First John 3:16-18 How we know Christs Love
1 John 3:16-18 · Roger Henderson · Jul 17, 2022
Letters of John (2022), No. 23
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261927461886

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, well today we're gradually going through chapter three in 1 John, and today we're to a very interesting set of verses. 1 John 3, I'm sorry, 1 John 3, 16 to 18. And ask the question, actually, there's a question to ask in this lesson. Basically, how do we know Christ's love? That's kind of the question. And I think that if I were to ask that question to most people, if we weren't looking at 1 John necessarily, I'd say, well, how do we know Christ's love? I think many, many people would say, well, Roger, all we've got to do is turn to one of the most familiar verses in the Bible. in the Gospel of John, verse 316. And it's really interesting that people have noticed there's an interesting parallel between the Gospel of John 316 and the First John Letter 316. They discuss a very similar topic. And they both answer the question about knowing Christ's love.

So in John 3.16 in the Gospel it says, So it talks about the fact that he gave his only begotten son. And we're going to see that same concept as we say the verses today. But the demonstration of God's love is declared in John 3, 16, the gospel. And this case is talked about in terms of how do we know that you truly are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's going to be John's question in these three verses. So let's go on to the next slide here. I got to get my, hopefully this will work. Well, come on. Okay, well, let's see here. Oh, okay, there we go. Well, let's try this way. Okay, so the first verse in verse 16, we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

And it goes on, but whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? And then lastly, very familiar term that John uses, little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth. So these are marvelous verses, but you notice the tone here. The tone is about how can the love of God be in a believer if he doesn't demonstrate something, doesn't demonstrate that love. That's kind of, and also about the fact of laying down his life for us.

So we're gonna go through these verses in detail. Okay, all right. So let's start with the first verse. So we start off in the first verse. Another thing that John is so good about, each of these verses and each of the sections, I've kind of taken each verse and kind of put it in three or four sections, depending upon the verse, but they actually are very, very, they have the subject, the verb, and a direct object many times, and then a modifier. So we start off with that pattern in this verse, we know, So I take it here, John means we, meaning John the disciple or apostle, and believers, we include ourselves here. So we know something, we know. Know is here, is gnosko, to be taking in knowledge.

It's what we call the know of experience. So we've experienced something and we gain knowledge based upon that. So it's in the perfect tense, which is the idea of past completed action with abiding results. So let's see how that kind of plays out here. It's going to be important in this verse. So we have come to know by experience. So he's saying, brothers and sisters, we've come to know by experience something.

And the object here is love, agape, God's love. So we could render it based upon the perfect tense, we could render it, we have experienced God's love in the past, and continue to experience God's love in the present. So I kind of thought about this, I thought, wow, this is talking about the fact that When we come to know the Lord Jesus, we experience God's love.

We're born again. We come into a relationship that we never had before. And that continues on. And we continue that relationship. And we experience God's love up into the present. And it becomes a permanent part of us. So that's the perfect tense. That's the essence of the perfect tense. So it says, we know love by this, or in this, and know here modifies, by this modifies know. We know something. So now we're gonna see, what do we know? And this is pretty basic stuff. We know something.

The next part of the verse is gonna tell us what we know. that he laid down his life for us. We know that from John 3, 16, and we know it from just the whole, certainly all of scripture speaks of that. So he, Christ, laid down, tithami, I think that's pronounced. The idea is to put, place, or set. And this time, it's a fact. Something happened. Eris tense, it's a fact. He laid down his life.

And his life is this word, suki, suke, the idea of breath, the breath of life, the soul. And we could go off on a little rabbit trail here, but I decided not to do that. I wanted to kind of get through the, and kind of keep focused here. But he laid down his life, his soul, his breath, And that's Hupayr on behalf of us, and it modifies laid down. So what's cool is Harris – this is W.H. Harris, as pointed out, he's a good resource for 1 John. That laying down, that phrase laying down, John uses it. It's Tithami again.

It's unique to the Gospel of John and to 1 John 3.16. So something he uses uniquely in talking about what Christ accomplished. And it happens in like eight places, seven in the Gospels and only one time in the letter in 1 John. And so here's one of the ones in the gospel, the first one actually, and it uses this wonderful picture that we all love to hear the Lord talk about. He says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. So we're going to look at this. It's pretty amazing. We're going to look at how we.

