12th February 2024

12th February 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (1 John 4:13-21 focus v13-15)


Message (Alan Burke) 


We’ve all with someone as they have told us a story that if they’ve told us before. We can all do it, recount a story that we have done forgetting that we have told it before while there are times it is by accident there are times that hearing the same story again and again can be a helpful reminder to us of not to make the same mistakes, to learn form someone else’s failures or maybe just have a laugh at someone else’s expense. Some times we don’t mind hearing the same stories again and again while at other times it has just become like noise and we just try to block it out. Have you noticed that throughout this letter John has been telling us the same things over and over again in different ways? He is like a parent to their child, sitting them down trying to teach them. John wants us to understand in the church, here in this place that the better way is the way of love, it is the remedy that we need and often in the problems in the church today what is needed is love, it is the remedy, to love more even when there is a cost to us, a cost to what we want or desire or would have.


What John says here comes in the context of what he has just said. I know that is stating the obvious but look back to the end of v13, how if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. The result of this, of loving one another, as we live in this way we will know that we live in him and he in us and it is all because he has given us of his Spirit. The Lord God within his children has gave his Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in the believer and love as well as obedience in our lives are inseparable to the work of the Holy Spirit within us. The work of the Spirit of God produces faith within us and that faith is lived in love and obedience. We live in God by his Spirit, the indwelling spirit that enables us to be born again, that brings us from death to life. It is the work of God within us from start to finish. 


For us God’s presence in us, God’s Spirit in us is seen in how we love and we obey, as we confess to being children of God and we live accordingly. It is not something that we have brought about ourselves but it is all by the work of God within that enables us to become the children of God and our love and obedience testifies to this truth. This is so important, for we who are the children of God who have the indwelling Spirit desire to obey our heavenly Father, to love as he loved us in our lives and the more that we do that the greater our confidence will be in who we are and the more we have confidences in the indwelling Spirit within us. 


Yes we may have skeletons in our past, we may have done or left undone many a think, we may go on to make an absolute hash of things or right now you may be living in a way that you know is out of step with the Spirit, it is sinful and you know you’re not living obediently. If it is the past, in the future or in the present what we must do is repent of that sin. We will not have a perfect track record but what we need is the Lord Jesus Christ and his perfect obedience for us because we fall miserably. Of course that is not an excuse to give into sin but it does mean if we have failed to resist temptation, if we have repented of that sin even though our conscience may accuse us, the devil may be doing all he can to accuse you to make you doubt your salvation, we are still the Lord’s. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q66 What is the reason annexed to the fifth commandment?
The reason annexed to the fifth commandment, is a promise of long life and prosperity (as far as it shall serve for God’ s glory and their own good) to all such as keep this commandment. (Deut. 5:16, Eph. 6:2–3)
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