1Jn.2:3-6

I’m sure that you have been following the story about the stand-off between the cult in Waco, Texas and law enforcement officials. The leader of the group, which calls itself the Branch Davidian fellowship, is a man named David Koresh. Koresh has claimed not only to know Jesus Christ, but to actually be Jesus Christ.

Last week, he and his followers killed four Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents, wounded 15, and have held police at bay for the past week. They have a stash of weapons and ammunition in their compound that gives them some pretty serious firepower. It’s anybody’s guess how long they can hold out.

There’s something tragic about a man who claims to be Jesus Christ who would act this way. His conduct is so clearly at odds with his claims, that no one, except his followers, takes him seriously. He is obviously a deeply disturbed and dangerous man.

But before we write off David Koresh as a lunatic, let’s not miss the moral of the story. If you say that you know God, then your life is going to have to bear that out. Your words are going to be tested by your works.

That is exactly what John says in 1 John 2. We have already seen that John was a man who walked with Jesus. He talked with him, he heard him teach, he saw the miracles that Jesus did. There could be no arguing with the fact that Jesus Christ was an extraordinary man who lived, died, and rose from the dead, because people like John were eyewitnesses.

And the conclusion they came to was that Jesus Christ was God Himself; God in human form. They came to that conclusion because:

1. that’s what Jesus told them, and

2. His life bore that out

In other words, Jesus wasn’t like David Koresh, who claimed one thing and did another. He claimed to be God, and then he backed up that claim by acting like God - by doing things that no mortal man could ever do.

He healed the sick, he raised the dead, he caused the blind to see. He fed thousands of people with a little boy’s lunch. He commanded the wind and the waves to obey him and they did. He looked into people’s minds and told them what they were thinking. He hung on a cross and died a horrible death, only to walk out of his tomb three days later, alive and well.

Fantastic stuff? Legendary stuff? “No!” John says, “I saw it all with my own eyes. It happened. I was there.” Mark my words: Christianity stands or falls on the reliability of the testimony of the twelve apostles. If these things didn’t happen, if Jesus were not a historical person who actually did these things, then there’s no point in being a Christian.

A Christian is a person who believes in the historical Jesus. You can’t be a Christian if you think that Jesus was sort of an imaginary character who embodied all of our noblest ideals, but didn’t really exist. Believing that makes you a “myth-tian” - a person who believes in myths - not a Christian.

In 1 John 1:5, John says that Jesus showed us what God is like. He showed us that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. When you read about Jesus in the Gospels, it’s obvious that there is a luminous, light-giving quality about Him. He is clear, he is pure, he is radiant. He shines. Maybe that’s why the medieval artists, when they painted his picture, portrayed him with a halo, or a glow around his face.

There is no shadow in his character, no sense of concealment, dishonesty, or hidden motives. He is transparent. And yet the amazing thing is that this brightness and this purity didn’t scare people away. It attracted them.

Oddly enough, the people who were most attracted to Jesus were the people whose lives were most broken. The sinners - the publicans, the prostitutes - the people who were stumbling around in the dark, they were the ones who gravitated to him. Because they knew they were in the dark, and they wanted his light.

In 1 John 1, John tells us that if we walk with Jesus, our lives will take on that light-giving quality, too.

1 John 1:6-7 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

If you walk with Jesus, your life is changed. It’s as simple as that. Jesus takes you by the hand and leads you out of the darkness and into the light. That’s why we need to be walking with Jesus.

In chapter 2, John gives us three important principles about a person who is walking with Jesus.

1. Knowing Jesus is going to have consequences for your lifestyle.

2. Jesus reveals Himself to people who do his will.

3. Obeying the Word of God results in experiencing the love of God.

1. Knowing Jesus is going to have consequences for your lifestyle.

You’ve probably heard someone claim to be an agnostic. What does that mean? It means that, when it comes to the existence of God, you just don’t know. You’re not saying that God doesn’t exist, it’s just that you can’t be sure if he does or he doesn’t.

Actually, to admit that you’re an agnostic is to admit that you’re an intellectual coward. If you are an agnostic it is because you’re too afraid to come right out and be an atheist — to say that God doesn’t exist — because you know in your heart of hearts that He does. There’s too much evidence to indicate that He does. But an atheist insists that He doesn’t. You have to be brave to be an atheist!

But, on the other hand, if you are an agnostic, you are not willing to say for sure that God does exist, and that you can know Him, because that would have implications for your lifestyle. You’d have to start thinking about how God wants you to live. You’d have to come to grips with your responsibility before God as your Creator. So the agnostic throws up his hands and says “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody can know about God. I’m an agnostic. Now I can live however I want.”

An atheist willfully denies the truth about God, and lives however he wants. An agnostic pretends that no one can know the truth about God, and he lives however he wants. But did you know that there is a third position?

The word agnostic comes from the Greek word “gnosis”, which means “to know”. So an “a-gnostic” is someone who doesn’t know. But in John’s day, there was a group of people who called themselves the Gnostics, and there are people like that today. They called themselves Gnostics because they said “We do know God. We know all about him. We have the knowledge of spiritual things.” But they still lived however they wanted.

