Children of God - Nick Gale

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. So, how are we? Hey, there we are. We've been working through a series called, yes, my name is, wow, Nicholas Gale. My mother wrote that. She was, if you don't know me, my name's Nicholas Gale, Nick's fine, I've been part of this church for a while, and we are currently working through a sermon series called Children of God. It is a journey through the book of 1 John, one of his shorter books, he wrote a few of the New Testament. And it's really cool. It's really cool. We get to see multiple sides of the personality of John in his authorship. We get to see his, obviously, he's very emotional, he's very loving and whimsical in his writing. But we get to see that pastoral, fatherly nature of him throughout this letter. But we also get to see a very firm understanding of doctrine and theology. And what it means to live as a Christian. And he kind of bounces his way through those different, I guess, attitudes or dispositions throughout this letter. And today we're reading from 1 John 2, verse 12 to 17 in our journey through the letter. I want to read it to you. This opening section, I might add, is some of the words are kind of odd when you really pay attention. You feel like I'm repeating myself. And we're going to discuss why that is. But let's read together. If you've got your scriptures, open up or here it says, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong. And the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Abiding in God. Abiding in God forever. It's a very common theme that we see in John's authorship, this abiding in Christ, this staying with Christ, this intimacy that we get to have with our heavenly father. See, as I said before, John has these kind of two tones he's speaking from, that pastoral loving tone and that doctrinal tone. So let's look at that first portion. I'm going to split this into kind of two. The two halves today. We're going to look at verse 12 to 14, and then we'll look at verse 15 to 17. So verse 12 to 14, we don't need to put it up just yet. I'll come back to that. Verse 12 to 14, that opening phrasing, it's a fascinating portion of scripture because John breaks down his readers into three categories. So there was the children, the father, and the young men, you noticed. And there's a bit of debate as to whether or not he's literally speaking to kind of their physical attribute, like where they stand. You know, life, or is he speaking to their spiritual disposition? Is he speaking to their potential maturity of faith or how long they've been in Christ? But with John's tendency to refer to his readers of all readers as children, we probably lean more towards the second disposition, that spiritual disposition. How long have these people been within Christ? And so when we look at it through that lens, we are, we need to understand first how John is writing. And what I mean by how is you're going to have to bear with me. I get real nerdy with the Bible. Sometimes literally speaking about like, remember when we all did English class at school, we're going to do a bit of Greek class. Uh, so, um, how John literally wrote this. And then we've got to look at what he's actually trying to convey because what he's trying to convey is completely intertwined with how he's written it. And it's not just nerding out for nerd sake. It's there's actually purpose to it. And the reason we understand these purpose. Sometimes is because we are English speakers in 2026 and the authorship of this was a Greek writer who was authoring to Greek speakers in what we presume is modern day Turkey. So the way that they understand the words on the pages that they received is completely different to how we will interpret them. It's for our benefit, but we were not the original audience. So we need to understand that, take a step back and go, okay, what's going on here? Now, you probably noticed there was a bit of flip-flopping between this authorship. He was saying, I am writing. And then we basically read the exact same thing. And he said, I write some manuscripts or some versions of the scriptures will read, I wrote or I write. But anyway, what we are discussing there is we in English have tenses. We have present tense. We have past tense and we have the future tense Greek. Had a similar thing. However, Greek had an additional tense, which was referred to as the aorist tense. Now, aorist was the idea of the state of something, not the time in which it occurred. So when John is writing to these people, he's both speaking about what he's physically doing in a time sense. And he's also speaking to the state of being of the concepts he's conveying to them. That's the aorist tense. The first sequence we see, he says, I am writing. It's encouragement. He's writing to inspire and to edify. So we see the great contrast here between verse 12 and verse 13. So what's he doing there? He's inspiring. He's edifying. He's building them up. He's saying, this is why I want to communicate with you. I believe in you. I have hope for you because this, just let me take a step back. I'm sorry. This is a church that's facing doctrinal issues and they're struggling and they're getting pulled to and fro with what they should believe and how they should believe it and how they should enact their faith. Right? And so because of that, that is my beautiful daughter. Because of that, very quiet daughter. Because of that, he is writing to them to bolster their faith. He's writing to them to bolster their heart, bolster them up in what they believe. He's saying to them, I am writing to you because you have overcome the evil one. Don't forget that. The moment of your salvation, the moment that you accepted Christ and you were in Christ, you overcame the evil one. So he's inspiring them. He's trying to build that. The second sequence, the Aorist sequence. I'm sorry. Hello, darling. Go back with mum, please. We have two kids and my cousin just got, my daughter's cousin, just got back and they're fighting them like crazy out in the foyer. Please forgive. The second