A Pastoral Interlude | In light of love | 1 John 2: 12-14 | Ep.6

Welcome to Preaching from Bryanson Bible Church, located in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is our prayer that this teaching would bless you, deepen your love for God's word, and encourage you as you follow Jesus.

And if you are not a Christian, we pray that this message would encourage you as you explore the Christian faith.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the Father.

I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Well, good morning, everyone.

Really is so, so good to be worshiping with you today on Father's Day.

Well, when you think about your life in a city like Johannesburg, what is it that immediately comes to mind for you?

Your week, your month may have also been completely consumed by the micromanaging of your kids' exam stress.

Or maybe navigating the lawless chaos of Vitkoppan and Winimandela traffic.

Maybe it's those varsity exams or that work deadline that is hanging over your head.

It might be the heavy reality of having to care for frail aging parents.

Or maybe the quiet sadness of staring at an empty nest.

It might be the doctor's bills that are mounting, or that looming decision about whether or not to move to that retirement village.

If you're anything like me, well then you'll find that life here is really characterized by that constant, relentless feeling of the hustle.

Do you know it?

That aggressive rush from point A to point B, the hyper-packed school schedules, the tight deadlines, the work, and let's not sugarcoat it.

The survival sports of trying to find parking at BBC on a Sunday morning, right?

Things in this life are stressful.

They are fast-paced, they are hectic.

And sometimes we can feel as if we're living in this pressure cooker.

It's a high altitude, high anxiety pressure cooker that we do life in.

And because misery loves company, eventually you find yourself sitting opposite that one friend of yours.

You know that friend, we've all got one, the one who's deeply zen, kind of out of touch with reality, and you're wanting to process your existence, your frantic pace of life with them.

You're at a coffee shop, you're pouring your heart out to them, and that point in the conversation always comes where they look at you with deep sadness and pity in their eyes and take a sip of their oat milk skinny, no fun latte, and say to you the most unhelpful thing known to man.

Mike, all you have to do in your life is find a little bit of balance.

Balance, really?

Do you mean the myth that is otherwise known as work-life balance?

Because if you are working or parenting or living in Johannesburg right now, then you've also become disillusioned with that mirage of work-life balance.

People treat it like it's this delicate scale that you sort of adjust here and then you adjust over there.

Balance itself is a verb, right?

It implies a constant state of doing.

You are doing at home and then you are doing at work.

You are managing a corporate team, and then you're managing your family's weekend schedule logistics.

It's exhausting.

And here's my confession.

I feel a pastoral, a measure of pastoral guilt about this.

Sometimes the life part of that work-life balance doesn't always feel like life.

On a Saturday morning, when I'm rushing across Johannesburg trying to get one daughter to a netball match and then rushing to get the other one to a hockey match on the other side of the city, it doesn't always feel like life.

Sometimes it just feels like labor.

When I'm at a social function on a Friday night and I know I've got a party on a Saturday and a mandatory family lunch on a Sunday, it doesn't always feel like life.

Sometimes it just feels like an admin roster.

And even DIY, home maintenance, that I love doing so much and normally brings me so much joy, oftentimes doesn't feel like life.

It just feels like an unpaid internship.

Do you know it?

Do you know that sense of feeling of the unpaid internship?

That's that's kind of what life is like.

And if if you're anything like me, all of this rush, all of this pressure comes to a head on or about the 13th of December every year.

You are frantically rushing to send that last email, see that last client, attend that last credit committee meeting.

And at the end of the day, you slam your laptop shut and activate your out-of-office auto-reply with this holy sense of joy.

You race home to pack the car to the roof.

And the next morning you wake up at like 3 a.m.

Because now you're suddenly competitively rushing against every other person in how ting to beat them onto the highway.

Now, dads are guilty of this.

Like drill sergeant, come, we're late, we're late, let's go, let's go.

You're either charging down the N3 towards the coast, or you're flying up the N1 towards Limpopo, or you're racing along the N4 towards Mpumalanga and the Kruger.

