In the sermon 'The Power of the New Birth' delivered by Scott Brown, the essence and implications of being 'born of God' are explored through the lens of 1 John 5:1-5. Brown emphasizes the transformative power of the new birth, highlighting how it results in faith, love for God and others, and a delight in God's commandments. He uses the imagery of a child walking with their parent to illustrate the relationship between God and believers, suggesting a life of dependence and joy. The sermon makes a distinction between mere intellectual belief and a living faith that brings one's whole life under the governance of Christ. Regeneration, or the new birth, is presented as a miraculous act of God that precedes faith and transforms individuals into new creatures. Brown warns against the misunderstanding that Christianity is merely about self-improvement or doctrinal correctness, emphasizing that true Christianity is characterized by a life filled with love and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit.

1 John 5, verses 1-5 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone who loves him who begot also loves him who is begotten of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for loving us. Lord, we thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, into the world that we might believe. We thank you for sending your Spirit that dwells in us.

We pray that our eyes might be opened, our ears might be opened, our hearts and our minds might be renewed today through the preaching of your word. And Lord we thank you and we pray that we would see your glory today. In Jesus name. You may be seated. Our text today is one of the clearest explanations of what it means to be a child of God in the entire Bible.

And John brings us an image that he's already brought to us many times. He brings us the image of a child. John is a wise old man now and he's speaking to his children, but he sees the church as a group of children. He sees these children that are walking with their father, and they enter into this relationship by being born again. So John is always talking about children.

And you have this picture here in this passage of a newborn child. And that child is walking with his father. You know, one of the most remarkable scenes that you can see in life is when you see a parent walking with his child. And that child has his hand up because children are short. And so they hold their hands up and they reach into the hands of their father or their mother.

And it's a picture of what it means to be a Christian. That you have this happy child, you know, and someone is holding that child's hand. And then somebody might be carrying that child as well, like a father carries his son. This is how God relates with his people as children. And of course everybody is aware of how insatiable the desire of a child is to play a particular game with their parents.

They're between two parents and they're holding both hands up and the parents are walking along. It's the game one, two, three, we. You know that game? And you swing your child up in the air and they always say the same thing. Do it again!

And you do it again. And they say, do it again! And you could do it a thousand times. Because it's such a blessing to be a child walking with your father and with your mother and that's the picture that we have here and it's a continuous explanation that John is giving us here of the miracle of the new birth and he's he's describing what happens to you when you are born again he's preaching Jesus Christ and the love of Jesus Christ toward his children and how his children become a different kind of children. And so he's writing about what is the foundation of Christianity.

And that is that there is a supernatural regeneration of the soul that changes everything for a child. And that regeneration, that new birth, results in believing faith. It results in love toward God. It causes love toward one another in the church. It causes you to love His commandments.

And you don't see His commandments as burdensome anymore. You delight in them. You love them. It changes everything. The commandments didn't change, but you changed.

And it overcomes the world. This is the blessing of salvation. Now you who are really young here today, I want you to learn a new word. Well, it's a word you've heard here before, but I don't want you to miss it this time. Regeneration.

Regeneration. I'll talk about that in more detail later, but don't forget that word regeneration. It's one of the most wonderful things that can happen to you. And so I've identified these things in this outline that are that is here before you that that the new birth gives you faith, it gives you love for the children of God, it gives you love for God, it gives you delight in his commandments, and it also gives you the power to overcome the world. Now when you think of the world, think back at what John said earlier about the world do not love the world or the things of the world and he defines What that is so here the Lord Jesus Christ is presented as as the giver of life because because he is the way the truth And for our purposes in this text, the life.

This passage is about the life. And these are fruits of the new birth. They are symptoms of the root of the new birth. All this faith that God gives you, all this love that God gives you, all of this overcoming of the world. It happens because one thing happened, the regenerating power of the new birth.

These are just symptoms. Now I want to bring you two observations here by way of introduction to sort of give you a grid from which to think through this and at least some of the things that I feel we should consider as a church. And the First is this, the concept of born of God occurs three times in these five verses. That should help you understand what John is trying to communicate. He's already mentioned this in chapter 2 verse 29.

He's going to speak of it again in 1 John 5, 18. So born of God or born again is the heart of Everything John is trying to tell us in this passage Secondly love the word love the word love is mentioned no less than five times in these five verses And by the way John is always talking about love in 1 John. In fact, here's a statistic for you. Since 1 John 4 verse 7, all the way to chapter 5 verse 3, John uses the word love 30 times. John wants us to understand the centrality of love in the heart of the child of God.

