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For everything next week.
While.
There's love.
And God yes, now I'm going to love you.
In keeping with the opening hymn.
And prayer and the exercise of the prayer before God. I would suggest, brethren, that we take up that subject. God is love has brought to us in first John chapter 4.
First John chapter 4 we can read that.
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist. Where have you heard that it should come? And even now already is it in the world.
Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God. He that knoweth God heareth us. He that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.
He the loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because the God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him here in His love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time.
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If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in US. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He and us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and to testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and He and God and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.
God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment.
Because as He is, so are we in this world. There is No Fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth has not made perfect in love. We love him because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he have not seen?
And this is the commandment that have we from him, that he who loveth God, love his brother also.
Very often the questions of doubt that.
Come into our minds when I'll use the way we say things. Bad things happen as we see them that cause us to question why something has been allowed to happen in life. I believe that very often the answer from God is not necessarily to tell us why. Sometimes He does, but is an opportunity for us to lay hold of the truth.
That God is love, as in the end of this chapter.
We have There's No Fear in love, and yet there's often fear when things happen that we don't understand.
I doubt that.
Abraham knew why when God told him, you go Abraham out there and put your son to death.
I suspect there were some questions in his mind as to why he was being told to take his son out and make a sacrifice of him. But he did do as he was told because he trusted the heart of God. And I think this chapter is a help to us to enter in more fully into the heart of God. He created us.
Because He loved us, He created us because He wanted to have an eternal relationship with us in which He could make known to us His heart and in which we could respond and enjoy His heart for eternity. And it was a tremendous pain to God when Adam sinned and had to be put out from the Garden of Eden because it separated God.
From the object of his love and.
So I think as we go through this chapter, there are many points that we will enjoy.
To the end, desire that each one of us may enter more into the enjoyment in our own souls that God is love and that love is not abstract, just a fact, but in the enjoyment in our own heart that God loves me.
Brought the Epistle of first John. We have many ways we might say that we know that we are children of God.
And toward the end of the previous chapter, we have one of them.
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And even keeping His commandments dwelled in Him, and He and Him, and hereby we know that He abides in US by the spirit which He's given us then in the beginning of this chapter.
We have.
Instructions on how to know if other people are believers.
So it says don't believe everybody.
Love it, believe not every spirit, but try the Spirit when they are God. Because many false prophets are gone out into the world. How do you know if somebody who says they're a believer is truly a believer?
You check their spirit and their spirit, it says in verse two. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is coming to flesh.
Of God. So do I have to have two or three witnesses that somebody's a believer before I will accept him as a believer?
Bible tells me how I know that somebody is a believer. It's by his spirit.
And that he confesses by his Spirit that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
The times in this chapter we have God is Love verse 8 and verse 16.
That is who God is.
In chapter one we have.
This statement in verse five God is light to me. It's.
Interesting and helpful to understand that.
To love us doesn't mean that God just hides some of our defects.
Rather, he knows absolutely everything.
And he loves us in spite of everything.
And it's a sacrificial love. Sometimes we I find in this culture that we live in, we think of love as an emotion.
And there is a lot of emotion connected with love, but I think it's important to see that agape love is not love of emotion.
It's love of who he is.
We go to the prison and speak to the prisoners there. We say sometimes God loves you.
And you can't change that fact as much as you reject him and decide to go to a lost eternity.
Still loves you even in her eternity. You will never be able to say nobody ever loved me because he loves you.
It's because of who He is. It's not because of who you are. It's because of who He is. That to me is so important if we're going to get ahold of this and enjoy the fact that God loves us.
Is that he knows every single little wit about you, Things that you don't even know about yourself. He knows about it, and he loves you just the same.
If you'd really know me, I don't know if you'd really like me that well.
But God knows me.
And he loves me. Isn't that wonderful?
John, Chapter one.
It's gospel.
We learned that God was manifested in flesh.
God made himself known to us in the person of His Son, become a man of flesh and blood.
That is the mechanism that God has chosen to use to make Himself known to us.
And so in the person of the sun, we learn God is love.
