[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning everybody
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Citizen's Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys don't know me if anybody's new here, my name is Mike M. And I, along with Taren Maze, help out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I help out with our training and their classes and other things like that here at Citizen's Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you got a Bible going grab it, turn to First John, chapter two, verse 28, and following.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you got the hardback one in the Puses, page 122.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because First John,
[SPEAKER_00]: uses mostly very simple language, very simple images, light, dark, good, evil, love, hate.
[SPEAKER_00]: First time I can seem very simple, even simplistic.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's actually very rich and very deep and quite complex.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today's passage is no exception.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks easy on the surface, but underneath there's deep currents.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the surface, it seems like John is basically saying, like all that bad stuff, just knock it off, stop, cut it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, stop doing mostly bad stuff, and start doing mostly good stuff, duh.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's so much deeper than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: John is getting at the heart of who we are, what we believe, where we belong, what is beloved to us?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so John is asking, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is it about our behavior that reveals where we belong?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is beloved to us and what we believe?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what is it that we must believe about Jesus for us to be transformed in these things, and how we behave, and what is beloved, and how we belong?
[SPEAKER_00]: What we're gonna do today is we're gonna go backwards through the text.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna go from the end to the beginning, and we're gonna trace through these themes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, take a look at first John chapter 3, we're going to read 7 through 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: That last chunk, little children, let no one deceive you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever practices righteousness is righteousness, he's righteous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.
[SPEAKER_00]: For God's seed abides in Him and He cannot keep on sinning because He's been born of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nor is the one who does not love His brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so first off, what can this not mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's some stuff in here that, as soon as you read it, you're like, wait, hold on a second, I feel like I'm in here somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we remember from chapter one, the Christians cannot claim to be sinless.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sinless perfectionism is not something that is part of our faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter one verse eight, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Chapter one verse 10, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so John has not so quickly forgotten just a page later, what he's already written.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is, this seems so stark.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the ESV, it says, whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the word practice there is not in the Greek.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at the King James, it's much more straightforward or like the CSB.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, no one born of God commits sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I commit sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you guys commit sin, so I guess none of us in the world of God, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what it would seem to say, but it's that's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems simplistic, we have to read what he's trying to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: in and through these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why the ESV translators here hopefully supply the word practice is that the way the verb is formed is not just saying you commit a sin once, like oops, I told the fib.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is talking about where you keep on keeping on and on and on and on, and over and over and over and over.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's on about habitual sin, not occasional sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's talking about habitual righteousness, not occasional righteousness, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's that saying, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, he's not talking about practicing sin and practicing righteousness the way you practice piano, hoping to get better over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way the practice means here is a continual calling of occasion.
[SPEAKER_00]: The closest thing we have to it in modern usage is just like a law practice or a medical practice or an accounting practice, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So just because you did your own taxes this year, doesn't mean you have an accounting practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because you got pulled over 15 times last year, I went to traffic court a bunch of times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean you have a law practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just because you took antastasis this morning, doesn't mean you have a medical practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: So doing these things, yeah, you occasionally bump up against these things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's occasional behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a practice again, it's a calling, it's a vocation, it's a profession, it's expertise.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there any sins, John is asking?
[SPEAKER_00]: in which you're an expert, like an expert in committing, you have refined and perfected it over time, that you're an expert in hiding, that you're an expert in teaching, expert in recruiting, expert in collaborating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you simply get your job, like it's your profession, like you're a professional in it?
[SPEAKER_00]: This behaving is related to belonging because John says it reveals who the children of God are and who are the children of the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for this is that we don't do this very often, it wouldn't be very clear to the people of John's day and actually all the way through the Middle Ages.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you used to be that whatever your dad did is probably what you yourself would do, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So like if your dad was a dairy farmer, you'd probably be a dairy farmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so so many traditional last names are based on this practice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Smith, Miller, Potter, Tanner, Gardner, Butler, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, when he was a boy, Mary was looking for him and he said, why were you looking for me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't you know I had to be about my father's business?