The commandments are mentioned three times in these five verses. Further, I want you to make a connection there in verse one, make a connection with verse one and with verse five. Because in verse one we read, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of him. Now the word believes is the word faith. And when you get to verse five, you learn that What God did by implanting faith into your heart was the most powerful thing that ever happened to you.

Your faith overcomes the world. God did that. He gave you a seed. He gave you something in your heart that will overcome the world. This is what God is doing in every single Christian here today.

Praise God for his marvelous gift. Now, I want to talk about some misunderstandings that I think are helpful for us to consider in our church. This passage reveals a common flaw in our thinking. And so what we have here is really the essence of the Christian life. And we dare not misunderstand the essence of the Christian life.

I was reading a sermon, or I was listening to a sermon by Martin Lloyd-Jones on John chapter 3 verse 8 a while back, and he's arguing that one of the greatest obstacles to true Christianity occurs in the minds of people who think that Christianity is all about getting your life and your doctrine right. And he's preaching from 1 John 3, 8, which is the story of Nicodemus, where the Lord Jesus Christ tells him, you must be born again. And he talks about Nicodemus who thought he could get improvement by the teaching of Jesus. That's what he was looking for. He was looking for a better world.

He was looking for a better understanding, a better life. And so this text that's before us corrects our thinking about what the Christian life is. And the Christian life is the result of justification. So what's the common flaw? The common flaw is in people who find themselves in the church and they're often found seeking sanctification before justification.

And they want to fix up their lives. They want to do the right thing before regeneration. They focus on learning doctrine and they think that that is the sum of the Christian life. It must be obvious to everyone that we think that we should learn doctrine. This is not an argument against learning doctrine.

It's an argument against what you think about learning doctrine primarily. You know, if you've encountered people who say something like this, they did something good and they said, I did it because it was the right thing to do. Well That's not how a Christian thinks at all. A Christian says, I did it because God was working in me. I'm a newborn man.

I'm standing on a rock. I love the commandments of God. I did it not because it was right. I did it because God gave birth to a seed of faith in my life and I love him and it came out. I didn't go do the right thing.

God moved in my soul and I moved and I did what I did but I didn't do it because Christians just do the right thing. That's not Christianity. That's self-improvement. And so there's a mistake, there's a misunderstanding in people who are trying to grow before they have been born. And they get fixated on working on the applications of truth without having an impartation of life.

And you find various manifestations of this in mysticism, in People who want to become monks or students or they want to become self-improvement enthusiasts. And we always have to have to guard against that. And we have there are many examples in history of this. You have Luther, you have Wesley, you have Whitefield. They went through periods where they just wanted to do what was right and they buffeted their bodies They were so remarkably disciplined and they found they had no life in them even in their disciplined life.

And so John is is trying to explode this whole misunderstanding of Christianity that you can have self-improvement without justification to try to live, to try to get your, to try to think of Christianity as getting in terms of ideas and points of view instead of life and the tendency to think that this is all about knowledge of the Bible this is all about doing the right thing and but there's no new life in it. And so the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a church of newborn people. They have life. That's the essence of this passage, that Jesus Christ gives life. And Christianity is not primarily about having debates about theology and getting your life right.

Those things do come, but they are actual results. They are not the essence of Christianity. So John is bearing down on the essence of Christianity and the center of Christianity is the power of the new birth where Christ causes you to become a new creature and there are various things that happen when you become a new creature and what's so important for us as we understand this is that when we When individuals in the church understand this, the church becomes a place of the presence of Jesus Christ. It becomes a place where the love and the truth and the power of Jesus Christ is known because it is real, because there is a vine and there are branches and there is real life flowing into those branches. You know, there is a song that I sang to one of my children recently where It goes like this.

I will serve you because I love you You've given life to me. I was nothing and then you found me You've given life to me. That is the essence of the Christian life right there. Okay so let's let's dive in to the text now. We first of all encounter this phrase in verse 1 which gives the first fruit, the first manifestation of the new birth, and that is that God gives you faith to believe.

Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. So this focus here is of the new birth and I want to give you five elements of the new birth that that scripture speaks of and what this is actually referring to. And the first is the new birth is a regeneration. There are two words here, birth and again, these two things, a birth and it's again, and it speaks of divine power through a spiritual transformation where a person is made new and they are given something. And so it has to do with begetting again, to give birth to, to be actually twice born.

