Children of God - Jesse Starr

Hey guys, Pastor James Murray here, and I want to welcome you to the Abide Sydney podcast. This whole podcast is designed to help you on the journey of discipleship, and our mission is to make disciples of the people of Sydney. But maybe you're not from Sydney. We hope this blesses you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this podcast. If we haven't met yet, my name is Jesse, and we've been attending this church since we landed here from the US, probably about six, seven weeks ago. And I do, I just want to say, George and Tanya Solomons are such lovely people. And I know what happens is every time like a new speaker comes up, they say all these like over-flatterising kind of like, I just want to be really genuine. They are, yeah, he pays me for this, but I just want to be really genuine. They are really humble, servant-hearted leaders. And you couldn't want anything more from your senior pastors. Just people who are genuinely, genuinely, they want to see you grow in your faith. And so can we just show them a bit of love? And I am excited to preach. Obviously, George did a stitch up on me today. He gave me the passage about children of the devil. It's like, I'm gonna let Jesse take this one. So that was super encouraging. But before we jump into it, I just want to mention that my wife is here. She's at the back. Love, give everyone a wave. There she is. So next weekend, we've actually been married for 13 years. All right. Well, I thought it was good. Apparently not in this room. We have three kids. We have a nine-year-old named Judah. We have a seven-year-old named Lainey. And we have an accident named Ben. And so, no, I'm kidding. God planned it. But we are excited. And so we love being part of this church. And what I'm going to do today is, basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to read out the whole text. Because we're continuing our series in the first book of John. And so I'm going to read out the whole text. It's going to be a lot to take on, okay? So don't get me wrong. There's no part of me that thinks, oh, you're going to like memorize all of this. No, no, no. My goal as a communicator, right, is I want you to understand the passage just that little bit more, okay? That's my goal. I want you to understand God's Word a little bit more than when you did when you came in. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to read out the whole text. And then we're going to backtrack through it. And I'm just going to make some observations. Does that sound good? Lovely. All right. Very good. All right. Let's turn to John chapter one, verse three. And we're going to read from verse four. Here's what it says. Everyone who sin breaks, everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that He appeared so that He might take away our sins. And in Him is no sin. No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous. And the one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God's seed remains in them. They cannot go on sinning because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not God's child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother or sister. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that as we open up Your Word, God, we pray that You would illuminate things in our hearts. We pray that You would speak to us to our heart, God. God, we pray as we gather as the community of believers this morning, that our faith would be strengthened, encouraged, and that we would grow to be more like You. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, we lived in Orlando, Florida. That's where we've been living for the last four years. And what we did was we would oftentimes go to Disney World. Has anyone been to Disney World before? Oh, lots of people. Disneyland or Disney World? Okay, okay. Disney World. So we would go to Disney World. We actually had annual passes. So we would go to Disney World pretty often, right? We'd almost go there at least once a week. We would go there and you'd go on all the rides and do all that kind of stuff, fun stuff. Well, one time my wife and I, we were kind of in the line to get on the tram. So we weren't lining up for a ride. We had all three kids with us, you know, Ben's in the prim and we're in a line and there was lots of people. And this couple in front of us, they were a relatively young couple. They turned around, right, and said, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just want you to let you know that we are just really big fans of you guys. Now, we're from a very, we were from a very big church in the US. Like thousands of people. So I just thought, yes, it's just one of my fans. Like that's, that's fine. And she's like, you guys have just helped us so much. And I'm like, bless you. Did you want me to sign something? That's so, that's so sweet. And then, and then she says, your videos have really like, you know, helped us with some stuff. And I'm like, videos. Yes. Yes. That makes sense. That tracks videos. And my wife's like, right. I think we've got something going on here. And then she said, I just love how in your videos, you've navigated the Disney parks so well. And all the different food things. And my wife's like, yeah, that's not us. And I'm like, it could be us though. Should we do this? Like, could we make YouTube videos? Anyway, she was so convinced that we were, even when we said, that's not us. She was like, are you sure that's not you? Like, she was so convinced that we were these like YouTubers who like went through Disney and showed you all these different hacks. And my wife and I are sitting there trying to convince her, no, it's not us. Yeah. Why do I tell that story? Because John in these six verses in this chapter is basically saying, God doesn't make mistakes about you. And that's a good thing and a bad thing, right? What he's saying is, as people, we can manipulate, we can trick, we can hide, we can shift. You can show all this stuff on social media