[SPEAKER_00]: In John 5, 17, he says, my father has been working until now and I'm working.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all his sons and daughters work there.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's children happily and habitually do what they see their father and a big brother doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice that to have a law practice doesn't mean that you win every case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't mean you lose your law practice because you lost the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just not how the law works.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way you lose your law practice really would be if you get tired of losing you quit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm done with this and you walk out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about, again, we talked about this few weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not perfect obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to have perfect obedience to have real obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: The opposite of the practice of God's children in God's practice of righteousness, is the jealous of children who happily and habitually do what their father does, which is whatever he wants.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this sort of misperception that like Satanism is about like child sacrifice and weird rituals and stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to the 80s, you remember like, don't play Dungeons & Dragons, it's gonna mess you up, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But really, the central tenant of Satanism is not so exotic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The central tenet of Satanism is, you're not the boss of me, I do whatever I want.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you claim to be a child of God, but you find yourself working at Satan and sons, John wants to warn you with both loving charity and loving clarity.
[SPEAKER_00]: You cannot have it both ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way that we behave reveals are belonging.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is because he says, it is evident who are the children of God and who the children of the devil, because every one of the practices right is born of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: When things I love, when the doctrine that I love is the doctrine of adoption, I love the doctrine of adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the things we looked at John 316 in January and one of the things that comes out of John 316 is, for God's love, the world that he gave his, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Only son.
[SPEAKER_00]: God only has one son and you're not him.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one in here is a child of God, not naturally.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has one child, you're not him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rest of us who are made children of God are made children through adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are not the natural born children.
[SPEAKER_00]: God only Jesus is the Son of God by nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rest of us are adopted in.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why adoption is one of the most Christian things that you can do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God does something even beyond that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul talks a lot about adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see him in Romans 8 and other places.
[SPEAKER_00]: John does not.
[SPEAKER_00]: John talks about something similar, related, but even more beyond adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: He talks about something that no human parent who adopts someone can do, even if you wish it, which is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says that when Jesus adopts you into his family, if you get adopted, you might learn the mannerisms and learn how they eat and learn the new culture and all those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what Jesus does, what the Father does and Jesus does, when you are adopted in Jesus gives you His nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: because he does something that you cannot do through human adoption.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are born again into that family.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are adopted into a family, you are born to another family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're gonna bump up against it in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when God adopts you, he does something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes, no, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are born into my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are always in my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're born again.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a new birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not naturally as child, you are supernaturally as child.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you are given a new nature and it transforms the way you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this evidence is in the transformation that happens inside of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where does that transformation come from?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just behaving, it's not just blowing into something deeper in the heart transformation that comes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at, first John, three, four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sin is lawlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: sin is lawlessness, what's that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, sin is disobedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's missing the mark.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's disobeying God's law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what's lawlessness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Lawlessness is disobeying God's law.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this sounds like an nonsense statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Disobedience is disobedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who practices disobedience also practices disobedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know that that cannot be what he's trying to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something deeper than that here, because lawlessness is not just not following the law of God,
[SPEAKER_00]: Guys, there's a lot of rules who can keep them all.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why it's not just keeping the rules is that the law of God is not simply a series of rules.
[SPEAKER_00]: The law of God is the description of the very character and the nature of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: John here says, sin is lawlessness because what's the opposite?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the opposite?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same as sin is lawlessness.
[SPEAKER_00]: What is the law then?
[SPEAKER_00]: The law is righteousness.
[SPEAKER_00]: a description of God, like for example, take the 10 commandments and I'm not going to have time to go through every single one.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can seem to the novice, like it's a list of arbitrary rules from a cranky God who's trying to catch you slipping, like he's an angry example after trying to find the cheaters.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, no, no, no, when you take the Ten Commandments that are mostly stated negatively, thou shalt not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you flip them around and see, what are they positively telling us about the nature of God?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see how grounded they are in the very character in nature of the majestic godness of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: For example, like the first commandment, that shall have no other gods before me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that one of the commandments?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is God insecure.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, God is one.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is not one God among many gods.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the only true in living God.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the gods are false.