And it speaks of a completely new start and it's the realization that comes to you when you know in your heart and you say I'm a newborn man, I have light, I love the commandments, I desire to walk in His ways, and God is changing me. I'm like a child and He's holding my hand, and we're walking together, and He's taking me by the hand, and He walks with me and He talks with me, and he tells me that I'm his own and I'm a child of God and I have been born again and that power of God and being born again, it changes everything. It changes the way you act, it changes the way you think, it changes the way you talk and you become a different person. First of all, there is a different person living inside you and you are becoming like him. And you begin to talk like your father and you begin to walk like your father.

Have you ever noticed how men often walk like their fathers walk? Notice it. Next time you're walking behind a father and a son, it's almost universal. It's not completely universal. I have had people say, Scott, you walk like your dad.

Well, how did that happen? I held up my hand, and I walked with my dad, and I watched my dad, and it just happened. And that's what happens to those who become partakers of the divine nature. And we have something new in us, and it causes new things to happen in us. Secondly, it's a spiritual recreation.

2 Corinthians 5-17 speaks of the fact that when one is born again, old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come." Which is why the apostle Paul said to the Ephesian church in Ephesians chapter 24, he said, put on the new self which is created in the likeness of Jesus Christ. And so there is a new creation. Now, the third thing about being born again is that it creates faith. But what kind of faith is it?

What kind of belief is it? It actually creates a particular kind of belief. When you are born again, you believe something different about Jesus Christ. And the faith, whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ. It's that kind of belief.

And it's a belief that recognizes that Jesus Christ is the only savior of the world. But this is not anything like intellectual ascent It's not believing the facts of the gospel anybody can believe the facts of the gospel James says the demons believe the facts of the gospel with a vengeance and they understand vengeance From God and they're terrified as a result of it. So it's not enough to believe the facts. It's not enough for someone to sit with you and say, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God? Yes.

Do you believe that he died and rose again? Yes. Do you believe that he is seated at the right hand of God? Yes. That is not what John is talking about.

He is talking about a faith that says, I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ has come and saved my soul. He is the only Savior of the world. So it is not an intellectual assent. It is a happy bringing your whole life under his government and putting your hand in his hands and say where he leads me I will follow. It's that kind of faith.

It's a live faith not a dead intellectual faith that John is arguing about here. Now you can trace this kind of dead faith throughout history and it has always been a challenge to the church and it was a challenge in John's day. You know back in the 18th century There was a theologian by the name of Robert Sandeman, and he taught that a person who said he believed with his mouth was a believer. And He and another friend of his, John Glass, believed that all that was necessary was a verbal confession, that all that was needed was an intellectual assent. And they believed that a person could be a Christian without repentance, without faith, and without a transformed life.

And of course, this was a heresy that was actually condemned by the church in the 18th century But but the modern churches embrace many elements of what of Robert Sandeman once taught and You often find this principle in local churches where people, they really don't have a love for God. They don't have a love for each other. They don't have a love for the Word of God. And the problem is that they've never been born again. Their lives haven't changed.

Because when you're born again, you are a new person. You have new affections. And those affections always take you somewhere. Your affections are always taking you somewhere. But Jesus Christ himself confronted this when he said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.

So you can say the words, But if you don't desire to do the will of God, you have not been born again. And that's the point that John is making. Because saving faith is a real faith, it's not a dead faith, it's a dynamic faith. It's not sterile. It's real, it's beautiful, and it changes your life.

And that's what John is talking about. And so he says it is a faith in Jesus. It's a faith that says Jesus is the Christ. And we've talked about this before, that Christ is not Jesus' last name. It's a confession that Jesus is a Savior, that he is so good.

He rescues you, he loves you, he cares for you, he takes you by the hand, and he walks with you. That's What it means to say Jesus is the Christ. It does include a belief that he is the begotten Son of God. It does include that he is God in the flesh. It does include that he died and suffered for our sins and was raised again on the third day and is seated on the right hand of God.

It does include a real repentance, but it is an affirmation that Jesus Christ is the Christ and he's my Christ. And so, you know, people should always ask, what Christ do I believe in? Is he just that person that walked around that is a historical figure? A lot of people believe that. Most people actually believe that Jesus was a historical figure some don't they're crazy They haven't really they really don't understand history at all and But what Christ do we believe in that's the that's the question.

