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Mills River SDA Church

Cory Reeves

Abide in Me

I do want to read you a quote before we dive in.

And I guess it has some to do with the sermon, but someone sent it to me and it just blessed me, so I wanted to share it with you.

The great outpouring of the Spirit of God which lightens the whole earth with His glory.

What lightens the whole earth with His glory?

Will not come, so that's key, will not come until we have an enlightened people that know by experience what it means to be laborers together with God.

Experience being laborers together with God.

When we have entire, wholehearted consecration to the service of Christ, God will recognize the fact by an outpouring of His Spirit without measure.

But This will not be while the largest portion of the church are not laborers together with God.

It will tie in a little bit to today, but I think we're going to talk about it more at another sermon.

I was so excited about it, I couldn't help but share it.

Today, we're going to continue our study of 1 John.

And you know, this world is pretty mixed up right now on what love is, right?

And this isn't the topic of today, but it's kind of the topic of the series.

And we're going to see today that God's law and His love are 1 and the same.

And it clears up a lot about what's going on in the world if we look at it from that perspective.

Now last time I was here, I know it's been a few weeks, but I hope you remember some, we had a Bible study entitled May Your Joy Be Full.

It's when we did an in-depth study of 1 John 1.

And I'll tell you, that 1 was a lot more condensed than this 1 this week.

For some reason, John seems to throw out all these different random thoughts.

And so I'm hoping, my wife told me a few weeks ago I could have been a little more concise, she's gonna be mad at me for saying it this way, a little more concise on a few points at Brevard a few weeks ago and so I tried to clean that up but it is it's almost like John is shooting buckshot at you in 1 John 2, but then he kind of brings it all together.

And that's what we're going to try to work through.

Does anyone not have a study guide that needs 1?

This is not Required homework if you're visiting.

I'm not gonna collect, I'm not gonna grade.

It's for you to study and also help you follow along with me a little bit more clearly, hopefully.

I just lost connection with my computer, which is a problem.

I'll have to pull my computer out if it doesn't connect.

First John, and if you want to open your Bibles this might be a good time to open your Bibles It's on the study guides, but we're gonna jump around in 1st John 1 or 1st John 2 We're gonna jump around a little bit It's nice to have it open and just be able to refer to it from time to time But John starts out with my little children.

I think we all understand here that John isn't addressing a group of kids.

It's a love that whoever He's writing to, He's writing with this, my little children.

And you're going to see that throughout especially 1 John 2 is this pastoral address.

I will say that I'm almost positive we're not positive 1 John was written by John, but last time we talked between the Gospels, the Gospel of John and 1 John, it's pretty clear that it's the same person.

1 thing we don't know is we're not sure who he was writing it to.

There's books that are entitled and they start out, I'm writing to Beverly.

But in 1 John, he doesn't start out that way.

And it's almost like it's this address to the church as a whole.

And I think what we're going to see today is that it's an address to us today.

And that's an important thing to think through is how are we going to do this and he is writing to you my little children okay back to the text first John my little children these things I write to you so that you may not sin and if anyone sins we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And He Himself is the perpetuation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.

Now if you remember last time, here's a summary of last time.

1 John 1, it gives us the plan of salvation, the plan of atonement.

John gives us a witness that the world was made flesh in Jesus' coming.

This God is, as we've talked today, the Creator God.

The God of light and of truth that came to give us light to show us the way.

That we are to come to Him not only giving Him our sins, but also believing, if you remember last time, believing that they are forgiven.

All of this, this Word of Life, is the plan that puts us back into fellowship with God.

And this is what John is telling you should make you full of joy.

It is the plan of good news that we can be returned to fellowship with God.

And what I want you to remember is when John wrote this letter, he didn't go 1 John 1.1.

So as we go into 1 John 2, it's going to be a continuation.

As we go on to 3, it's going to be a continuation.

So we've got to kind of remember what we've studied.

As we ended the message last time, He begins this time with telling us that we are not to what?

It's actually the most common Greek word for sin.

Now how many, I'm not going to make you raise your hands, but I hope everyone would, how many of you have sinned?

We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But John quickly, as he does throughout this whole letter, he jumps in and gives you the good news.

He tells you bad news and then jumps in and tells you the good news.

The dictionary, as you've learned, I'm kind of nerdy, I jump to the dictionary pretty quickly.

A person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy.

John tells us of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Righteous 1 is the Advocate.

Now I'm going to get even more nerdy for a minute here.

The Greek word that is translated by the word advocate is the word, and I'm going to slaughter Greek, so if there's any Greek scholars in here, I apologize.

This is a very interesting word in the New Testament.

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Abide in Me

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