And you're still exhausted.

Your mind is still hissing with adrenaline.

It's like the pressure cooker lid is fastened shut.

And do you experience that pressure in your life?

Can I get a nod of heads?

Have anyone else experienced that?

Yes.

Okay, good.

Well, you might even be experiencing it this morning without realizing it.

You know that Joe Burg rush as you sort of subtly look down towards your watch and realize that it's been almost 10 minutes and Mike isn't even through his introduction.

I need you to stick with me.

I hear you, but stick with me.

We're going somewhere.

Back to my December leave uh analogy.

Amidst all of that rush, you're trying to get there, there is normally that very specific physical sensation that happens at a certain point on the trip.

For me, it's it's almost every time, the exact moment I drive through the Moy River toll gate on the N3, and the sprawling green of the Kwasuluna Tel Midlands opens up in front of me, and I roll down my window, and it's like the air there is different.

It's just crisp, it's clean.

And I take that first sort of deep, unfiltered breath, you know, right from the diaphragm.

And then when you breathe out, it's like the pressure drops instantly.

You might not be at the beach, you might not be at your destination, but crossing that threshold forces a shift in your soul.

It's like you step out of the anxiety of the pressure cooker and you step into the breathing room of rest.

Now, hard work and hustle are not unimportant, but sometimes rest is the only thing that allows us to step back, remember what all the hard work is for, and to regain the strength that we'll need for what lies ahead.

Now, in the past five weeks, as we've journeyed through this letter of one John, this text has had us in a spiritual pressure cooker.

John has been asking some hard questions, he's been pressing us hard, forcing us to ask hard questions of ourselves.

Are you walking in the light?

Are you confessing hidden sin in your life?

Do you keep God's commandments and do you live the way that Jesus lived?

Are you harboring bitterness in your heart towards your brother and sister in Christ, or do you love them like Jesus loves them?

It's been a beautiful couple of weeks, but very intense and very introspective.

And you see, John is a wise old pastor, and he knows that as soon as you start telling Christians you've got to live like this, or if you've got to love like that, very quickly people's faces begin to fall.

And so, as that experienced old pastor is sitting writing this letter, and he perceives that these readers may face some sense of exhaustion.

He realizes they that they might be facing spiritual fatigue as he's holding up this mirror in front of them.

And we're not so different, are we?

We read these exhortations that we've read so far, we read on in the letter, and we find ourselves asking, how do we possibly sustain this?

How do we sustain the Christian life?

Lord, it just feels too hard to be a Christian in this world.

And if you're not asking that question right now, if you're not feeling those feelings right now, I guarantee that at some point in this letter, or at some point in your life as a Christian, you will.

And so, right here in the middle of chapter two, it's like John's pulling us over at the side of that toll gate, pulling us on the side of the road at that toll gate and hitting the manual pressure release valve.

Because these verses are a beautiful, poetic interlude in what has been otherwise been a very intense start to the letter and what will be a very intense finish to the letter.

It's almost like in these verses, he's saying to these readers and to us, just pause, stop for a moment, relax your shoulders, lift your gaze, and take a deep breath.

And so I want you to physically do that with me now.

Let's take a deep breath together.

Just breathe out.

John says, I need to remind you of what is already permanently, irrevocably true of your identity in Christ.

And it's his message for us today.

He says, reminds us of three things.

Your sins are forgiven.

As children of God, as Christians, your sins are forgiven.

You know the Father, and you have overcome the evil one.

Your sins are forgiven, you know the Father, you have overcome the evil one.

And the reality of our lives as Christians is that we'll become defeated, we'll get discouraged.

We might even face spiritual burnout to the extent that we lose sight of these things.

And so these verses are a beautiful pastoral pause for assurance.

John is giving us assurance of our faith, he's reminding us of who we are in Christ so that we might have strength for the fight of the spiritual life that lies ahead.

And so if you have your Bibles open, turn with me to that text again.

I'm going to read it to us because it's such a beautiful text.

