1John 3:1-10 - "Planned Luminescence"

1John 3:1-10  

(…everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.)  See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.  And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.  Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

There is a thing in manufacturing these days called planned obsolescence… Things are designed to break down, to wear out.  So that the customer is forced to replace the item far sooner than necessary.

But that is not the plan here at all.  No, the plan which God is carrying out in the lives of those who trust in Him is planned magnificence!  Planned luminescence.  It is luminaries, souls and lives which shine and reflect His breathtaking goodness.  Increasingly so as we follow Him and rest and remain in Him, on into eternity.  Forever and ever.  What we see in the brief breath which is our life is two outcomes, two families, if you will.  One family is those who have been begotten by God, and because He has birthed them, given them spiritual new life, they are His children.  And because His life, His seed is in them, they are steadily and increasingly looking more and more like Him.  Shining and reflecting His life, His attributes.  More and more like Him.  Family resemblance.  That’s what John is saying in this passage.  We will be like Him.  Increasingly pure, just as He is pure.  Producing righteousness, just as He is righteous.  More like Him.  Luminescently so!  Planned luminescence!

Like Father like Son like son...

What our Father is like:

• He is, He is alive, He is the great I AM, always and forever the one and only God
• And the fact that He is makes Him the God with Whom I have to do.  I have to deal with Him.  I must deal with Him.  Because He made me…
• He begets, He births, gives birth to life, 
• He gives life, the great Life-giver.  He spoke.  Let there be life.  And it was so…
• The miracle of life - let’s not ever underestimate what a gift, what a miracle that is.  Life out of deep dark darkness, out of nothingness.  Science has yet to be able to accomplish that feat.  We can resuscitate that which had already been given life, we’ve learned how to manipulate modified forms of life from existing forms of life, but life out of nothing. That's a good old fashioned miracle.  And what God is doing in these last days is dead men walking - not as zombies but as new creations.  Born of Him…
• And again, this is a second birth.  Our first birth is a physical birth - which itself is an unbelievable miracle.  The miracle of life in the womb.  I think it is no coincidence that the womb itself has become a battleground - the enemy of our souls who comes to steal and kill and destroy is doing his darnedest to try and destroy the breathtaking goodness of God at every turn.  But so there is a second birth, and not coincidently he opposes this too.  And this is the one we are talking about.  It is where God breathes His eternal life into our soul when we put our trust in Jesus, when we turn to Him in our hearts for forgiveness of our sins.  Born of Him…  So God is.  He is alive.  And He gives life.  
• He loves
• Not love if.  Not love because.  Love in spite of.  
• Us
• So
• Very much
• Born of Him.  All that goes into this second birth is what shows us that He so loves us.
• IN ORDER THAT we should be called His children.  This is the result.  The result of His so loving us such that He has birthed us is that now we are called His children.  It is not that He merely calls us His children - which would of course be entirely loving and merciful.  But it is that He made us His children by actually birthing us - that is the love.  We actually ARE His children now in the truest way possible.  This second birth.  Eternal life.  His life, in our soul, life in Him and with Him.  And this is where we want to be, people, cuz this is where the real party is…
• He is.  He is alive, and gives life.  He loves.
• He is our hope.  Our source of hope, and the Object of our hope…
• Obviously not the only object of hope.  We hope in a lot of things.  Why do we hope?  Why do we need hope?  For what do we hope?  What is hope?  And what happens when we have no hope?
• Hope is what gives life its meaning.  Hope is what gives us our reason to live.  Hope is the expectant gaze of the soul, the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out how I want.  And sadly, when hope is gone, when all seems hopeless, some decide that life is not worth living.  And life can seem that way sometimes.  No hope.  The thing or things in which we put our hope can disappear.  They can let us down.  We put our hope in other people.  Or we put it in ourselves, in our ability to take care of ourselves.  We put our hope in the things which we think will fill our hearts - we want to be happy, and we put our hope in those things or people which we think will make us happy.  And when they don’t do that, when nothing is coming up roses, when life seems against us, when our friends let us down and our health lets us down and our stuff lets us down, we can lose hope.  