[SPEAKER_00]: To worship them brings death and decay and God commands us, not to bring sadness, suffering, death, and decay upon ourselves because like a good shepherd, he calls us to himself, who alone can offer safety and blessing and gracious love.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is one.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Second Commandment, make no card images, no likenesses of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: God cannot accurately be represented by any symbol, any image from the creative world, because God is creator.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not the creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a vast gulf between creator and creation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is holy, not just morally righteous, but holy also meaning transcended, set apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherworldly, he cannot be compared with anything in all the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why every analogy,
[SPEAKER_00]: for the Trinity, devolves into heresy, through the clover, the rays of the sun, states of matter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because God cannot be analogized or containerized or iconized in any way, God is utterly unique.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stands alone, nothing can contain Him or replace Him or simulate Him in any attempt to do so does not honor God, but instead insults God and misrepresent Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: What will you compare me to, ask God?
[SPEAKER_00]: God is utterly unique, the fourth commandment on the Sabbath, keep it holy, don't do any work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it is God and not our labor that secures our well-being, that secures our rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is sufficient and we are saved by grace through faith, not by works less than any should boast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is in resting in God's work that we find, the peace that we're searching for.
[SPEAKER_00]: 7th, don't come into adultery.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is steadfast, He's faithful, He's unwavering, unchanging.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is the promise making and promise keeping God.
[SPEAKER_00]: God cannot commit adultery because God cannot be unfaithful.
[SPEAKER_00]: God cannot break any promises.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is against His character.
[SPEAKER_00]: Faith, do not steal.
[SPEAKER_00]: God cannot steal.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, he can't steal because he owns everything already.
[SPEAKER_00]: But beyond that, he cannot steal because he's the opposite of thief.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than taking what is not his, he takes what is his and gives it away.
[SPEAKER_00]: He provides blessing not just to his own children, but to even do his enemies, he makes the sun shine on the evil and the good and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not served by human hands as if he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind, life and breath and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is generous.
[SPEAKER_00]: The nice, do not lie, God is always truthful.
[SPEAKER_00]: He never lies.
[SPEAKER_00]: His word is truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in error, infallible, reliable, trustworthy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unchanging.
[SPEAKER_00]: God not only does not lie, God cannot lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The tenth, do not covet.
[SPEAKER_00]: God does not covet because God is deeply content.
[SPEAKER_00]: He needs nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He provides all that his children need.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is the opposite of covetous.
[SPEAKER_00]: God is at peace, not restless the way we are moving from one interest to another, always dissatisfied, hoping to fill up that craving that we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: God did not create a universe because he was lonely or because he needed anything or wanted anything God created out of the overflow of the love and the contentment and the peace and the rest and the joy found in the eternal relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: God does not covet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lawlessness is not just reacting to God's law with disobedience, but with disgust.
[SPEAKER_00]: To say that the character of God is morally ugly, not worthy of worship, something to be sneered at to be mocked, sin is lawlessness, because lawlessness is a condition of a heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is hating what God loves and loving what God hates.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why your behavior reveals both to whom you belong and to what is your beloved.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the heart of John's teaching is in this last point that our behavior reveals our true believing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we're going to go back and read the beginning of our passage.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we do that,
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to remind us of what we talked about last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week when we talked about antichrist and all that cool stuff, we read first John 218, which reads this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Children is the last hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the slide from last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about the first coming of Christ of the life, the death, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus, the incarnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in his coming, Jesus inaugurated the last hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Kingdom of God is already here and yet not fully here.
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in this overlap of the ages.