I'm going to read it to us again.

1 John 2, verses 12 to 14.

1 John 2:12–14

He says this.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, children, because you know the Father.

I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

When John sat down to write these words, he knew exactly the environment that his original readers were trying to survive in.

They were facing a crisis.

False teachers had split the church, spreading destructive, confusing ideas about who Jesus was.

And these believers that were remaining were reeling.

They were left reeling.

They were anxious.

They were deeply unsettled.

Now, if you haven't yet picked up a copy of our In Light of Love study and discussion guide, I highly recommend that you do.

You can do it, you can buy a copy at our next steps station outside, or you can buy it online because this guide really sets out the detail and the backdrop of this letter in a way that'll make it come alive for you.

I highly encourage you to get one.

But these believers were facing pressure from the outside, and we know they were also facing pressure from the inside.

Because up to this point in the letter, John had been pressing them hard.

He had been dropping some heavy, introspective tests on them, and they were becoming fatigued by the mirror that he was holding up to their souls.

And we are not so different, are we?

So this text is really John's way of saying, I want you to stick with me.

He writes this to give us hope.

He writes this to give us assurance.

Almost like he pauses teaching and instruction for a moment to remind us who it is that we are in Christ.

And so before we dive into those reminders and unpack them, it's really important that we look at the structure of these verses because the way that John has written them, the structure, tell a story in and of them, the structure itself tells a story.

If you look at your physical Bibles, you'll notice that these verses are slightly indented.

They're sort of offset a little bit from the margin.

The same way we see poetry is in the in the Bible when we read through it.

And even as we are reading, these verses are a beautiful, poetic, sort of liturgical chant.

Six times John says, I'm writing to you, or I write to you.

Six times he says that.

And he writes to three very distinctive groups.

And he almost writes in this beautiful symmetrical pattern to children, fathers, and young men.

It's a it's a it's a beautiful pattern that he writes with.

Now, if you've read the commentary on these verses, you will know that they have caused some headaches for Bible scholars over the centuries because they go backwards and forwards about who it is exactly John is writing to here.

Is he writing to different physical age brackets in this congregation?

Or is he speaking metaphorically about different stages of spiritual maturity?

Well, I tend to agree with those who say he's speaking about different stages of spiritual maturity, you know, going from the infancy of basic faith to the strength of young adulthood to the weathered wisdom of someone who's walked with God for a long time.

Even though that's what I think he's speaking about.

Ultimately, I don't want us to lose sight of his purpose for writing.

John's purpose here isn't to give separate instructions to separate groups in the church, saying, group A, look at this clipboard, you know, group B, look at this clipboard.

He writes this beautiful rhythmic poem, almost to wrap his arms around this whole congregation and give them assurance of their faith.

Even when you look at the underlying Greek language that these verses were written in, the verbs that John uses indicate that he's not placing the emphasis on the different stages or phases of maturity, but rather he's placing the emphasis on the standing that every Christian has in Christ.

And of course, there is encouragement to be taken from the fact that the Christian life is a process.

At certain points we struggle with some things, but then later in our walk with God, those things are easier.

There is encouragement to be taken from that.

This morning, whether no matter what your age is, no matter where you find yourself on the spectrum of spiritual maturity, this pastoral interlude is for you.

So let's look at the first thing he says.

Your sins are forgiven.

Your sins are forgiven.

As Christians, I don't think we can be reminded often enough that our sins are forgiven.

If I had to walk sort of down this middle aisle this morning and I looked at each of you in the eye, and as a Christian, I said to you, Are your sins forgiven?

What would your answer to me be?

Your honest answer.

Would you say to me, Mike, I'm hoping so.

Mike, I'm praying for it.

I'm working really hard at it.

I love the way that the late pastor Tim Keller challenges us in this area and challenges this mindset.

He said, When anyone says, I am looking for forgiveness, I'm hoping for forgiveness, they show that they don't understand the essential message of Christianity.

A Christian is not somebody who has access to forgiveness only.

