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TranscriptIntroduction
It’s so good to be meeting with you and your family once again. I count it an honor to do so.
And if you’re new to this study, I’m honored to be meeting with you as well. However, it will be very important—if this is your first time—to stop this session and start with Part 1 in episode 613. That way you can all better understand the first letter of John and how it can help your family glorify God better. As always, this session comes with free notes, a transcript, and related resources to help you grow even faster. So, let’s dive right in. Topic
We’ll start with a LifeWork check. We only had three verses to read this week, so I hope you read them at least 2 times before listening to this session.
I’m also curious if you spent time talking with the Lord in prayer this week. Did you praise God for Who He is? Did you thank Him for your current situation—even if it’s uncomfortable? Did you pray for other people in your life? Did you ask the Lord to help you grow spiritually? I hope you did all of these and more, and I hope that time was sweet. The Lord loves it when we pray to Him, and we should learn to love it too. Did you spend time with God’s people this week? There are so many ways to do this. There’s Sunday School, a morning and/or evening service, there are youth group meetings, small group meetings, and prayer meetings, but we can also collect as God’s people to do life together. These times should involve challenging and building each other up in Christ through formal and informal discipleship. Now, I realize that many people don’t truly understand what biblical discipleship is. Thankfully, we have a number of resources linked for you in the description of today’s session that open the Bible to help us all better understand God’s plan for our spiritual growth. In short, discipleship is the process whereby we become more and more like Jesus Christ. It’s very important, and it’s something that John focuses on in this portion of his letter. And that leads to our fourth piece of LifeWork this week. Did you strive to live righteously? Did you try to act and speak and feel and think and want and believe what Jesus would if He were in your situation? Did you try through the power of the Holy Spirit to live in God’s sinless light? And when you did sin, did you confess your sin, ask for forgiveness, and commit to changing? I pray everyone in your family did all of these things this week. If you did, I’m sure that the changes in your family are sticking out. Perhaps you didn’t use to read God’s Word and pray. Perhaps you didn’t regularly attend and participate in the corporate worship of God’s people. Perhaps you didn’t use to strive to live righteously and respond biblically when you sinned. Any and all of those changes should be celebrated because each of those changes is your family living more and more biblically. And if you and your family members haven’t been growing in those ways and seeing those exciting changes, then you know what you need to do. But before we read today’s passage together, I want to remind you Truth.Love.Family. has trained biblical counselors who would love to minister to you and your family. All you have to do is send and email to [email protected] to learn more. Now, I hope you have your Bibles. Let’s read I John 3:1-3 together, “See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we would be called children of God; and we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” Today’s topic is the hope of biblical families. 1. What is Hope? In the Bible, the word hope doesn’t refer to a wish over which we have no control. A child might say, “I hope it will snow tomorrow,” but that doesn’t mean it will happen . . . and it frequently doesn’t. And if it did happen, it didn’t have anything to do with the child’s wishing that it would. In the Bible, the concept of the Christian’s hope is best described like this. It’s a confident expectation of a guaranteed future blessing. God has promised many things in the Bible, and Christians have a confident hope that they will take place. It’s not a wish. It’s not something that might happen. It’s guaranteed to happen, and that fills us with hope. Merriam-Webster tells us that an archaic definition of the word “hope” was simply “trust.” A more modern definition includes “to cherish a desire with anticipation.” And that’s what Christian do. We have a trust in God’s promises that fills us with confident anticipation for the future. In Hebrews 6:17-19 we read, “In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. 19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and confirmed.” So, if we’re living like a biblical family, each member of our family should be looking forward to the fulfillment of God’s future promise with anticipation and delight. But we need to be more specific about . . . 2. Who has this Hope? John starts this passage by pointing to the infinite love the Father has bestowed on His children. I’m not sure if you’ve encountered this, but many people in this world believe that everyone is a child of God because He created everyone. But this passage and others teach us that we are only considered to be children of God when we have been born again by the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is those who are born again who are children of God. And John goes on to say, “For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” The world is not children of God and neither know Him nor us. This word to “know” can be a very personal—even intimate. I’m saying this so that the younger ones joining us today don’t get confused. John is not saying that no unbelievers know us. There are obviously many non-Christians on your street or in your school or on your teams who “know you.” John is referring to a different kind of knowing. It’s a personal, complete kind of relationship that changes us because we’re in it. But then John continues, “Beloved, now we are children of God.” John is writing to believers. This hope is not just for anyone. It’s only for those who have been saved by grace and are living in the light and have Jesus as their Advocate. If you are sitting there today, and you are not born again, my friend, you do not have this hope. Our next point does not apply to you. Therefore, you cannot have any real confidence that these promises will be fulfilled in your life . . . because they won’t. But that can change. You can put your trust in Jesus. You can choose to submit to Him and His Word. You can can confess your sins and believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and be saved! And then you too can experience the same joyous hope that other Christians should have. So, many of us are probably wondering . . . 3. What is the Christian’s Hope? This is how John describes it. He says, “It has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” The word “manifested” refers to having something be made clear or evident. Ever since the beginning of this letter, John’s been setting a goal and expectation for our lives. We need to live in the light. We need to be righteous. We need to live purely. Simply put, we need to be like Christ. And remember, John actually saw and touched and spoke with Jesus. And yet John is saying that we don’t have a complete picture yet of what exactly we will become. Even though Jesus lived a perfect life, there are still many things about perfection that we don’t yet understand. But John goes back to the hope. He says, “We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” When Jesus does appear, when He is made visible to us, we will see Him in His final glorified state, and in that moment, we too will be changed. As we see Him just as He is, we will be like Him. The Bible has a word for this process. It’s called being glorified. In the Gospel of John chapter 17, verse 24 John records part of Jesus’ prayer to the Father. Jesus said, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” In II Corinthians 3:18, Paul writes “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” This is the current state that all Christians are in. We are slowly being changed over time. We should be more and more spiritually mature. We should be growing in the image of Christ. But Romans 8:29-30 describes it this way, “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son . . . 