Letters
1 John 5:13-21
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Believing with Assurance audio (5MB)
Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Mind you, he probably hadn’t imagined the industry that’s sprung up around tax avoidance these days. But he was certainly correct about death. You can’t live with it. You can’t live without it. Of course if you ever want to kill a conversation, just start talking about death. It’s inevitable, but none of us seems to want to face it. It’s almost as though we’re scared of it. For some there’s even a superstitious fear that if you talk about death someone might die. I was talking to someone about our funeral request forms last week and I was saying how hard it is to get people to fill them out. Why is that? Is that because people here don't want to think about death? I know one person whose daughter doesn’t want to talk about it. But why? Do they think that not thinking about it will put it off? Well, I’m afraid that’s a vain hope. None of us knows the day or the hour when God will call us to him.
For the people of the new Testament death was often in their thoughts. They were a persecuted Church for whom the next day, the next hour even, could signal arrest and possible death. So we find some 200 odd references to death or dying in the letters of the New Testament. But notice that death was never referred to as a thing to fear. Rather the message of the gospel was that the fear of death has been removed. In the place of death is eternal life. Far from fearing death, the Christian can see death as a necessary step that leads to new life, to release from all the ravages of this world.
1 John 5:1-12
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- Written by: George Hemmings
Belief in Action audio (5MB)
Let’s Talk about Faith
Over the last few weeks, as we’ve delved into 1 John, we’ve heard over and over again his call for us to love and obedience. Well, this morning I want to change tack a little and talk about faith. In chapter 5, John writes that our faith will overcome the world! Faith is victorious, in this life and the next. But this isn’t all John says about our faith. He describes what our faith should look like and what our faith is in.
Faith is… Vital
The first thing John says is that our faith is vital. It’s alive and kicking. That’s because it begins with the new life we receive from God. We like the think that we have faith and then we’re born again. But John tells us this isn’t the case. He says in verse 1, that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, has been born of God. Our rebirth comes before our faith! God is the one who has given us new life. Through God we’ve been born again, we’ve been made new. It’s this new life that enables us to believe in Jesus. Therefore it’s no surprise that the faith we have as a result should be alive as well.
1 John 4:7-21
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Living God’s Love audio (5MB)
Well we saw last week how important it is for us to love one another and here he says it again, but this time with an added couple of reasons.
God is Love
Twice in this passage he tells us “God is love.” Last week the motivation for loving God and remaining faithful to the gospel was that this would please God. But what’s the motivation here? Well it’s more fundamental isn’t it? “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God.” In fact, he says, this is the test that you’ve been born of God. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8Whoever does not love does not know God.” Why? “For God is love.” As Sherlock would say: “Elementary my dear Watson.”
As we saw last week, the source of love is God, just as the source of hatred is Satan. So love is the evidence that we’re both born of God and know God.
Well, the question then is, how can we show that we’re from God. Or to put it the other way around, if we say we’re from God how can we show his sort of love to others? Now as I said last week the term love can mean a number of things. Its meaning has been hijacked by popular culture. And what makes it even trickier is that we only have one word to cover a whole range of meanings. So I can say: “I love my wife,” or “I love my children, or my parents,” or “I love chocolate,” or “I love lying by the pool on a hot summer’s day” etc. All the same word but unless you look carefully at the context to see what sort of love I’m talking about it isn’t necessarily clear. What’s happened, you see, is that we’ve come to use the same word for that wide range of meanings as though they were all equal. Well in the Greek language it was a bit easier. There were 4 different words in Greek that were used for love. There was family love, storgé, that kind of love you might have for your parents or your children or your brothers and sisters. There was social love, philia, the sort of love you have for your social group. There was sexual love, eros, the sort of love you have for a wife or a husband, a boyfriend or a girlfriend. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that eros is the only Greek word for love that most people would recognise these days. That, I think, says a lot about the way popular culture has twisted the idea of love. Finally there was agapé love, which was a practical and unemotional love, fairly nonspecific in its normal usage.
1 John 3:11-4:6
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- Written by: Chris Appleby
Living to Please God audio (5MB)
I want to talk about how we can live to please God. But first I suppose I should check whether that is one of your desires in life? Do you want to please God? Do you ask yourself regularly will this activity, this conversation, this friendship please God?
Well, if that is your desire, let me tell you how you can achieve it. In fact, let me tell you how John says we can do it. He tells us in 1 John 3:21-23. If you’ve got your Bibles with you have a look. What does he say? “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; 22and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. 23And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.” It so simple isn’t it? If you want to please him, believe in his name and love one another.
1 John 3:1-10
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- Written by: George Hemmings
Living as the Family of God audio (5MB)
1 John 3:1-10
For a while this was one of Sarah’s favourite photos. A few months ago she was sending it to everyone she could think of. Not because it was a great shot of one of our boys. In fact, it’s not a photo of Micah or Joshua at all. No, it’s a photo of me, from when I was just a few months old. Sarah loved it though, because it showed the striking resemblance between Micah and me.
We expect this don’t we? We expect children to look something like their parents.
And it’s not just in looks that we expect a resemblance, but in behaviour and temperament.
If you looked at Micah and Joshua, you’d see that Micah looks like me, but acts like Sarah. And Joshua looks like Sarah, but is much more like me in his personality.
Incredibly John states that we belong to God’s family! In the passage we are looking at today, he says something amazing. That we are God’s children and that we should therefore resemble our Heavenly Father.