sequence, I write to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. What he's done there, he's flipped his tense, right? And he's moved into what's called the completion tense. So this idea that he's speaking to the state of the thing that he has just projected to them because what his goal is, he doesn't want them to just, read this and go, oh, I need to be better. I need to live up to this thing. I hope, yeah, thanks. Thanks for the encouragement, John. He's not saying that. He's saying, whilst I am writing this to you, I believe this wholeheartedly that upon the point you receive this letter, you recognise that this is a truth about you, regardless of your attitude towards the truth. He's trying to convey to this audience that just because you don't feel it in the moment and just because you're struggling to obtain it, the truth is the truth, regardless of your disposition towards it. That's what he's trying to get across. And the reason he uses this tense and the reason Greek has this tense and we don't is because the Greeks were wildly philosophical. So the idea for an author, when they were penning a letter to their audience, something that was a huge consideration for them of great value, was the disposition of the reader's mind on it as well. They weren't comfortable with just settling with like, you've got this, mate. You're going to be okay. You promise you're going to be good. That's kind of the English way of doing it, right? We're like, oh, we believe in you. You've got this. The Greeks had this entire tense that they used to ensure that when they communicated with someone, the person had no doubts about the person's hope for them and the truth of the claim. Does that make sense? That's why he's written in this style. So what is he trying to convey to them? Obviously, we just spoke a little bit about it. There's that short, of phrasing of that confidence in their hope. But there's a really beautiful phrase that he used is you certainly, you notice in the first John, John 12, in the verse 12, I'm sorry, he says little children. And then in verse 13, we just says children. Now in English, it's just children and children, but in the Greek, he uses two different terms. The first version, he uses a term technia, which is from the term technon, which is the idea of a child, regardless of age, i.e. I'm 33 years old, but I'm still my father's child. No matter what happens in my life, I will always be the child of my father and I am a son. So that is how he opens this little portion of scripture. He's writing collectively to the whole body of believers. He's writing to all of them saying, you all fit this state of being. You all are children of God and you are all forgiven in your state. Your sins are forgiven, he says. So he opens with that. And then he flips in verse 13, but he uses a term there called pedia, which is from the word pedon, which is the idea of the developing age. So i.e. like an infant or a toddler. So then he flips and he says, in the next phrase, he says, I write. And so this is in the different phrasing as well. And he says, I write to these children, these infants kind of thing, right? And he's speaking to them in a way. So he's saying, you are dependent on God. So he's gone from, I believe this about you and your sins are forgiven. And then he flips into that completion state. He goes, even though just like everyone, all our sins are forgiven. He flips into that completion tense and that aorist tense. And he says to them, there is never a point in your journey of faith, no matter whether you're a father or a young man, as he goes on through that portion of scripture, that you are not dependent on Christ. You are not dependent on your father above. So he's drawing this beautiful parallel and comparison saying, whilst we all fit this category in our hope and in our beginning phrase, we also all fit this category at all times, regardless of fatherhood, regardless of anything that you might fit into in your spiritual maturity journey, you are never going to graduate from dependency on God. There is never a point in time that you can say, I write to these children, I write to these people, I write to these people. You can graduate from the place where your faith doesn't require the constant forgiveness of God. In other portions of scripture, John, I'm paraphrasing this. I don't have the exact reference. So the Nick paraphrase of it, he basically says, if you think you become a Christian and you will stop sinning, you're kidding yourself. He knows that people will sin. He knows that no matter what happens in your life of faith, you're going to sin. You're going to forget these things, but the truth of it exists regardless. The truth of the truth maintains no matter what the scenario you find yourself in. And that's what he's trying to convey. He's trying to say, no matter what moment of your journey of faith you find yourself in, you are always going to be a child of God that requires forgiveness. You are always going to know your father, as he says about the fathers and little children, you are always, always going to overcome the evil one. And you will be able to be strong in that because you overcame the evil one. He's a collective of the entire experience of our faith, no matter where we find ourselves. And then, so he gets out of that moment, right? He's encouraged them. He's bolstered them. He's reminded them of their truth. And then he flips out of that super pastoral tone. And he goes back to this kind of like doctrinal, firm, heavy tone. And he says in verse 15, is not from the father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. The world, what is the world? It can't be the physical world because we know that God created the physical earth and he said, it's good, right? God created the physical earth. And in Acts says, God has made the world and all things in them. It could be, it's not the human world because we're not meant to avoid the human world because John 3, 16, for God so loved the world. I mean, take it one step further, right? Like we're actually encouraged to engage with