1-3 John - Final Review

So let's look at the first chapter 1. Chapter 1, it's only 10 verses, but probably the part of 1 John you remember the most. It's really neat. The first 4 verses kind of talk about our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ's incarnation. And actually, I always like the very first verse. It says, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of Life. So it talks about John's experience, his interaction with our Savior.

You know, all those words, I think we mentioned this when we taught this part, that they're in the perfect tense. So it meant that they They were there with the Lord. They remembered up into the present. And it was a continuing memory. It was like they could remember just being there. That significant event in a person's life, being with our Savior, impacted them. So they could remember touching Him, remember seeing Him, and all those things. So that's just a wonderful introduction to this section. He's called the Word of Life here. And then it goes on.

They didn't want to keep that secret. They said, what we have seen and testify and proclaim to you, eternal life, which was with the Father, was manifested to us. So they wanted to proclaim and tell people about our Savior and the life that came from Him. And then they go on. That wasn't the only message they wanted to tell us about. They wanted to tell us about this wonderful fellowship we can have.

In verse 3 they talk about, we have seen and heard what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And then they say, well, our fellowship is not just among us, it's with our Savior. It's with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And they say, you know, this is to make our joy complete. To complete our joy. To tell you, to share with you these wonderful truths. So it's just a wonderful start to that. To this first John.

And then, if you have questions, I'm just going to ramble along here, if you stop me. Actually, I left the questions that were there from the previous time. I'm not going to necessarily answer those, but if you want to talk about any of those, let me know. So let's go on to verses 5-10.

Then he starts off and he makes a statement about God. He basically is going to tell us about the purity of God. That God is light and there is not any darkness at all. There is not one particle of darkness at all. And then from there on, the rest of that chapter, he's going to talk about the sin problem. He's going to talk about what we might say about ourselves, how we might walk. There's five verses, six through ten. He makes five statements. And they're all in contrast, if you think about it. He stated that God is light.

And now he's going to say, when we talk about sin, we need to be accurate, and I'll talk about our walk with him. He starts off, if we say we have fellowship with him, so if we say we're having fellowship, a communion with him, but walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. And this is very much the way John presents almost this entire epistle, he's going to make a statement and he's going to say, well, if you do this, you should do this. He's going to make black and white, A and B. He just constantly does that through the entire book.

So if our walk ought to equal our talk, right? I mean, we say something, that ought to be our action. And it says, if we walk in the light, in verse 7, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

It's interesting that there's all this, we save, and actually, even, oh, thanks Roy, thank you. Yay! Yay Roy! Okay, so, let's see, okay, we're actually on this chart here. Okay, so, So it says if we say we have fellowship, we walk in darkness. What's interesting here, we have the one if we confess. And that word confess actually is to say the same thing. So that's another form of saying something. But in this case, we were saying something in terms of walking in the light, saying we have fellowship. This time we're saying something in terms of our sins. And we're saying we're agreeing with God about our sins. And there's a result of that.

He's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And then it talks about if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. So there's this constant presenting a fact and then saying if our actions don't back that up, then we have a problem. He wants us to be truthful about who we are and what we have in our Savior. And the whole context of 1 John is that there was there was false teachers.

And it seems like they were, and we're going to see later on, they weren't just sort of on the outside, they were in the body of believers. And you can kind of see why maybe he was a little bit, you know, you've got to be careful. He really was persistent in presenting what a Christian should look like. A Christian should look like this and should act like this. And he's not laying down the law, he's laying down grace. But he's saying, you can't act one way You can't act contrary to who you are. If you're doing that, you're lying, basically.

So we're going to see this, and we saw this the whole last year. And as we saw that, it challenged us many times to think, well, how does this fit under grace? How does this fit with the whole counsel of God? And we went through all those verses many times, many Sundays. We went through those. I think we tried to answer each one. in terms of what we've learned under grace.

