1-3 John - 1st John 2:12-14 Little Children, Young men, Fathers

Alright, I apologize if I'm just a hair horse this morning. I have to sing during the main service, so I practiced this morning and now I'm going to teach and then I'm going to sing again. I guess I should have added the prayer request that I would still have a voice by the end of the day.

This morning we're going to take a look at 1 John chapter 2 verses 12 through 14. The truth of the matter is that this is just the beginning of a section that, well it's a continuation of a section, but it's the beginning of a second part of a larger section, that I think is really tremendous. I was saying to my mom earlier, she's making photocopies of the handout, I feel like the basic principles in this could be understood in five minutes easily and yet the discussion of the application of this could be weeks of our time together as we study because there's just a lot of application for this text. So as we go through it if you feel like something could be explored or you've got a question about something please don't hesitate to We're going to take a look at it.

I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake. I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I'm writing to you, children, because you know the Father. I've written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Alright, so as I was studying for this, one of the things that gets brought up by various theologians is that we have a split audience here. So he has He has addressed this at the beginning of the letter. Who does he address it to? Or earlier in the letter? How does he address his audience? His children, he says. 2.1. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. If you do sin, we have an Advocate, Jesus Christ the Righteous. So he's already called them his children.

But then he gets here and he talks about three different age groups. And so you recognize, as you read this, that he is seeing that his audience is different groups. So we need to ask ourselves, and now is probably not the right time to ask this question, but think about it as we study through the text. Why does John use age groups in this text? Why is he choosing to use these references to different age groups?

Then the next question that I want to preemptively ask is, this talks, I believe that the implications of this passage, and this is definitely the historical teaching of Holly Hills so I don't feel too awkward saying that, it addresses the topic of sanctification or spiritual growth. With that in mind, we need to ask the question, what is sanctification? And I just called it spiritual growth, but what does that look like? If I had to ask you for a paragraph definition of sanctification. Tom. Growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay. That's a Bible verse, so I can't really argue with that. No, that's right. It's growing in the knowledge of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So sanctification has three elements to it. It has a historical element, a present element, and a future element. What's the historical element of sanctification? When were you sanctified first? When you believed. Are you being sanctified? Are you being set aside? and you will be set aside in the future.

So there's different elements of that. Another question here is, does it matter that John is writing to the age groups out of order? Some people make a big deal out of this. I had to do some thinking and studying on this because there are theologians who really think that this is Very critical to your interpretation of the text.

You haven't actually talked about it yet, but if you assign what fathers and young men and children represent, if you assume that the older is the more mature in the Lord, he speaks to them first, or he addresses them first. At least in the same way in 14, I guess, too. Well, you see in verse 12 he says, I'm riding a few little children. And then in 13 he addresses the fathers.

And so some theologians, because of this, and I'm going to just draw this out for the sake of making sure you're aware of this, because there's nothing like being sideswiped by this doctrinal concept that you've not prepared for, like I was. I was like, wait a minute, this is the weirdest thing I've ever heard. They say because it's out of order, all of the things that are written about all the different age targets or audiences in this are true of all believers at all times. I know that sounds a little weird, but I even got it out of a commentary from what I thought was normally really good, the Bible Knowledge Commentary.

That promotes that idea. I don't believe that it's consistent with normative Bible study and interpretation. We're going to be talking about children, young men, and fathers, but the last question here is, do the scriptures imply a time in the believer's life where they're babies? Little children is not infants. Is there an implication of that?

This text just doesn't address that, but I think that we need to be aware of that. Paul talks about that. Paul is going to be talking about that, and he talks about baby food. In Hebrews, the book of Hebrews addresses that. By now you should be past the milk.

So we have a split audience here. Just because it's out of order doesn't mean that we should panic too badly that it's out of order. But I do want to take a look at some other passages that help us understand that the order is less significant to the actual meaning of the content.

So if you open your Bibles, if you haven't already done so, and turn them to 1 Timothy chapter 5. And if someone would read out loud verses 1 and 2, that would be tremendous. Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. Okay, and then just turn right just a hair more to Titus chapter 2, and we'll take a look at chapter 2 verses 1 through 8, which some of my reading notes are on. Not all at once. What verse, Randy? Chapter 2, verses 1 through 8. 1 through 8?

Yeah, it's a lot. But speak thou the things which become sound doctrine, that the aged men be sober, brave, temperate, sound in the faith, in charity, in patience, and aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not giving them much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemy. How many more? You know what?