Who is He? Do we say like Peter did, you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God? And there's only one way that a person can say that, and that is if the Holy Spirit moves upon their heart and reveals it to him. To have Christ revealed to you is to believe that He is the Savior. And everything that that word Savior encapsulates, you believe, because He is your Savior.

Now, the fourth thing I want you to recognize about this matter of being born again is that there's a sequence to it. Now notice that there is a sequence that is taught in this passage of Scripture And there are at least three of these that are spoken of, perhaps all four, but the sequence of salvation goes like this. Before the foundation of the world, God shows you. That's election. And then there is regeneration and that's what John is talking about here where a person is born again.

And thirdly there is faith. That's the third step in salvation. And fourthly there is love. That's the sequence that John is presenting here. Now, belief, belief is in the present tense in this phrase here.

And so Saving faith, the faith that God gives you is a result of being born of God. Born of God is in the perfect tense. And so saving faith Is a result of the new birth not the cause you don't get faith first You get born again first and in that act of being being born again God gives you faith He plants something in you that changes your affections and it changes your whole worldview So the one who believes or the one who has faith has already been born of God now the word faith and believe are the same Greek word in this passage. And so they are used synonymously here. But make sure you understand this.

Saving faith is the result of the new birth, not the cause. Because being born of God precedes the faith. Regeneration precedes the faith that produces the works in your life. You must be born again so that you would be given the gift of faith and that faith would would issue in works. So when a person believes, it's an indication that that person has been born of God.

A person who has faith has a manifestation of the new birth and And so that's that's how belief takes place now the fifth The fifth element of regeneration is this is that it is a is a work of a miracle of God. The theologian Louis Burkoff defined regeneration this way, regeneration is an act of God by which the principle of new life is implanted in man. And that's exactly what Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about. You must be born again. In other words, you are passive in the new birth.

We did not choose to be born. To be born of God is to have a miraculous power working upon your soul. And this is what theologians called monergistic regeneration, mono, one, energy, one agent, one agent in salvation. And that is the power of God to cause one to be born again. Synergistic regeneration is the idea that most evangelicals embrace today.

They believe in synergism, that there are two agents involved. This is actually Arminianism. But monergistic salvation Embraces the idea that God exerts his will in the new birth and so and that and and John is trying to say that the center of Christianity is the power of the new birth where Christ Causes you to become a new creature and he imparts faith, he imparts love toward God, he imparts love toward one another, and that very faith causes you to overcome the world. That's John's argument here. And you serve Him because you love Him.

You serve Him because you are so thankful to have your hand in His hand. You are like a happy child holding the hand of His Father. You know, I was praying with a pastor just this week in another state. And I was praying for him and he prayed for me. And here's what he prayed for me.

He said, I pray that Scott Brown would be like a little child holding your hand. That's what he said. And so I haven't been able to get it out of my mind, obviously, but that's what he's talking about. Now, the fact that God was the one who initiated and ordained your salvation is very important for you to understand it. Now, for you little children here today, I want to give you an illustration of this.

Okay, are you ready? Here's how you can understand monergistic salvation. Okay? Can you say regeneration? Can you say?

Monergistic salvation. Okay, so here's here's how you can understand it. It's really very easy. It's not complex at all Do you do you remember a time? When you decided to be born?

Did you decide to be born? Or you know, were you floating around in outer space, you know, before you came into this world and you thought, I think I'll be born. I want to be born. And then you start looking around at all the mommies and daddies and you say, I want to be in that mommy's tummy. I want that daddy.

No, you didn't do that. You have no memory of that because that did not happen. You did not choose to be born. Nobody gets to be, nobody gets to choose to be born. To be born is an act of the sovereign grace that's embedded in the will of God to plant souls in this world.

And he does it by his own choice and you didn't choose. You know, you didn't get to choose your daddy, did you? You didn't get to choose your mommy. No. God did that.

God did that. And that's the, that's how you understand what it means to be born again. That is a simplified form of monergistic salvation. It's a picture of regeneration that is here. And it is a work of God.

And The apostle Paul explains this so clearly in Ephesians chapter 1 where God chose us before the foundation of the world. This concept is in the Old Testament all over the place in Ezekiel chapter 36. If you read Ezekiel chapter 36 you'll encounter these words, I will, I will, I will. You know, I will give you a new heart. I will put my spirit in you.

