Will you stand with me and open your
Bibles to 1st John chapter 2, 1st
John 2 starting at verse 12.
John there says, I write unto you little
children because your sins are forgiven for his
name's sake.
Uh-oh, cellular telephones.
I write unto you fathers because you have
known him that is from the beginning.
I write unto you young men because you
have overcome the wicked one.
I write unto you little children because you
have known the father.
I've written unto you fathers because you have
known him that is from the beginning.
And I've written unto you young men because
you are strong and the word of God
abides in you and you have overcome the
wicked one.
Let's pray.
Father, as we take some time this morning
to look into your word, to examine your
word, would you examine our hearts as we
prepare ourselves for communion to remember your death,
burial, and resurrection, the work that you have
done for us, Lord, to bring us near.
Lord, would you draw us near this morning
and speak to us, we pray in Jesus'
name, amen.
You can be seated.
As Richard mentioned, I have grown up at
this church and my family has been a
part of Calvary Chapel for quite a number
of years.
I was here at the church when we
were in the donut church a long time
ago and have been a part of this
church ever since.
And as I came near to the time
that I was going to graduate from high
school about six years ago, I knew that
I wanted to serve the Lord.
I wanted to follow him and serve him
with my whole life.
And that being the case, I tend to
be one who has goals in some sort
of a direction most of the time.
So I figured coming out of high school,
the best thing to do to pursue that
was to go to the Bible College up
in Murrieta.
And so I went up there for a
semester and then the Lord opened the door
for me to come on as an intern
here and then later as one of the
staff pastors here at the church.
And ever since I've come back from the
Bible College when people in the youth group
or people younger than me would come to
me and say they wanted to serve the
Lord and they wanted to go to Bible
College, I'd always discourage them and say, don't
go to Calvary Chapel Murrieta Bible College.
And they'd kind of give me a weird
look.
And I'd encourage them to go to one
of the colleges in York, England, or over
in Austria when the Bible College was in
Austria or in Budapest, Hungary, or the one
in Germany, in Siegen, Germany.
And I never expected that the Lord would
say, all right, now you're going to have
a little bit of your own advice and
go over there.
But the Lord has opened the door and
it's just an awesome opportunity.
But being that I normally have somewhat of
a purpose and a direction in mind, I
really like this book here, 1 John.
And as I was looking at my schedule
a couple of weeks ago and looking over
things that were coming up, I saw that
I was going to be in 1 John
chapter 2 this weekend.
And so I opened up my Bible and
started to read through 1 John 1 and
2.
And I was planning on reading through the
whole book again because it's pretty short and
I like short books.
And I got through chapter 2, verse 12,
and just stopped there because chapter 2, verse
12 stuck out to me.
And I thought, you know, Lord, I think
maybe you want me just to think about
this for a while.
And one of the things that I like
about John in this book specifically is that
several times in this book he gives us
his purpose, his reason for writing.
He says in 1 John chapter 1, verse
4, And these things write we unto you
that your joy may be full.
And then just a few verses later in
chapter 2, verse 1, he says, My little
children, these things I write unto you that
you sin not.
And then the verses that we just read
a second ago, six times he says, I
write to you for this purpose.
And he goes on as the book unfolds
and he says later on in chapter 2,
at the end of chapter 2, he tells
them again, these things I have written.
I haven't written these things to you because
you know not the truth, but because you
know the truth.
And later on in chapter 5, verse 13,
he says, These things I have written unto
you that you would believe on the name
of the Son of God, that you may
know that you have eternal life and that
you may believe on the name of the
Son of God.
And so he clearly lays out why he's
writing this book and to whom he's writing.
And he's very specifically writing to believers, to
Christians, those who are following the Lord, have
believed upon him.
And he has a purpose and a goal
in mind in writing this letter.
About eight weeks ago as I was looking
at getting ready to go to Germany, I
remember I woke up one morning and I
was kind of laying in my bed and
I thought, well maybe I should take a
German class.
And so I got on Palomar College's website
and looked around and I saw that yeah,
they had a summer course for German and
I thought, yeah, that's a good idea.
So I figured I'll sign up for it
and I paid for it.
And then after I paid for it, as
I was reading through it and talking with
someone, I realized that it was five days
a week, two and a half hours a
day.
And I thought, boy, I've really got myself
in for an interesting one here.
So six weeks, five days a week, two
and a half hours a day.
My last class is tomorrow.
I have my final tomorrow so you guys
can be praying for me.