I will keep reading from 6. If you were to look at those two texts in parallel to what we see in 1 John, you kind of notice that the age groups are there within the culture of the body, but the order here in 1 John is not overly significant to cause us to think, oh, we can throw out all of the age groups entirely and just embrace the ideas and say these are true of all believers all the time.

So now that I've belabored that point, hopefully no one has any strong objections to that. What I've done here in the handout and what we'll do on the slides is I've actually reordered it since the order doesn't matter. What I decided to do was cluster the statements to the children and cluster the statements to the young men and cluster the statements to the fathers. Not because we want to ignore the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the order of the text, but simply because we can follow things through in a logical process. As a software developer, I like to do things in a logical fashion.

Hopefully you'll bear with me as I do that. Alright, qualities of the children. So the children have the qualities of their sins having been forgiven for His namesake and they know the Father. So what is the significance of God forgiving sins for His namesake? I hadn't studied this concept previous to this passage. Having forgiven sins for His namesake. And I have to say that I was really blown away by the awesomeness of this doctrine. It was humbling and really something I was excited to be able to share with you.

What is the significance of being saved for his namesake, Tom? So what can we say about it being His work for His name's sake? Because Tom's right. But that's one piece of what I thought was the bigger picture. How much do you bring to the table for forgiveness? He seeks after us. We don't merit it. If we look at the notes here, we can go streaming through the Psalms. Ezekiel mentions it, Romans mentions it, and I do want to take a look at a few of the Psalms.

If you'll turn to Psalm 79.9. I'm going to actually start in verse 8 because I can. Do not remember the iniquities of our forefathers against us. Let your compassion come quickly to meet us, for we are brought very low.

Help us, O God, of our salvation for the glory of your name, and deliver us and forgive us our sins for your name's sake. Why would the psalmist be calling out to God to do things for his name's sake? What characteristics of God make it so that His name is glorified when this happens? What are some characteristics of God? He's merciful. That's it. What other ones? Please tell me no more than one. He's sovereign. Is He just?

Holy, infinite, loving. Righteous, loving. So the loving nature of God I think is one of the most, well, not the most. Calling anything of God the most is a little lopsided because He's perfectly balanced in His infinite nature. But God's love being what it is, that's amazing.

One of the overarching themes in Scripture is that God does things to be glorified. But when God does things, He is glorified. So when He does things, when He forgives us for His namesake, He's glorified. It shows His greatness. It shows His greatness. And when you see His greatness, you can't help but to glorify Him. When I was reading this, I was nearly overwhelmed emotionally, just thinking about when I think about God's grace poured out in my life, and I think he did it for his namesake, I can't help but to worship him and praise him for his character.

If he was a lesser God the way the world thinks of him, then doing things for his namesake would be one of those, we would ascribe to him some kind of flawed human characteristic. But he's not a lesser God, and so him doing things for his namesake brings glory to himself that is justly deserved. Also, just continuing on with the namesake, if you've got your fingers still back in 1 John, hold on to that, and let's look at Romans chapter 1 verse 5. And there he says, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for his namesake. Okay, so he didn't reach out just to the Jews like in the Old Testament context of the law in Israel. For his namesake, he reached outside the boundaries of Israel. So again, for his namesake is repeated over and over.

I would encourage you throughout the week if you have time to read some of the other references that are there. It's just going to be edifying to your day. I guarantee you will enjoy that time in God's Word. The Jews would have been highly familiar with this concept because of the Psalms. There are a lot of references to this in the Psalms. the Gentile readers would soon be acquainted with this doctrine.

So we have sins having been forgiven for his namesake. The other thing that John writes about these young children is that they know the father. Now let me ask you this. They know the father. He also says that the older fathers in the church there, in the readers of this letter, know the father. Do you think he means they know the father the same way?

The longer you hang out with them, the more you get to know them. The depth of their relationship is going to be a distinguishing factor, just because over time... I mean, I think that all of us could testify that in our relationships with one another, and in marriages, the longer you know someone, the more you get to know them, and deeper you get to know them, and the more you find yourself learning who they are, and probably Hopefully being amazed by the character of the person that you're getting to know. Hopefully we don't find too many exceptions to that. But these believers knew the Father. Now, because we're already flipping through the Bible lots, let's continue to do that because I think some of these cross-references are rich to provide context.