I will rescue you. I mean, it is the will of God that has designed for the salvation of sinners. And you must dispense with the idea that your salvation comes from anything that you did. It has not come from living a good life, it hasn't come from having the right parents, it doesn't come from having the right attitudes, it doesn't come from having the right theology, it doesn't come from anything that man does. It doesn't come from your interest in doctrine or the way that you like the people of the church.

Regeneration is a miracle of God and of God alone. You know, in John chapter one, verses 12 and 13, we read that God gave, He gave you the right to become the children of God. He gave you that right. You didn't give it to yourself. He says, who were born not of blood, nor the will of man, nor the will of the flesh, but of God.

And so this is The truth that there is only one agent in salvation, that every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights. Everything that has figured into your salvation came from God. In 1st Peter chapter 1 verse 3 we read that in his great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ From the dead into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you. And that's what you have when you're holding your father's hand, when he causes you to be a child and you instinctively reach up.

You thought it was instinctively, he caused you to lift up your hand toward him. And he gave you, and he secures an inheritance in heaven for you. And so when you have faith, when you love God, when you love the children of God, when you love the Word of God, it's a miraculous act that God has performed. And this is why the Apostle Paul said to Titus in Titus 3.5, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. And this is this monogistic salvation.

No one is born again unless God moves upon their hearts. And it's the greatest gift. And it makes you a child. And it gives you a hand to hold all your life long. It's such a blessing to be a child of God.

I will serve you because I love you. You've given life to me. I was nothing and then you found me. You've given life to me. So the second thing that God gives you is love for the children of God that's in in the second part of verse 1 and And everyone who loves him Who begot also loves him who has begotten of him now?

I would like for you to look very carefully at this phrase, okay, because you have to get the hymns right. You gotta know who he is. And I'm gonna tell you who it is right here. Everyone who loves him, the Father. Everyone who loves the Father who begot, that's the Son.

And loves him who is begotten of him, that's the church. So you have the Father, the Son, and the Church. And this is love that flows from the Father to the Son and to the Church. And then it is spread in the Church. That's the whole logic and argument that he is making here.

And again, as we've seen other times in John, there's a representation of this cascading love that comes from the throne of God. He pours out his love on his son, and his son loves his children, and his children start to love one another like they never could love before. You know, when you love someone, you love their friend. That's usually how it works. Many people get connected in this world because their friend loves someone.

And then, because they were your friend, you love them too. And that's how it works in the church. When you love Jesus Christ, you love his friends. And so in the church, you have all these adoptees running around, all these adopted children of God. And all the adopted children, they came from all kinds of different backgrounds and they got rescued from all kinds of different places.

And what do they do? They love one another. They came out of the world. And because as adopted sons, they are loved, they love those who are loved of God. Because when you love someone, you love the friend.

And that's exactly what's happening here. And you see this all through the scriptures, you know, there's so many pictures of it, it would fail us in time to even try to cover them but, you know, in Acts chapter 4 you have this picture of the church where it says, and the multitude that believed were of one heart and one soul. And then two chapters later, there's this picture of them. They're rejoicing. They're breaking bread from house to house.

They're delighting in the Lord. They're like children. They have their hands in their Father's hand and He's walking with them and they... This cascading fountain of love is coming from the Father through the Son and through the sons and the daughters of God that are there. And so this love is something that flows.

We love the brethren and you know we learn that the power of the new birth is a shared power. Now this is really critical for us as a church gathered together, That the power of the new birth is a shared power. Now notice in in verse 1 there are the everyones. Do you see them? I'm just gonna call them the everyone's because he speaks of it here, everyone or whoever believes and everyone who loves.

Now notice this corporate family language. This is love for the church. Not the church universal, the ethereal church that you don't really, those people you don't know. It's the people that you do know. And it gives you love for the people that you actually do know.

This is the corporate family language that exists in this entire section. Now, if you map this out, if you read this over and over again, you'll notice this corporate focus, this we-ness about the passage. You know, it starts out, whoever believes, whoever loves, verse two, by this we know, and then when we love God and keep his commandments verse 3 for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and then in verse 4 whatever is born of God speaking of lots of people and He says and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith, us, it's us, We're together in this life. We love one another. We are recipients of this cascading love of God that God has ordained in the new birth.

