A Loving Colony, Swimming in God's Ways

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1 John 5:1-15

This reading is 1 John chapter 5, verses 1 to 15, and in the Red Bibles it's page 1903.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God, to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are in agreement. We accept human testimony, but God's testimony is greater, because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.

And this is the testimony. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.

This is the word of the Lord.

A Loving Colony

Well, hello there. Now, this is an all-in service, after all. Does anyone know what I'm dressed as?

Thank goodness for that. Yes, I'm a penguin. I'm a penguin.

And I may or may not have decided what onesies do I have at home, and what will fit, but with the sermon I mean, not what will fit. However, that also is a consideration.

Today, we are concluding our series on being wholehearted. And I need to ask our kids here today what they know about penguins. What do you know about them?

Yes. They live in the Antarctic. Yes, that is correct. Yes. Yes. They do. They put their babies there. Yes. What else do you know?

How do they move? Yes. What have you got? They can't fly. That's right. They do. They waddle. They waddle. I waddle. Anything else?

Well, today, the message that I want to bring to you in my final message, the most serious one I could ever give, is that the scriptures tell us that we are to be a loving colony, swimming in God's ways, confident in the goodness of Jesus. Now, what you know about penguins was that they waddle, and they live in the ice. They put their babies in between their legs. They can't fly. Now, what we didn't say is that they live in colonies. They always stick together.

So, this isn't a very large group of penguins, but they never kind of hang out towards the edges of things. They always end up clustering together in a special colony.

I think the scriptures tell us to be exactly like penguins. We've got this passage, and it tells us to love one another.

It says, we love because he, God, first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar, for whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen.

He has given us this command. Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God by loving God and carrying out his commands. The scriptures tell us, John tells us, to be a colony of love. We have to huddle together.

Emperor penguins who live in Antarctica, the coldest, windiest place on earth, in the depths of winter temperatures drop to minus 60 degrees. What do they do? They huddle, thousands of them pressed together, body to body, sharing warmth.

It's not every penguin for themselves. Like you can imagine, you want to get a spot in the middle, right? Because that's the warm spot. No, they actually rotate who goes on the outside.

The penguins on the exposed outer edge, they gradually move inward, and those who've been able to be warm take their turn on the outside. Nobody has to bear the cold and the harsh conditions alone.

John is writing to people who indeed will face harsh conditions. You can't live on this planet and not face harsh conditions. Maybe with your friends, maybe in your family, maybe in what's in your bank account, maybe in what's conflicted between your nation and another nation.

But the Bible tells us that the church is to look like this, a huddle where people share the burden of the harsh conditions. Acts 2 says all the believers were together and had everything in common. Galatians 6 tells us to carry each other's burdens.

This is the body of Christ, a loving colony where we all share and care for one another.

Swimming in God's Ways

But secondly, penguins know each other. In a colony of 200,000 penguins, a parent can find their single chick and their baby by its unique call, not by sight, by voice. They know each other individually. When John says in John 10, the sheep know my voice about Jesus and they follow me, John is saying something about us following our saviour, but here he would say, and in the same way, know and see each other. Don't just wave to each other in the car park, don't just say hi on a Sunday morning, but know people's names, know their story, know what they're carrying, know if they've been on the outside of the huddle for too long and they need to get into the middle to get some warmth.

Thirdly, no penguin survives alone. Now, you might occasionally see a penguin wander off into the icy wastelands, but that's only for a moment.

No penguin believes that it can live by itself without its brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. A penguin separated from its colony is in serious trouble.

They're not designed for solitude, it's not safe, it's not healthy and neither are we. Hebrews chapter 10 says, let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together.

We need each other and it's not a nice extra, it's a survival necessity.

And fourth, Adelie penguins and another sort that I can't remember the name of, but if it's your special interest maybe you can tell me later. Adelie penguins, they bring each other gifts.

So, the male Adelie penguin brings their mate, the female Adelie penguin brings their mate, a pebble, the best, the smoothest it can find and not just to do something practical with it, it's to show his affection and commitment.

When we come to our loving colony, we're not simply here for good, warm, safe community. We're here to bring the gifts that God has given us, the best thing we can find and bring either in our own talents or in our resources or in the experiences that we've had and we're to bring them to each other.

We're to bring them as many as we can and we just, we keep bringing them and showing up and bringing our pebbles and saying, I love you God, I love your people.

Love the son and I love his people. I love the father and I love his children.