A Christian is not just somebody who hopes for forgiveness.

A Christian is somebody who has it.

Your sins have been forgiven.

That's what it means to be a Christian.

Not that you have access to forgiveness only or that you have hope for forgiveness, but that your sins are forgiven.

He says, Your sins are forgiven.

When he writes that language, when he says, Little children, I'm writing to you because your sins are forgiven, he's really anchoring us in the language of justification.

Remember, justification is the legal declaration by God Himself that we are completely innocent in his sight.

Not because we didn't commit the crime, but remember from a few weeks ago, because Jesus Christ, our advocate, stepped into the courtroom on our behalf, became the propitiation for our sins, took the punishment that our sins deserved, paid the debt in full.

We must remember as Christians that our sins are forgiven.

It's going to be so important to do on this journey of faith because there will be times of your of your faith journey where it feels like you are in a brutal spiritual pressure cooker.

And we'll see it next week in the verses that we go through.

That we'll face pressure from the world around us.

We'll face pressure from the brokenness of our own sinful desires.

We will be encouraged to or challenged to demonstrate sacrificial love, to demonstrate sincere obedience.

And our tendency when we fail at those things is to become discouraged.

But the kind of forgiveness that John is speaking about here is not something that fluctuates based on your weekly performance.

As a child of God, he says, Your sins are forgiven.

As a child of God, he says, your sins are forgiven.

How do we know that for sure?

Because did you notice in the verses, he didn't only say, Your little children, your sins are forgiven.

He said, Your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

He gives the legal and the spiritual grounding for the forgiveness of our sins.

In the ancient world, when these words were written, someone's name wasn't only a personal label, it represented their character, their authority, their reputation, everything they were and everything they did.

In fact, when you journey through the Old Testament, particularly and you see that a king signed a decree in his name or a ruling in his name, it was as if the entire wealth and military power of the empire backed up that promise.

And so when John says your sins are forgiven for his name's sake or an account of his name, he's really removing the foundation for your assurance off of you.

He says your forgiveness doesn't depend on the value of your name.

It doesn't depend on the strength of your moral record, it doesn't depend on how well you have navigated the spiritual pressure cooker this week.

It entirely depends on Jesus Christ, the value of his name, his power, his finished work, on the merit of his finished work.

Your sins are forgiven.

Think about it from this angle for a moment.

As Christians, when we doubt that our sins are forgiven, in those moments, it's not as if we're devaluing our name, but we really are devaluing the name of Jesus Christ.

When we doubt that our sins are forgiven, it's like looking at the cross and saying, God, it was a good effort, but it wasn't quite good enough for my specific sins.

Doubting our forgiveness, friends, is not humility, it is a denial of the gospel.

The price has been paid.

And so would you just relax your shoulders for a moment, lift your gaze, and take a deep breath with me.

As a child of God in Christ, your sins are forgiven.

You might be with us this morning and you might not yet consider yourself a Christian.

This sense of assurance, this certainty about your identity is also on offer to you.

After the service, I'll be down the front here.

Some of our elders and prayer team will be here, and we'd love to tell you more about this forgiveness that is on offer in Christ Jesus.

So please do come down and have a chat with us.

But John's first encouragement to us is your sins are forgiven.

The second thing he says is, you know the Father.

He says, You know the Father.

Twice in this interlude, he uses the exact same writing.

I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

That phrase from the beginning, in the beginning, is a repetitive phrase in John's writing, even in this letter.

And in this context, I think it's referring to the beginning of the spiritual journey and knowing God from the beginning of that spiritual journey.

He's addressing people who've walked with God for some time and are able to look back in the rear view mirror of their lives and trace God's hand of faithfulness throughout.

And so he's reminding these readers, he's reminding them of God's faithfulness.

God doesn't change as the years go on.

That means he doesn't change as your circumstances change.

Whether you are navigating a chaos in your family or a sudden crisis at work or turbulence in your faith, you can rest secure that you know him, that God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Did you notice the phrasing though?