And I’m just telling you - ALL those things WILL let you down, sooner or later.  People will let you down, sadly.  I will let you down (if I haven’t already).  You will let you down.  Your health will let you down.  Your stuff will let you down.  Even your iPhone will let you down.  Where do we put our hope?  Is there such a thing as a sure thing?  Well, we believe life is never hopeless - because there IS One Who will never let us down.  We think we want all these other things, but they cannot and never will fill the hole in our hearts.  Nothing on this earth will ever satisfy  Everything ain’t come back.  Only Jesus.  Only He can fill the hole - the very fact of its existence is due to His absence.  We cast Him out of heart and mind to our own detriment.  So John says, no - fix your hope on Him. 
• He is pure
• Not one blemish.  Not one contaminant or toxin.  Not one flaw or inclusion or imperfection.  And I think we greatly underestimate this word.  Have you ever seen something pure?  We are wired for this - in fact our life depends on it.  Who here this morning wants to drink water which is impure?  We’re going to set up two pitchers of water for our pot luck meal today - one is the pure water, the other is the impure.  Which one are you drinking?  Exactly!  So how about your soul, that part of you which is designed to live forever?  What kind of spiritual water are you putting in your soul?  What kinds of moral toxins are we putting into our soul?  He is pure, 100% pure.
• Righteous
• Everything about Him is right.  Everything He does is right.  And we get this, in our hearts.  Have you ever been in a situation where you said, that’s not right?  That’s not right.  Or maybe, if you’re from these parts, that ain’t right?  It could be the answer you got on that math problem.  You added 2 plus 2 and got 5.  That ain’t right.  Or the referee made a bad call.  Or he missed a call.  Happens all the time.  That ain’t right.  Or somebody dangled a preposition.  IF you’re not from these parts you might think that "ain’t" ain’t right.  But we know for sure some things ain’t right.  Somebody is being mistreated.  Taken advantage of.  Justice is being perverted by someone in power, someone corrupt.  Or your neighbor or that business treated you unkindly or unfairly.  They did you wrong.  That’s not right.  Evil - that’s not right.  But that’s not how our heavenly Father rolls.  That’s not what He is like at all.  He always gets it right.  He always does what is right.
• As such, He is a Trash (sin) remover.  He came to take away sins.  All these deeds and attitudes which aren’t right.  All these things which separate us from Him.  Our messes - He’s cleaning them up.  And isn’t that just like a parent?  Parents - isn’t that what we get to do?  We clean up other people’s messes.  Little people’s messes.  Little messes.  Well, sometimes not so little… :)  But it’s something we’re trying to teach our kids.  Not just clean up your own mess - which sometimes seems like would be a miracle in and of itself.  But what if you cleaned up somebody else’s mess?  Whoa, great day in the morning!  But John says, Jesus came to pick up our mess.  He came to take up our sins - which He did on the cross.
• But He’s not just a Trash Picker-upper.  He didn’t just take up our sins.  John says He is a Destroyer.  He came to destroy the works of the devil.  Who is a destroyer himself.  Scripture tells us that the devil is out to steal and kill and destroy all the goodness of God.  He is trying to deceive and trick people into joining him in his long rebellion against God.  E-vil, as in the fruits of the devil.  Living apart from God.  Living apart from His breathtaking goodness.  Some people try to make an argument against an all-powerful all-good God because of this problem of evil.  There must not be a God Who is good or Who is powerful because of all this evil.  Evil is not destroyed - and we know that evil is not right, that it should be destroyed - and so some falsely conclude that there is no God Who is all-good or all-powerful.  But the premise is flawed.  Evil is not destroyed YET.  That little adverb makes all the difference.  It’s a very important adverb.  Are we there YET?  Are the cookies done YET?  YET is hard.  We like now.  Hot NOW.  If the sign says, Hot NOT YET, we’re not stopping.  We’re moving on.  But John says, Jesus came in order that He should destroy the works of the devil.  That’s how verse 8 should read.  It is aorist subjunctive, which is basically a future tense.  Not yet.  It IS going to happen, it is beginning to happen in fact, but not yet.  Not fully.  But just you wait.  Just you wait, Henry Higgins…

So God is.  He is a life-giver.  He is love.  He is hope - full of it!  He is pure and righteous.  And this is the One Who has begotten us.  We are His children - His Seed, His Spirit lives in us, when we put our faith in Jesus.  We are no longer like the devil…