We take what the Lord did, and what John tells us is we should be doing the same thing. Well, the question is, is this gonna be a one-time act? Are we to lay down our lives like the Lord did at a point in time, or is this something that's a continuous part? I'm already kind of biasing you here, but we're heading that direction. If you have questions, let me know, speak up.

Okay, and it says, so now he says, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. So we believers, John including himself, he uses the word ought, it's to owe, it speaks of continuous action in the present. And so it's present tense, indicative, active. So it's speaking of, and so right here off the bat, this verb tense, this helps us here because if we think this is a one-time act, this kind of may change our mind about this. This is present tense.

So how do I, I only have one life, right? So it's gotta be, if it's present tense, it's continuous action. So how does it all work out? So hopefully we can answer that. So once again, very simple language. We ought to lay down our lives. On behalf of the brethren, So Weiss, I got a couple of quotes here.

Weiss points out, right off the bat, it must be kept in mind that our Lord's death had atoning value, right? He died for the sins of the whole world, 1 John 1, 9. He is a propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. So his death was for the whole world.

Well, our laying down our lives is more in the area of service, right? He said, serving our fellow brother, fellow man. And then Constable has, this is good, he shows, kind of speaking of the tense here of the verb, Jesus Christ laid down his life once, and we ought to lay down our lives habitually, continuous action, as the verb tense tells us, and self-sacrificing love, as the tense of the Greek verb suggests. So this helps a lot. So we aren't, you know, the Lord's not asking us to do some heroic one time act for our brothers, but he is actually asking us to, as we walk with him and his life is lived out through us, that will be demonstrated in our love for our brethren.

Okay. So that's verse 16. Any, I'm going to go on to go on to 17. Any questions about this verse? Yeah, go ahead. Just a passing thought here in looking at verse 16. Okay. We have come to know the love. There's a definite article there. Okay. The translators have supplied of God. It's like there's an intensity there. This is the specific love that God has in you. He explains it in the next phrase. He assumes that you and I understand that this is God's love. It's perfect love. Exactly. No, that's good, Roy. That's real good. Yeah, definitely. The love spoken of here has to be Christ's love, has to be God's love. That's good. That's good. And it's demonstrated, that love was demonstrated by an action, right?

Just like the Lord's going to ask believers, or as believers trust Him, They're going to live out God's love continuously as they live their life. Whereas the Lord, and the Lord loves us continuously too. The other half of that is then, that's God's side. Our side is, we're coming to know His love and experience when we love one another. It's the same way that He loved us that we love each other. Right. Right. And it's his love, not our love. Yeah, it's the embodiment of his two commands, you know. Right. Believe on whom he has sent and love one another as I have loved you. Good. Very good. Very good. Great. Okay. All righty, so now we're gonna move on to verse 17. So now he's gonna say, he's gonna give up what I think is, I think most think is a hypothetical example. So let's read verse 17.

He says, but I'll read the whole verse and come back to the first phrase, or first part of it. But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? So his question with this verse is, how does the love of God abide in him for a believer who closes his heart against his fellow believer?

That's his question. Okay, so let's start with the first part. But, or now, whoever, has, echo, speaking of another present tense, speaking of habitual possession, he has something. He has the world's goods. So now we got to understand what does he mean by the world's goods? Is he speaking of a rich man, poor man? What kind of person is he speaking about? So both of those words are going to help us understand what's he talking about here.

So world's goods or world here, there's several – and the world can be the world in a sense of... So I'm a little bit wrapped around the axle here. But I think in this sense, let's just focus on this sense right now. This sense is since it's connected with the world's goods, it's a very ordinary sense. It's a sense in which he has what it takes to live in the world.

And goods is going to help us even more. Goods are the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter. So this is what we would say an ordinary person. I'm not sure statistics why but most people have food clothing and shelter at least in this country Most people have that they can if they don't have a thing.