John didn't say you know about him.

It says you know him.

Today's Father's Day, and I echo what Liesel said earlier.

Happy Father's Day to all of you.

My dad was actually here in the first service.

This day really gives us a perfect window into what John is teaching.

Because if I were to stand up here and say to you that I know my dad, because I know that his name is Hannes, or I know he was born on the 9th of April, or I know that he's an economist, would that be absolute proof of the fact that I know him?

Well, no, because even a stranger could look up those facts about him on LinkedIn, right?

To know my dad is to know his heart.

It is to know what brings him joy, it's to know what moves him to sorrow, it's to know the desires he has for my life as his son, and then to experience the delight of walking out in those desires.

There's a universe of difference between knowing facts about Hanness and really knowing my dad.

And so let me ask you this morning directly.

Do you know God, your father?

Do you know the weight of his presence?

Do you know the intimacy of his love?

You see, in this letter, John's actually very specific about what it means to know God.

He says to know God is not just knowing facts about him, to know God is to know his heart.

It's to know his commandments and then live out in those commandments.

It's to confess sin when his word convicts us of sin.

It's to love sacrificially, even when it's difficult for us to do so.

That's what it means to know God.

But BBC, here's where that pressure cooker so often gets us as Christians.

Because oftentimes we we so focus on the things we do wrong.

Often we are overly fixated on our brokenness, on the ways that we stumble, that we completely look past the evidences of grace in our lives.

We forget about those moments, those quiet moments where we make a decision to be obedient to God.

We forget about those moments where we choose to love someone who's difficult, or we fall to our knees in repentance.

Friends, these things are evidence, proof that you know the Father.

So I believe John would have us just stop for a moment, pause for a moment, and remember the one who has been fiercely faithful to you from the very beginning.

Remember, you have a you know the one who has been fiercely faithful to you from the very first page of your spiritual story.

God doesn't change because your circumstances change.

And so this morning I just want you to relax your shoulders and take a deep breath with me.

And rest in this.

The Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the Ephesians in chapter 6, he affirmed that.

He said, We don't wrestle as Christians against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic powers over this present darkness.

Even the Apostle John, who wrote this letter, who wrote the fourth gospel, throughout that gospel depicts the spiritual landscape as this cosmic war between good and evil, light and darkness.

And Jesus Christ is leading the forces of light in a war against the forces of darkness.

Our lives as Christians are a spiritual battle.

But did you again notice John's phrasing in these verses?

He didn't say to these original readers or to us, you have to somehow muster the strength to overcome, that you have to somehow force yourself to be able to overcome.

He said to them, you have overcome the evil one.

You have overcome the evil one.

If you're here with us this morning and you are struggling with spiritual exhaustion, if you're feeling discouraged, you might look at those words as John says, You have overcome, and think to yourself, maybe that's a little bit of a cruel joke.

Because when you look at your track record and your failings this week, you might say to me, Mike, I don't feel like an overcomer.

I feel like I'm just struggling to survive.

How can John say to me, you have overcome?

To understand what he means, we have to look back at the words of Jesus Christ that John himself recorded for us in the fourth gospel.

Here's what Jesus said.

In the world you will have tribulation.

Remember, these words were spoken the night before Jesus was going to be crucified and face immense suffering at the cross.

His disciples were terrified and he looked at them and he dropped this anchor for their souls.

In this world, you will have tribulation.

It'll be difficult, you'll face pressure, but take heart.

I have overcome the world.

I have overcome the world.

Do you see the link?

Our overcoming is entirely dependent on his overcoming.

When Jesus Christ marched to the battlefield of Golgotha, he endured everything the enemy could throw at him: sin, death, hell, the grave.

The Son of God was nailed to a Roman cross.

And at that moment, the enemy, the evil one, the devil, must have thought the victory was won.

But three days later, Jesus Christ walked out of the tomb, defeating the power of the evil one forever.