In himself as a man here and in the beginning of this chapter, the trying of the spirits. If someone says as it says in verse 2, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the fleshes of God. But if I deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
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I'm robbing God.
Of the way in which he has made himself known as love to me.
And so we when we look at the person and the work of the Lord Jesus as a man here on earth, it is God's demonstration to us of his heart, and the fullness of his heart toward us is seen in His Son become man. And so there was false and there always will be because Satan seeks to rob God. And so there would be those who would say no.
And if anyone says such, then that spirit isn't that spirit of what they're saying is not of God. It's a actually robbing God of that which is in his own heart, that we might know him.
So in verse 3.
Speaks of the spirit of Antichrist.
And he says, and this is very in the very beginning, really of the Christian era, after the Lord Jesus had come and done his work and returned to the Father's house on high. He says, you've heard that it should come. And even now it's already in the world. That is that spirit if Satan can't be successful in convincing man.
That price has not come in the flesh and is as such as displayed. God is love and his perfection. Then he will substitute another to take his place. And so there are what are called false Christs and ultimately one called the Antichrist will come and be raised up of Satan to say I'm the Christ.
A false substitute for the God's Son, the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of that replacement of what God has presented to us that we might know Him and we might know His love is already in the world. That Spirit's here and man is constantly being exposed to that which instead of.
God's provision for him in the person of His Son to substitute something else for his life that takes his place.
I will make a comment though, I just read it the last couple of days that I found interesting to remember and that is.
Unbelief.
Is never satisfied.
It's a short, simple statement, but it's worth putting in memory. Unbelief is never satisfied. So we live in a world that separates itself from the love of God and the provisions of God. And what's the consequence? We live in a world that has no satisfaction, constantly striving.
To find something that provides permanent, lasting happiness and satisfaction to the soul.
But God in love, in presenting his Son the Lord Jesus to himself says, if you have me, you're going to have the satisfaction that your heart seeks. And also it will help remove the doubts that come into the mind that want to keep in mind that when we are learning that God is love, it's also that which removes doubt from the soul.
You have the Antichrist mentioned in chapter 2 as well in verse.
18 When he's speaking to little children, it is the last time, and as you have heard, that Antichrist shall come. Even now there are many antichrists against Christ, whereby we know that it is the last time. And notice verse 19. He says, They went out from us, but they were not of us.
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For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. Five times it mentions us. And it's helpful to understand that it's the apostles that is speaking about because our faith is based on the doctrine of the apostles.
Foundation of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the apostles and prophets.
And it's about the Lord Jesus. And if it doesn't square with the doctrine we have about the person of the Lord Jesus in the doctrine of the apostles, then it is the spirit of Antichrist. And I think it's helpful to see that it's connected directly with the apostles. It's again given in this chapter 4 in verse 6 where it says.
We are of God.
He that knoweth God heareth us.
He that is not of God heareth not us hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Again, that us is Speaking of the apostles and their doctrine. That's the basis of our Christian faith and it's important.
The Spirit is going to testify. It's going to be according to the doctrine that we have in in the New Testament here, the doctrine of the apostles.
Says in the beginning of verse four year of God, Mr. Darby leaves out the little.
Year of God, children.
Their children in this room.
And I dare say the children that are in this room know better.
But the probably a person sitting near them loves them and they know of anybody else.
Their children, and God has so made them that they become very young in life, dependent upon mother and father, and learn through mother and father what love is.
When it's displayed to them, and there are those who perhaps most of us are children by birth, there may be some in the room who are children by adoption. And when there's adoption, there's the sense of choice involved in the specific individual that is chosen to become part of a family.
And we're in God's family both ways, and both ways express that God is love.
God has chosen us because He loves us to be His children. He has also brought us into the family, to have the life of the family, the life of Christ that enables us to enjoy His love and to share in what He has pleasure in. You could spend the whole meeting on that very point, but it's part of the truth.
That God is love. He has expressed it in making us his children and making us part of his family, that that's love and both by choice and he has done that which is necessary through his son, that we might not only be adopted into the family in that way, but we also.
Are born into the family by new birds.
It's the apostle John that speaks of being born into the family, whereas it's Paul's ministry that we get that we are chosen in him and brought into sonship. To me, it's very interesting because Paul's ministry is different, but it takes in God's eternal counsels.