[SPEAKER_00]: The old is passing away and the new is breaking forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this overlap will continue until the second coming of Christ, which will consummate the last hour that Jesus inaugurated in His first coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: The two coming of Christ, the two arrivals, the two advanced form a bracket that contain this last hour, this last day in which we find ourselves now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And today's passage has this exact idea that was only hinted at.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of that we got out of just the phrase children in the last hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this passage lays it out and unpacks it for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that the first and second coming of Christ bracket, the already not yet kingdom of God, and that without being grounded in this doctrine, you cannot fully understand all of the righteousness application that John is so passionate to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to read from 228 down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to pay a special attention to one word that appears five times.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that word is the word appears, look for that word in your Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you write in your Bible, I would circle it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now the children abided him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know that he's righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteous is inborn of him, see what kind of love the Father has given to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We should be called children of God and so we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him, beloved, we are God's children now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this passage, again, the world appears, shows up five times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four times is about Jesus, one time it's about us.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first two times that John uses the word appears, uses it in the future tense.
[SPEAKER_00]: When he appears in the future, he's referring to the second coming of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: To 28, he says, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three, two, we know that when he appears, we shall be like him.
[SPEAKER_00]: What John is saying here is that when Jesus appears, he's gonna come to judge the whole world and some will approach him with great confidence, like a child and others will flee in shame, like a criminal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in three two, John says that when Jesus comes again, he will complete his work of reconciling, restoring all things to himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: He will transform the world in not only that us as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a few verse later, John will again use the word of peers, but in a different tense in the past tense.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking about the first coming of Christ in incarnation.
[SPEAKER_00]: We get three, five, and three, eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: He appeared in order to take away sins.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three, eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
[SPEAKER_00]: J.man said this last week that everyone in this room has only ever lived in a time between the first and secondcomings of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first two appearances in this last hour, the whole section of this passage about how to live
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that means, what is expected, is describing life in this bracketed zone, the already but not yet in the last hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so no matter what we say that we believe, what John is saying is that the real proof of what we really do believe is born out in how we live.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been here any length of time, you have heard this phrase.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are justified, we are justified by faith, alone, apart from works.
[SPEAKER_00]: but never by a faith that remains alone apart from works.
[SPEAKER_00]: True trust in Jesus, true reliance in Jesus, true allegiance towards Jesus, true faith in Jesus is always accompanied by a transformed life, always.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, you will know them by their fruits.
[SPEAKER_00]: That only works at their fruit.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you do does not save you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it reveals whether you have believed in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me illustrate this in this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you've heard of this thing called Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's currently about $70,000 per coin.
[SPEAKER_00]: What if I told you you had the opportunity to buy Bitcoin for less than a penny per coin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would you want to buy some Bitcoin from me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that would depend, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Depends, do you trust me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this just another scam we get these every day, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like why am I sharing this?
[SPEAKER_00]: On May 18th, 2010, a software developer made what is the first documented real world purchase with Bitcoin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me read the forum post that he made.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, I'll pay 10,000 big coins for a couple pizzas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe two large ones, so I have some left over for the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like having left over pizza nibble on later, so if you can make the pizza yourself, you can make the pizza yourself and bring to my house, or order it from a delivery place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like things like onions, peppers, sausage, mushrooms, tomatoes, pepperoni, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, standard stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: No weird dish toppings or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also like regular cheese pizzas, which might be cheaper to prepare or otherwise require.
[SPEAKER_00]: Four days later on May 22nd, he posted a photo of himself as two kids sitting in front of two large pizzas.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just one sentence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to report that I have successfully traded 10,000 bitcoins for pizza.
[SPEAKER_00]: At the height of Bitcoin in the summer of 2025, last year, 10,000 bitcoins would have been worth about $1.1 billion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was 110,000 per big coin.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's an expensive pizza.
[SPEAKER_00]: What if you could send a message back to 2010, and have a conversation with this guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: You got a magic phone, you can talk to this guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, what's up, guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, heads up, maybe keep some of that Bitcoin, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be worth $100,000 per coin, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you can buy a way more than two pizzas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'll buy you the pizza, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and when you get rich, like, please remember me as a money mail dress, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Any questions is, yeah, I got tons of questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's say you talked for like a couple hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: Explain all those questions all things and he's like, okay, so are you gonna do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I believe you man.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe you.