But it was interesting to step outside of
the walls of the church here, which working
at a church is an interesting experience because
in some ways you become a little bit
detached from things that are going on in
the world and people that are just a
part of the world who don't know the
Lord.
And so I've had many people tell me
that they really wish they worked at a
church.
And sometimes I think, well, you don't really
know what you wish for because you really
do become detached.
And so over the last six weeks I've
had an opportunity to go outside the walls
and to be in a very secular environment
with people who don't know the Lord.
There's only a couple of people in my
class who I'd say do know the Lord.
And it's interesting to meet some of them
and to see a very indecisive group of
people with no purpose or direction in mind.
There's a guy in my class, he's a
great guy, a very nice guy.
He's got his bachelor's degree in philosophy and
he's working on his master's degree in theology.
And he doesn't really know what he's going
to do after that except he knows he
wants to continue to go to school and
he's planning on getting his doctorate in something.
But he doesn't know what and he doesn't
have a purpose for why.
And there's several people in my class that
are kind of professional students that they don't
really have any direction as to where they're
going and what they're doing.
And they would ask me, so are you
taking this class for credit?
What are you taking this class for?
And I said, no, I'm moving to Germany
in a month.
And so I figured I'd take this class.
It seems like a good idea because I
have a purpose in mind and a direction.
And that's really the way that I've lived
my life over the last several years is
that there's a purpose.
And I believe that the Lord would have
us to be like that as we walk
with him.
I think that's one of the reasons why
the purpose-driven church has sold so many
books for the purpose-driven life over the
last several years because the Lord does desire
that we have a purpose as we walk
with him.
When Josh and I were doing the youth
group, we had decided early on that the
youth ministry, all the activities that we would
do would have a focus and a purpose,
that there would be a reason for everything
that we did.
And we desired that the Lord would show
us what he wanted us to do to
keep that as the focus of our youth
group while we were leading it.
And so I really like John because he
has a purpose and he has a focus
as he writes this letter.
But as I read verse 12 of chapter
2 where he says there, I write unto
you little children because your sins are forgiven,
something really stuck out to me, and it's
not the portion that your sins are forgiven,
but that for his name's sake.
And if you would, underline that in your
Bibles, for his name's sake.
Because I believe it's very important.
Pastor Jeff, a few weeks ago, he was
talking about how we in America view the
gospel through a certain American cultural lens.
And we read the scriptures through that lens.
And a lot of times we don't even
realize that we do so, but I've taken
more of a notice of it over the
last few years as I've made a determination
to try and look at the scriptures with
an unbiased view.
But I see that a lot of times
we do have that Americanized cultural lenses that
we look through as we read the Word.
And sometimes as Americans, we, being the way
that we are, think that we are the
greatest nation in the world and we're a
great group of people and you are a
wonderful group of people.
And we start to think that Jesus came
down in the form of a man to
live a perfect life and to die a
brutal death and raise from the dead because
he wanted to save us really good people.
And he really got something good when he
saved us, didn't he?
And we think that I have so much
to offer you, Lord, now that you've saved
me, you just watch out because your kingdom,
there's a lot going to be going on
because you got me in your kingdom now.
Now that I'm on the bench, we're going
to have some no-hitters going on.
And we think like that sometimes.
We think that, Lord, you really got a
good deal when you saved me.
In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 7, when
the children of Israel had come out of
the land of Egypt and they had wandered
in the wilderness for 40 years, they're getting
ready to come into the Promised Land and
the Lord tells Moses that he wants him
to declare the law to the children of
Israel once again.
And so Deuteronomy is the second reading, the
second declaration of the law.
And Moses stands and he begins to declare
to the children of Israel.
The entire book of Deuteronomy is a message
that he gave to them.
Sometimes you think that Pat and myself are
long-winded.
Read the book of Deuteronomy.
It's a very long message.
But in chapter 7, he tells the children
of Israel that God has not set His
love upon you because you were a great
nation amongst all the other nations, that you
were large because you weren't.
You were a little nation.
He hasn't called you and brought you out
of bondage because there was something great about
you, but because He is a loving God
and because He is good.
He saved them and brought them out of
Egypt and out of darkness into His marvelous
light because He is good and for His
name's sake, for His glory, that people would
get to know Him and how great He
was.
All the things that He did while the
children of Israel were in Egypt, the ten
plagues, were to bring glory to God, to
turn the Egyptians from focusing on their false
gods.
Every single one of those plagues correlated with
one of the gods that the Egyptians served.