So so it's a person like that So is that the so he says? But whoever has the world's goods Now he says and notice we have all these ands in here we have but whoever has the world's good and Sees his brother and closes his heart. So I just repeated but now whoever Sees and this is this is one of my many favorite words in scriptures that areo Have you ever gone to a theater? And got how I love this word How will I love this word? He he would describe it really and and and I know cool You get intensely involved in something you go to the theater and you become whatever the movie is you You become that person you get so intense you you lose you forget about yourself, which is good.

Sometimes. Hopefully it's a good movie. It's not But so this is something that you're seeing, you're intensely interested. And a good verse for this, and it's present tense, continuous action. We're going to see how that helps here in a second. The one about Simon Peter.

Remember John and Peter were rushing to the tomb? after the resurrection, and Peter entered the tomb, and he saw, he said, the linen wrappings lying there. So he didn't just glance at them, he looked at them intensely. I think you would too. Well, there's nobody in them. Well, he's gone. I mean, that's pretty big. So he didn't just, it wasn't a slight glance, it was an intense glance, looking at Wow, the Lord's not here. So this idea is whoever sees him.

So we're going to get a sense here that this is not just a casual glance at your brother. You look at your brother, the example that John wants to use, you look at your brother and you study your brother. You're not just saying, well, I heard so-and-so, John, you know, Joe Blow told me that, you know, Sam and our congregation has a need. And you hardly know the person. No, you know about this person. You studied him.

So at the census here, he's seeing a Christian in need of the necessities of life over a long period. He gets that long period, I believe, from the present tense. So he says, whoever sees his brother, his brother in need, And need here is a necessity, not a want. So he says he sees his brother over a long time period. So this kind of sets the stage for what he's going to say.

So you know there's a brother in need that you know. And you know it not just in one instant. You know it over a time period. So what happens then? But whoever closes, that is to shut up. It's a snap close is the idea. And it's a point fact. It happened. Aoristensis is always a point. Speaking of a fact of the action.

Closes his heart. He snaps closed. The physical organ of the heart is flanking on all the intestines, your gut. So we points out here that it speaks here of this person who snapped shut the door of his heart Toward his needy brother. So remember I believe John is to this is a hypothetical. He has he's not At the moment. He's not claiming that Well, I don't know I barely that for a second because he because some people think that he is gonna he is speaking to a certain people and he's a with So it speaks here of snapping shut his heart toward his needy brother. And it would be a Christian. He's speaking of fellow believers in this passage. Okay, so now he asks this question.

How does the love of God abide in him? How is it possible? or better. So here we have a case where we have the love of God, and it can be translated a couple of ways. One way, as at the bottom of the footnote says, it can be our love for God, or it can be, as I believe it is, and I think others believe it is, God's love for us. And Roy knows about this subjective versus objective, but I'm not going to get into the details of that.

So we're going to choose to look at it as God's love for us. This is God's love for us. How is it possible that God's love for us abides or remains or dwells, present tense, continuous action, in him, the believer? So he's asking, how is it possible that this guy shuts his heart How does God's love for us abide in Him? So here's my explanation, and maybe it's an explanation that many here would say.

So we think of our position and our condition. Positionally, every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit and should show forth God's love as he abides in him. But in the believer's condition, he may not be abiding in Christ and therefore not showing God's love. But what's interesting is this question that's been asked, people looked at it a slightly different way, and I'm going to present that at the very end here. But this is how I would explain this, that that could happen. It could happen to a believer that he could not be abiding and could shut his heart.

But it seems a pretty, you know, what the picture John has set up is pretty You know, it's hard to grasp that a believer would do that. But anyway, that's his question. So now he's going to—so let me just stop there. Verse 18's going to be—he's going to tell—he's going to encourage us. He's going to encourage us to a course of action.

But any thoughts on verse 17? I notice there's a verse in John 14, 7 that says, "...the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold him or know him but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. That's another use of this coming to know here in this text that we're looking with the perception of looking with the eyes is magnified to the point where it's a spiritual knowledge that only the Holy Spirit can give us. When we look at another believer, we don't just see another human being. We see someone God loves just like He loves us, and we can detect when they have a need. And the world can't. They don't even, they don't perceive that. They don't have that ability. No, that's good, Roy. That's really good.