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a new life change in my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm writing all the instructions down.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, okay, great, great, great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you hang up the phone and you check the news.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're looking at Wikipedia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, he still bought the pizzas.
[SPEAKER_00]: He promised.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what does it tell you?
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't believe you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he confessed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He promised.
[SPEAKER_00]: He swore it, but at the end of the day, either, he didn't believe the story or he didn't believe in your character.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's thinking it's too good to be true, it's too silly to be true, or I don't even know this person and whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like besides, I'm actually really hungry right now, and I could use two pieces.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I rather have the pieces I can see, than I can taste, than I can eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I feed my kids with, and whatever this fantasy is about Fisha wealth.
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you do if you got a message like this from the future that told you exactly what to invest in?
[SPEAKER_00]: What would you do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you trusted the person, totally trusted the person, would you do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to guess because we have this message.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called the Book of Revelation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's written by the same author as first John.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in it, John unpacks with great detail that Jesus is returning and what he will do and how he will judge and what the economy of that world will be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he says, live and light of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, have you ever heard the phrase, like, you can't take it with you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus, no, you can absolutely take it with you, depending on what you mean.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, don't lay treasurer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't lay up for yourselves treasurer's on earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're moth and rust destroy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thieves break in and steal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But lay up for yourselves treasurers in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thieves do not break in and steal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever you invest in the kingdom of heaven, you get to keep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every other investment goes to zero.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever you invest in the kingdom of heaven, not just money, but your time, and your energy, and your attention, and your thoughts, and your passions, bring a harvest of 30, 60, and a hundred times and they keep compounding, keep multiplying.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way that we spend our money, the way that we spend our time, the way that we spend our energy and our focus on our attention, our passions, the thing that keep us up at night, the things that calm us down so we can sleep, the things that we set our hopes on, those things reveal whether we believe in this message from the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: The return on investment in the kingdom of heaven makes 10,000 big coin looks like a joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are some people of whom the Apostle Paul says, their God is their belly because I'd rather have a pizza.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have goers in the Middle East right now, right now, in all the craziness of their who refused to leave, some of the kids because the work of the kingdom is too dear.
[SPEAKER_00]: They refuse to sell their inheritance for a couple of pizzas.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way you can do this is if you actually believe that Jesus came and they will come again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, that's nonsense.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it's true, but if it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, you will Google safest city to raise a family.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you will invest in ever larger houses, in ever more expensive cars, ever more exotic vacations, ever more intense experiences, and you'll keep investing and investing and investing in the things of this world that rot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because all of those pizzas you can taste now,
[SPEAKER_00]: How is it that you can be generous with your money and not be afraid?
[SPEAKER_00]: How is it that you can entertain people in your home that you find intensely annoying?
[SPEAKER_00]: How can you love those who don't deserve your love?
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is all there is, that's a waste of your time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if Jesus is telling the truth, that's the only stuff that's going to last.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only way that you can fight sin is if you realize that Jesus came to take away sin,
[SPEAKER_00]: to destroy the works of the devil in the first coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that he actually succeeded in doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: John Piper has famously said the only way, the only sin that you have a hope of overcoming is the forgiven sin, is the sin that Jesus has taken on your behalf.
[SPEAKER_00]: All those who practice righteous are born of God, because it takes being born again, new birth regeneration into his family, to even begin to be invited into the practice of God in sons.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we live right here.
[SPEAKER_00]: right between the first and second coming in the already but not yet in this last hour when everything is so confusing and so demoralizing, so chaotic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right in between, when he appears and when he did appear, there is the fifth instance of the word appear and it is aimed at us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, we are God's children now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we will be has not yet appeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Below we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we know that when it appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We live in the already but not yet age, and we are already but not yet people.
[SPEAKER_00]: My two-year-old, Talitha, she's already my child now.