If you want to turn to Matthew 11, verse 27. And Jesus is speaking. He says, All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. So, knowing the Father is really cool, But we have to recognize that that relationship is a very special gift of the salvation that came with the forgiveness of sins for God's name's sake. For His name's sake, He forgave our sins and He's glorified and He drew us to Him so that we could know Him. That's a very rich relationship we can have. Jesus is the one who reveals the Father to us. And in other verses we've read, it is the Holy Spirit who reveals the Lord Jesus to us.

All three members of the Trinity. I love that part of the Godhead, that in the Trinity they would lift one another up and draw us to him. It may be one thing if from a state of separation they've pointed to one another, but instead they bring intimacy and then point to one another. I think that is just tremendous. I've got on here a couple of questions just for discussion.

What is the impact of this doctrine, the doctrine of having God forgive for his namesake on the modern psychological concept of self-esteem. I'm not trying to pick on self-esteem, I just thought immediately this is something different. It seems like on self-esteem they tend to give it a kind of blanket treatment saying, you know, I accept you as you are, good, bad, and ugly, and even the ugly is good, or something like that. Well, self-esteem tends to be self-merit and self-evaluation. God evaluated us. saw the mistakes and the flaws and still, because of his own name, picked us and chose us to be conformed to the image of the Son. And I think that self-esteem, you try to do it yourself. I'm looking to me. This is esteem within God and it's really esteem of God and less of ourselves. I don't want to draw too much out about that, but I think it's an interesting distinction. Roy? I just thought that God came to save sinners. Yeah.

He didn't come to save self-esteemed. Yeah, well, and that's, you know, on Thursday night, on Wednesday night, we've been going over Romans at the Doyles, and then on Thursday night, we've also been going over Romans at Aaron and Trish's, well, it wasn't Aaron and Trish's house. We just finished chapter 2 verses 1 through 11 where he's talking about man's own judgment of himself and God's judgment and how we all fall short. It doesn't matter who's doing the judging.

There's a falling short that's there. We need salvation. How big of a deal is it for the believer to be able to say that they know the Father? That's a big deal. Roy pointed out that the Holy Spirit draws us to Christ and Christ draws us to the Father. That means that we have a relationship with all three parts of the Godhead and we have intimacy with the Father.

If you had said to an Old Testament Jew, hey, you want to go approach the throne of God? They were not too likely to be excited about that. That's like a death sentence in the Old Testament law context. What did the priest have to do to enter the Holy of Holies to approach the Lord for one short part of one day of the year? There was a tremendous amount of sacrifice and things that had to go. They had to sacrifice animals and purify themselves and they had to do a number of things just so, so that they didn't find themselves immediately dead upon entering the Holy of Holies.

Randy, I was thinking about knowing God. It points out that scripture teaches obviously that we have a personal God that can be known. Some people's concept of God is that you can't have that relationship. That's true. It's an impossibility. A personal knowledge is not He's God and you're the creature and that's it.

I have to say that when I was under a more legalistic understanding of scripture and I didn't understand grace, the idea of the way Hebrews tells us to boldly go before the throne of God, there was no such thing as boldness in my step. I had this whole thing I'd worked out in my mind of processes I needed to go through, basically, almost like the priest. I'd go, OK, I've got to repent, and I've got to feel guilty for a while just to make sure that God knows I'm really sorry for the mistakes I made. There was no boldness, because I didn't understand grace, and I didn't understand that the forgiveness was His work unto His glory, and I had nothing to do with it. And I couldn't add and contribute anything to grace. Now, the last question I've got here is, does the father know the children? That's a yes or no question and everybody's nodding yes. So, for the sake of the recording, yes. The father does know the children.

I think that's really awesome too. I have a really great relationship with my father, so for me that's not too hard of a deal to imagine that the Heavenly Father would have a relationship with his children. Some people didn't grow up in households like that. I've had people kind of challenge me on that, saying, well, you talk about a relationship with the Heavenly Father, I had a terrible father, how come that? And they stumble over that. The thing is that if we try to make human fathers a representation of Heavenly Father, that's a terrible, that's like the worst idea ever.

That's kind of like getting one of those wind-up propeller airplanes throwing that outside and saying that's what it's like to be on an airplane. It's just not the same. I have a story about being on an airplane recently, but I'll share that after we're done with the lesson.