mankind. We're encouraged to love your neighbour as yourself. We're encouraged to pray for your enemies as well. So it like clearly the world there, it's not speaking about people. It's not speaking about earth. So what is it speaking of? It's speaking about a system. And this is, it feels strange to say, but it's a very, very normal concept that we use all the time in life. For example, if you grew up in Australia, you would have heard of nine's wide world of sports. It is not another planet. It is not a different species of being. It is a system or a construct of rules and regulations and ideas that manage a functioning outworking, a functional outworking. I'm sorry. That is what we're speaking. My wife had firsthand experience of this yesterday. I was blessed to go to church in a beautiful place called Greenacre. I, uh, on Waterloo road and plenty of people by not laughing, I realised have not been to Greenacre in this room. If you have been to Greenacre, you would understand you have driven through another country on some parts of the streets. It is a completely different world. My wife is sitting in the car and she literally said the words, she was like, it's a different world here. She was like, what on earth is going on? Science are in another language. People all look different. Food is completely different. You're in another experience. You're in another culture, in another system, even though you're within the big system that everything exists within. Right? And so the world that John is speaking of is a system of Satan. We don't like calling it out that abruptly sometimes, but it's just the truth. The system that John is referring to is Satan. It is evil. And let's go one step further. Ephesians 6, 12. It's not just John's idea. This is the whole Bible presenting this to us in the New Testament. Paul writes, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. This is what John is referring to. The evil, the satanic evil, the satanic, the stuff that is not of God's kingdom. So that's what he's referring to, but what actually is it? Right? Because that's a tough thing to put your finger on. You're like, okay, so like define world for me then so that I can walk out of here, Nick. And I know, well, I don't do that. And I do do this and I don't do that. And I do do this. That's also not the point because in 1 Timothy, right? Paul writes to Timothy, a young pastor. He says, he gave us richly all things, to enjoy. Okay. So what do I do with that now? If everything on earth was given to me by God and I'm able to enjoy things, what's the world and what's not the world? What can I love? What can I not? If the created experience, the visceral experience of the world around me, God has made that I can enjoy, what do I or don't I engage with? Worldliness is far less about the physical activities that you find yourself performing. And it's actually about the attitude of your heart, the disposition of your heart, the disposition of your heart, the disposition of your heart, the way you interact with the thing that you do. See, there's like many activities in life that are definitely wrong. The Bible is absolutely black and white, crystal clear, cannot argue with it. You've got, you know, stealing, lying, sexual sin, idolatry, all of that witchcraft, that stuff, black and white. We're not arguing about it. This church will never bring those things up as, well, maybe, no. There is sexual sin. There is lying. There is stealing. These things are black and white. But I'm also aware there are hundreds of activities that occur in our everyday life that the Bible says nothing about. People have plenty of opinions about what is or isn't worldly, but the Bible says nothing about them. And so they're the things, right, that you go, well, what do I do with those things? And that's where the questions come up because it's very obvious, right? Sexual sin. Don't be worldly? Wait till you get married to have sex. Easy, easy thing to achieve. But you could also live your life as a Christian, avoiding questionable venues and avoiding questionable scenarios, and you are no more godly than the person next to you. Just because you avoided something doesn't make you a Christian. Just because you didn't do something doesn't make you a Christian. Take getting drunk, right? Getting drunk is absolutely wrong. Drinking alcohol, questionable. I've got non-Christian mates that do not touch alcohol at all. They are not of God. So clearly it's not the thing, right? But what you do with the thing that starts to matter. So John writes in verse 15, If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The extent in that we love the world has a direct correlation to the extent in that we love our Heavenly Father. That's what John is comparing here. He's trying to draw attention to the fact that when you shift your focus to something else and it replaces the way that you interact with God, now you are loving the world. So it's not the thing, it's the approach to the thing. It's the attitude you have towards the thing. It's the way you relate to it. There's a beautiful, beautiful theologian called Warren Wispy. He's amazing at what he does. And he summarized the idea of interacting with the world so beautifully. And it's simply this, anything in a Christian's life that causes him to lose his enjoyment of the Father's love or his desire to do the Father's will is worldly and must be avoided. Anything. It could be running. You could be a fitness fanatic and your entire sense of identity comes from and your entire sense of inner peace comes from whether or not you went for a run today. If that is your disposition for inner peace, it's worldly and it needs to be corrected because it's shifting the way that you relate to your Father. Jesus himself said that if you love me, you'll obey my commands. So if we are struggling to obey the commands of our Father, because there is something that is sitting in the way of obeying him, that's the issue. Because I don't want my heart today, please understand, my heart today is never that someone walks out of here and they've got a