Yeah, you know, this whole verse 17 is a very, very interesting picture of of you know what can happen that now that uh... and but it should not happen that should not be happening to a believer because he he has the ability like you say to understand what's going on he he's experienced god's love and therefore why wouldn't he want to show forth god's love uh... seems on that it seems unnatural not not net you know unnatural for a believer not to want to show forth god's love and i i think that you're you're using the uh... not the objective genitive, but subjective. Yeah, it's God's love. God's love for us, yes.

Right, and so that's fellowship, right? Right. We're not in fellowship with him. Is that how you would take that? Well, yeah, okay. I would say he's not abiding, right? He's not abiding in him. If, if that person does that and closes his heart, he's not abiding in Christ. He's not in fellowship with him.

That's kind of what John's all about. He's saying, you know, and John's also about, uh, that fellowship with him, right. It's going to be seen in our actions. I mean, John is much about that. He's in much about, um, that our actions audit ought to demonstrate what's in our heart and where we're at. That's what John's about. Right. That's sort of the whole theme of the book, isn't it? Exactly. Exactly. No, that's great. Okay. Alrighty. So, let's go on to the... We're going a little bit faster than I thought we would, but...

And you guys can ask questions in the room here, too. You're allowed to. It's a sparse group here, but it's a friendly group. They're all smiling at me, so that's good. Okay, all right, here we go. All right, and this is a cool verse. This is really cool.

Okay, little children, let us not. So he starts off the negative and then goes to the positive. Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth. Okay, so let's look at that. Little children. And this is one of John's favorite words, little children, little born ones. And actually, what I did, I did a quick search of little children or little born ones. And in the gospel, it occurs in the gospel of John and in 1 John. And I have that at the very end of the presentation, so we can look at that at the end, just how many times John addresses Believers as little children a little born ones being born again So it's it's pretty cool. I left that for the very last so little children and I decided to go with the inner linear here because it it helps me to Show let us and and that's what let us love.

I'm sorry. Let us love not So he gives a negative first let us love not and it's another present tense. He's speaking continuous action here and So it's agapio, which corresponds to agape, the noun. So it's God's love. And this might be a little bit too geeky, or I don't know. Anyway, Daniel Wallace, which is a book that Vern got us acquainted with. He points out this is subjunctive, present subjunctive.

So he says, this is used, subjunctive, to urge someone to unite with the speaker in the course of action. And that's exactly what John's trying to do here, right? He wants, he's encouraging his believers, little-born ones, not to do something, but to do something else, right? Not to love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in truth. So he's urging us That's what I want you to do. I don't want you to just talk about something and just wag your tongue. I want you to be acting in God's truth, which is carried out in deeds.

Okay. So here's another case where this, let us not lose heart in doing good. Kind of a parallel idea. So what follows is his desire for his little-born ones. This is what John desires that his little-born ones be involved in. Hey, Roger? Yes, go ahead.

Just a passing word here. The Byzantine text used by the King James has a personal pronoun, of me. Children of me. Whereas the text coming out of Alexandria doesn't have that. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, but the bottom line is he's addressing fellow believers that he's led to the Lord and has nurtured them. So his focus is on believing children of his. They're very personal to him. Right. Exactly. Exactly. No, that's good. That's good.

Little children really kind of brings that across strongly. He uses that just to, you know, this is, he's kind of bringing his fellow believers alongside and saying, here's, here's what we should be doing, brothers and sisters. You know, this is, should be our course of action in our lives. That's great. And doesn't it mean, let us not love with just word or with tongue? That's kind of what it's saying, because you can show love with your words. That's true.

He's saying not with just words or with tongue, I think. Well, yeah, I think it's in his point, wouldn't you say in this point is that you can talk about, well, brother, I heard that you had a need, like I could, I could say, I could say, yeah. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. You know, you could say, brother or sister, so-and-so. You could say, well, I've heard about your situation.

It sounds really bad. How are you doing with that? I hope you're holding up. We're praying for you. How many times have you heard people do that? We're praying for you. I don't know what, and that's encouraging. I'm not saying that, that's Vani's point. You could say, I'm praying for him, but boy. You could be. But isn't it more encouraging when they maybe show up at your doorstep and they say, hey, I'd like to help you. How can I help you? I'll go to the store for you. I'll do this. That's another level, and I think that's what John's about here. You can talk, and that can be encouraging. Boy, but deeds carried out in Christian love is what he's talking about. That's kind of the point.