I think John presents that same picture, but you have to look at it carefully. if I recall correctly, not a salvation confession. It was just a walk, continuous. Right, exactly. This is if you have sin in your life, basically. And actually, if you go back, and we're going to say that's kind of presupposed. He's going to say later on, actually, when we get to the first couple of verses in Chapter 2, he's going to say something about, I don't want you to sin, but if you do sin, And he understands the human condition. He understands that we will sin. And we have an avocet with the Father. Fellowship is in focus in 1 John. Not salvation. Let's see. Actually, when we presented this, this was the first chapter review.

I kind of broke it down and went through each of the verses kind of individually. I wasn't really going to go back over that again. And we had questions that we tried to answer, basically, in each of these. Hopefully you have your notes from before. I didn't provide the answers.

So actually I was going to call that chapter one, because we've got four more chapters to go. But if you want anything you want to try to talk about, I'm happy to address that. If not, we'll just move on. Let's see if there's anything else I wanted to say here.

And what's cool, you know, in this section he talks about the sin nature, sin singular, and also sins plural. And we saw that basically saying that you have, that's actually right here, if we say that we have no sin, that's actually, that's an article there, we have no sin nature, we're deceiving ourselves. So he addresses the sin nature and then he addresses sins as well. Okay, so let's go on.

So now, this is the verse I was talking about in chapter 2. In chapter 2, he starts out with talking about our advocate with the Father. He says, My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. So his desire is that we not sin. That's his desire. But then right after that, and he says, and if anyone sins, so he says, I don't want you to sin, but if anyone does sin, this is where we're at, this is what it's all about.

We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins. Not for our sins only, but for those of the whole world. So he basically talks about our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he talks about that he's the propitiation or satisfaction for our sins. And this satisfaction or payment for our sins is not just for us, Tom.

What's really neat is that this allows room for you to grow into Christian life. Of course, when we're brand new Christians, I agree. That's where the growth is allowed for and Jesus does the advocacy and he deals with this and at the right moment in time he'll say okay Holy Spirit it's time to convict this man in this one area or this lady. Right. growth continue in his time. Exactly.

I still remember our dear brother Hal, he would describe about his conversion and shortly thereafter. I'm sure many of you have heard this before, but Hal was a gambler, and he would go and gamble and drink and smoke cigars and the whole work. Anyway, he tells this story about, he was so excited about the Lord Jesus, telling people about the Lord Jesus. I don't know exactly where this was at, but as the story goes, he was there gambling and drinking and there was some lady across the way and he says, have you heard about Jesus Christ? With a glass of whiskey in his hand. And that's just the way we are. He was so excited about that. It didn't occur to him that that might be a stumbling block to that lady.

And over time, and then the story about when he decided, OK, I've had it with alcohol. And he dumps out all the alcohol, and there's these bottles stacked up. And Lindy comes down the next morning and sees all these bottles and thinks, Hal's actually It consumed all the alcohol. Call the emergency. He's going to be dead. You should have left a note. I decided to give it up and I dumped it all out. Don't worry. So Tom, all that kind of triggered my mind about Hal's story. That's good.

So basically, in this case, we're counting upon our position in what God has done for us. He's satisfied about our sins. And we've come to faith and we're trusting that He's satisfied about our sins. And we're not trying to say, well, God, I've got to pay you back for this sin. Or I've got some sin coming along that I have to pay you back for. I have to be extra.

No, we count upon His propitiation for us in our Christian life. Okay, so with that as a beginning, Then chapter 2 goes on through a myriad of different things. And actually, we didn't have any questions on these. I mean, I asked questions, but we didn't have them on the page. So in these sections, we talk about his commandments. Does anybody remember what his commandments are? Actually, it's called my commandments in other passages. What's that referring to? And what it's not referring to?

And this is not the law. It's not the law. Amen. Right. It's not the law of Moses. Right. So we're not. I often think I'm so thankful for our body of believers here. It's so important. And John is very much the same way. We don't want to be inconsistent. be teaching one thing in one meeting and something else in another meeting. So Roger is going to teach the law and Vernon is going to teach grace and the Bible is going to be somewhere in between. And for the recording, I'm not teaching law. Anyway, so in the context of here and in the context of what John's other writings, his commandments, or my commandments, are basically grace. And if you look back in In the Gospel of John, chapter 13, you'll see a part of the verse that says, you are to love one another even as I have loved you. So we're to love.