The problem with Gnostics was that there was no connection between their knowledge and their lifestyle. They said “How you live is not the issue; it’s what you know that really matters.” You see, they believed that your mind was far more important than your body. Your mind was spiritual, but your body was just temporal - it belonged to this material world that was passing away. They got this idea from Greek philosophy. So it didn’t matter what you did with your body - you could pig out, party down, have orgies, the whole bit, as long as your mind was fixed on spiritual things.

Sound like a strange idea? Well, not so strange as you might think. There are people today who call themselves Christians who essentially believe the same thing. They say “I know Jesus. I walk with Jesus. My mind is focused on spiritual things.” But then they go out and live like the devil.

What would you think of a pastor who took some of the offering money of his church and flew down to Atlantic City to gamble with it? Who had on his arm a different woman on each trip? Who introduced his secretary to another preacher so that he could have sex with her? Would you think he was a fine, upstanding Christian leader? There is such a pastor right here on Long Island.

What would you think of a person who said that he knew Jesus, but whose lifestyle was so unlike that of Jesus? Well, the Bible tells you what to think right here in v.3-4:

We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

Many Christians say “I know Jesus.” They can give a glowing testimony in church. They read their Bible. They can quote Scripture and say Hallelujah and Praise the Lord. They talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk.

Titus 1:16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him.

That’s not Christianity; that’s Gnosticism. “What I know is important; not what I do.”

But John says “To know Jesus is to obey him.” If you really know Jesus, it’s going to show in the way that you live.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had been playing with her toys all over the kitchen floor. When she was finished, she knew that she was supposed to pick them up. But in the meantime, her mother sat down at the piano in the living room and began to play some hymns. The little girl loved to sing, so she ran into the living room, sat down beside her mother, and started to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”

Just then, her Daddy came home from work. He saw the toys all over the kitchen floor, and his daughter sitting in the living room enjoying the music. He reminded her that she needed to go back to the kitchen and pick up her toys. But she didn’t make a move, and in a defiant little voice she said, “But I want to sing Jesus Loves Me.” To which her Daddy replied, “Honey, there’s no use singing God’s praises when you’re being disobedient.”

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. Go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

Jesus said there’s no use coming to church to worship God when you’re being disobedient.

Peter told husbands:

1 Peter 3:7 Be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Peter said, “Men, there’s no use praying when you’re treating your wife like dirt. You’re being disobedient. God doesn’t want your prayers; he wants your obedience. Devotion to God without obedience to God is just empty words.

David said in Psalm 51 “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

We all have a tendency to try to compensate for our disobedience in one area by an excess of devotion in another. But God tells us that he doesn’t want our devotion if we’re being disobedient. You just need to read Isaiah 1:15ff to discover that.

Is there an area of your life where you know you are being disobedient to God? Perhaps it is in your relationship with another person. Perhaps it is a habit that you are struggling to overcome. Perhaps it is in some aspect of your business or financial life. What are you going to do about it on the basis of this truth? Are you going to cover it over and pretend it doesn’t exist? Or are you going to deal with it?

1 John 1:8-9 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

2. Jesus reveals Himself to people who do his will.

We live in the Information Age. Everything you could possibly want to know about anything is available at your fingertips. And that is certainly true of the Christian world as well. There are more Christian books, and tapes, and CD’s, and computer software available to us today than ever before — all of it intended to help us grow spiritually.

As children of our culture — the information culture — we’ve taken an information approach to getting to know God better. We think that if we can just absorb more data about God, we’ll get to know Him better. So we buy the latest book, we tune into the greatest Bible teachers on the radio, we get hold of a thick Study Bible full of background information, thinking that all these things will help us to get to know God better.

But that’s not true. We’ve been taking an information approach to getting to know God when the Bible says that what we really need to take is an obedience approach.

John 14:21 Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

1 John 2:3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.

You want to get to know God better? Obey the Word of God. Mark Twain once said “It’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts I do understand.”

Because the Word of God shows us that there are things in our lives that we’re doing that we shouldn’t be doing, and there are other things that we’re not doing that we should be doing. And the big question is: are we going to obey God’s Word?

It’s not how much of it I know, but how much of it I obey that determines whether I grow in the knowledge of God. God reveals himself to people who do His will.

3. Obeying the Word of God results in experiencing the love of God.

1 John 2:5 But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.

The expression “made complete” means that it is perfected, it comes to full maturity. There is nothing lacking in a love that is made complete. There is some debate about the actual meaning of this verse - the Greek is a little ambiguous. Is this “love that is made complete” God’s love for us, or is it our love for God?

Actually, it may be both.

Think back to when you were a child. Your mother or father asked you to do something, and you did it. How did you feel? Did you not feel more love for them, and more love from them when you obeyed them? Obedience brought you into a fuller experience of your parents’ love.

This is how it is in our relationship with God. When we obey God, we are giving full expression to our love for him. Again, we go back to John 14:21…

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.

But when we obey God, we also remove any obstacle to experiencing His divine love for us. That verse goes on to say…

He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.

So obeying the Word of God results in experiencing the love of God. Obeying the Word of God enables us to get to know God better. Obeying the Word of God proves whether or not we really know Him. When we obey the Word of God, it changes the way we live. We no longer walk in the darkness, we walk in the light.