Roger? Yes, go ahead. I just thought of a parallel verse to this verse in James. to James 2 16 Okay, yeah 15 and 16 maybe if a brother or sisters without closing clothing and in need of daily food and one says and one of you says to them go in peace be warm and be filled and Yet, you do not give them what is necessary for their body. What use is that and Excellent. No, that's great. Yeah. Excellent. No, that's really good. And that's, that's exactly the sense I believe this is about.

There's a lot of parallels here. You know, John is much about our actions should demonstrate who we are much about that. Our life should demonstrate that. That's what he's trying to tell these believers here. So that's great. Thanks for sharing that. That's really good.

One of the, one of the things that occurs to me is that it is, generated by the Holy Spirit that we can perceive a real need. In our world, there's a lot of people asking for things. There's not a real need. It's the Holy Spirit that makes us discern that correctly. No, that's good, Roy. And I really like the fact that that idea was present tense in the earlier verses.

It's over some time period. It's not just a one time shot where boom, you know, and we hear all the time, you know, you get a newsflash. So and so are having problems and people, you know, we're we may empathize with that. But this is a situation where you understand what's going on in this fellow believer's life. You understand that. And that's That really narrows down and makes it more – you're not as likely to be taken in by false claims. And that's a concern that I think John had, and actually, Harris is going to bring it out at my last little quote here.

Let me get there. Okay, so now we're going to look at the contrast, the contrast between word or with tongue and indeed and in truth. So you could translate this, it's with word, in the numerical standard it's with word or with tongue, but it could be translated in word or in tongue, and that actually might be the better translation. So, word here is logos, expression of thought, discourse, speech.

And it was interesting, and Vani asked me about this. I found that Wyss, when he translated the last two parts of this verse, he liked to use in the sphere of. He used in the sphere of words, in the sphere of the tongue, in the sphere of deeds, in the sphere of truth. And so he didn't have much other explanation for why he did that.

But it seems to me that he's talking about words a lot, you know, there can be a multitude of words. You can wag your tongue a lot. It's like the whole sphere of words, the whole sphere of the tongue. So he, and I pointed out in each of these. So he says, we're not to be loving with word in the sphere of words, or, and tongue, glossa, the organ of speech. So he has here in the sphere of tongue, So Harris, this is good, I really like this. So he observed that if you look at, we have two nouns here, you have the word as a noun and tongue as a noun.

And so it looks like, and I hadn't seen this, he said, obviously words are produced by the tongue, right? You can't have, the organ of speech God's given us is our tongue. So words are produced by the tongue. The admonition here is, the believer is not to love with words which are produced by his tongue. And now he's going to say, but here's the contrast I want you to do. So we're not to love with words which are produced by his tongue.

So I thought that was kind of neat. That kind of spoke to me. And he actually uses that for these set of nouns. And then he uses it for the next set, deed and truth. Okay, so the last part is, but indeed and in truth. So but here is Allah, strong contrast, indeed. Indeed here is a work, an act. You're doing something. And here again, Weiss comes in with this idea of sphere of deeds, and in truth.

Aletheia, and as was pointed out, I think it was last week, truth in scripture, truth is reality. And that actually defines what truth is. Truth is gonna be defined as the underlying reality at the base, agreeing with what it appears to be. And so truth is to drive your deeds. For a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, truth drives your deeds, not as, where do we get, truth comes from God's word.

Again, Wiest has it implied here in the sphere of truth. So again, here we have the two sets of nouns. So, a deed is produced by truth. I thought that was really cool. You just don't do a rant, you know, the deed is something that agrees with what the truth is. And I think Roy points out, the believer is in a unique position to understand truth. He can understand the truth that the world cannot see. And maybe he looks and he finds out that, you know, this brother needs something that, you know, he finds out the truth of the situation.

All right, so here's, Any last thoughts on these three verses? And I was going to go back and answer a question here in a second. So any more thoughts on this verse, verse 18? Roger, it reminds me of sometimes, rarely, but occasionally, some people show up at the church right after the service in need of something.