spreadsheet of like a pros and cons column of following Christ. And they're like, all right, here's all the things I can do. And here's all the things I can't do. And as long as I kind of, you know, yin yang it out each week and I have more in this side than this side, I'm not worldly. No, that's not the heart of this message. It's not my heart for this message. I'm also fully, fully aware that it is so easy to sit in the seat and sit there and I do it to myself all the time. And I think through my week and I go, oh my goodness, I need forgiveness. Like it's a tough test. When you're really honest with yourself, like we're all very good at being semi-honest with ourselves, I think. Like we all love being like, hmm, worldliness is really bad. So bad for that guy sitting next to me that really needs to hear this message. You know, we all do it. I do it. I do it all the time. Moment of confession. But when we're truly, deeply honest with ourselves, I reckon every day of our lives, there is something that trips us into that worldly place. There's something every day that trips us into, it's on me, not on God. I don't take my hope in my salvation. I take my hope in what I can figure out for this situation or what I can do for this. And that's what John is speaking to. And that's why John wrote that letter. That's why John used that present tense and that aorist tense, because he said, I know the world is coming at you like a freight train, but in that space of it coming at you and firing up against you, and you are constantly, as Paul wrote in Ephesians, fighting against the spiritualities, stand firm and know. Know and know and know that you are forgiven, that you know your father and that you have overcome evil. That is the point John is trying to make. He's not condemning the fact that the world is going to come at you like nothing else and that you are going to trip up and you are going to fall short and you are going to sin again because he himself says it. If you think you're not going to sin again, you're wrong. You will sin again. But it is not a free ticket to sin. It is not a get out of jail free card. Well, I've got forgiveness, therefore doesn't matter. It's none of that. If you are submitting to the will of God and you understand that, that you are under God the Father, you have all these truths and you will, as Jesus said, want to obey the commands. You will want to live for Jesus Christ. And the worldly things are the things trying to divide you. They're trying to pull you away, pull you to another place. Say, don't obey him. Look for this. Don't go to Jesus. Go over here. We do it every day. And I am so, so comforted when I read about this and I think about this by the person I am. The person of King David. I'm so comforted by it. Because King David, right? Let me just find my notes. I've got to read this list out because it's brilliant. Not brilliant, but it's brilliant. This guy, right? He refused to go to war when they were meant to go to war. He sees a woman on a rooftop, says, I'm going to sleep with that person, gets her pregnant and then orchestrates the murder of her husband. And then, a few weeks later, months maybe, someone shows up, tells him a story about someone similar and David's response is, that guy is rubbish and should be killed. And the person telling him goes, that guy's you, right? And David's now like, oh my gosh, well, he's me. Anyway, he moves on in life. Later on in life, God gives him a very strict command. Trust me in this war, not yourself, not your, not your own strength, not your own might. Trust me in this war. What does David do? He goes, thanks God, let me go count all the soldiers and I'll figure out the battle plan here. So how does God respond? Puts a plague over all of Israel. This guy has caused his entire nation to get a plague because he's kept going back to him himself, right? Also, David, you read other parts of scripture, described as a man after God's own heart. Please help me make sense of that because I can't. It's wild, right? But I take comfort in that fact. Not because I now have an excuse to go sleep with someone's wife, get them pregnant and murder their husband. No, I don't have an excuse to do that. It is wrong. It is evil. It is absolutely worldly. But what I do have confidence in is that the forgiveness, that complete forgiveness that comes from my relationship to God as a child, as a child of God overcomes that. That overcomes that. It atones for that. That's what we're singing about. It covers that. And that is what God is speaking. That's what John is speaking to here. He's saying, I know the world is going to come at you. I know it's going to hit you like a freight train. I know that no matter what you try and do, this is still going to happen. That's why he establishes the edifying truth and the encouraging truth of this is who you are. This is what you are. And this, this is how you can live your life regardless of what happens. And then he reminds them, do not go for the world. Do everything you can to avoid it and stay away from it. Everything you can. But how could David, a thousand years before this scripture was written, know that? How could he have peace in that? It's also because David, a thousand years before Paul penned this, knew this truth to be true. Paul just put words to it a thousand years later. Let's look at this. Romans 8, 38 verse 39. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, nor present nor future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That truth is true no matter what happens. That truth isn't saying, I want to specify this. It's not saying off you go, live like David's worst days. Because it's all good. It's not saying that. It's saying even when the world drew on David, even when the world begged him to forsake his loving father, nothing will overcome the loving father that says not my child. I will hold my child in my arms because they are mine. They are forgiven. They have known me from the beginning and they overcome evil. That's what John is saying. That truth overcomes the pull of the world. You will have the moments where you stumble. You will have the moments where you fall. You will have the moments where the world desires you and attracts you in. But it will never hold you if you are in Christ. If you are in Christ, it can never win. That's what David knew. He knew that even though he royally ruined it, he could stand before God and said, but my heart is for you. And God knows that. He knows it. He looks at every single, every single person that he created that is in him. The scriptures use this beautiful language. You are in Christ. You're not just with him. You don't just know him here. You don't just have a disposition towards Christian ethics. You are in Christ. When we can wrap our heads around that, it gets real cool. Because what it's saying is, there is a world that exists outside of the system of Christ. And it is knocking on the edge of Christ, begging you to step back out. And sometimes we're going to do it. But Christ is saying, not mine. Never stays out there. It's mine. He's in me. You are in me. You are mine. And nothing in this world, neither death, nor life, nor angel, nor demon, nor present, nor future, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything, beats God. Beats God. Nothing beats Him. We might not like the outcome. It doesn't beat Him. Us liking the situation has no bearance on the matter. It's the fact that we are in Christ. And that's John's letter. He's reminding them, you're in Christ. I'm writing this to encourage you and I'm writing it so that you know. So that you don't fall for the lie. the temptation. of the world, you maintain, you stay the course, you're encouraged. And it's so easy to sit down sometimes and hear a message like this and go, but what on earth do I do with that? I get it. I think more than I do. Pastor George is the best influence in my life because he reminds me just sitting with God is so much better than trying to understand Him. Because you'll get frustrated. So what do you do with that? You devote yourself to Him. You put on the full armour of God. You fellowship with believers. You worship. You glorify God. Because when your attention is fixed on something, it will only be on that. It will only draw you to it. It's a skating, surfing, ice skating, roller. It's a law in all of those sports. What you're looking at is where you'll go. You can't look there and not think that your body will pull you that way. So how you devote yourself to God is the exact way that you combat the pull of the world. And this isn't a lesson on like, oh, well, you better do the rice devotional thing or whatever. Or there was the soap one at some point. I'm not telling you how to devote yourself to God. I'm telling you to devote yourself to God. Your quiet time might just be sitting and worshipping. Your quiet time might be studying. But if you're not with God, you can't know Him. And I want to encourage us to stand here tonight, this morning, I'm sorry, because we're going to go back into a moment of worship. And the team are going to, they're going to come up. We're singing. And it's not to force you to do something you might not like doing. It's to help you understand that when you hear a message like this, and when you don't know what to do with the information that's been given to you, the best response is to simply honour God with worship. It's the easiest response that you will ever have in your life to know your loving Father, to know your King, to recognise that the world won't win and nothing beats God. As we sing, I want to also ask you, if you need prayer, please come forward and ask for prayer. Our pastors are down here. Please come forward and ask for prayer. That we can encourage you and build you up and edify you and help you on this journey. Because that is the entire point of John's writing. I want to finish with what he opened with as a blessing, so to speak. Because he opened his letter with this. I write to you children because you know the Father. I write to you fathers because you know Him who is from the beginning. And I write to you young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. If you stand here today and say, I am a believer in Jesus Christ. He is my God and my Saviour. That is true for you. No height, no depth, no anything will ever change you. Nothing will ever change that fact. So as we sing, please, worship God in a response. Fix your gaze, your spiritual eyes to Him. Fix your heart and your posture towards Him. And please come forward for prayer. Please come forward for prayer if you need it. It's not a thing to be ashamed of. It's nothing to be weeded out by. We all need prayer. We all need help. Let me pray. Let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, we thank You that we are confident in the fact that You are our King and our God, that You knew us before the world was established, that You've known us since the beginning. Lord, we ask for Your strength and Your Holy Spirit to empower us this week as we understand that at all times, we are not fighting our fellow man and we're not fighting creation. We're fighting against spiritual powers. We're fighting against the spiritual system. Remind our soul this week that You are ever present, that You are ever near in our time of need, that no matter what pulls at us, no matter what tugs at us, no matter what comes in the way of our gaze being fixed on You, You are right there. You are with us, that we are found in You. Lord, I ask that You would bless every person in this church. Would You be with them? Would You be near to them? Would You go before them? Heavenly Father, we honour You with our lips. We honour You with our thoughts. We honour You with our minds, Heavenly Father, that You would be lifted up holy and righteous this week in our lives, that we would stand firm and against the. the arrows of the enemy. God, build us up this week. Encourage us, strengthen us, give us a fortitude to know these truths of Scripture. In Jesus' name, Amen. We're going to sing, please. 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. 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. ♪♪♪