And, You know, the love of God is very clearly defined. You know, if you have questions about it, we just did a series on 1 Corinthians 13 where the definitions of love are delivered so beautifully. How do you know if you're loved? Paul gives us 15 manifestations of love, And they're so wonderful. And they wage war against the hatreds and the dissatisfactions that rise up in people's hearts.

I love what Charles Spurgeon said. He said, Where there is the spirit of enmity, of envy, of pride, of contention, there is not the spirit of God. But that which makes toward division and contention, emulation and strife, is not of God, for God is love." Now whose responsibility is it to maintain the love, love in the church? Well, we trust in the work and the power of the Holy Spirit primarily because love is a work of the Holy Spirit. It's not something that you crank up.

It's not necessarily something that the pastors tell you to do because the Spirit of God does teach us to love. Now there are times when love seems to wane in a church and elders do have a responsibility to be watchful for lack of love in the church and to watch the culture of the church. And in doing such a thing, they're really preparing a congregation for heaven because heaven is a world of love. But a true church possesses a culture of love the way that God has defined it. And it's full of affection.

It is free of slander and gossip. It's full of people who think the best of one another and people who are long suffering toward one another. But it's very it's a very real and a practical thing as well. In the church there's this there's there's such a family sense of what the Bible teaches about the church. In the church you love people of all ages.

The older love the younger by teaching them. The younger honor the aged by being with them and listening to them. This is a picture of a true church. Now one of the problems that you can find in any church is that the old people have a tendency to want to be with their kind. They want to talk to people that they can see eyeball to eyeball with, or their friends.

And so they gravitate toward one another as old people. And the young people can tend to do the same thing. And, you know, from time to time, you know, you might have been disturbed. Like if you see young people going off to be by themselves and they're maybe they're walking around the property here they just only want to be with the people of their age but it's possible that you can be disturbed about that but not be disturbed about old people who just talk to old people. Because both of those things are aberrations.

They're not pictures of the Church of Jesus Christ. And God implants His love. It's a family kind of love. So our encouragement as pastors of this church is don't just hang around the people that you're that are your own age You old people quit just hanging around old people you young people just quit hanging around old people young people You know mix it up. You know just so you know when I look out among our congregation on a weekly basis, I want to see all the ages meeting together.

I want to see that 35-year-old mom sitting down with the 8-year-old daughter of another mama. I want to see the fifty-year-old man with the fourteen-year-old young man. That's what I want to see. And the reason I want to see that is that's a picture of the Kingdom of Heaven. Because in the Kingdom of Heaven, it ain't about old people hanging around old people and young people hanging around young people.

It's about people loving each other like a family. Now our church has tried to structure that way so that there's a Familistic nature of the church where we don't segregate into various subcultures So You know love is such a critical critical thing in the church And that's why John is talking about love so much. You know, there's this story of John the apostle. He's in his old age and he's so weak, he's so old, he has to be carried to the pulpit to preach. And so this story is found in Jerome's commentary on Galatians, on Galatians 6-10.

And he tells the story of John being carried into the congregation in the arms of his disciples. And he was so old, he was so weak that he could only say, little children love one another. And then he said it again. And then one of his disciples said, why do you say this? And he says, it's the Lord's command.

And if this only is done, it's enough. It's another way of saying, you know, the greatest of these is love. It doesn't matter how eloquent you are. You can have all knowledge of all doctrine. You can Speak in the tongues of men and of angels, you can be so articulate and erudite, you can give all your money away, you can be so generous, you can do so much for God and it be worth nothing.

Because Paul says, without love, you ain't nothing. That's a paraphrase. So he gives you love for the brethren. That's what he does. And then thirdly, he gives you a desire to keep his commandments.

That's in verse 2. By this we know we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments." Now there's there are many There are many ways to approach these sentences in verse two and three but What one thing that John is trying to communicate is that? The only way you know if you're loving your brother is if you're keeping his commandments because all of his commandments are laws of love. His commandments define love.

And one of the wonderful things about the Christian life is that while you're holding your Father's hand, He's teaching you that love is different than what you thought. Because he communicates his love in his word. You know, our confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689, has a section on good works. And the question is, how do you know if you're doing a good work? Well, the Bible tells you what good works are.

That's basically the answer. And you can perform commandments without love, but that's not a true keeping of the commandments. A rote wooden keeping of a commandment, like giving your money to the poor, is not the way that John is talking about keeping his commandments. Any more than the child who says I'm sorry is keeping the commandment of you know You know repenting The heart of it is what matters and You know you can you can know neglect and forsake a heart of love while performing all the outward forms of Love and Jesus actually he talked to the Pharisees about this They had neglected the weightier matters of the law He says in Matthew 23 23 you have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought ye to have done and have not, and not left the others undone.