So, we are to be a colony of love. Now, you said I waddled.

I would really like the kids, any that's not kind of really locked into a coloring or something right now, I think I need to see some waddling. Anyone wanna stand up and give us some waddling demonstrations?

I know you guys do in the back row, 100%. I reckon I'd like to see it out here. Can I have some now?

Yeah, oh, that's great. Perfect, perfect. Yep, all right. That is so good, so good. Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, great.

Now, thank you very much, April. Thank you. That's what you were saying and I got it.

Now, it's not the most sophisticated look, the old penguin waddle. It doesn't seem very efficient and it's very comical. It kind of feels uncomfortable.

They're out there. They're sort of, they really can't get very far and they can't fly, but where do they really come into their own? In the water, right?

Once they're in the water, they are so fast, so graceful, so efficient and effective at getting what they need. They are like another animal altogether.

And they still stick together, but boy, can they show off and be fast and incredibly impressive.

Well, I think that there's something in what John is telling us that might indicate that we're to be swimming and not waddling. So he says, in fact, this is love for God, to keep his commands and his commands are not burdensome for everyone born of God overcomes the world.

This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one that believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

If you wanna spend your whole life waddling around, looking kind of awkward, okay, you can. But the scriptures tell us that we were made to swim in the kingdom of God, to live according to God's ways.

And when we do, it's not a burden. It doesn't actually make us waddle more. It takes us right into the life in which we are perfectly made for. We are elegant. We are graceful. We are fast. We are efficient and effective.

The world, John would say, its values, its pace, its metrics for success, its definitions of what freedom and the good life look like, it's gonna keep you waddling. That's the land. When we try to live according to those rules, we will always be like this.

But, and unfortunately I can't dive off, do some sort of synchronized swimming for you. I wouldn't actually even be able to do that even if there was a pool here. That could have been the greatest farewell service in the history of, yeah.

But when we are born of God, when we believe that Jesus is the son of God, when we trust him, that's what faith is, when we keep the commands of God, walk in his ways, we swim. We swim in the kingdom of God. It is not actually God's commands that will hold us back. They are not burdensome. They are hard sometimes, absolutely.

And it's worth reading what Jesus taught and how he lived over and over again because we kind of keep shaping them to fit our own desires and miss how hard they might be. But they're not burdensome. They are the things that bring us into the life we were made for. They're the water. And we were made to swim.

Confident in the Goodness of Jesus

Okay, small transition now. No, no, no. Don't put any mustard on. It is a little bit hard, a little bit hard to do a final sermon entirely in a penguin outfit. A little bit hard. Not as hard as you might think, but a little bit hard.

So even harder is putting shoes on, standing on one foot with a microphone. Okay. Now, confidence. I wanted some, now I've got some. But John's moving us to confidence now.

So he wants us to know that the things that will help us to be a loving colony and swimming through life as we were intended come from evidence that he has already provided for us.

Now this year, our theme for the church, and I'm blessed that Kevin's continuing it, is Jesus is good and good for you. And the reason why I chose that as our theme is because our greatest call in this world is to be Jesus' disciples and to share Jesus with other people. But to do that, you need a foundation of confidence that he is worth investing in. You need to be confident that you can stake everything on him, that you can live your life as a disciple of Jesus and never lose out. He is really that good. And you need to be confident that he is that good that you can share him with other people, that you're not placing a burden on them, but instead you're inviting them into the life in which they were designed to live.

And so here, John gives us that evidence that will help us have that confidence to be disciples and to be evangelists. He says there are three witnesses. They are the Spirit, the water, and the blood.

This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. This is evidence. And we've got two witnesses here, water and blood.

Water is most likely the baptism of Jesus. Not because that's when he became the Son of God, but what happened at the baptism? God spoke. A voice from heaven bore witness to who Jesus is. And he said, this is my Son in whom I am pleased.

The Holy Spirit descended upon him. Those who were there could see. This one is the one chosen by God, his very Son. This is evidence, this is a witness.

And we might also say that when you read the scriptures, this is the sort of witness that you find. God speaking through all the ages, pointing to this one who would be his Son, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.

But secondly, the second witness is the blood. The blood meaning the cross and the resurrection of Jesus. What happens when this man is on the cross or the centurion looks up and he says, surely this man was the Son of God.

When we see how he died, when we see the real body put in the real tomb, and then for the blood that was spilt to be now only seen in scars on risen hands, this is the second witness.