And God was declaring to the Egyptians through
His people that He is better and greater
than all those gods and that He is
to be served and that He is worthy
of praise.
And so He brought them out of Egypt
to glorify Himself and He has saved us
out of the darkness of this world, this
Egypt that we are in, out of bondage,
to bring glory to His name.
And He has forgiven our sins for His
name's sake, that He would be glorified among
the nations, that He would be exalted in
all the earth.
And that's why He has saved us.
In Psalm 25, I'm going to be going
through several verses, you can jot them down
and you can try and follow along, but
I'm going to go pretty quickly.
Psalm 25, verse 11, there David says, For
thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity,
for it is great.
King David, the king of God's chosen people,
doesn't stand up and say, Lord, because I'm
a really good king, and because I killed
that Goliath guy, and because I've written so
many of these great psalms, and because I'm
the great shepherd of Israel, pardon my iniquity
and my sin.
No, he stands before the Lord and he
says, for Your name's sake, because of who
You are, pardon my iniquity.
It is great.
I have great iniquity and so Lord, because
of who You are, I pray that You
would pardon my iniquity.
Then in Psalm 106, verse 8, we read
there, Nevertheless, He saved them, speaking about the
children of Israel, as they wandered in the
wilderness, and as they were in bondage in
Egypt.
It says, Nevertheless, God saved them for His
name's sake, that He might make His mighty
power to be known.
God saved the children of Israel out of
bondage, out of Egypt, out of sin, out
of darkness, for His name's sake that He
might be made known, that His mighty power
may be shown to the rest of the
world.
Again in Psalm 31, at verse 3, we
read, For You are my rock and my
fortress.
Therefore, for Thy name's sake, lead me and
guide me.
God, for Your glory, for Your name's sake,
would You lead and guide me and direct
me.
David prays there in Psalm 31.
Again in Psalm 79, at verse 9, we
read, Help us, O God, our salvation, for
the glory of Thy name, and deliver us
and purge away our sins for Thy name's
sake.
Lord, for the glory of Your name, and
deliver us and purge our sins away and
cleanse us.
Not because we're something great, but because You
are great and because You are awesome.
For Your name's sake, for Your glory, would
You purge our sins and cleanse us and
lead us and guide us and direct us
and be our fortress and be our God.
In Psalm 109, we read there in verse
21, O God, the Lord, for Thy name's
sake, because Thy mercy is good, deliver You
me.
Because Your mercy is great, for Your name's
sake, deliver me.
I need Your deliverance.
Psalm 143, verse 11.
A psalm of David again.
We read, Quicken me or revive me, O
Lord, for Your name's sake, for Your righteousness'
sake, bring my soul out of trouble.
For Your name's sake.
In Isaiah 43, verse 25, God is speaking
here, and He tells the nation of Israel,
and He tells Isaiah, I, even I, am
He that blots out Your transgression for my
own sake, and I will not remember your
sins.
But it's for His sake, for His glory.
In Isaiah 48, verse 9, again the Lord
is speaking.
He says, For My name's sake will I
defer mine anger, and for My praise will
I refrain for Thee that I cut Thee
not off.
Behold, I have refined Thee, but not with
silver.
I have chosen Thee in the furnace of
affliction for mine own sake.
Even mine own sake will I do it.
For how should my name be polluted?
I will not give my glory to another.
And so the Lord says, I've drawn you,
I've cleaned you, I'm cleansing you for mine's
sake, for my glory.
And then in Ezekiel 36, you might want
to turn there.
Ezekiel 36, the Lord again speaking to and
through Ezekiel.
At verse 22, God tells Ezekiel, Say unto
the house of Israel, Ezekiel 36, verse 22,
Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus
saith the Lord God, I do not this
for your sakes, O house of Israel, but
for My holy name's sake.
And then He says, Which you have profaned
among the heathen, whither you went.
And I will sanctify My great name, which
was profaned among the heathen, which you have
profaned in the midst of them.
And the heathen shall know that I am
the Lord, says the Lord God, when I
shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.
For I will take you away from among
the heathen and gather you out of all
countries and will bring you into your own
land.
And then will I sprinkle clean water upon
you and you shall be clean from all
your filthiness and from all your idols will
I cleanse you.
A new heart also will I give you
and a new spirit will I put within
you.
And I will take away the stony heart
out of your flesh and I will give
you a heart of flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you
and cause you to walk in My statutes
and you shall keep My judgments and do
them.