So you can't, you can't separate love from the keeping of the commandments. John, in these two verses, he hardwires love and the law. That's what he does. I like the way Ian Hamilton says it. He says, your attitude to God's commandments will speak volumes about the reality or unreality of your Christian profession If you love the laws of God you love God If you hate the laws of God, you're hating God.

Because John connects these two inseparably. Love and the keeping of his commandments. In fact, the law teaches you how to love. And you know, if you ask, well, how do I know if I'm loving my brother? Well look to the Word of God and see how God defines love and look at His commandments.

Because you can have a form of godliness without love as well. You know my experience in this life is that those, the most loveless people that I've ever met are those who have a low view of the law. And they end up being the harshest, most judgmental people. And they are the most relentless people I've ever known. They have a low view of the law.

Well, there's another kind as well where they have too high a view of their law keeping and those people too find themselves as the most loveless. So, He says, for this is the love of God that we keep His commandments. That's verse 3. And His commandments are not burdensome. Now there are two kinds of people.

There are those who love his commandments, and then there are those who feel that his commandments are a burden, that they are hard, like the man in Jesus' parable who said, I knew you were a hard man. He thought God was a hard guy. He thought God was trying to deprive him of something good. He thought God's commandments were somehow going to take something good away from him. And he said, I know you're a hard man.

Well, so he represents one kind of person, and this kind of person resents the commandments of God. If you resent the commandments of God, if you want to avoid them, or if you don't want to take them up and internalize them. If you want to sort of live on the edge of Christianity, you're thinking the way a non-Christian thinks and feels because they want to set aside the word of God for the sake of their tradition. In other words, the thing that they prefer. Or somebody else's tradition.

But the non-Christian thinks that God's commandments are intrusive and heavy and they're a burden. You know, you see a picture of this in the prophet Malachi. The people were bringing all the sacrifices. I mean, they were faithfully bringing their sacrifices. But Malachi reveals their flaw.

They were bringing the sacrifices, but what were they saying? My, how tiresome it is. It was a hardship for them. You know, they didn't really like it. They were doing it.

It's like the person who goes to church all the time because he knows that if he doesn't, people are going to talk to him about it, but he doesn't really enjoy it. He doesn't love it. He doesn't want to hear the preaching. He doesn't love the brethren. He doesn't really like the commandments of God that much.

He wants to get away from the commandments of God. But that's a picture of what you see in Malachi. My, how tiresome it is. Now, I have sympathy for people who can go to sleep in the midst of a sermon because I've done it. And so I understand that.

But if you are asleep in your heart, that's a different matter. I think it's reasonable that some of us from time to time might do this, and every once in a while I see somebody down like this. They're going, they're gone, they're out. One blessing of God's kindness to me is he gave me a wife who has this, she has this internal sense of when I'm nodding out. I mean, I haven't even dropped my head yet, but she, I don't know what it is.

She can sense that my eyes are closing and she gets me like that and she wakes me up, you know, sometimes in the middle of a sermon. So I'm so thankful for that. But here's the question. The issue isn't, have you ever nodded out? By the way, no one is nodding out right now.

Not one person is nodding out in this church. That is totally awesome. But you know, but the question, the real question is, have you nodded out in your heart? Like, are you hungry? Do you want it?

Do you want His commandments? You're like David, oh how I love thy law. Thy commandments are my greatest delight. I would have lost my heart unless I had known the kindness of the Lord." You know, I mean, so your heart can be asleep, but your eyes open. But your eyes can actually be closed and your heart awake as well.

So I understand that. But the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. That's what Paul said to the Romans. So he's talking about this mind that is not subject to the law of God.

It doesn't want any more law. No more law. Have you ever thought that in your heart? That's dangerous Really really dangerous when you say that And you become so unlike your Savior so unlike those who truly loved God. Because Jesus said, he said, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

And he says, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light, and you will find rest for your souls Jesus is talking about people who find rest in the yoke of God it's light it's not burdensome his commandments aren't burdensome So he's talking about the person who either does or doesn't think the commandments are burdensome. Your relationship to the law of God tells you everything about your relationship to God. And if you find someone who hates the law of God, you should warn them. You should read this verse to them because his commandments are not burdensome. And that's why David said in Psalm 40, I delight to do your will, oh my God.