We think about grace. What is grace? Grace is what God has done on our behalf. We're counting upon that. So God has loved us. And as a result of that, we can love one another because we have his very spirit within us. Yes, go ahead. In 1 John, he actually gives us He does. This is a commandment of Him in order that we should believe the name of the Son of Christ, of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another just as He commanded.

And those are in the Gospels too. Exactly. In the Gospel of John. Right, exactly. So actually what's cool is you're right. He repeats them in 1 John and he has stated them previously in the Gospel of John. So what I find that's really neat is that when you look at those carefully you see, well that's not, that's something that I'm to do based upon what has been done for me. That my Savior has done this for me. I do that because of what he's done for me.

It's not a law system, it's a grace system. And he actually calls it in John, the work of God. What must we do to do the work of God? He says this is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent. It always points back to not a law based thing, but a grace based system. We're doing it because we've been the beneficiaries of that. And it's all about exercising our faith. It's not exercising, well I'm going to, by some human merit, I'm going to keep this set of rules, or whatever. That's good, thanks Roy.

So what I also found in here that was kind of neat, I underlined a couple places and once again it's the A versus B. So he's trying to go this the one who says I have come to know him And he says it again, the one who says he abides in Him, and then later on the one who says this, it says, if you do this or if you say this, then this should be true or should not be true. So the one who says I've come to know Him and does not keep His commandments, does not abide in His grace in a sense, is a liar. And down later, he says the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner. So John's very much about this is the Christian life, this is how you should look, And this is the action I should see from you.

And you have to think that, why is he so overboard in that? Why does he just pound that away chapter after chapter, verse after verse? It seems like there was a very real opposition to that. People wanted to have other systems than that. So he's very much about doing that. OK.

Okay, so actually another one of those is here the one who says he's in the light yet hates his brother here again He sets up a condition. He says if you say you're in the light Being you know light in the Lord you're you're you're in him in the Savior that you hate your brother He's in darkness until now the one who loves his brother actually one of the key verses in this passage here is 10 the one who loves his brother and The one who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling. So you can kind of see, this kind of takes into account the commandment which he gave us that we're to love one another as he has loved us. And he says that's an indication that you're abiding in the light.

That's an action, manifestation of your life in Christ. So now he's going to talk about Christian maturity here. He addresses them as little children, little born ones. He's going to talk about three kinds of maturity. Fathers, young men, and children or younger children. And he's going to talk about the maturity. in the Lord. Basically, we talked about that, that the children, it says they know the Father.

They've been born again. So it's like the birth truths. The young men have overcome and are victorious. They've prevailed. You could say they know the positional truths. And then lastly, the fathers, that they know Him, that I might know Him. They know Him as their life. So there seems to be, and some have argued maybe there isn't exactly a progression, but I find a real helpful dialogue here about the younger children, the young men and the fathers, about their Christian maturity.

And then he goes on to separation from the world. And basically that we are to be separate from the world. He says, do not love the world nor the things in the world. And once again, he says, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. So he doesn't mince any words. He doesn't say, well, don't get your foot too deep in that world. You can get a little bit. He says, no, don't agape. That's agape. Don't agape the world.

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but from the world. You know, those are the three things that that man seems to gravitate toward. The lust of the flesh is the flesh of desires. Many times talking about illicit sexual desires. How many people fall? How many great men, women, not so many women, but usually a woman's involved. Anyway, great men fall over that. And then we see the lust of the eyes.