And you shall dwell in the land that
I gave to your fathers and you shall
be My people and I will be your
God.
But He says, this is for My namesake.
Not because you've done something great because He
says there, you've profaned My name.
And yet for My namesake I'm going to
bring My grace upon you and give you
a new heart and bring you into the
Promised Land once again from which they had
been taken out.
And He says, for My namesake I'm going
to do all of this.
In Exodus chapter 34, Moses there is pleading
on behalf of the children of Israel from
Exodus chapter 32 through 34 because the children
of Israel, you may know the story while
Moses was up on Mount Sinai, the children
of Israel had told him that all that
the Lord has said we will do.
Three times they tell him that back in
Exodus chapter 20 and 21.
All that God has said we will do
and be obedient.
And then Moses goes up on Mount Sinai
and receives the law from the Lord and
while he's up there, the Lord says, go
down to your people because there's some bad
stuff going on.
And they go down there and there's a
golden calf there that Aaron said, well, they
just gave me the gold and I put
it in the fire and out came this
golden calf.
But that's not really what happened.
And so they're worshiping and bowing down to
this golden calf that they had made saying
this is the God that saved us out
of Egypt.
And the Lord is ready to destroy them
and really it's a test for Moses to
see what Moses would do.
And Moses pleads on behalf of the people
and the Lord declares that He is going
to forgive them.
And then Moses says to Him, Lord, show
me Your glory.
And God says, I can't show you My
glory because if you see all My glory,
you're not going to be able to live.
You can't see Me and live.
And in Exodus 34, He says, I'm going
to pass by you and as I pass
by you, I'm going to put you in
the cleft of the rock and you're going
to see My afterglow, My presence pass by
and I'm going to declare My name to
you.
And in Exodus 34, verse 6, it says,
And the Lord passed by before him and
He proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God.
And now God declares His name to Moses.
He defines who He is, the nature of
God here in Exodus 34, verse 6.
The Lord, the Lord God merciful.
I praise the Lord that the very first
thing that He uses to define His nature
and His name is merciful.
Although later on as we go through this
passage, we find that He is just.
And He will visit the iniquity of the
fathers upon the generations of the third and
fourth generation.
He is a just and holy God, and
yet the very first thing that He says
about Himself is the Lord, the Lord God
merciful and gracious and long-suffering, abundant in
goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that by no
means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children and upon the
children's children to the third and fourth generation.
But He says to Moses, this is who
I am.
I'm merciful and gracious and long-suffering, abundant
in goodness and truth, merciful, keeping mercy for
thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, although I
am just.
And I won't clear the guilty.
But He says, this is My name.
And for His name's sake, this One who
is merciful and gracious and long-suffering, abounding
in goodness and truth, or as Gail Irwin
would say, abounding in goodness and truth, for
His name's sake, He has forgiven us.
And not only has He forgiven us, that
would be way more than sufficient for every
single one of us, for God to forgive
us of our sin.
And yet Ephesians declares to us not only
has He forgiven us of our sin, but
He has given us all spiritual blessings in
heavenly places.
And He's adopted us into His family.
He has made us children of God.
Joint heirs with Christ.
And not because of who we are, but
because of His goodness and because of who
He is and for His name's sake, for
His glory.
It says in Ephesians 2, verse 1, And
you He has quickened, or made alive, who
were dead in trespasses and sins, where in
the time past you walked according to the
course of this world, according to the prince
of the power of the air, the Spirit
who now works in the children of disobedience,
among whom you also had your conversation or
your conduct in times past in the lust
of your flesh, fulfilling the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by
nature children of wrath, even as the others.
But God, this is who you and I
were, dead in trespasses and sins, walking according
to the lust of the world.
But God, who is rich in mercy because
of His great love with which He loved
us, even when we were dead in sins,
has quickened us together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved.
By His awesome and powerful grace, did He
not only extend His hand down into darkness
to pull us out of darkness, but He
came down in the form of a man
as Philippians 2 tells us in verse 5,
that Christ Jesus, who being in the form
of God, thought it not robbery to be
equal with God, but He made Himself of
no reputation, taking upon Himself the form of
a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men.
And being found in the fashion of a
man, He humbled Himself and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross.
Because of His name and who He is,
God stepped into the realm of man, out
of eternity, and into time, taking on the
form of human beings to save us, to
glorify His name.
Because you see, since the fall of Lucifer,
the name of God has been defamed.