It's totally irrelevant and not related, but it's funny. So continuing on through the passage, we have the the qualities of the young men. So contrasting, oh, here's an important thing I wanted to point out. The characteristics that were true of the little children are also true of the young men and the fathers. So I had originally drawn a diagram, but I figured it wasn't adding anything to the content. But the idea is that you have the foundational truths that are true of the children also apply to the younger men which also apply to the fathers. There is no shifting of those characteristics to where they cease to be true.

So John writes to them that they overcome the evil one and that they're strong and that the word of God abides in them. And he repeats the overcoming the evil one twice. John emphasizes the concept of overcoming in his letters, and he mentions it here in chapter 2, he implies it in chapter 3, and he's explicit about it in 4 and 5. And he talks about overcoming in his gospel letters as well.

And he explains in various other parts of the text that the Holy Spirit, through our walking in faith, enables us all who are born of God to be able to overcome the world, or in this case, the evil one. How is it that we overcome the evil one as believers? Actually, it begins to start out as you are new, because who is it that overcomes? It's the one who believes on the Son of God. So it starts from the beginning and builds. So that overcoming, was it something that we did?

It's not something we did, but we are involved and this is one of those things where you want to be careful that you're not trying to say that you do something. I'm not saying that you get yourself somewhere of your own accord and you make yourself awesome, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, but you are walking in faith. So John emphasizes that later on in this book. I don't want to steal the thunder when we get to that entirely because we have only so much time this morning.

But walking in faith is something you're doing in your relationship. You're making the decision to be walking in fellowship with the Lord. And I just use the word fellowship. One of the things that I think is important as we go through the book of 1 John is to recognize the fellowship purpose of the book.

They know the father, they have a relationship with him, but John is talking about fellowship, that we would have intimacy and in doing so we overcome the evil one. Then he says that they're strong and the being strong part reminded me immediately of Ephesians 6 So I'd like to turn there just because I think that that is a good outline that ties in overcoming the evil one and being strong. Starting in verse 10, and I'll go ahead and I'll read this because it's a long passage. Ephesians 6, 10.

He says, Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of the darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith, with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one, and to take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit.

And with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. And pray on my behalf that utterances may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. And he continues on speaking about his own condition at that point in time. But being strong, what does Paul suggest we should be strong in? In the might of gospel.

And what are the pieces of armor and even the sword, what are those references to? Are they things that we bring to the table? They're characteristics of Christ, they're characteristics of the sword of the Spirit, it's definitely the Holy Spirit. It's not Christ in that context, but the other elements are all things that come through the relationship with the Father.

And so when he says to these young men that they're strong, when he says to them that they are overcoming, Paul gives us a little bit more depth as far as direct revelation from an apostle to what those things look like. So the next question I've got here is what is the world's response to overcoming the evil one? When the world sees us overcoming the evil one, what's their general response to that? Are you talking about Christianity? No, the world's response to believers overcoming the evil one.

Do you think it's smart effort? Well, they often are going to be negative about it in various ways. They're going to think you're self-righteous. There are going to be various attitudes of negativity. Romans chapter 1 tells us why that is. They want to come do our thing. Do the sin that I do, because it's fun. You'll like it. But John tells us, and of course also Paul and Peter encourage us to be abiding instead.

So how can we be strong? And of course we went over that in part in Ephesians. How are we strong? We're not. What were you going to say, Ron? The words in Ephesians are standing firm. You're in a defensive posture, if you say so. You're not on the offense, you're standing in who you are in Christ. Yeah. We put on God's armor and stand where He's placed us, knowing that He has put us there for that time. We're not out there.

I remember when I was in my charismatic youth days during high school and junior high, we would pray against Satan. Lord, we bind Satan. And everybody in the prayer group all had to bind Satan, because apparently one of us wasn't good enough. Because we thought, oh, well, we've got this spiritual armor, we've got to be binding Satan. That's not what Scripture calls us to.

Instead, Scripture calls us to be standing firm in this armor. The overcoming has to do with what Christ did and overcame in us. And then continuing on with the young man, just because our time is running out, John writes that the Word of God abides in you. What do we know about the Word of God based on our study of the Gospel of John and 1 John? Who or what is the Word of God? He references several times that Christ is the Word of God.

At this point in time, they didn't have the New Testament completed. They didn't have the canon of scriptures completed. But they did have the Old Testament, which would still be something that they're familiar with, which is still a reference to the work of Christ.