Having power, owning, having stuff. and the pride of life, control, ego, that kind of thing. So that's not where the Christian... because the world is passing away and also it's lost. So why do we want to be there? We don't want to be there. And then he starts warning us about the Antichrist. And the Antichrist says, children, this is the last hour. Just as you heard that the Antichrist is coming. Even now many Antichrists have appeared. For this we know that it is the last hour. So there's not, you know, there's the Antichrist and there's many prototypes of Antichrist that are against Christ, contrary to who Christ is. But he points out that, he puts us in the, he says, but you have an anointing from the Holy One. That's one of the grace gifts. You've been anointed. The idea of anointing, every believer has that. It's one of the mysteries of the Holy Spirit.

What did we say was the last hour? We talked about that, and that's a good question. Anyone want to help here? Tom? In a very real sense, the Jews still had a temple. And if they still had a chance to repent, even that late in the game. Is that right? About the 3rd John or 2nd John? Or is that after the temple had been destroyed?

Help me on the timeline. Okay, I... Okay. Well, 18 talks about the Antichrist. Yeah, yeah. I think it's the end times. Some of the translations have the last days, the last times. So typically it's before Christ comes to set up his kingdom. That's why I have my notes here again. That's why I kind of remember what we talked about. It's prior to Christ coming. And you could say, obviously that's now, right?

He hasn't come yet. And of course that's going to be a thousand years. Be careful here. I'm sorry, seven years and then the thousand year millennial kingdom. So I believe it's the time before, sometimes we call it the critical season. Go ahead. This is your last chance.

Then he goes into some sections on truth and falsehood. And once again, it's going to be this A versus B. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. And what's interesting, so much in here is about knowing. knowing who you are and what you have. He wants you to know these facts, not just, you know, I heard that somewhere, you're to know that. And that know is, you know, many times it's a know of experience, you have experiential knowledge, but then he also uses the one of, you have an absolute knowledge, you're convinced of something. And then here we are in 22, it says, Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? So he wants to clearly define who Christ is and what he's done and what you believe. You believe that Jesus is the Christ.

And then he goes down in here to about abiding. As for you, let us abide in you what you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also abide in the Father and the Son. And he talks about the promise of eternal life, kind of returns to that topic a little bit, which we had in chapter 1. And he talks about your anointing again.

And then he closes us out by the hope of Christ's return. Now, little children, abide in Him. so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from him that is coming. And this confidence, we've talked about that a little bit, this confidence is basically knowing who you are in Christ, what you have. You're seated with Christ in the heavenlies, you're in union with Christ, you've been baptized into Christ, you're hidden with Christ in God. So we have this confidence by knowing him. and that we'll be excited about his coming. We'll be overjoyed by his coming.

Okay, so that's chapter two. So there will be some Christians who will be ashamed. Yeah, and I know people have that. I've heard people talk about, well, I don't want to be ashamed of his coming. You'll hear some people teach that, You know, I want to be in the Spirit. They don't understand what we have in Christ. And they'll say, well, I want to be Spirit-filled when the Lord comes.

Well, you already are. If you know the truth, then you already know that that's already accomplished. Some people want to have a certain feeling when He comes, they say. I think just like with your parents, you trust them, and you say, I know who they are, and I can trust them. And when they come, you're excited. You're not wondering, well, they don't remember me anymore? Or something like that. It's knowing a person, and the person of our Savior. So if you don't know that, maybe that's referring to that.

Roger? Yeah, go ahead. I don't know if I can say this right, but this morning I was just reading something sort of fits here, that the truth came with the Lord Jesus Christ, grace and truth came with him. The law came with Moses, but grace and truth came with the Lord Jesus. Well then we sort of, what is truth?

I mean, it is beyond this is what you ought to be, it is what you are. It includes the aspects of God's grace, whereas the law did not include that. It was more of a, this is what you ought to be, without any relationship of what reality is. You didn't learn who you, your jettisoned nature, or any of that.

That's reality, that's truth. That came with the Lord Jesus Christ. He showed it in both himself, as well as ourselves. No, that's good. I don't know if that helps or not. He walks in the truth. He's under that. It seems like, as Bonnie was saying, it seems like he has a possibility.