The very first thing that Lucifer did in
the Garden of Eden was defame the name
of God, defame who God was, by saying,
did God indeed say?
He's calling into question our God.
Calling into question the graciousness and the power
and the awesomeness of our God from the
very beginning.
Satan has defamed the name of God.
And God has come in the likeness of
man to glorify His name.
To put it in the right place that
it should be.
Because Philippians 2 goes on to say, Wherefore
God has also highly exalted Him and given
Him a name which is above every name.
And that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow of things in heaven and
things in earth and things under the earth
and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of the Father.
There's a girl in my class, my German
class, and her grandfather was a Jew in
Germany during the time of the Holocaust.
And just before everything started to get really,
really bad in Germany, he escaped with his
family and he escaped and fled to Haifa,
which is in modern day Israel today.
Israel was not a state during that time.
And there, while he was in Haifa, he
had this girl's mother and she immigrated to
America.
And then this girl was born here in
America and she has dual citizenship here in
America and there in Israel.
And it's been interesting just kind of talking
with her here and there and I walked
into class, I believe it was Thursday morning,
and I had my headphones on and no
one else was in the class and I
sat down at my desk and right after
I sat down she came walking in the
classroom and walked right up to me and
I was like, oh, hello, and I took
off my headphones, I was like, can I
help you?
And she said, is it true that you
believe that if I don't believe in Jesus
I'm going to hell?
I thought, boy, that was kind of direct.
I kind of bit my tongue and looked
at her and I said, Jesus said I
am the way, the truth, and the life
and no one comes to the Father except
through me.
She said, in my sociology class, I'm pretty
sure that's what class she was talking about,
she said we were talking about religious tolerance.
And she said, my religion, Judaism, is tolerant
to other religions.
And I thought to myself, have you read
the Old Testament?
And she said, but we were talking about
Christianity and you guys aren't tolerant to other
religions.
And at that point I thought that what
I had said and what I had shared
with her was enough.
At that point I didn't want to start
an argument with her, but I thought about
what she had to say.
It's interesting how the enemy has defamed the
name of God to say that he is
intolerant and to say that he is a
mean God because he's going to look at
someone and say, I don't know you.
The name of God has been defamed by
the enemy.
And God is seeking to glorify his name
and he glorifies his name by coming down
into the midst of humanity, humbling himself.
God, the God of the universe, humbled himself
and became obedient even to the point of
death, the death of the cross.
The one who there on that day laid
himself down on a cross made of wood
that he created, allowed a Roman soldier to
take a nail made from iron and steel
that he had created, that he spoke into
existence and allowed it to be pounded through
his hand by a man whose breath he
was holding in the palm of his hand
at that very second.
Why?
So that he could put his name in
the rightful place that it should be.
That at the name of Jesus Christ every
knee would bow and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of
the Father.
And he has forgiven us for his namesake
and saved us because he is good and
because he is awesome and because he is
gracious.
How beautiful that is.
And that's what we do today as we
remember that work.
As we take the bread, a picture of
his body that was broken for us, and
the cup, his blood that was shed for
us, that he could forgive our sins and
our iniquities and remember them no more to
put his name back where it should be.
Let's pray.
Father, I do thank you that your word
declares to us that scarcely for a good
person would one die.
Maybe for a righteous man would one even
dare to die.
But you show us, you display your love
towards us that while we were yet sinners,
while we were at enmity with you, you
came and died for us.
God, teach us to live a life that
will glorify you.
I thank you, Lord, that your grace, which
has appeared to all men as Titus chapter
2 says, teaches us how to live godly,
to live a life that is glorifying.
God, I thank you that you have forgiven
our sins for your name's sake.
And as you declare through Paul there in
Hebrews 11 that those who followed you by
faith you were not ashamed to be called
their God.
I pray that our lives would be such
that you would not be ashamed to be
called our God, but that our lives would
be glorifying to you this day and through
the rest of our lives.
And so this morning as we come to
the table in remembrance, Lord, would you remind
us of the work that you did.
And would you fill our hearts not with
sorrow but with joy.
Thank you for glorifying yourself in and through
us by forgiving us.
You are our great and awesome King.
Teach us to glorify you, we pray in
Jesus' name.
Amen.
We're going to spend the remainder of our
service this morning in worship and communion.
Some of the pastors and the elders will
be up in front to pray with you
if you have prayer needs.
But as the Lord would lead you, come
on forward and take of the bread, the
cup, back to your seat or kneel down
in the front.