Morning. I want to welcome you who are here inside and you who are outside under the tent. Good to be with God's people together.

I want to invite you, if you will turn in your bulletin or look on the screen, to read these words from First John chapter three together. A couple of words of introduction before we do so.

We're in a summertime series on the book of First John. And I love John. He's like listening to an older man who sometimes says things over and over, but says things with such clarity. I find him like this was one of Jesus' best friends. At this point in his life, he is a wise older pastor and he speaks to the churches of the New Testament era. This is a circular letter, it was passed around, and he speaks to them about something which I think is so critical for us.

He asks, he's sort of helping the church answer this question: How do you know that you're a child of God? And he keeps giving these kinds of tests. It's almost like he knows us—it's like he knows we're people who struggle with this. And it's actually normal for Christians to struggle, and yet it's so important for us to engage that struggle. How do we know that we know? How do we know that we are a child of God?

I think that this is really important. It has a lot of implications for us. If you struggle with assurance of salvation, that means you're going to struggle in other areas. It means you're going to struggle to pray boldly. It means you're going to struggle to take risks for the Lord. It means you're going to struggle to give generously or to serve in sacrificial ways. It means you're going to struggle in lots of ways that really hamper your joy and your freedom.

I love it that this old pastor is addressing this. He's saying, this is so important that you do this. I think about this: a good father doesn't want his kids to question all the time whether he loves them or not. What would it be like? Let me play a little thought experiment with you.

When I go away on a trip, I don't say to my kids, "Hey, daddy will be back soon or he might not. You never know. Maybe he's not really your daddy. Maybe he's got another family somewhere else that he loves more than you. Or you'll just have to wait and see. And if you're really good, I might come back or not." I mean, what a terrible thing to say to your kids.

Our heavenly Father wants us to know. He doesn't want us to question. I think about that with my own children. If my children are wrestling over and over with whether their Father loves them, that may turn for a short period of time into fear-based obedience. But over time it will turn into father-loathing rebellion.

It's really important that we know. Love for God grows only in the assurance of love for God.

The Family Resemblance Test

Today's test is number three. I'm doing these every time I preach this summer. Test number three is the family resemblance test.

If you've been around our church for a while, sometimes we have a lot of kids in our church. Sometimes it's hard to know—you can be like, I'm not sure whose kid that is, but I think that's a Peterson. You know, I tell by the stance, or the laugh, or the way they talk. Or you're like, that's an Ask you right there. That's a Spickered. I had somebody, one of my kids works at Chick-fil-A in Cameron Village, and somebody asked him, "Are you a Bradford?" Right? And how do they know that? They're asking because of family resemblance. They're asking because you look like the family.

So as we turn to God's Word today, this is the test for us: Do we know and are we growing in family resemblance? Let's look at this together. We're going to First John chapter three, verses four through ten. We're going to read this aloud together as is our practice. Three, two, one.

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or know him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. — 1 John 3:4-10

Man, that's a hard passage.

The Woman Caught in Adultery

One of the things I love about going through 1 John is that it's sort of like he's writing a commentary on his gospel. They go back and forth, and it always makes me think of stories in the gospel of John when I read 1 John. This passage makes me think very much of the story from John 8, where John recounts the woman who's caught in adultery.

If you don't know that story, here's how it goes. Jesus is in the temple, and like the practice of rabbis in His day, the rabbi is teaching. Jesus is in the temple teaching, and He's squatted down. The audience is standing around Him, and the religious leaders drag in this woman into the temple and throw her before Jesus on the ground.

Now she's caught—it says in the very act of adultery. We don't know where the guy was, right? It takes two to do that. But she's caught, dragged in in her shame, in her fear, and thrown before a rabbi.

This is a very tension-filled moment because this is a test for Jesus, but it's way more than a test for this woman. This is a trial. This is execution coming. They ask Jesus the question: what should we do with this woman? According to the law of Moses, we should kill her for her sin.

And Jesus, John records, is just staying there on the ground, drawing in the dirt. Finally, he responds to them. This is a test for him because if Jesus says we shouldn't obey the law of Moses, then it's not just her execution, but it's His too.

But Jesus says something unique and powerful here.

Anybody who hasn't sinned, they get to throw first. They get to pick up the rock first and beat her to death with it.

And slowly it says one by one, they walked away. Finally Jesus gets up from where He's sitting and comes over to the woman. I've got to imagine this scene where He looks in her eyes and reaches down and lifts her up, grabs her by the hand and says:

Where are they? Has nobody condemned you?