Some people will not be in a settled position about the Savior. they'll be full of guilt and saying, well, I didn't do this and I didn't do that. And they're trying to measure themselves by the law possibly, the Mosaic law. But we have confidence because of what Christ has done. And we know who we are. He's pointing us to that. That's the confidence that we have.

And then actually, verse 29, actually, we include it in the first three verses of chapter 3. So I'm just going to present it that way. OK, chapter 3. I would say chapter 3 is probably the most difficult one in 1 John. OK, so chapter 3. And once again, I think it's another, John is going to reinforce the idea that this is what a Christian looks like. This is what he should be doing. And that was one of the words that we we struggle with a little bit too. And I put does in there a couple places just to kind of help out.

So it says, it starts off, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices, or literally does, does righteousness is born of him. And then he describes, see how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we would be called children of God, such as we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know him. Beloved, we are now children of God. It has not appeared yet what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we will see him just as he is.

Everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure. So once again, he makes a a statement about ourselves and our Savior, and then he's going to start into a series of A versus B. Sin, lawlessness, and Christ's appearance. So he's going to say, once he's down to the rubber meets the road, everyone that does sin also does lawlessness.

And sin is lawlessness. And actually, that does is in the present tense. And I think that's why the authors have used practice there. Anyway, so he says, you practice sin and practice lawlessness. You do not know everyone who practices sin. So he makes a statement about that. He's identifying sin as lawlessness.

You know that he appeared in order to take away sins. and in them there is no sin. So he states what Christ has done for us. And now he's going to come down, in verse 5, he states what he did for us. Now he's going to say, no one who abides in him sins. So that's one of those statements that we struggle with through there. And it says, and no one who sins has seen him or knows him. So you have to ask the question, well, is he talking about position or condition? No one who abides in him sins.

And you say, well, that seems in contradiction to 1 John 1.10 which says, 1 John 1.10 says, if we say that we have not sinned, he makes us a liar and his word is not in us.

So it seems like that this one here, as we abide in him, we won't, you know, no one who abides in him sins. So, you know, that seems that consistent with what we understand in our Christian walk and who we are. So that's possible. And then the harder part is the last part.

No one who sins has seen him or knows him and seen him and knows him or in the perfect tense. And that's the ones that Looking at that, what I found as I went through 1 John, and I found it in several places, when it had the perfect tense there, and they talk about sin or some action of a person, it seemed like that, in my mind, could point to an unbeliever. I know we had discussions about that, but that's what I kind of came away with, that I said, well, when it's in the perfect tense, and the perfect tense again is that something happened in the past, it continues in the present, on in the future. So it says, no one who sins in the past, in the present, or in the future, and actually knows him, knows is also in the perfect tense as well.

So it seems like that's describing an unbeliever, and we talked about how come in the same verse we have believer and unbeliever, and I'm not sure we have totally resolved all those, but I try to present what I felt was... I would commend it to you to look at the Perfect Tantrum, see what occurs in 1 John, not a whole lot of places, But when that happens, I think that it many times could be for an unbeliever. I know we didn't always agree on that, but I'll leave it at that.

Yes, go ahead. So when you say perfect tense, that's a completed action? Completed past action with abiding results up into the present and onto the future. I had a little chart last week, if you have last week's charts on the perfect tense. That's right. Completed past action. So it would say, no one who sins in the past. I'm not sure I can even say it. Well, it's a mental song. I was going to try to put the perfect tense in there and say it. I'm not sure I can do that. Anyway.

So there are a few places where that comes up. But the rest of the times, I think it's talking about believers. But in a few cases it seems like he's referring to non-believers. And that's another way you can look at that and you say well okay I think this is talking about our own nature and our own nature can certainly act, can certainly sin and certainly act like an unbeliever. It has every capability to do that. There's no question about that. That was the case. And DeRoy you have something to add? Well just in the context here we're talking about fellowship. We're not talking about salvation.

And that sort of lends it towards what he's making up is that this is our sin nature. And in the immediate context he's also saying that the sin is the lawlessness. It's the nature that is lawless. And not only that, as a believer We have a nature that sins.