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But think that we're born into the family and like you say, brother Don, it's we are have the very nature, we have the very life of God. And if you're truly born into that family, then you're going to see the characteristics of that family. When I look at somebody and their children, I say I can tell that they are in that family because of the characteristics. Yeah.
That's the way it is in the family of God too, so the characteristics of that life are seen in the members of those that are born into God's family. Beautiful to think about.
So he says in verse four, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
Consider that.
In the light of life of the perfect Son, the Lord Jesus.
He was here as Son of God.
He constantly and habitually in his conversation, spoke to and of his father.
And enjoyed in his life that relationship.
Could the world overcome it?
Did there come anything between his soul and his father that made him doubt or question?
The relationship or the heart of his father?
He could say I do always those things that please him.
What was the consequence of his life lived in that way? He says in John 17 his prayer.
That he wanted.
Us, the disciples and ourselves to have the same joy that he had.
And that was the joy of the relationship that he lived in, in the enjoyment of his father's love and the enjoyment that he had to do his father's will.
There was number doubt in him when he cried out in agony, an anticipation of the cross. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
In the very place where he says that in Psalm 22.
A couple of verses later he says, But thou art holy, but thou art holy. He recognized even in for himself, going through the agony of the thought of being made sin.
There wasn't any doubt in doing it, but there was agony in anticipation in His holy being of having to be made sin. And in having to be made sin, God would have to forsake him, turn away from him when the judgment was falling upon Him and He felt it. But at the same time he could say, Thou art holy, and when he had finished the work.
He says I have finished the work which thou gave us me to do.
Again.
We can't develop it in the time we have here, but if you go back to.
Genesis 22 in the love side of what took place at the cross, you have something very personal, private and precious. When Abraham says, Abraham, the father says to.
His son.
I and the latter says about himself and his son, I and the lad will go Yonder and worship.
Perhaps the most intense period of true love being ever expressed at any time.
Was the love of God and the love of the sun when they went Yonder to worship, and in doing so established the work that has saved our souls and brought us into the family of God? And as such God is love.
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You'll pardon my taking us back to the end of verse two and beginning of verse three and we have there about spirits confessing that Jesus Christ is coming the flesh being of God or not making that confession. I wonder if we can have some help on something that might lead someone to think that if someone were to state I believe that Jesus born.
That grew up in Nazareth, lived a couple thousand years ago. Was that sufficient?
To say that there was a man that existed named Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course I know the answer to that, but I think that that could lead someone to think that's what it's saying, that it might be good to try to make that a little clearer for some of us.
You and I could not come in. That's what we are.
By creating.
Only the eternal Son of God could come in.
To creation and come in flesh.
And so there's two things there. The fact that he was before he came in flesh.
To come into this room, you had to be outside of it.
And then you could come in.
He was always the Son from eternity. He came in flesh, so it's showing that he always was.
But he came in flesh. It's not the fact either that he came.
It's that he came in flesh.
And has already been brought up spirit, soul, and body, perfectly a man. The Word became flash, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. The glories of an only begotten with a Father full of grace and truth. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.
And so as come in flesh perfectly a man in that way, as the brother said.
In that way it was in the purpose of God that God would be manifest, and in no other way could he be manifest to us. God, who is love, could not be manifest to us in any other way than Jesus Christ come in flesh.
And so he came in flesh, and in that way he has declared not only God who is loved, but the Father.
The one who we have been brought into closest relationship to. If you deny that Jesus Christ has come in flesh, you destroy the very fundamentals of Christianity and the manifestation of God who is love and the Father.
To whom we've been brought into relationship, Who is the liar? It says in Chapter 2, not a liar. Who is the liar? Turn back to that. I'm not going to be able to quote it.
Verse 22 Who is the liar? But he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. That's Jewish apostasy, denying that Jesus of Nazareth was true Messiah.
But it goes on. He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son for his common flesh. He's manifested God and God as Father, full of grace and truth, the greatest revelation of grace and truth that man will ever have and has ever had.