One of the things that I want to ask, and this is something that used to challenge me when I first came to Holly Hills, Mike Doyle brought this up the first time that I recall, and that is that, do you need to read your Bible every day to grow? And this killed me when he asked this question, because I went to seminary and I wanted all of my seminary years to count for something. I was like, I put a lot of my parents' money into that.

Do we need to be reading the Bible to grow? Technically, the Lord can grow us in other areas. However, and Mike did qualify this too, It is good to be in God's Word for fellowship and relationship and growth. Do we grow in the facts of God's Word or do we grow in random objects or things? It's the facts. We grow in the facts. Our faith grows in those things that are true. So being in God's Word helps us have a deeper understanding of God, His plan, and where we can grow as we walk in faith. So while it may be technically true that we don't have to always be in God's Word, for God to bring about an opportunity for our growth is edifying and ideal for us to be in God's Word. fake anybody out.

If I wasn't teaching during Sunday school and teaching on Thursday nights, I would spend less time in God's Word than I probably would otherwise. I wish I could say it was more regular, just outside of those teaching preparation opportunities. Part of why I volunteer to teach is so that I can always make sure that I'm always having to be in God's Word. And every time I do, then I find myself like this morning, when we discussed, I didn't just do it this morning, fortunately, when we discussed for his namesake, I find myself challenged by New Passage content and doctrines that I haven't explored before.

And it's just so edifying. It's a rich opportunity. But the Word of God abides in these young men, and I believe that that is an important part of our fellowship. I've got the last sentence on that paragraph, is the Lord will bring about a deeper appropriation of the truths within the scriptures as the believer abides in them. And he abides in the believer. That deeper appropriation is really cool.

How many of you have found in your own walk that the application of reckoning is deeper than you first thought you understood when you were studying? Oh, it's Word and Someone, so here's reckoning. God shows me new opportunities for reckoning everywhere, every corner seems to have a new opportunity. Gail? Earlier on you said something about, let's see, how was it? Praying and feeling like you had to go through this ritual of doing all these things, sort of almost like giving a sacrifice. It was not too much different.

And I think reckoning has helped with that, with the idea that I'm really a rotten person. how could God even listen to me when I pray and I've got all these things I really shouldn't be doing or should be doing like reading the Bible more often and all these things used to come to mind in prayer when I would think I really should spend some quiet time praying here today and and then it's like well there's so much to go through beforehand it just wears me out and so it's like prayer is no longer a joy it's it's an a huge effort to go before the Lord and first of all admit to Him who I am and what I am. Where reckoning kind of deals with that and prayer becomes a joy. Well and the funny thing is that reckoning deals with who you are from a biblical perspective, which is not who the flesh wants to say you are. And that right there, that was pretty shocking for my system, especially when I thought I had to bring something to the table.

But yeah, the Lord grows us, and as we have this deeper understanding of God's Word, I apologize if I keep pointing to the PowerPoint, it's mostly because I'm used to having the scriptures up on there, and in my mind I'm pointing and it's questions that are unrelated.

So we have these qualities of young men that are there. And then John writes so much more simply about the qualities of the fathers. But let's visit that just briefly again here. He says that the fathers have known him from the beginning. And that's the variation. The children know the father. The fathers have known him from the beginning.

Now, in the context of the reading of this letter, there is an implication that these are believers from early in the church days. Today, we don't have anybody here. I mean, Bertha, she's getting up there, I'm not going to lie. But she wasn't there when Christ was dead on the cross. Literally, she was there in identification.

But these fathers knew God from the beginning, and I think that's an important thing for us to recognize, is that these are believers who had a long-standing, in a relatively young church age, they had a long-standing relationship with the Lord. When I was studying through all of this, the thing that came to my mind was really the parallel with Titus chapter 2 verses 1-8, which we already read, if Masu's paying attention. What is the call for the older men, the fathers, in Titus chapter 2 verses 1-8? You flip back there if you're not sure, because this is really the critical crux, or critical point, the moral of the story of what we're looking at. Or at least, I believe, a very direct application of what we're looking at.

Titus 2.2, he says, Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith and love and perseverance. 6 Likewise urge the young men to be sensible. In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech, which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.

Were the older men in any way involved with the younger men's lives? Were they involved with the children's lives? We're the older women, because that's the thing. In Titus, Paul emphasizes also the relationship between the older women and the younger women.

John says, hey, you're heads of households. This should be going on in your households. I think that's the implication of John's text. Paul is explicit. He knows those Greek people are flaky in their logic. I'm not going to lie. They love logic, but they stink at it.