That's all it does. And doesn't know him, never has known him. I agree. I know, I know. I lean toward that this is our sin. Right, okay. And Royce, that's the other possibility. And Tom, you had something? No, go ahead. Okay. Thanks Roy. Okay, so now So now we go on and he's gonna keep going here little children.

Make sure that no one deceives you So I thought this was a interesting point. He's you know, he spoke here's chapter 3 He doesn't little children little born ones. Make sure that no one deceives you so he is that's one of his principles for putting this information out. I don't want anybody deceiving you. The one who practices or does righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who practices or does sin is of the devil.

Here's where I'm going to twist it a little bit. What I saw as you go through here, the example of Cain, I thought that was a kind of gave me the idea that he's going to present Cain as an example of one whose source is of the devil. And I thought, well, there's a case that makes me think that he presented Cain who's an unbeliever in this context. So that was kind of, I wondered about that as we go through here. So that's just another. Because he's going to talk about this, that he's of the devil, and then he's going to present Cain as an example, it seems like, of that.

In verse 9, though, what do you do with that? OK. OK. There's somebody who likes that. OK, let's try verse 9. The one who is born of God practices sin. OK? All right? So who's that talking about? And I would agree that no one who is born of God practices or does sin. Okay? Who's that talking about? Is that? Are we sinless perfect? No. So does this mean that everyone that's born of God never sins? Right. Okay. Practice is a continual lifestyle. But that's not what the text says. It does not say practice. It says sins. And you cannot distort this with a durative action. It is not that at all.

It says, point in fact, when we are born of God, we don't sin. That has to refer to our new nature in Christ. I would agree with you. I agree that no one who is born of God does sin. We don't sin. In Christ we do not sin. And I think he's talking about the source rather than the condition. He's talking about our sources here. Who is the one that sins and who is the one that does righteousness. Well he kind of explains it in the rest of the verse and he says because his seed, we have God's seed. Because Christ is in us. Craig, you had something on me, I didn't want to go past that.

Well, I guess that the believer's life is Christ, and there are times where a believer will sin, but the nature, the new nature is not that. Whereas the person before, I believe, was an unbeliever that his life, his nature, is the old nature. And a believer, there's a difference between old nature and new nature. The believer is removed from the old nature.

So there's no connection with that. the man that's talking about is the one whose life and practice is sin continually. He knows nothing else. So when you talk about a believer, it's not a continual practice of sin, because we have confession of sin to restore fellowship. It's a fellowship issue. I guess I agree. Well, thanks. Thanks. That was good. OK. Let's see how we're doing. Oh, well. OK. type of character. Well, okay.

Well, when it says, you know, of in many cases, or in most cases, it's the word ek, and that's the source. So he's talking about source in many cases. We have verse 10, he says, where children, source of God, you can put in there for of, And then he has children sourced of the devil. And this is another verse that you look at. Will we ever say that a believer is sourced in the devil?

And I don't think that's... We had this discussion too, I think. That our nature is. Yeah, I don't think we... You're going to say our sin nature is, okay. But we're not talked about. Once we become a believer, we're not sourced in the devil anymore. Even though we have a sin nature. That would be my contention. We have a sin nature that can sin, but that doesn't say, Scripture doesn't call us as sourced in the devil, we're sourced in Christ. In our position, who we are. Our sin nature is influenced. We don't need the devil to act out through our sin nature. The world, the flesh and the devil are the influences on that.

Well we're talking about source and just as the Levites paid taxes, they did so out from a relationship with God that was started way before that. And we get that from Melchizedek. that Abraham paid taxes, or gave a portion of his foils, and we said, you know, Levi's didn't even exist then, but they paid taxes on Abraham. They were out from that relationship.

And it's just like that here. We're out from the devil in our nature, that we received through our fathers, all the way back to Adam, during the fall, and that source was the devil. That's where we got that nature. But we are a new creation in Christ. That's the new nature. That's our source. And our source now is children of God, is children out from God's nature. But we have those too, they're real.