What the devil is like:

• practicing sin, ongoing - sinning from beginning, hell-bent on doing what is NOT right
• practicing lawlessness - no law.  No chains on me.  This is an unsurrendered heart.  I want what I want, and ain’t nobody gonna tell me otherwise.  I am going to do what I want.  Maybe not everything that I want, but there are some things, at least one thing, that I am not gonna surrender.  Cuz I need that.  I want that.  I need to be free to do that.  No chains on me - not giving up that.  And there is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.  Destruction.  His is the ultimate paradox - he sets out to destroy, but he is destined for destruction…
• This is not what we are like, people… God’s children are not at all like this.

What God’s children (whom He has birthed, in whom He has placed His seed) are like:

• Born (again) of God (the Spirit - Jn 3.5-8)(used more frequently in 1Jn than anywhere else in NT)
• It’s not simply that you chose to believe.  Or that you were instructed by your parents or teachers.  We’re not talking about a creed or some external collection of wise sayings, some disposable set of beliefs.  If you and I are IN, if we are really in with Christ, it is because we have been born from above.  God has caused His Truth and His Spirit to work in our hearts such that when we did believe, when we did transfer our trust from our own feeble ineffective efforts to get to heaven and transferred our trust to the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross - when we did that, God caused us to be born again, a second time.  He made us alive spiritually.  He gave us His life - new, eternal never-ending life.  He was in back of the entire process in fact.  His Spirit was the One convicting us of the Truth about God and His Word and our sin and need for a Savior, the truth about Jesus.  He opened our heart to believe.  He sealed His Spirit in our hearts as our Helper and as a guarantee of eternal life.  We can’t fully explain it, we can’t put it in a lab and reproduce it, but we can verify it.  We can look at the results.  We should be able to see the results.  Just like the wind, Jesus said.  You don’t know where it comes from, but the results are unmistakable.  And what are they?  What are these results we should be seeing?
• Love
• for our brothers, first - and among other things
• Hope
• fixed on Jesus.  You can’t see Him, but you want Him and what He wants.
• 1Pet 1.3 - born again to a living hope
• Heb 6.19 - hope sure and steadfast which enters within the veil
• Life is never hopeless, not with Jesus
• Purifying
• we are "ore" - the pure is in there, but it needs refining...
• He must increase, I must decrease - more of Him and less of me
• Practicing/producing righteousness
• cannot sin = unable to go on sinning, to be practicing sin
• Unrecognizable.  John says, the world does not know us.  Do I know you?  The more we come to resemble our heavenly Father, the more alien we become.  Other-worldly.  Unrecognizable.  The world doesn’t know Him, they reject Him, and they don’t understand Him.  And they don’t understand His children.  Who lives like that?  Who does that?  Who believes in something they can’t see?  Much less base your life upon it.  Who believes that a Book so old is reliable, much less authoritative.  Who believes in miracles, in the supernatural?  Who does the right thing when no one's looking? That’s just foolish.  It’s all so foolish.  Yet that which is true about our heavenly Father is evident within ALL of us - even in those who don’t believe.  God has set eternity in the heart of every man.  And it is rebellion against Him, against the truth about Him, which causes the world to be so antagonistic towards those who do follow Him.  The fact of our following exacerbates the guilt that unbelievers carry around in their soul, and it can make them hate us.  They certainly don’t understand us.
• But what happens when a person turns to the Lord in their heart?  When they surrender?  A light goes on!  Illumination!  Suddenly it all makes sense.  Suddenly God’s Word begins to make sense.  It is the operation of the Spirit of God in their hearts.  Which leads to luminescence.  Light inside, which shows up and shows out on the outside.  That’s the plan.  That’s God’s plan - like Father like Son like son.  And daughter.  Planned luminescence.

Seeing is… transforming.  Seeing then in heaven yes, but also seeing now with the eyes of faith.  Faith of course is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  These things we see NOW, we begin a long soul gaze at Jesus now - and His life grows inside of us.  The life of the Father and the Son - IN us.  And revealed THROUGH us.  More of Him, and less of me.  Practicing righteousness… and loving your brother.  This is how it should be, John says.  Planned luminescence.  Increasingly so.

Have you ever surrendered your heart to Him?