And she says, no one. He says:

Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

That's my outline for this passage this morning. Beloved children, neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.

The Beloved Little Children

This passage that we read from 1 John—like I said, it's really a commentary on this gospel over and over again. He says something here in verse seven that I want you to make sure you notice: two little words that are repeated throughout this book—little children.

In fact, there are two little phrases that are bounced back and forth in John's letter. He says "little children" seven times, and he calls them "beloved" six times. Back and forth, he keeps using these phrases.

I wonder why John uses that. Why does he keep repeating that? I think it's because that's how God relates to us. Beloved little children. Our little ones are beloved, aren't they? I mean, it's one of the reasons why I love this church and all the kids in this church. Even when they're loud and squirmy, even if we can hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth from the hallway or running around under the tent, our little ones are beloved. They're precious to us.

This past week I was flying back from our denomination's annual gathering—general assembly in St. Louis—and I was stuck in the Charlotte Airport. The flight was delayed, and you know what happens when a flight gets delayed for a long time? You can just feel the natives getting restless. People are getting upset, and you can feel that growing. People keep going up to the counter and asking questions that the people behind the counter can't answer: when are we going to take off? How long is this going to be? The mood in the room is just grumbling and anger.

And then something remarkable happened that changed everything. It was bizarre to watch. There's this giant guy—really tall, skinny guy, huge dreads, sleeveless shirt—and I watch him running around. Then I realized he's chasing a toddler. This toddler has a pacifier in his mouth and he's squealing, going up and down, running away from his dad. You can just watch this little chase going on, and it completely alters the mood in the concourse.

Suddenly waiting isn't that bad. We're all getting a front row seat to what's happening with this father and child—this raucous play, this joy.

Why is it? A beloved little child is beloved. Isn't that what Jesus said? If we love our children that way, how much more the Father in heaven? That's how I am with my boys. There are only six people in the whole world.

Lots of people call me pastor. Only six people in the world call me daddy. And that is a special treasured word for me. I remember years ago, we were dealing with one of our guys. We were having a lot of trouble with him, but I knew things were okay because at 16, he would still come and sit in my lap when I was in the kitchen. I love that. I love that when my boys call me daddy. I love it when they want my full attention or my praise or my delight and it fills my heart to give it.

Jesus said, if that's how we are with our children, how much more the Father in heaven? The writer John Owen said, the greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to Him, is to not believe that He loves you. Do you really know that's how God relates to you? I don't mean yeah, sure. Do you know it? Is how Jesus relates to the one caught in adultery. She's the beloved of God. Jesus not only doesn't condemn her, he moves toward her.

I don't know if we realize this passage is very familiar in Christian circles. In the first century, a rabbi would not speak to his wife in public, much less another woman, much less a sinner, a notorious sinner in the middle of the temple. Just incredible tenderness in Jesus toward this woman. This is no ordinary rabbi. This is, as we read in Colossians:

The image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. By Him, all things were created in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominion, rulers, and authorities, all things were created by Him and for Him, and He is the image of God. The fullness of God was pleased to dwell in Him. — Colossians 1

Donald Guthrie said, it's one thing to know. It's easy to know the knock of a beggar at the door versus the knock, the rushing in of a child. The knock of a beggar at the door will be low, timid, hesitating. It seems to say, I have no claim on the kindness of this house. How different from a child returning home from school, getting off the bus, busting in, so happy to tell you about his day. The bounding step, the joyous rush of the child into the father and the mother's presence. This is how God relates to us.

It's no surprise that John embraced this. In his gospel, you know what he called himself? The beloved disciple. Is that how you self identify? We're in an age of self identification. Do you identify as the beloved?

How We Know We Are Beloved

How do we know, know that we are beloved of God? John tells us: we've been delivered from sin, we've been delivered from the devil, and we've been demarcated as the children of God. God says to you here this morning, just like He said to that woman, neither do I condemn you.

Look at verses four and five: delivered from sin. Let's make sure we all understand what we're talking about when we talk about sin. We have to teach this regularly in our house when our children were small—the difference between sins and mistakes. Somebody spills their milk at dinner? That's not a sin. That's a mistake. Parents, I hope you're taking notes. Spilling your milk at dinner—mistake or sin? Mistake. And what do we say when we make a mistake? I'm sorry. But what do we say when we sin? Please forgive me. There's a big difference.