30 and those whom He predestined, He also called; and those whom He called, He also justified; and those whom He justified, He also glorified.” Earlier in this same passage, Paul wrote about how we and even the creation groans in our unperfected state. In verse 21, Paul describes the hope this way, “that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.” That is our hope! One of these days all of God’s children will be changed! We’ll be perfected! We’ll have our sinful flesh removed, we will no longer be tempted to disobey God, and we’ll be completely and totally righteous! That will be an amazing day, and it should excited you! In fact, it should excite you so much that you start moving in that direction now. 4. How Do People with this Hope Live? Though some things John has written may have required additional study in order to fully understand it, verse 3 is very clear: “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” The idea of purity refers to “free from defilement.” No one wants to drink impure water. Impurities make us sick and could kill us. Pure water is just water. There’s no salt or dirt or amoebas. John says that those who are looking forward to being just like Jesus in the future are striving to be as much like Him as they can right now. Jesus is pure, and so we should live purely as well. Back in John 17:19, during His high priestly prayer, Jesus said, “For their sake I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.” Glorification is the future fulfillment of our transformation into the image of Jesus. Sanctification is the current slow transformation whereby we sin less and live more righteously. Sanctification refers to being set apart and can refer to that change from glory to glory as we’re growing in our spiritual maturity. In II Corinthians 7:1, the Holy Spirit wrote though Paul’s pen, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” To what promises is Paul referring. Well, at the end of chapter 6, we read, “just as God said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 17 Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘And do not touch what is unclean, And I will welcome you. 18 And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,’ says the Lord Almighty.’” It is these promises that should motivate God’s people to live righteously. Now, we’re almost done for today. We learned what biblical hope is. We recognize that only Christians have this hope. We learned that the hope is our future glorification whereby we will never again sin, and we saw that Christians should be motivated by this hope to live righteously now. But . . . 5. What if this Hope Doesn’t Excite You? What if the idea of being sinless seems boring? What it there are things that you know are wrong but don’t want to stop doing? What if being like Jesus is distasteful to you? Well, there are three possibilities. A. You’re not a child of God. This hope is only for God’s children. Therefore, unsaved people don’t have it. If you aren’t actively anticipating the second coming of Jesus and how that will forever change us, then it’s very likely you’re not a Christian. B. You’re very spiritually immature. Immature children know that eating ice cream all day long will make them sick, and they’ve been told that vegetables will help them be happy and healthy, but they don’t really believe it or care. Eating ice cream sounds so good and eating vegetables sounds bad. You may feel that way yourself, so please hear my heart when I say, you feel that way because you’re foolish. You’re immature. You’re uniformed, and you lack important life experiences to recognize the truth. I don’t say that to be mean. It’s simply the truth. And it’s also possible that a very spiritually immature Christian might not be as excited about their future glorification and present sanctification as they should be. I understand that. Too often I don’t look forward to them as much as I should, and it’s tied to my own sinfulness and spiritual immaturity. C. You didn’t know about the hope. It’s also possible that up until now, you didn’t know about the hope we have in God. You weren’t excited about it because you didn’t know about it. So, which on are you? Well, we all know the truth now. So, we can’t blame ignorance. That means that if the idea of sinning less and obeying God more doesn’t excited you, you’re either not a Christian, or you’re very immature. But here’s the thing, it’s impossible for a genuinely born again believer to never look forward to God’s promises. We can’t stay immature. Living things grow. The Holy Spirit is actively working in all of God’s children to sanctify them. They will be changing. They will be maturing. They will be sinning less and living purer lives. So, if you continue to not be excited about this guaranteed future blessing, allow me to point you back to the beginning of John’s letter: “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not do the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” But if you are a genuine follower of Christ, and you want to mature and grow and change, please know that you won’t do it perfectly, but you should actually be growing and changing. And that’s what makes any current changes in your family so exciting. Sure, people can pull themselves up by their boot straps and—for a time—change in their own power for their own glory, but—Lord willing—at least some of you are actually being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And that’s exciting! “Everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” Conclusion
Let’s finish today be rereading our passage and looking at this week’s LifeWork. I John 3:1-3, “See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we would be called children of God; and we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. We know that when He is manifested, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
This week, we should all . . . 1. Read I John 3:4-10 two times. Again, it’s a short enough of a passage. You could read it more than twice. But this week, I want to encourage you to meditate on the passage. What do I mean by that? I want you to try to imagine what we’re going to talk about in light of what you read. What does God want us to know? How does He want that information to change us? 2. Thank God for the hope of glorification. As you continue praying this week, be sure to thank the Lord for the Hope that is in Christ. 3. Purify yourself. Purifying ourselves requires both the removal of what shouldn’t be there—false beliefs that result in sinful desires, actions, words, and feelings—and the addition of what should be there—true beliefs that result in righteous desires, actions, words, and feelings. Pursue your own sanctification this week to the glory of God. Know God and His will better and strive to please Him by obeying Him. You can also share this devotional with your friends, reach out to us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if we can offer you personalized biblical counsel, and take advantage of the additional resources we’ve linked for you in the description of this session. Next week we’re going to turn our eyes from the hope of biblical families to the battle of biblical families. We know who are our enemy is, so what will the battle look like? I’ll see you then.
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