So Paul says to the older women in verse 3, older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored.

So what we end up having here is I like pictures, so I'm going to draw it this way, but please forgive me that it's not very pretty, okay? If you're a father, in the context of John, because we want to try to stay there, you're going to have younger men underneath you. And I'm going to write plural. We'll do plural here. And then children. The doctrines that the fathers know get passed down to the young men, get passed down to the children.

But what happens every year? Do you get a birthday? Every year, I have to have a birthday no matter what I try to do. And eventually, if the Lord tarries, maybe someday I'll stop being a child or a young man. Depends on who you talk to. And maybe someday I'll be a father. And the Lord will bring young men underneath me. Now, this is in no way bragging, so please, when I tell you this story, please don't think that I'm trying to say, see I do this.

I moved from Texas in 2004. The Lord made it really clear I needed to come to Denver and grow. I had a lot of growing I needed to do. I needed to learn about grace. I needed to learn about sanctification, reckoning, identification. Okay, lots of things that the Lord... I went to seminary. I moved to Texas to go to seminary so I could learn that I couldn't learn enough there and I needed to go to Denver and learn here. I have not stopped having a group of young men and women in Texas that the Lord has brought.

For every time I work for a company in Grapevine, Texas, so they pay for me to fly down there. I get to go this year. I can go once a month until next month and then maybe I get a break. I get to meet with these young men and women, and when there's women I'm always careful that there's a group of people so that it doesn't ever look inappropriate.

I always get together with them as the Lord allows, and I get to teach them the things that God is teaching me at Holy Hills. And someday, I hope that they get married and make babies, in that order, and get to teach their children these things that the Lord is teaching me. And you know what? I'm teaching them the things that I'm learning from the elders, from the fathers.

Technically, my dad is my father twice, which is convenient. But these are things that apply to the body here. John's writing about these things. If you can imagine, here's the Apostle writing to these believers, and he's saying to them, hey, these are things I'm writing to you about, and I wonder if, and this is totally supposition, so this is not doctrine, I wonder if in the back of his mind, he was thinking, jeez, I wish I wasn't having to write these things, I could write something deeper, but these fathers aren't passing it on enough. We don't know that for sure, and so I don't want to say that. tends to write that in a few places. He wrote two letters to Timothy. The second one is not a Xerox copy, but very much similar to the content of the first one, because Timothy apparently was a little slow on the uptake. And I mean that in the nicest way anyone can speak of anybody who's got a letter written by the Apostle Paul. In the book of Hebrews, he says, hey, I can write you guys about this milk stuff.

I wish I was talking about deeper things, but I can't. One of the last questions that I've got, and it's on the next slide here, is where does seminary fit in with this concept of maturation for the church? Where does John or Paul, or Peter for that matter, write about seminary? So here's the thing, I'm not down on seminary to the point where I would say no one should ever go to seminary because that's legalism and we don't need that. But if the truth of God's Word is being carefully taught and passed down from generation to generation to generation within a church body, seminary becomes less valuable because you're getting fed and you're being raised up. You're going to be the next generation. You're going to be that godly woman, that godly wife, that godly man, husband, father, child, teenager, because God has grown the body.

Hopefully, as we move forward in this letter from John, you're going to see how he's going to reinforce these ideas. But hopefully, as they're reinforced in your own life, you find opportunities to share them with other people in the body. And it doesn't stop here. That's all I have to say. I get excited about this stuff. I really love the idea of discipleship and teaching the next generation. I'm excited because I got taught. I'm not excited because I'm doing something that's never been done before. I'm excited because I'm doing the thing that my dad did in my life with other people. And hopefully you will pray for the Lord to bring, if He hasn't done so already, other people in your life. But I know that you're just hankering for a young whippersnapper of 70 to come around.

We should really go before the Lord because I think we're over on class time. We can close in prayer and then if you've got other thoughts or questions we'll keep going. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time that we have to study your word. Thank you that we can edify one another. Thank you that I can have grown up in the church and have been a child and hopefully, Lord, you're raising me into the state of being a young man. Lord, thank you for the fathers that are in this church and the mothers for that matter. And Lord, thank you that we are here as embodied. Just pray that You would preserve the truth of your word in the lives of the believers in this area through faithful sharing of these truths. And Lord, we pray that we would be overcomers of the evil one in the world and be a light out there. And Lord, thank you so much for this time as a body. In Jesus' name, Amen.