I want to define sin this way, just like John does. Sin is saying no to God. Sin is lawlessness. Sin is saying no to God. Kids who are here, please remind your parents of this. It's not okay to be angry at our kids with mistakes. We should say everybody makes mistakes. That's what we expect. But sins, we take those to God. We confess them to one another. Sin is lawlessness, rebellion. It's defiance against our King. It's saying, I hate you and I hate your law. It's saying no to God. The BD Abba Weyaw says this: it's being an outlaw against God.

And because our predicament is so great as outlaws, look what it says in verse five. This is what Jesus does. This is our rescue. He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. I can almost hear John the Baptist at the Jordan River when he first sees Jesus coming to him. He says, Behold, the Lamb of God. How awesome is that? He's coming to take away the sins of the world. He's not mad about this. He is celebrating the Lamb of God.

I read this recently: one day a bee flew into the car while a family was taking a trip. It was a nice spring day with the windows down, so the bee flies in and the kid in the back seat starts screaming, scared of the bee. Finally, the dad who's driving manages to grab the bee in his hand and squeezes it. He lets it go and it keeps buzzing around, and the kids start screaming again. It was quiet for a second, then screaming again. The dad turns around, opens up his palm and says, "Look, you can stop screaming. That's the stinger right there. He can make a lot of noise, but he can't sting you."

The Bible tells us that God took in Jesus the sting of death for sin on the cross. First Corinthians 15 says this:

The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. — 1 Corinthians 15

This is why Jesus can say:

Neither do I condemn you. — John 8:11

The only one who could condemn is Jesus Christ, the one who took the sting of death for us.

John also tells us that now we're delivered from sin, we're also delivered from the power of the devil. This is maybe weird to modern ears. Look at verses seven and eight. If sin is personal enemy number one, then Satan is public enemy number one. Christians are fighting a two-front war. We have an internal foe—our sin. We have an external foe—Satan. Both of them are against us.

Yet listen to verse eight. This is one of the clearest explanations in all of the Bible about Jesus and His relationship to the devil:

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. — 1 John 3:8

Jesus went into enemy territory and snuck behind enemy lines and did this huge reconnaissance event that ended up destroying, cutting out the legs underneath the power of the devil.

John Piper says it this way: "Christmas happened, Jesus coming, because God aims to destroy something. We don't think about that at Christmas, do we? We don't have little guerrilla warfare sets that we're putting up. God showed up to destroy something. God's infiltrating of a rebel planet was a search and destroy mission."

This is why verses five and eight are parallel: came to destroy sin, deliver us from the devil. Those things go together. By means of His atonement, sin's penalty has been paid for. By His resurrection, sin's power has been dealt a death blow. And at His second coming, it will be completely eradicated. This is our hope.

Early Church Practice

It's funny—early church baptism rites. I remember reading this when I was in seminary. In the early church, you know what they did a lot of times at the conversion of an adult when they baptized them? They had this weird phrase that's kind of absent from modern church liturgy. They said this: "Do you renounce the devil and all his works, in the vain pomp and glory in the world?" And the person being baptized would say, "I do," and turn around and spit over their shoulder. Why were they doing that? They're like, "I'm spitting in the devil's face."

Right? Jesus won. Jesus won in the past and He's really winning in the now and He will eradicate all the work of the devil in the future. This is what turning around and spitting in His face means. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. The Jeff Bradford paraphrase of this is: signed, sealed, delivered. I'm yours, Jesus. Right? The devil's gone.

This is why Jesus can say:

Neither do I condemn you. — John 8:11

The only one who could condemn is the one who has defeated the power of the devil. But now there's no condemnation. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So here's what I want you to do: you're going to stand up, turn around, spit over your shoulder. Let's go. Okay? No, I'm just kidding. I don't want to clean that up later. Aaron's going to be mad at me. But it's true. Delivered from the power of the devil. That's how we ought to think about that.

And therefore, we're demarcated as the children of God. That's what Mark preached on last week in 3:1:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and that's what we are. — 1 John 3:1

I can hear him shouting that part. I feel like he's shouting that part out: and that's what we are.

A Trip to Yosemite

A couple of years ago, our family went on a trip to Yosemite National Park out in California and we hiked Half Dome, which if you don't know what that is, it's like somebody took a big mountain and just cut it in half. So you hike up—it's a forever hike to get to the top of Half Dome. When you get there, it's exhausting, but then what's really startling is the edge because I've never been anywhere near an edge of anything that scary.