and live a different way. We can be like that with human beings. We can be like that with each other, but you can't fool God. God sees you for exactly who you are. He sees the best things about you and He sees the worst things about you. He doesn't just see your highlights real. He actually sees who you are. And more than that, He doesn't just just see who you are, but He sees how you live your daily life. And this is why John in this passage, he jumps in and he says, everyone who sins, in fact, breaks the law. Now, why does he jump in with this? Let me just quickly explain this. He jumps in with this because at this point in this Christian community, in this book, there were some false teachers that were basically peddling a belief that your righteousness with God, your relationship with God was so protected, it didn't really matter how you lived. That's what basically they were being told. And what was doing, it was kind of infiltrating the church that they were starting to kind of like almost be accepting of sin. And John comes in with this. And when we read it, by the way, we can read it and be like, that's pretty confronting. Like, look what it says. It says, Now, when you read that, you might go, well, I'm in trouble because I sinned this morning. Do you know what I mean? Like, I sinned getting the kids in the car, right? Like, we have these sins in our life that we're like, we read this and we're like, well, I sin all the time. So what kind of sin was he talking about? Well, growing up in the Star family, I can tell you it was pretty fun, but there was some intensity to it. Now, you might see Dad, Glenn, start to get up there. He's all smiley. He's all happy. He's bopping around. Can I tell you, growing up, that man was intense. Okay. And this wasn't like new age, like millennial parenting, where it's like sit in the naughty corner and share your feelings. Like, that's not, no, we didn't have naughty corners. We didn't have groundings. We just had the belt, right? That's what you had, right? It was just, that's all you got, right? Now, the reason I mentioned that is because growing up in our home, you didn't get like smacked for making a mistake. You got smacked for rebellion. Now, what's the difference? Making a mistake is like doing something accidental, like making a little trip up. Rebellion is intentionally doing something wrong when you know it's wrong. And that's the kind of sin that John is talking about. John isn't talking about the little mistakes we do. He's talking about the habitual practice of sin. And now you might think, well, why is that a problem? Why is that a problem if God's so forgiving? Why can't I have a lifestyle of sin if God's so forgiving? Because here it is. When you say yes to Jesus, it means that you have to say no to sin. It's like when you get married. When you get married, you say yes to your husband or wife while simultaneously saying no to all the other options. And if you didn't, you have marriage problems, okay? Because that's what you're supposed to do. And this is what John is saying. John is saying, right, when you say yes to a life with Jesus, you actually have to say no to the practice of sin in your life. This isn't about accidental sin, but this is about the practice of sin. Okay, let's move on. Verse seven, look what it says. Verse 10, this is how we know who the children of God are, the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. In this text, we have the children of God and the children of the devil. This is going to be fun, isn't it? I'm just going to get straight into it. All right, let's first look at what a child of God is supposed to look like. What is a child of God supposed to be marked with? First, let's break it down with this. The defining characteristics of a child, right? Child of God, of a child is what? Is that they are dependent on their parents. Anyone who has a child knows that that kid doesn't have any chance of survival without someone like attending to its daily needs, okay? That's the characteristic of a child. On legal documents, they're literally called dependent. Right, how many dependents do you have? As children of God, we are meant to be completely spiritually dependent on God. Now, which is contrary to kind of like how we think of children, right? Because we wanna take a child and raise them to become independent, right? We take the dependent and we make them independent. No one wants to have like a 15 year old that's like, mom, brush my teeth. It's like, no, no, no. You gotta raise them to take care of themselves. But when it comes to relationship with God, it's reversed. It's actually, we actually never outgrow our dependence on God. Did you know that even in eternity, you will still be dependent on God? We never outgrow that. I love what Timothy Keller says. Timothy Keller says, the most childlike a believer will be the least childish believer. Because see, our job isn't to act like children. No, no, no. But it's meant to be spiritually dependent on God. What does that mean? It means that his works, his righteousness, his love, his grace, right? It's all dependent on him. What does that mean? It means we bring nothing to the table. We don't bring anything to the table. We had dinner recently with Pastor George and Tanya and I text George and said, hey, what can I bring? He didn't even respond. He goes, you bring nothing. And then I got there and was like, Tanya's the best chef I've ever met. Except my wife, she's way better. But do you know what I mean? She didn't even hear that joke. Woo, thank God. All right. It's like we are completely spiritually dependent on God to the point that we don't bring anything to the table. Jesus starts off the greatest sermon ever written, the Sermon on the Mount with this. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. What's poor in spirit? You spiritually don't have anything to offer because we are completely dependent on him. When I would take my kids to the theme parks and there was one time and I wanted to take my son Judah on a ride, but he's a little height challenged. And so he wasn't like meeting the mark properly. So I said to my son Judah, I said, look, we're about to get to the point where they're going to measure you. I said, what you got to do is I just want you to like, just lift up those heels just a little bit, right? Just lift up those heels. And then he practiced. He's like, like this, dad. And I'm like, relax, Billy Elliot, just a little, just a little, just lift it up just a little bit. Now, why do I mention that? Because in basically every other religion, it's do your best and see where you measure up and see if you'll get accepted. But in Christianity, it's not that you got to measure up, but rather it's that he came down, right? It's not that we measured up and we were able to gain acceptance. It's that he came down and through him, we have acceptance, right? We are spiritually dependent on him. All right. The second part of being a child of God is that we live righteously, live righteously. You can't be a child of God if you are not of God, right? It's in the title. You got to be of God. Okay. Let's like break that down for a second. What does it mean to live righteously? This is kind of one of those words that throws around in church all the time. And we're kind of like, just live righteous. But if you missed the description of it, you know, when you went into classroom when you're in school and if the lesson took off without you, you felt dumb to be like, I'm sorry, what are we talking about? Like I missed the whole first 10 minutes. That's kind of what happens with this word. We're like, live righteously. Could someone explain what that means quickly? Here's what it basically means. It means that we live in right relationship with God. Okay. Our world would say, oh no, it means you have upright, moral, good character. You make good choices. You do all this kind of stuff. You're a person of integrity. Those things are good. They're included. But firstly, when it comes to Christianity, to live righteous means you live in a right relationship with God. Now, how do you get into a right relationship with God? Very complicated, but I'll try to really simplify it. Here's how it goes. Jesus is called the righteousness of God. We are sinners, right? So how do we become the righteousness of God? In theological world, this is called double imputation. What it means, not amputation, imputation. Okay, here's what it means. It means that as Christ's righteousness was given to us, He took our sin. So we became the righteousness and He became that which was sin and that's what He took to the cross. Do you catch that? So it's He took out our sin and He put the righteousness of God in us. And this is why in verse nine, it says, No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God's seed remains in them. What's God's seed? That's God's righteousness living on the inside of us. Now, why is this important? Because becoming a Christian, like converting to Christianity, we sometimes think it's about behaving right. Well, I got to stop doing that and I got to start doing this. It's not, see, it's not about activities. It's about identity. Did you catch that? It's not about what you act. It's who you're part of. It's who you're in relationship with God. I remember when I was teaching Scripture, I substituted for another school and I went into this English staff room and I was taking this glass in. I realised when I walked in, this school didn't really like Christian education. And I was pretty young. I was only like in my early 20s. And there was one Christian teacher who I knew when I was chatting to him about God. And then a couple of other teachers kind of joined into the conversation. And one art teacher, she said to me, she goes, so do you really believe everything the Bible says? And I went, yeah. And then she went, and you really believe God made a boat and put all animals on it? And I was like, correction, Noah made it. But you know what I mean? I'm like, she was like quizzing my theology. And then she said, and what you really believe that God, like people can live good and do all this kind of stuff and you think God will still send them to hell. And the whole staff room is looking at me. And I'm like, well, I did before I walked in. But no, I said, yeah. Because it's not about works. It's not about how good you think you behave. Isaiah 64 says, all our righteous acts are filthy rags. So what's this about? It's not about behaviour. It's about belonging. It's not about behaving right. Now, when you belong to God, when you become His child, guess what? You will start to behave like He does. Let me give you an illustration. Dad, could you like pull out what's in your left pocket? We didn't rehearse this. This is going to be great. Hey, did you see that? Right. So what am I trying to show? I'm trying to say that as children, we reflect our parents. As children of God, our job is to reflect our Heavenly Father. If He is righteous, then we act righteous. It's not that we're trying not to sin all the time. No, no, no. What happens is when we have the Spirit of God in us, we don't want to sin. We lose our appetite for sin. Okay, the third part, because I'm running out of time. Here we go. The third part of this, being a child of God, is that we love. Look what verse 10 says. This is how we know who the children of God are, who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not God's child. We already talked about that righteousness. Nor is anyone who does not love their brother or sister. If you are a child of God, then you will love. Okay, you will love. If you came up to me and said, Jesse, you seem like a really nice guy. We should hang out. I'd say, I'd love to hang out with you. And then you said, well, we should go out to lunch, you and your wife, and we could all go get lunch together. And then you said to me, but don't bring your kids. Not really into them. Yeah, I met them. Don't really like