American Idols - Audio
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
If you've been with us any length of time, you know that we've been in the book of 1 John. Great news. Today we're finishing it. No? No one's like, "Yes, finally, it's been so long." Yeah, so we're finishing it today. And while we're doing it, John's going to give us a little recap of where we've been, and then he's going to say something a little surprising. As we're engaging this text and trying to work through it, I would like us to be thinking about our answer to the question, "What is the good life, and where do we find it?" What is the good life, and where do we find it? This is a question that has been, it's tortured philosophers and theologians and normal folks throughout the centuries. In fact, every single one of us probably has an intuitive answer to that question, "What is the good life?" In fact, for a lot of us, if we've grown up in American culture, it's probably something along the lines of the white picket fence and the 2.5 children, actually I'd like to revise that down to zero children, but some children, no, they're beautiful, they're a blessing from the Lord. Yeah, and grandkids are really great too. All right, hopefully I'll find out about that. Yes, so something like that, the picket fence and the family and meaningful work, something like that. And if you have that good health, probably is included, that is the good life now. When we talk about the good life, one thing we have to have remember is it can't just be an abstract idea. It has to be something that actually is realized in communities with real people, okay? So someone tells you that the good life is when all of the workers are seeing in union at the workers' paradise, you can be like, "No, that's crazy," because we've seen what happens when communism's tried, and it's a disaster. And if you think that communism is a good idea, you should talk to me after the service. I don't want to get into the ideology right now, but man, a lot of people have died because trying to live up to this ideal, this idea of what the good life is. And so whatever we're going to say the good life is, it has to be something that can actually exist in the real world with real people like us. And so let that sit in the back of your mind as we encounter this text. This is 1 John 5, 18 to 21. We know that the God-borns do not sin, since the God-born protect themselves and the evil one does not touch them. We know that we have our source in God while the whole universe, the whole cosmos is under the power of the evil one. Yet we know that the Son of God has come and given us understanding such that we have come to know the truth, and we are in the truth, in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is true God and life eternal. Little children, keep yourselves away from idols. This is a pretty powerful text. It confesses something that's totally nuts, that there was a person here who was true God. It says a lot of things. One of the first things that we notice when we get it is that we know, we know, we know. This is kind of John sort of giving us a recap of the entire book.
Transcription truncated.
Wrapping up his message series on 1 John, Pastor Tom discusses the good life and where it can be found. (1John 5:18-21)