And I'm a little afraid of heights. I'm really afraid of Half Dome. So we get up there and I'm looking over the edge and it's just, you can't really see the bottom. And I think that when we step into passages like this, it's like we're coming up to the edge of glory in heaven and staring down into the very heart of God. And it's almost more than we can comprehend. This is what God has done for us. Gazing into the very heart of God.

And I want you to banish all the kind of human stuff that we do with God and Jesus. We're like, oh, Jesus sort of dutifully fulfilled what God wanted Him to do. He kind of begrudgingly went to the cross. He did it sort of against his no, no, no. This is the very heart of God for people. This kind of incredible love. This is the heart of God we're peering into because God the Father from all creation willed to create a people who would want to come and sit in His lap. Children of God. That, my friends, is what we are. As John says, that's what we are.

So listen to your savior this morning.

Beloved children, therefore, I don't condemn you. But then there's one more part. This is the hard part of the passage. Go and sin no more.

If you were listening closely as you read the words aloud, you should have been disturbed. Anybody disturbed this morning reading these? Verse six and verse nine, it gets a little weird here.

No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning. No one keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him.

Verse nine:

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed abides in Him and he cannot keep on sinning for He has been born of God.

Let's talk about what this doesn't mean. John is not undoing everything he said earlier in the book. In John one, he says:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and we're liars. The truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us.

Chapter two:

My little children, I'm writing these things so you may not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father.

He's not saying Christians never sin. But what does He mean by this? The translation of the Greek in the ESV helps us. That little word "practice." No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning. No one who makes a practice of sinning. This is the most often word repeated in that section: practice.

Remember when you're a kid, your mom or dad would say to you, or especially your piano teacher, practice makes perfect. That statement's a truism. What you practice is what you reinforce in your life. This is why you have to practice piano in order to play proficiently. This is why you have to practice baseball. Nobody wakes up one morning and throws a 90 mile an hour fastball. It has to be practiced. Muscle memory, you have to build that in.

And conversely, there are lots of things you don't have to practice and you're really good at them. Selfishness. Anybody really good at selfishness? I may be the best. Lying, gossiping, hating.

But here's John's test for children of God. Here's one of the ways you know. A transformed person is growing. They're learning to practice new things. They're practicing new virtues in their life.

You remember John eight, remember what Jesus says:

Neither do I condemn you. And then He adds, go and sin no more.

That is a crazy statement for today. We live in a culture that's like, I like the first part of that, but not so much the second part. Jesus, can we erase that or change that? This is what we want in our culture—anything goes kind of faith where Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you. Go on, have a great day. Go on your way."

But I want you to remember this woman. This woman was a sexual sinner as well as the man who wasn't dragged into public. And if there's anything that's off limits in America today it's somebody telling me that something's wrong to do with my body. We live in a culture where anything goes. I'm amazed even to see the heights and lengths to which people go to reinterpret passages of Scripture that say really clearly things that they've said for thousands of years.

A couple of weeks ago I introduced you to Gumby Jesus that someone gave me. If you don't know what Gumby is, you can look it up when you get home. Gumby Jesus—we can move around and shape Him in whatever we want Him to do. And this is where we are in our culture. There's a lot of people like, I want a Jesus who never condemns, always accepts, but never tells me, never challenges me or tells me I can't do something.

Like never says go and sin no more. And when we do that, we think we're being super compassionate. We think we're being really loving to want that kind of a Jesus, but are we more compassionate than Jesus? Because let's think about His love. The real gospel of Jesus is grace and truth together. It's grace and truth. Jesus doesn't say, neither do I condemn you, go and have a great day. That's lawlessness as described in this passage. Nor does he say, if you go and sin no more, then I won't condemn you. That's legalism.

The gospel says: neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. It's acceptance, neither do I condemn you, with an agenda for change, go and sin no more. Acceptance with an agenda for change. That's what gospel discipleship is. And if you think about that, isn't that actually an outgrowth of God's love for His children? I mean, many parents would say, I love my kids. I never really want them to grow. I never really want them to mature. I'm not looking for responsibility or ownership of life's decisions or independence at some point in the future. No sane parent would say that. We want for our own children that they would grow. They would become different over time.

How You Know You're a Child of God

So here's how you know you're a child of God. Two things. One, are you growing in confidence of God's love for you? No, that's not linear. There are days when that goes up and down, but are you growing in confidence of God's love for you? And two, are you growing to become like the family traits, in a family resemblance? Are you growing to be more and more like Jesus?