[SPEAKER_00]: but what she will be has not yet appeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we wonder, and we like to guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we think about this, you do with little kids, like a little kid, like lifts up a block and like, oh, maybe you'll be with Lifter, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, they make a one-doodle, and you're like, oh, you'll be an artist, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, put on a plastic stuff that you're gonna be a doctor, and like, what, we don't do that with anybody else, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of funny, we do that with kids because they have so much potential.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're like pure potential, which is so excited to see what they are, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, like, no one does that with me, you know, when they see me struggling and like, I get out of breath and like, or you're training for the Olympics, you might be an Olympian one day, Mike, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And they see me like taking allergy meds and like, oh, you could be a doctor as you keep that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one says that, why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Cause I'm old.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my potential is mostly passed, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel that, you're like, should I go to school?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I'm an retired.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I tell you something, I'm really amazing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is as we are God's children now, that's everyone who believes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone who believes is God's children now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if you're 65 or 75 or 95, your God's children now, you have potential to be transformed by the transforming and dwelling Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not done.
[SPEAKER_00]: in the way we are in a physical sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially, we have seen people in their old age come to Jesus and it's just transformed their life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally 180, it's unbelievable.
[SPEAKER_00]: God transforms people's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: All who believe in Christ are like children of God, like children of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have so much potential, your story's not done.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have not seen what we will be, what you will be has not yet appeared,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not too late for you to come to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you were a believer, what I mean by that to use a language or a join is if your hope is in the fact that Jesus, the Christ has come in the flesh and that when Jesus appeared the first time, he came to take away sins and to destroy the works of the devil that is, he came to pay the penalty of sin, and break the power of sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you believe that,
[SPEAKER_00]: And you believe that soon and very soon, Jesus will return to make us like him, to be physically resurrected, spiritually perfected, that he will come and wipe away every tear and all death, all suffering, judge, all evil, that is not just to cancel the penalty and the power of sin, but the very presence of sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you believe all those things with your mind and you cherish it with your heart, there are two things you should expect about your life in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week we talked about those expectations of the already but not yet as an age.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you yourself, if you are in Christ, you are an already but not yet child of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you should expect two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, you should expect to find your heart's old sinful affections gradually being replaced by God, new God, the ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should expect to begin to love what Jesus loves and hate what Jesus hates.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's something that you used to love,
[SPEAKER_00]: You should define that your speech begins to change, that your thoughts begin to change.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your relationship to things like money and power and sex are transformed and purified, in ways that confound people who are like you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like so much so that, for example, like people who share your political beliefs or who come from your ethnic background, your socio-political status, your socioeconomic status, but don't share your theological beliefs,
[SPEAKER_00]: They should be confused by you rather than be able to peg you right away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we are God's children now.
[SPEAKER_00]: These things are happening now.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have not just been adopted by him, but we have been born of him and he has put his spirit in us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you should expect to stumble occasionally, to struggle with our old impulses, to have
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to fight hard to live a life worthy of the calling to what you've been called.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should expect to sometimes disappoint yourself and to disappoint others and to find that even after decades of faithfully following Jesus, man, there's still such a long way to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what we will be has not yet appeared
[SPEAKER_00]: All of what John is talking about, practicing righteousness, not practicing sin, needs to be understood in this right context.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is all happening here between the first and secondcomings of Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is happening here in the last hour, the overlap of the ages.
[SPEAKER_00]: And just like there's an overlap of the ages, we are experiencing an overlap of the old and new self.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Paul says, put off the old self, put on the new self.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's happening at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: The life of the believer is full of blessing and full of suffering, full of victory, full of struggle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just like the already been not yet age, those who hope and cry live already but not yet lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it doesn't just end with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, but we know that when he appears,
[SPEAKER_00]: We shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.
[SPEAKER_00]: We shall see Him as He is.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is called the Beatific Vision, the desire of every Old Testament saint, Moses said, show me your glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God said, no, you'll die.