them. Particularly the oldest one. He gives me weird vibes. If you said that to me, I wouldn't be like, where are we going for lunch? I'd be like, get away from me. I don't want to hang out with you. Do you know why? Because if you want to love me, you love my kids. And the best way to show your love for me is to show love to my kids. Can I tell you, when it comes to loving God, you can't love God and hate His children. You can't even love God and just tolerate His children. No, no, no. If you truly love God and you've been transformed by the love of God, then you will love the people that He loves. Does that make sense? Jesus said, If God, if we are in Christ, if we are children of God, we will love the people in our world. Okay, let's get into the fun part. What is a child of the devil? Okay. So who are they and how do we spot them? I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, I went to school and there was some goths in my class. And I think that was one of them. They're black nails and they had like necklaces. And that's what we think of when we think of like a child of the devil, right? We're trying to figure out what it is they do. Growing up in the Star family, what would happen is when we would go driving anywhere, we had five kids in the car, we would drive anywhere. Anytime we saw any type of other like religious building, my dad would be like, kids, they worship the devil in there. It's true. And we would like run to the windows and be like, Satanists, where are they? Now, obviously, I think if Glenn had his chance, he probably wouldn't redo that. It's not great parenting. It's not great. It's not very tolerant. I've been working for Activate Pool Tables. And recently we visited a pub up in Newcastle and it was called Lost Souls. And I didn't really like catch it until I walked in. And I'm telling you, they didn't have just like a Slipknot poster. They had so much demonic paraphernalia. Like it was insane. Like I walked in there and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like cleaning the pool tables. I'm like getting the devil and the dust off it. I'm like, it is so spiritually heavy. Now, why do I say that? Okay. Because when it comes to this, like we read things like Child of the Devil, we automatically think, well, that's someone who has pledged allegiance to Satan. That's what we think. We go, that's what it is. But the truth is actually a lot more subtle and actually a lot more dangerous than that. I'm going to mention two things really quickly. When John uses this phrase, Children of the Devil, he actually didn't come up with it. He's actually repeating from his teacher, Jesus. He's actually repeating Jesus. And Jesus did call some people Children of the Devil. But it wasn't lost people. It wasn't worshippers of other religions. It wasn't even demon-possessed people. It wasn't the Romans nailing him to a cross. It wasn't Peter and it wasn't Judas. No, Jesus said this to religious hypocrites who denied the truth of who Jesus is. Look what it says in John 8. Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me. For I have come here from God. I have not come on my own, but God sent me. Verse 44. You belong to your father, the devil, and you were to carry out your father's desires. See, these religious Pharisees, they were more interested in their own self-righteousness than his righteousness. They were more interested in having a religious belief of independence instead of having complete dependence on him. They didn't want what Jesus was offering. And when we put it in that kind of category, I think for some of us, we go, that hits a little bit closer to home than I'd like to think. Because when we talk about if dependence is a child of God and independence is a child of the devil, then how many times have you tried to live independently from God? How many times has God asked you to pray for someone or get involved or give and you've been like, no, no, I'm too busy. No, I don't have time for that. How many times has God told you to forgive someone and you've gone, no, no, no. You don't know what they did to me. How many times have we decided that we want to live independent in our Christian walk from God? See, this sin, the sin of independence, it's the original sin of the devil. See, the devil didn't become the devil because he was an angel who suddenly like became an atheist, right? The devil is the devil because he wanted independence from God. He wanted his own glory, right? That's the sin that has been from the beginning. Now, there's another part of this and it says this in verse 8. Hannah can come up and join me. I'm going to finish in just a couple of minutes. It says in verse 8, What's the devil's work? You kind of think of it, right? You kind of think of like all the evil in the world. You're like, what's the devil's work? Do you know what I think it is? I think it's holding people captive. See, Jesus said, if you don't know Him and the freedom He offers, then you are enslaved to sin. So what's the devil's work? Well, He holds people captive. You know, many years ago, I brought a friend along to church. Probably about 25, almost 30 years ago, I brought a friend to church. At this point, my awesome parents were pastoring a church. And my friend's name was Mitch. And I sat down with Mitch. We were watching the church and we had a speaker named Barry Chan. And he had a prophetic gift. And he pointed, you know, in our direction. And he said, God is going to use you. And I said to my friend Mitch, he's talking to me, actually. Like, he's pointing at me. And then he said to my friend, he said, God is going to use you or you're going to end up in jail. And I'm like, do you know what? This is for you, actually. You should write that down. After that, my friend turned to me and said, that guy said I'm going to jail. And I was like, but he also said you could be used by God. Mitch didn't actually come back to church. Would you blame him, though? That's kind of an awkward situation. Like, I