No one who names himself as Jesus' savior should put up with prevailing patterns of sin. If you've been a Christian for years and you're just as anxious, just as greedy, just as lustful, just as angry, as stubborn as you were, you should be asking questions. Am I growing? Is this happening in my life? Why is that? Because living things grow. Living things grow. They change. Yes, you may struggle for the same years with this one particular besetting sin, and sometimes the Spirit allows that to happen so we learn dependence upon Him. But there should be growth somewhere in other parts of your life. There should be some growth. A real Christian cannot not grow over time. This is one of the things that the Spirit works in us.

The Role of Community in Recognizing Growth

Here's the difficult thing though. It's hard to tell if you're growing. Am I growing? I don't know. It's hard for you to evaluate you. This is one of the reasons I think John writes this not to individual Christians, but to a community of people because it is in community, in relationship that we can evaluate your own growth. It's with other people that you can see what's happening with you because growth is gradual. I've read that even trees grow during the wintertime in times when they look dormant. To my side, I'm like, nothing is happening with that tree. It's still growing. And this is why we need other people.

Did you ever have that—an aunt, great aunt, grandma, somebody you didn't see very often and they would see you every couple of months or every couple of years and they'd say, my, how you've grown. What are they feeding you? And you're like, I didn't realize I was getting bigger. And that's one of the things that your Body of Christ people are for. This is one of the great gifts of being a part of the body of Christ. You need people who are saying, my, how you've grown. What are you feeding on? What are you growing in?

If I ask you right now, are you growing in family resemblance to God? A lot of you would say no. You're struggling. You may feel really flat and kind of dead, but let me stop preaching and start meddling a little bit this morning.

An Invitation Back to Community

I want to invite you. Our church is open for business and one of the hard things I've heard from so many people this year during COVID is just the disruption of relationships. Many of us feel isolated in ways we didn't before. We feel disconnected from one another. We feel like I'm not really growing, not really. I feel really stagnant in my faith. The biggest thing that you need is one another. Church isn't this—it's not the show—it's this: the relationships. It's God working among His people.

And I just want to call you back. I know you're here this morning, but I'm calling you into relationships. Our men's ministry is fully up and operational. Our women's ministry is doing tons of stuff with one-to-one Bible reading. We're gathering and I know I don't want to infringe upon anybody's comfort level, but I do want to encourage you: you need the body of Christ. You need one another.

Let me close with this. Acorns—we're going to see acorns all across Raleigh this fall. Some of you are like, I'm sick of acorns.

All I do is clean up my backyard full of acorns. Raleigh is known as the city of Oaks. I want you to think about acorns. There's a guy named G Campbell Morgan who said something striking. He said, think about an acorn versus a concrete slab. Which one's going to win? Acorn every time. He was looking at a concrete slab on the sidewalk and watching the roots penetrate through concrete and break it. The power of the little life in the acorn.

An acorn is slow growth. It's difficult to see, but it's incredible power. An oak tree is in small form in that acorn. And over time, it will become what it's supposed to be. The spirit that is planted in you, if you're a child of God, this life that's in you—and right now you're like, I'm so discouraged, I don't know what's going on, there seems to be a concrete slab over my life right now—the spirit of God in His children will break through that. In this life or the next, but in this life, we expect breakthroughs. We're looking for growth. We're looking to see how that seminal form of God's work in you will grow from a tiny seed into a gigantic tree.

Acorns grow really because they love God. That's a weird thing to say, but everything in nature becomes what it is supposed to be in our Creator. An oak tree in its glorious form is what an acorn is in its smallest. I want to encourage you this morning, beloved children of God. He delights so much in you and he longs to work deeply in your life.

Prayer

Let's turn to Him in prayer this morning.

Father, I'm so burdened for our congregation. I know the sense of discouragement and isolation, of frustration, the way that we feel—many of us stuck and cold, isolated from one another. Lord, we pray that you would stir us up this morning, grow in us that confidence in the love of the Father that would build assurance and therefore blossom into joy in our lives.

We pray that you would work in us, that you would grow your purposes in us. For many of us, we're dealing with besetting sins, places hidden. We pray that you would use your body of Christ, people in our lives, to fix our eyes on Jesus. We pray that we would grow, that we would take on the family resemblance. Lord, would you do that among this little body of Christ, this church.

Father, we need hope this morning. We come therefore as people needy to your table, hungry for you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.