And we can willfully go under the domination of what we've been cut off from. we can willfully sin like. We as an entity. But we would not call ourselves children of the devil. I don't think that's a term that... That's what I'm saying. That's kind of my point.

I think that we need to be careful about, you know, if we make our case here in saying we're going to say children of the devil is referring to our sin nature, I think that kind of misses the point of this section because he's going to go and talk about Cain and he's going to give Cain as an example of that. And on the flip side, if you do righteous, well Cain wasn't righteous. And because he gave an example of Cain, it came out of the sin nature. Make a long story short, John is explaining in the strongest possible terms that it's far more beneficial to continue abiding in Christ than to of plaguing here. All right, so I'm going to show it.

Let's see, what else do you want to do here? Let's see, anything else here? OK, now here's Cain's example. He says, for this is the message which you've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother, So this is my point, he's a source of the evil one, and he was an unbeliever, and widely slain because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.

He's going to go on and talk about more. How about if we just There's more to do in this chapter, but let's just briefly, I'd just like to go over, I wanted to show you one thing in chapter four here. I apologize for jumping around, but let's look over here. So in chapter four, it's kind of neat. And you probably already picked up on this.

He's going to first talk about our relationship with our Savior. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out in the world. So once again, he's going to warn us about false prophets. And he's going to talk about, by this you know the Spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ is not from God. So basically again, this is going to be a, you know, Where are they coming from? Are they coming from God or not from God? And that's the spirit of the Antichrist.

So he sets that first part up and then also he kind of continues it on in verses 4 and 5. He talks about from God or from the world. Sources from God or sources from the world. And he says we are from God and we are from God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

So he kind of contrasts those two in chapter 4. And then actually the rest of chapter 4 really talks about God's marvelous love. Actually, this is a psalm I've been put to work to. Beloved, let us love one another. Actually, we have Randy here. He can do that for us.

If you look from 7 to the end of the chapter, in chapter 4, he talks about love is from God. He makes me say, love is from God. Love is from God. We're to love one another. Love is from God. God is love. The love of God was manifested. Not that we love God, but that he loved us. That we ought to love one another. And God abides enough, His love is perfected enough. So this is a whole treatise on God's love and interaction with the believer. So this is just a wonderful section on the nature of God and His love. And then it kind of gets down to the end here.

And it says, we love because He first loved us. And then he talks about, and then it kind of goes back to the thing about what you say is what you do. If someone says, I love God and hates his brother. You know, very similar pattern to previous times.

And then chapter 5 talks about our relationship to God. And whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Whoever loves the Father loves the children born of Him. And then he's going to talk about knowing that by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and observe his commandments.

And that kind of continues. And he talks about testimony of the Spirit and testimony of the water and the blood. Christ being baptized and then his death on the cross. That testifies with the Spirit. And the Father testifying about the Lord Jesus. And they talk about the confidence and certainties we can have as a believer. Knowing, you know, verse 13, these things I have written to you, who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. And that's one of John's big things in his writings here, are that you know that you have eternal life. And this is a conference which we have before him that if we ask anything important to his will, talking about the fellowship we have with him. And then once again he's going to go back to talking about what you see, the concept of what you do, and who you are with what you do. And then last, I think it's actually 21, is Celeste. Little children, guard your souls from idols.

So that was an attempt at a quick summary. Well, thanks. I really enjoyed Celeste. It's been great. There's been some challenges. I appreciate your comments. I've learned a lot. Actually, I've learned a lot by the things that we have that may have questions that come up. And we have to go back and study them to learn from that. So I appreciate that. So, we have a two week hiatus here, which has happened in, I can't remember, my memory of being here. We're going to start in Philippians, and Bob's going to start off with the introduction of Philippians on January 8th. Okay, so let's close here.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior, Father. We thank you that we can trust you for all things, that we have a confidence, Lord, that someday you'll come, Lord, and we'll be caught up to meet you in the air. We're thankful for that, Lord. We're thankful for this relationship we have with our Savior. We ask it in His name. Amen.