get it. But he didn't come back to church. A few years ago, so 25, 26 years ago from there, I ran into Mitch. I was out by the Cornell cliffs. I think I was out there either checking something or maybe I just wanted to go out there and seek the Lord. Like, I don't know. But I was out there. And Mitch was there. No one else was there. Mitch was there. And he looked all dishevelled. He had long hair. He had a hoodie on. And I was like, Mitch. And he was like, Jesse. And we caught up. And he said, well, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm in ministry and I'm doing stuff with youth and all this kind of jazz. And I said, well, what are you doing? And he said, well, I'm in fashion. I'm in the fashion industry. And I said, that's so cool. Good for you. And I said, what kind of fashion? And he's like, well, it's like dark streetwear. I said, so cool. I love dark streetwear. And so he then showed me his Instagram. And I'm not exaggerating. It was proper devil worship wear. Like it wasn't dark streetwear. It was the darkest of streetwear. You know what I mean? It's like, and I'm like trying to be cool with it because I don't want to become like his next sacrifice. So I'm like, this is lovely. This is so great. Do you have free shipping? This is great. I love it. When I walked away from Mitch, the Lord reminded me of that word spoken over him. Because see, Mitch, he didn't actually go to physical jail, but spiritually, he's being held captive. Spiritually, he is in prison. Spiritually, he is in jail. Because if anyone is not in Christ, then they are being held captive and a slave to sin. I'm going to finish with this quote. It's from A.W. Tozer, and I love this. Look what it says. In reality, salvation was brought on, was brought not by Jesus' fist, but by his nail-pierced hands. Not by muscle, but by love. Not by vengeance, but by forgiveness. Not by force, but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ, our Lord, surrendered in order that he might win. He destroyed his enemies by dying for them. And he conquered death by allowing death to conquer him. When it says that Jesus came to destroy, what that means is that in order for us to be free, the one that was holding us captive had to be destroyed. It's two things going on. God had to destroy the one so that we could walk away free. This week, I was watching Free Willy with the kids. Arguably the greatest movie ever made. And as we were watching it, the kids were all into it. But if you watch that movie, there's actually a beautiful picture of this. It's a little boy that wanted to get this killer whale free and out of the pool. But in order for that to happen, the destruction of his captor's business had to take place. And we get this beautiful picture of that. Because see, when we look at the cross, what do we see? Isaiah 53 says, what we see is the crushing of Jesus. See, what we see when we see the cross is we see the destruction of Jesus. So what? So that we could be free. So that we could be set free. The Gospel isn't just that, well, God died for your sins. No, no, no, the Gospel is that Jesus came to free us from the one that was holding us captive. Jesus came to heal us, which meant that He cut out sickness. Jesus came to give us life. What does that mean? It means that He came to destroy the finality of death. Are you following with me? I want to end today's service. Maybe just by taking a bit of a moment. Because there's been a lot said today. There's been a lot of things. There's been a lot of teaching. And I know that a lot of it was hard to take on. But do you know what? I think there's some people in the room and something kind of hit home today. And maybe it was because you've been living a life independent of God. Maybe for some of us, we actually haven't made that decision where we've said, do you know what? I want the freedom that Christ offers. But maybe for some of us, we need to almost have that moment where we need to come back to God and to submit to His will because we've been doing some sin in our lives and it's just not conducive with the nature of God. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm going to close the service. And then you can go get coffee or go get lunch, whatever you want. But if you want someone to pray with you, if you just want to talk to someone about what you're going through, I know I'll be here. I know my folks will be here. I know George and Tanya, other pastors will be here. If you want to talk to someone, you want someone to pray with you or whatever it is. But why don't we stand? Why don't we close our eyes and let's pray and then let's finish. Jesus, we love You. Heavenly Father, we love You and we are so thankful for You. God, I know that You are pressing it on some hearts tonight, this morning. God, I know that You are speaking. You are nudging some people in the right direction. God, I just pray over this room right now that everyone in this room will know that they are a child of God, that they have been chosen, they have been set apart. And what that means, Father God, is that we don't have to live in guilt and sin and shame, but rather we can bring it to the cross. We can bring it to the cross where You will do away with our sin, Father God, and You will put the righteousness in us. God, I just pray over everyone this morning that they would not just walk out of here with, oh, that was an interesting message, but they'll walk away saying, do you know what? I can live as a child of God. Why? Because I can be spiritually dependent on Him. It's not my works, but it's His works. God, we just pray a blessing over everyone here, Father God. Amen. Amen. Well, we hope this podcast has inspired you on your journey of discipleship to Jesus. If you want to know more about our church, just go to abide.sydney. We'd love to get to know you. If not, you're from another place. Hey, why don't you share this with someone else? And hopefully it helps them as they continue to follow Jesus. Have a great week.