And so when John says to us, you have overcome, he's not saying your life's gonna be easy, he's not saying you're not gonna be discouraged, you're not gonna fail.

He's not even saying that you are stronger than the devil.

He's saying the Christ who lives in you has already defeated him.

The Christ who lives in you has already defeated him.

And so, as Christians, we don't fight for a victory, we fight from a victory.

When you're in the pressure cooker of your life and you're and you're standing there and the evil one whispers lies, condemnation into your ear.

You don't have to at that moment draw on your own power.

You remember who it is that you abide in and who abides in you.

The very same Christ who said, Take heart, I have overcome the world.

You notice as you go further down these verses, the second time that John said to young men, You have overcome, he adds this vital key.

He said to him, All right to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you.

He reminds these believers you are strong, and the very vehicle that delivers that strength is the word of God.

You are strong because the word of God lives in you.

I love the way that the great theologian John Stott explained this.

He said, Your strength is due to the fact that the word of God lives in you.

And then he's commenting saying, They, the young men, these Christians, have grasped the Christian revelation.

They are seeking to conform their lives to its ethical demands.

Grasping the Christian revelation, grasping God's word, allowing it to take up residence in your mind, and then seeking to mold your life to the pattern of what it requires from you.

That's how the victory of Jesus becomes real in your experience.

That's what it means to overcome.

And so if you've been feeling targeted or ambushed or spiritually exhausted, my encouragement to you this morning is to take heart.

Don't give up the fight, don't lose hope.

Because the word of God is your daily source of strength.

And its pages are filled with a beautiful message of the gospel that says Jesus Christ has already overcome the evil one.

Satan is already a defeated foe, and that means you have overcome.

It's the third and final piece of our identity that John wants us to rest in this morning.

But just for a moment, I want you to look back at these verses.

Did you notice what John doesn't say here?

He doesn't give us a single command, he doesn't give us a single moral metric to track, he doesn't add a single thing to our Christianity to-do list.

In these verses, it's apostoral pause pulling us out of the pressure cooker that sometimes our journey of faith can be because so often we find ourselves saying, How do we keep this up?

How do we sustain our lives as Christians?

And John knows that we will face spiritual burnout if we forget who we are in Christ.

And so in these verses, he really wanted these readers and us to sit down, relax our shoulders, lift our gaze, and remember what is forever, permanently, irrevocably true of our identity in Christ.

And friends, to the extent that you forget these things, the rest of this letter, and maybe even the rest of your life as a Christian may just crush you.

And so, would would you remember then that your sins are forgiven?

Not because your name is great, but because his name is unshakable.

Would you remember that you know the Father who was from the very beginning, the unchanging one who holds you through every changing circumstance of life, who holds you fast through every changing circumstance of life.

And you have overcome the evil one, not because of your own power, but because you abide in the word of God, the very word that declares the finished victory of Jesus Christ.

So this morning, as we have sat in this beautiful shade of the gospel, would we go out of this room this morning, knowing exactly who it is that we are in Christ?

And my prayer for us as we read these words in the weeks to come and as we remember this message, my prayer is that we would regain the strength that we'll need for the fight of the spiritual life that lies ahead.

Would you bow your heads and pray with me?

Merciful Father, we are so thankful that Lord you saw it fit to include these very words in this letter to these original readers, Father God.

Thank you for the encouragement that we can take from these verses.

Lord, you know, you know the difficulty that being a Christian can be, Father God, the constant fight against the world around us, our broken desires and our sinful flesh, and even the evil one, Father God, you know the extent of the spiritual battle.

Thank you, Lord, that today we can rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for just giving us that pause, that break, that breather in these verses to remember who it is that we are, Father God.

And my prayer is that is that we would do just that.

Would we remember that we are children of God?

Would we remember our sins are forgiven?

We know you, Father God, and we have overcome the evil one.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for listening to this sermon from BBC.

If you have questions about what you've heard or would like to find out more about the Christian faith, we'd love to hear from you.

You can visit our website or reach out using the contact details below.

God bless you.