[SPEAKER_00]: To see God is to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in one sense, this is true of all believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what it means to be a believer is that God is giving you a new nature, and he's giving you spiritual eyes to see, and it's personal ears to hear, and the ability to perceive that Jesus is the Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crucifixion is God coming power, and you have seen God, you have beheld him, like we just saying, and has killed you, to see God is to die.
[SPEAKER_00]: God was not implying to Moses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul says that this way, I've been crucified with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Seeing God always results in death, but those who see God in Christ are not just killed Paul continues.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been crucified with Christ, and there's no longer eye who live with Christ who lives in me.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you see Jesus, yes, you die, but then you are spiritually born again, a child of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what baptism represents to be taken down and raised up again.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was his first coming, his first appearance, his first advent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But John tells us that Jesus will appear again, that there's a second advent of Christ, a second appearance and when he comes, then all those who are spiritually born again will be resurrected physically and perfected spiritually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just born of Christ, but fully matured in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul puts it this way in 2nd Corinthians 3, 18, and we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will be like who we see.
[SPEAKER_00]: After communion, we're gonna sing a song that I love so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my favorite line is a very last line of the last thanza.
[SPEAKER_00]: It chokes me up every single time I sing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even at the nine, I sing the whole song except for that line.
[SPEAKER_00]: It goes like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He shall return in robes of white and the blazing sun shall pierce the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will rise among the saints, my days transfixed on Jesus' face.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that line, my gaze transfixed on Jesus' face.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Jesus returns, someone will not be able to look at him.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will cringe in shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will cringe in fear saying, oh no, it was all true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think it was true.
[SPEAKER_00]: What did I do?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all a waste.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did I live that way?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was not worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He came too soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And others will not be able to look away.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will say, oh, thank God, he was all true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Praise God, it was all true.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of it was a waste.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all worth it, not a moment you soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they will stare at the catarating beauty and majesty, the raw glory of Jesus unmediated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, we see as in a miracle that then face to face.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: the image of the invisible God, the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, and if someone says, look over there, streets made of gold, look over there, pearly gates, they will say, what else try to look at?
[SPEAKER_00]: In Jesus or all my hopes, and all my dreams, and all my loves, and everything that I missed, and everything I long for, and everything that was stolen from me, and everything I've been waiting for, it's all right, there, where would I look?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, see what kind of love the Father's given to us that we should be called children of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: We truly are.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a glorious day that shall be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so John encourages us saying little children, abide in Him, reside in Him, live in Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make that your home, make that your address.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that when he appears, we may have confidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not shrink from him in shame as coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: For some, when Jesus comes, it will be like those videos.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love these videos.
[SPEAKER_00]: A serviceman comes from Afghanistan.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been there for months or years, and they surprise their child at a ball game, or at a basketball game, or at a graduation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the kids just drop whatever they're doing, these are one straight to their death.
[SPEAKER_00]: or there's a dog that hasn't seen there, seen there, and for a long time, they freak out for some it will be like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In others, it will be like you're driving a night and then police lights come on here, and we're here for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: What John is encouraging us, oh come to him with confidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't shrink away at shame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Loves me this sign out for the Bible, tells me so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so much deeper, so much wider, so much grand than what we get ever hoped for.
[SPEAKER_00]: See what kind of love the Father's given to us that we should be called children of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, I thank you that you were a God unlike any other God.
[SPEAKER_00]: What God is there like you?
[SPEAKER_00]: But we thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: that you are steadfast and trustworthy and true, Lord Jesus, thank you that you came and you will come again, that you have not left us, you have not abandoned us or to our own devices, but Lord, you have placed your whole spirit within us, you've made us born again, regenerated in your image, you've justified us and you're sanctifying us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one day, we will be glorified, or we will be resurrected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one day, all we will do is gaze upon you, give glory to you, God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, give us strength to wait until that day, to be patient, to be kind, to be generous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, there are liars where we reflect the hope that is within us God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let us lay down everything, or that you would receive all the glory, and that we would receive great joy in Jesus' name.