God the Father testifying to Jesus throughout all of scripture and particularly at the baptism. And then the second, the real death and real resurrection with historical weight behind them of Jesus. These are the two testimonies that we have as the foundation.

But the third, and this is why it works really well for today, the third witness is the Holy Spirit. Today is the day of Pentecost and Rachel's read for us how Joel says that in the last days, the Spirit will be poured out upon all people.

And the Spirit is a witness, evidence to these things that will bring us into the kingdom of God. He bears direct witness to our adoption as children. So he talks to our heart and he says, you're a child of God.

He's a deposit that when we receive the Holy Spirit and know that great presence of God with us, we know it's a seal, a guarantee of our inheritance. He bears witness to Christ to us in our mind, in our heart, as we read the scriptures, as we pray.

John 16 says, the Spirit will glorify me for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. He's illuminating Christ. He's a witness to us of who he is.

John here says, the Spirit is the one who testifies because the Spirit is the truth. And finally, we see the Spirit's witness in our lives if we see transformation, the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, et cetera. These are evidences that will help us to be utterly confident.

And in what? In the verdict that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God does not have life.

Seven years ago, we rebranded the church and made ourselves a place of refreshing faith. But we didn't actually make ourselves that. We recognized what God was already up to in our midst, and we put some words around it that would help people to see from the outside and on the inside what we're about.

And the start of verse 12 is what that really means. And if there was anything that we could line up and have a kind of tattoo event that that's what it meant to be part of Deep Creek, you would write this, whoever has the son has life. Whoever has the son has life. That's what it means to have refreshing faith. Whoever has the son has life.

The life that we long for, that we long to swim in, is only found in Jesus Christ. And the refreshing that we want, that the world needs, is found in Jesus Christ. The evidence has produced the verdict. Whoever has the son has life.

And so finally, there's one practical outcome that John gives, and then we're finishing. He says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

That's exactly what we've longed for. This is the confidence we have in approaching God that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

And if we know that he hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him. The confidence that we are to have is never to remain as just a mental idea or even a kind of this is in my spirit. It's to lead us to pray.

One of the things that I feel has been a great blessing and development over our time here is the sense of refreshing that has come to the Monday night prayer. So when we first gathered and then we had our breaks in COVID and we came back again, it felt a bit hard. It felt a bit hard to pray together. It felt a bit hard to pray in small groups. And so we purposefully started having more singing, more worship in our encounter nights to build up our confidence that God was good, to build up our confidence that his presence was a beautiful place to be. And then over the last 18 months, two years, we've actually realized that we can have less singing because the hunger to pray and the comfort to pray and the confidence to pray has returned.

Over the last 18 months, the prayer ministry that, so one person with two or three others praying for them has been able to return as well. Being able to restart and refresh our prayer ministry has been one of the most personally fulfilling things that I would say I've seen happen here. It was really strong before I arrived and I didn't really know how to navigate it coming in as a new leader. And the whole time I felt this has to be here, but I don't know the shape that it needs to have. And having been able to pray with different individuals with Beck over the last 18 months, I felt such a sense from God that this really important part of our DNA has been restored. So I'm very delighted.

Well, as we close this part, we are going to have a moment of prayer. Now, I believe that the kids have in their packs, I believe there's a heart somewhere in your bag and I need kids to take it out.

Have you got one or two paper hearts in your packs? We need to find them, we need to see them. Okay, great. Oh, Maria, Abby, fantastic.

Okay, so great, we need as many of them as we can because I need the kids to get the names of everybody in this church on those hearts, right? So what's gonna happen is you will help them out because they will pass them along a row and you will write your name on it.

We want five if we can per heart. So if you fill it up, let's get a new one, let's see if you can make it happen and then when we've got hearts filled with names, we're gonna bring them up to this cross, we're gonna put them around it, we're gonna put them on it because Vanessa's got some blue tack and she's gonna make that happen.

When we're doing that, we're saying this, we wanna be a loving colony, all of us together. We wanna have a bit of warmth, we wanna take our fair share of being on the outside. We're saying I want these ones to be able to swim in the kingdom as they were intended, all of us together and we're saying all the evidence points to this being the place where we are refreshed, where we have life. So as that happens, the band are gonna play. Kids, when you've got names on hearts, bring them up the front, Vanessa will make it look great and the rest of us, when your name's on a heart, would you stand and sing with the band.