Calvary Evangelical Free Church
Believe and Live
Josh Laack explores why the Christian life must be lived out by believing what God has revealed, and obeying His commands for our lives. Good morning, Calvary. My name is Josh Laack, and I have the joy and honor of serving as your elder board chair. And I also have the joy of being a part of the preaching team here at Calvary. And over the last little bit here this summer, we’ve been going through together this series in First John called Walk in the Light. When you hear the phrase walk in the light, what comes to your mind? For me, I think of the long journey that I took in my own life, toward becoming a born-again believer in Jesus, one who walks in the light. And I’ll be honest with you, this has not been a straight path in my life, nor an easy one. I see times in my life where I was trying to do one or the other of these pieces, either trying to be in the light or trying to walk, but I did not know how to put them together. What do I mean by that? Well, as a teen and into my early 20s, I spent a great deal of time walking all over the place. And by that I don’t mean getting exercise. I was trying to do a lot of things for and with people, but I was not motivated by the right things. I felt this powerful need to be seen and recognized and desired by those around me. But some of the people that I put around me were not people that I should want to be praised and recognized as doing what they wanted me to be doing. I wanted to be thought of as cool, accepted, part of the in-crowd. And so I behaved, I walked, in the way that I thought that they would want me to. This resulted in me joining in and swearing and watching movies and TV shows and listening to music, things that did not increase the light of Christ in my heart and my life. But I did these things because I wanted these people to think that I was somebody worth something, that I was somebody good. In fact, I even went so far as to do nice things for people, to do good things for people, but again, not for the right reasons. I would hold open doors or say nice things because I wanted the other person to recognize me, to say thank you, or to say, wow, that’s a really good guy, that Joshua. Unfortunately, this wasn’t just in the secular world that this played out. It happened for me at church too. Because at this point, even though I went to church on Sundays, I wasn’t even a Sunday Christian. I went to church, and I did it, and I said the things that I knew would get the recognition of Christians around me that I wanted to impress. I knew the right words. I knew what to say and how to say it. I knew when to pray. But it wasn’t something that was coming from my heart. It was something that was coming from my desire to be thought well of, to be recognized. During this time, I actually came to know many true things about Christianity, including even the knowledge that Jesus was probably who he claimed to be. I allowed that knowledge, that light, to enter my mind, but it did not affect my walk. Instead, I used the knowledge to continue to seek my own personal gain by having better things to share with those Christians around me. Better things to say. It took the Holy Spirit, a lot of trials and a lot of time for God to finally bring my heart around to a real desire to let that knowledge change how I walked. To become a Christian who genuinely served and walked in the light. This series, Walk in the Light, is John describing something genuine, something that begins with the light, the knowledge and truth of who Jesus is and what he’s done. And that light shining into the darkness of our lives. But it continues. It continues with that light altering who we are, what we know and believe, and then how we live our lives. We cannot just have knowledge, and we cannot just stand still or walk in our own strength. My point for us today is this: the Christian life must be lived out by believing what God has revealed and obeying his commands for our lives. You know, it actually makes a great deal of sense why it took me so long to get to that point in my life. Because the light does something that most of us don’t like at first. It reveals the hidden truths about who we really are. Things that we would much rather keep hidden from those around us. And it’s why Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3:20 that was read for us everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. You know, I was avoiding truly living in the light because I thought I wanted to have both. I thought I wanted to keep the things of my old life, the things that felt good in the moment. I thought I wanted those things, too. And so I tried to have the light, but I tried to keep it at a distance so that I could keep on the other side these things that I wanted in the shadows. And I tried to hide those things even from my Lord, only really fooling myself. Of course, it never works that way. The way we deceive ourselves into believing that it might. And thankfully, it’s not the only option for us. We can become part of a new group, a second group of people who live out my purpose statement for us today. And Jesus describes those in verse 21, but whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. Jesus was calling Nicodemus out of his old life of works for human approval, and he was calling him into the light of a new true life in Christ. And John has been doing much the same thing for us all throughout the letter of First John. Now, over the last several messages, the topic of love has come up over and over again the needing to love as a believer. And if you haven’t already, I recommend you check out those messages. Steve Ansell last week did a great job of setting us up for this message today where we will be in First John 5, verses one through five. Now here, John in these verses gives us a summary of what he has been teaching the whole time so far, which does include this idea of love. But he focuses on three main points that build upon what has come before. And we’re going to explore together today as three questions. By the end of our time, I hope to show us that John’s point on the fact that we must love, but we must focus on how this is practically done in our lives so that we know how to how to actually live this out. How can it change our lives today? In order to get to this practical application, we’re going to go through these three questions. Who is this for? What do we do? And why does it matter? Looking at the first question, who is this for? Let’s go to First John five, verse one and see how John approaches the answer. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. What we see here is John describing a clear definition of a person who walks in the light. This is someone who trusts, who believes what has been revealed to them about Christ. And that belief results in genuine love for the Father and love for others. Steve read this verse for us last week, and he really touched on the family nature of this verse. Belief in Christ as the Son of God results in a relationship in us being born again into the family of God. And if this is genuine, it will result in love lived out for our Father and for our brother Christ and for others in our lives. I notice here, though, that John does not describe many categories or many paths to this kind of love. Rather, he emphatically lists only two options. Either you are walking in the light of Christ or you are not. We’ll get into why this matters more with the last question, but we can clearly see here that John doesn’t see multiple paths to God, and this has been woven all throughout the letter so far, with John going so far as to say, if you claim you have love for the Father, but you don’t live out that love for him and for others, then you are a liar, and the truth is not in you. Anyone who tries to live this way is still in darkness. And that’s what Jesus was describing to Nicodemus. If your actions are not done in the light, then you will continue to hide in the darkness. So we see here only two options: either believe and trust in Jesus and be born again into his family, or reject him and still live in darkness. Now many people struggle with this, and Nicodemus does as well in John three, Jesus explains to him that he must be born again and how to enter the kingdom of God, not by his own power, but through the Holy Spirit. And Nicodemus doesn’t get it. How can these things be? He asks Jesus. And for all his study as a Pharisee, for all of the knowledge that he had as a teacher among the Jews, Nicodemus doesn’t understand. So Jesus explains to him who he is and what he has come to do. John 3:16-18. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. In First John, John is explaining to us what Jesus has already taught. Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world because the whole world is already condemned in their own sin. Jesus instead came to save us as the light. For the whole world then there are two options. Believe in Jesus, who died and rose again on our behalf, and be saved from the just result of the darkness that we used to live in. Or option two reject him and remain in darkness. Remain condemned in our sin. Jesus didn’t come to put people in hell or to put them into judgment. He came to offer a way out to the whole world that was already there. Believe in who Jesus is and what he has done for you and you will be saved. The final piece that is clear here is that this belief is not just knowledge of who Jesus is. Nicodemus came to Jesus saying, we know. We know that you are a teacher come from God. And yet that knowledge had not resulted in any kind of changed life for Nicodemus. In my own case, I knew who Jesus was long before I ever lived like it. I think many people have a lot of knowledge, but that knowledge must push us into a new life in Christ. It must push us to be born again into the family of God, and then to seek to live that way. I think there’s one final, powerful example that shows us that real knowledge, even deep knowledge of who Jesus is, is not enough. The demons that we see all throughout Scripture knew who Jesus was. They knew what he was capable of, and they knew what he had come to do to them. And yet that knowledge did not change at all how they behaved or who they were. Knowledge that leads to a genuinely saved life results in someone who, because of their belief in Jesus and what he has done for them, someone who walks or tries to walk in the light in a way that that brings their action, their life, into the light. Here I find another common argument. But what about those who are living good lives, who are genuinely loving people? They just, they just don’t believe in Jesus. What do we do with those? Well, we can argue over whether it’s even possible to be a good person without the Holy Spirit. But let’s, let’s pretend, for argument’s sake, that it’s completely possible to live a good life without Christ. So there’s this person and they live their entire life sacrificially honoring other people, serving other people, and they get to the end of the life and it’s time to enter the kingdom of God. And they come and they knock on the door and they say, let me in because of all the good things I have done. What is the King going to say to that person? He will say, I don’t know you. I will not let you into my home. The missing thing is relationship. I certainly am not going to let a stranger come live in my home, no matter how many good things they claim to have done. Why would we expect God to be any different? Especially when he says over and over again, all throughout the Scripture that what he is seeking is trust and a real relationship from us, not a life that is spent trying to prove that we don’t need him at all. So the answer to who is this for is anyone who wants out of the darkness, and who believes that a relationship with Jesus lived out in faith is the only way to do that. In simpler terms, it’s for anyone who wants what Jesus offers and is willing to do it Jesus’s way. It took me a long time to get to this place. But when I finally did begin to understand who Jesus was and what he had done and what that meant for me, and I began to want to live it out, I had another problem. I didn’t know what that meant or how to do it. This brings us to our second question. As born again believers, what do we do? How do we walk in the light? Now, we’ve heard over the last few weeks definitions of love. Commands to love. Commands not to hate. We have heard that God Himself is love. In