He's really quoting Jesus or in Psalm 112 verse 1, happy is the man who fears the Lord, taking great delight in his commands. Do you delight in them? Like do you long to hear the commands of God? Are they such a sweetness to your soul? David said, I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches.

In Psalm 119 verse 16, he said, I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. In other words, David, when he wanted to be delighted, you know, he didn't go to the medicine cabinet, he didn't go to the sports arena, he went to the Word of God. He says that, I delight myself in your statutes. That's where David got his delight.

He got his delight by going to the Word of God. Because they're not burdensome. They're freeing. And, you know, in fact, his commands relieve burdens. They don't cause burdens.

You know, it's not burdensome to honor your parents. It's not burdensome to turn away from pornography. Every man knows that. It's a burden to turn toward it. The greatest burdens of our lives come when we reject the commandments of God.

God relieves you of your burdens through your obedience. But There is nobody who ever turned to God who had more burdens. But it is so much more burdensome to turn to adultery or covetousness or theft. That's how you get burdened in this life and it will burden you. You will lose everything.

Sin is so burdensome. And then fourth, God gives you the power to overcome the world, verses four and five. Whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Now John uses this word Nike again, Nike.

You know there's a sports apparel company called Nike, and it's the word victory. It comes from the name of the Greek goddess of victory, and it's mentioned three times in verse four. Victory. And the word overcomes or victory is in the aorist tense in the Greek language which means it's a once-and-for-all action. It has overcome and it will continue to overcome the world.

This is the power of the new birth. There's a seed of faith that's planted that is overcoming the world. God began a good work in you and he will complete it. He's saying, you know what? The Christian life is possible.

It's actually possible to live this life because you have a faith that overcomes the world and it Overcame the world in a moment of time and it continues to overcome the world I love I love what what Mike Davenport said in our Bible study this week. He said, what God begats does not miscarry. It works. I mean, it overcomes. You can't stop it.

And so There's this whole matter of overcoming and then believing. And that has to do with continuous action too. And what John is communicating here is that you'll never love God without the new birth. You will never love your brethren without the new birth. You will never delight in his commandments without the new birth and you will never overcome the world without the new birth these things these things are are will always escape you and And it should help us understand that Christianity is not simply a matter of getting your doctrine straight and having discussions about theology.

It's life. It's the life of Jesus Christ living in the human soul. And so let me give you some applications. First of all, with this passage we're drawn in two directions. And you know these words, through these words our congregation is drawn in two directions.

And the first direction is exaltation. What a marvelous Savior is Jesus Christ our Lord. Look what He does. He gives you faith. He gives you love.

He gives you delight. He makes you overcome the world. How about that? What a wonderful thing. And then we also learn that the new birth is a package deal.

It's a package deal of at least four things in this passage. And all of these things that are here are declarations of the power and the beauty of the new birth. And so what you have is you have belief in keeping his commands and obedience and love for God Love for people love for the Word of God Overcoming the world all these things are like a package deal of the new birth and I like how Martin Lloyd-Jones explained this. He said, he said this, he said, sometimes John starts with the love of God and goes to the love of the brethren, but other times he starts with the love of the brethren and he arrives at the love of God and then sometimes he starts with the commandments and then goes to the love of the brethren and then to the love of God. He says it's like a circle.

He said if you don't have any one of them, any of them, you don't have, you don't even have one of them because they're all interconnected. They're all manifestations of the new birth. That all of these things are happening simultaneously in the soul of man. Because Christianity is all about the life of God in the soul of man and how he energizes you, how he changes you through a divine miracle of being born again and you are never the same again because you have been born of God. What a wondrous thing.

What a blessing. And it really does bring us back to the heart of what it means to be a Christian. I will serve you because I love you. Why? You've given life to me.

Because Christianity is all about the way, the truth, and the life. The life of a newborn man and a newborn woman who has light, who has bread, who has new life living within them. What a blessing it is to be born again. Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord, we pray that you would continue to show us the glory of your kingdom and the goodness of your son that we as a church would be so So entranced by your Son and the work of his Spirit, that you would make us a church in which we trust in the work of your Holy Spirit.

Our hands lifted up to you, holding your hand, walking with you, and fulfilling all of your desires through your wonderful commands. Amen.