass that was especially for that stadium.

And the perfect lines of the infield to the outfield and the stands.

You didn't walk in and you didn't say behold.

No, you walked in and you said, Wow.

This is amazing.

Look at that, and look, look at that.

That's unbelievable.

We've been talking about this Rembrandt painting of the prodigal son ever since Scotty Smith was here and preached for us a few weeks ago.

This is the story of the prodigal son who went off and rebelled and he comes back home and he is broken, and you can see him, he's broken down, he is worn out, his clothes are tathered.

I think he has on one shoe.

I mean, he has nothing left, he's on his knees.

And you can imagine how this boy felt.

Because we've all been this boy.

We've been this kid.

And we're like, will the father take me back?

Or maybe the father's angry.

Can you imagine the amount of self-condemnation this kid's heart was speaking to him?

That walk home and those moments until he falls before the father and the father embraces him.

Of course we can imagine it because we know it.

We know that walk and we know that self-condemnation.

And we know the evil messages that exist inside of self-condemnation, and they are I'm not enough, I'm not welcomed, and I'm not loved.

But the painting gives us the truth of the gospel.

That though we're not perfect, though we are sinners, we are welcomed by the Father.

And the Father is greater than the child's condition.

God is greater than our hearts, greater than our brokenness, greater than all we can even muster up in our little bit of faith when we come to Him.

He is greater than that.

Behold the lavish love of the Father.

Don't move on.

That's what it means.

Don't move on, don't move on.

The way you will be empowered to not be defined by the world, the way you will be empowered to love your neighbor is to behold, because you and I are fully known already by God.

And we are fully loved already by God in Christ.

My brothers and sisters, may the comfort of God be greater than the words of self-condemnation that you feel from your heart.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for this great news that we need because we so easily feel self-condemnation of what we have done, what we have not done, what we want to do, and we don't think we'll ever be able to do it.

We feel messages of self-condemnation from the world, we feel it maybe from other people, we certainly feel it from our hearts.

We hear that we are not welcomed, that we're not enough, and we're not loved.

And what we know from your good news, your gospel, is we are enough, and we are welcomed, and we are loved by you, that you are greater than our hearts.

God, would you increase the little bit of faith that we have?

May we behold in greater and greater ways that our lives, our hearts, our minds, our very beings may trust in you in greater ways, and that we may go and love our neighbor.

Amen.