John three, it’s love that inspires God to send His son on our behalf. And those are all beautiful concepts, but they’re a little bit abstract. Steve explained to us last week that biblical love here is not a feeling, but rather a choice to act in another person’s best interest. And that’s exactly what God did in sending Jesus on our behalf. While we were still his enemies, God loved us and sent His Son for us. He certainly didn’t love how we were acting or how we thought of and treated him or his creation, but he demonstrated his love anyway, not by letting us continue as we were, but by offering us a new alternative in Christ. He loved us first, and as we have been loved, that is how we must love others. But how? How do we know what that looks like? First John five, verses two and three. By this we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. John makes it clear here that the way to love both God and others is to obey the commandments that God has given us, and His word is full of commandments for us. Some of them are easier and others are harder. Yet they are laid out for us. Even just the simple Ten Commandments is a great place for us to start. Some of those commandments specific for how to love God, and the rest for how we go about loving others. So here is a simple and practical explanation for what I believe John is suggesting about the link between loving action and the commandments. In other words, how we should approach life’s situations when it comes to trying to walk in the light. Any time I am not sure what God would have me do, I need to seek God’s command on that issue. For example, if I disagree with my dad on something, how should I treat him? Can I just tell him I think he’s dumb and wrong? No. The commandment says I should honor my father. It doesn’t say agree with him. It says honor him. A little further research and I found a biblical definition for this word honor, which is recognizing and treating someone as having great value, weight, and worth. So how do I do that when I disagree? Well, believe it or not, my dad and I don’t agree on every topic. In fact, we have had conversations about things where I feel very strongly that my idea is right and his is wrong. Yet because of this command to honor him, I try to pause and think more deeply about what he’s saying and about his side of the argument before I interrupt and present my own evidence. And when I speak counter to his idea, I try to do it calmly and without judgment. Here’s another hard thing that I think many Christians are hurt by and have to deal with. How do I live when someone who claims to be my brother or sister mistreats me or insults me? I have a rough idea of what I think God might expect, but I don’t know for sure. Now we live in an amazing time in history in which information about all manner of things is available readily at our fingertips. I typed this question into a search. What are some Bible verses on dealing with a Christian who mistreats you? The top four verses that came up were Romans 12:17-19. Repay no one evil for evil. But so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Matthew 18:15 if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Ephesians 4:32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. And first Peter 3:9, do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless. Of course, there’s a caveat here. Just searching on the internet is not a good answer. We all still need to take the time to study and go back to these verses ourselves, and to pray and to meditate and to look at the context and understand what God is truly trying to teach in these things. But it is a good place for us to be able to find verses more quickly if we’re not sure where they are. And after reflection on these four verses, I see a clear consensus in God’s commands for us in Scripture and how we are to walk through dealing with a brother or sister who mistreats us. I should not respond immediately in the same way I feel they have behaved, but I should seek peace with them if possible. I should try to deal with it privately without dragging other people into it, if possible. My words and response should be kind and tenderhearted, giving them the benefit of the doubt, even if I don’t think they deserve it. I should be willing to forgive, if possible, and if they don’t repent or apologize, but they continue to mistreat and insult me, Peter says don’t repay their behavior with the same kind of behavior, but rather with a blessing. In other words, we can trust the Lord to handle the final outcome, and we can choose to live out his commands as an action of love towards someone else, whether they deserve it or not. You know, there are many topics beyond these that the Bible covers directly or with nuance, that will allow us to discern how God may want us to live or behave in any situation. And we should apply this as often as possible, because life is hard. And knowing the right thing to do in many situations is hard. We have to make choices like how should the church respond to refugees, to sojourners in the land? Well, Jason O’Grady’s message a few weeks ago included Deuteronomy 10:18-19, which tells us that God loves the sojourner and gives them food and clothing and commands that we do the same. What about deciding whether I should vote for someone? Well, do their words and behaviors line up with the commands of God? Should I marry this person? Are we equally yoked? Do they live and desire to live in a way that fits with God’s commands for their lives? Should I be 100% honest on my taxes? Or can I lie a little bit to keep some of my money because I really need it? Romans 13:7, pay to all what is owed to them. Or this most important one. There’s football on during the sermon today, should I skip church? Hebrews 10:25, do not neglect meeting together. Of course. That last one is a bit silly, but we do have to make choices on what love looks like for God and for others. And we need to do that in a way God would have us do it to the best of our ability. And to that end, we all have access to God’s Word for search and study. We have access to the internet, which can make finding verses easier if we’re careful about making sure we go back to the actual text and try to understand what it’s s