Is the Father manifested in the Son come in flesh? And the Antichrist is going to deny that. And there are many antichrists that deny that Jesus Christ is come in flesh. They don't deny His calm necessarily, but they deny in the character and the way in which He came in flesh, spirit, soul and body a man.
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Reminded me recently that Christ isn't Jesus last name Messiah like anointed savior and.
Like you were saying.
Someone might think, well, if I just believe that.
Jesus came, Hey I'm in that Jesus existed but we use Jesus Christ so easily that name and forget that Christ isn't his last name. It's like brother, you were just pointing out he's the Messiah. Here's the anointing chosen.
Jesus Savior.
It's so much more than what someone might look at on the surface.
Isaiah 96 is another good verse to show in that way, and it's a well known verse. We're unto us, a child is born.
Unto us a son is given. He doesn't say a son is born.
No, the Son was given because he was the eternal Son of God.
This is different than any other child that was born. He was born into this world, but he was a son from all eternity, eternal son in the bosom of the Father. So it's a beautiful thing to realize. So like you were bringing out brother.
He was. He was from all eternity, and that's the mystery. That is the amazing truth of his person. That's something in our human mind we cannot grasp. He always was there.
And he came to manifest who God is, and now we have the full revelation of all that God is.
To put that retrieve set in the last last few minutes, very briefly, it's confessing that he so came.
It's not confessing that it's can that it can, it's confessing that he's so king.
So one might ask for how else would you confess him, right?
Well, there are those who say he was just a spiritual appearance.
There are those who say.
There was a body, but there wasn't a human soul or spirit. It was that which was eternally God that indwelt that body. That was the spirit part of that body, denying he had a human soul and spirit.
There are those that say there was someone that looked like him.
And that represented him.
What was just a person born like you and I that did not have an existence from the past eternity? There are all shades of ways that that has been denied overtime.
Everyone of them is an attack on the truth of who He is and what He has revealed and the fundamentals, the foundations of Christianity.
Getting back to the thought and the chapter, it destroys the manifestation of God as of that One who is love and who is the Father and to whom we have been brought into closest relationship. It destroys the truth that this chapter is bringing before us for the comfort and encouragement of our hearts. That's all gone if Jesus Christ did not come in flesh.
We have in verse five further.
Remark made about those who deny His person as Son come in flesh.
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It says they are of the world.
We can, in our minds, go back.
To the cross.
And see the man who hangs there.
Even to repeat the words of scripture, flesh and blood.
You see me have.
Truth of his person.
Being a man, flesh and blood, you see me have and we see.
The spear piercing his side, and forthwith coming forth the blood.
That's the spirit of the world and its treatment.
And its rejection of the love of God manifested in the person of His Son.
In the book of the Acts.
Not that long afterwards, we see Steven presenting that man to the world.
And it's as if the world says to him, God, if you didn't get the message.
We're going to confirm it to you.
We don't want you in the person of your son. We don't want your love. And so Steven is put to death.
Has it changed the world? Changed its mind?
No it hasn't. And if we want to enjoy the love of God?
In in practice.
Then we have to take our place with the Lord Jesus, that man in his rejection.
The world has refused the love of God manifested in the person of the Son. God says he so loved the world He gave his Son. The world says we don't want him.
Cain is an Old Testament example. He went out from the presence of the Lord to live life without him. And so that spirit is, it's important in practice for us to recognize God hasn't left us here to kind of have both.
Well, I'm in the world. I better enjoy as much of it as I can and know that when this life's over, I'll go to heaven and enjoy heaven.
If you try that way, you will find you cannot enjoy in your soul. The love of God will not be in the enjoyment of the soul.
Because the conscience says, no, this isn't the way to go. And when the conscience is at work in us, it's a hindrance. If it has to work in us, it's a hindrance. Practically speaking, God doesn't give the enjoyment of his love when the conscience is working against Him in its will. And so here he says that's the spirit of the world.
And for us, like going back to the desire not to doubt, there won't be doubt if we take sides with God, and in that way we reject the world as well.
Sing 200 and 74274.
Oh Lord, vibrant what I.
Saw.
No.
And breathing is all.
Good.
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Oh.