And I know that you and Mike have to sort of discern, really discern their need, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that's where the truth comes in here, right? I mean, we could just randomly hand them a, you know, a $50 bill, but that probably wouldn't be the best course of action. And the other thing is, are they, you know, according to this verse, you're seeing your brother in need. So we don't know whether this person that shows up at the door is a brother or not.

Yeah. And it could, oftentimes it could be that they're doing it to a lot of churches and it's more of a, it's a game or a scam. Exactly. Yeah. No, I agree. And that's, and that's where I think the truth, you know, your deeds are to be in truth that, that, that a deed is produced by the truth. No, that's great.

Remember the time you took a person to another church. My daughter says, Dad, you don't realize how dangerous that was, taking this guy you didn't even know in your car and driving him to another church? Well, he wanted to go. He told me the church was close here.

But he told me his story, and I doubted the sincerity of him. And he said, well, could you take me? After we finished the whole conversation, I wasn't going to do something for him. He said, well, can you take me to over here? I thought for a while. I said, OK, I'll take you. So I don't know what that was. Was that the right thing to do? I don't know.

Yeah, I got there safely and back, and so it was good. And he seemed to be happy. As Andrew pointed out, it was a place that he makes the rounds. Should I have facilitated that? I don't know. That part hurts me maybe a little bit. OK, so here's some final thoughts. And so this final thought is actually a Harris final thought, a gentleman that has this. He does a really good job. He gets into the Greek and really. So here's his thought.

He says, and we are dealing with the major problem underlying the entire letter of 1 John. So what is that? So John, there's opponents, and I think maybe Andrew went into this or Bob, I'm not sure who went into this. There are opponents that John's addressing.

They're claiming to be in a relationship with God. So in the words here of these three verses, John's addressing those people. But these people who claim to have a relationship with God are refusing to share with their fellow believers in need. And so according to Harris here, and this... For the author, John, constitutes conclusive proof that the opponent's, that he's addressing here, profession to know God, or better, to have God's love in them, residing in them, must be false. So he comes to that conclusion, that's what this Harris is arguing, that's part of his intent here, that hypothetical situation.

So then he ends here with, as elsewhere in 1 John, conduct becomes a clue to our, he says, paternity. I would say it's our, the fact that we are God's children, you know, how we act, how we act in truth, our deeds in truth, is a clue, is, that verifies, as James said, that verifies who we are.

Okay, and then I had one, and the very last thing I had here was, I had these verses, there's one in the Gospel of John, and then we have the remainder up to our verse. So I could just read these briefly here. And this is all about, go ahead, if there's a question, ask it. Or not, okay, otherwise I'll just go ahead and, so we have, and it's his little children or little born ones.

So in the Gospel of John it says, little children, I am with you a little longer, you will seek me. And as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, where am I going? And you cannot come. So he's leading to the cross. He's speaking to his little children about his going to the cross.

Then we have a whole bunch, you know, 1 John is just filled with these. Back in chapter two, verse one, my little children, I'm writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And then down in verse 12, I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven for his name's sake. Then 228, little children, abide in him so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from him in shame at his coming. And then lastly, little children, make sure that no one deceives you. So he's concerned about these people that are opposing him, people he's speaking to. One who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. So once again, speaking of his condition. Okay, well, any last thoughts?

I don't know if it's appropriate here, but I would disagree with Harris. OK. All right. All right. He said what? I couldn't hear. OK, he's just saying, Roy's just pointing out, and the people that we use, it seemed interesting to me. So that's something to think about. We can talk about that in future classes. Is Harris right about that? Is John here? Is this something that he's speaking to the opponents about, that John wanted to identify people that were not truly Christian by their actions. That's kind of Roy's point. But we can think about that. That's good, Roy. OK. Anything else? OK. All right.

So we're going to go practice music here. Now, for all of you who are on Zoom, you'll get a chance to see me again. We're kind of a skeleton crew here. So I'm going to do the announcements and leading music. So it's going to be an interesting day. Fortunately, I have Bonnie to help me. She's going to get me through. So we've been practicing. All right. So let's close in prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. We thank you for your care for us. We thank you that we can act indeed in the truth because we know the truth. And the truth can be shown forth in our lives as we help other believers, Lord. We thank you for that. In Christ's name, amen.