Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church

1 John 3:24 is a transition from commandment keeping as an evidence that we know God to having the Holy Spirit as an evidence that we know Him.

Our gracious Lord is so wise and faithful in bringing about His purposes and kingdom. Last week, David glorifies God by refusing to take vengeance on his enemy, but this week, God is glorified by restraining David from taking vengeance.

Suppose you have two people who profess to believe in Christ. But one practices righteousness and the other does not. Last week, we saw in 3:4-10, that John says the one who doesn't doesn't know God. Suppose, however, that both of these individuals practice righteousness in the ways I just described, but one of them does not love his brother? That also is inconsistent with a true Christian profession. That is our topic this week in 1 John 3:10-23. Verse 10 is a transitional verse from the sign of practicing righteousness to the sign of brotherly love.

Revering God is a rare commodity in every age. David is a refreshing exception of someone who truly revered God. Let's take a look.

The characteristic we are looking at this week in 1 John 3:4-10 is one that, until you look at more closely, might be unsettling. "If You Know God, You Don't Sin."

God has a pattern He frequently follows of sending us to the wilderness for training. When you get down to it, this present world is a time of wilderness training for believers. This does not mean we should be hard and without compassion. Christ isn't (Hebrews 4:14-16). In 1 Samuel 23, we have David being trained in the wilderness with the men God gave him.

John is continuing to exhort us to abide in Him—to go on with the real Christ whom we know through the gospel—but adds the blessing of sonship. We are God's children.

God has been very kind to give us His word. It is like no other writings. He speaks to us. Today we have come to 1 Samuel 22 where we have a contrast between Saul and David. Saul shows us where we are headed if we put our life in our own hands—David shows us where we are headed if we put our life in God's hands!

Today, in our sermon series from 1 John, we come to 1 John 2:18-27. It relates to last week. Last week, in v. 12-17, John told us that those who know God don't go after the world. This week, in v. 18-27, he tells us that those who know God don't go after antichrists.

Today in our sermon series in Samuel we come to chapter 21. This the continuation of the account of David's rise to the throne. To the onlooking world, it certainly does not look like he is being raised up to reign! Presently, King Saul is trying to kill David. David is a fugitive, trying to avoid death. We see David brought to desperation, but we see God at work in times of desperation.

In our Sunday Afternoon Services, I have been preaching through the First Epistle of John. John explains that He has written this letter so that the reader might learn of Jesus Christ and have fellowship with Him and with the Father. John is especially concerned in this letter to help us know that we know Him. Today, John declares to us as believers that we do know the Lord

We often speak about covenants in the church with good reason. Without covenant promises from God, we could not be sure of His intentions toward us. In our text today, God gives us a beautiful picture of how covenants work.

In the passage we are looking at today, John shows us that if, in fact, we do not keep God's commandments, it shows that we have not come to know Him. We are still in the darkness.

God's way of making Christ known to us is through the word of the Apostles. So John and the others spoke and wrote that we might know God whom they know, that we might have fellowship with them whose fellowship is with Jesus Christ.

Last week we saw how God gave Goliath, the Philistine giant into David's hands. The focus of the story in the Bible is not to bolster self-esteem, but esteem for God! David was disturbed that God's name was being dishonoured. His trust was in God. Today, in 1 Sam 18, we see how God begins to raise up David as a faithful leader. We learn God's way of raising up leaders to bless His church.

Our new sermon series on Sunday afternoons will be from 1 John. I plan to preach twelve sermons in this series. The telos or purpose of this book is to instruct us about knowing God. Today, in the first four verses, we see that John tells us how we know God. This is a very important topic to me personally. I did not come to know God in a saving way until I was in my third year of university. In 1 John, John speaks specifically about what it means to know Him. He opens his letter by telling us how we can know Him. His answer is that it is through the Word of life revealed.

Many people who know next to nothing about the Bible know this story. It charms and encourages them. If David can conquer and overcome, so can they. The story is constantly misapplied to be about self-esteem. It is about God-esteem.

Today I am going to finish up our Mountains of Bether Sermon Series. For the final sermon in the Mountains of Bether series, I wanted to present the great barrier that is described in the Song of Songs itself. It is the barrier I am going to call: Ignoring Christ. Let's go to our scripture reading, where we see this barrier of ignoring Christ. Remember that in this Song, Jesus is the Husband and we, the church, are His bride. Listen and see what happens when we ignore Him and His gracious advances.

Since we have three new communicants and three new members that we are publicly welcoming today, I thought it would be a good time to have a message about what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. What is actually involved? Essentially, a disciple is one who comes to follow his master and to be like him. When you come to be Jesus's disciple, He teaches you how to live in harmony with God. He came to restore us to God, and that is exactly what He does.

In our Mountains of Bether Sermon Series, we have been looking at the mountains that stand between us and the Lord with a view to asking Him to remove them. The barriers we have been looking at recently are inattention to the means of grace. This week, the barrier is inattention to the Lord's Supper.

Today, we are going to look at the contrast between two anointings. One is an anointing with the Holy Spirit. The other is an anointing with a demon. Our goal will be to learn about how God anoints His people that we might cherish His anointing with the Holy Spirit—that we might understand it and desire it for ourselves and others; and that we might see the horror of His anointing with a demon and dread it for ourselves and others.

In our Mountains of Bether Series, we look at things that stand between us and our Lord, barriers that He, by His grace, removes as we look to Him, yearning to be closer to Him. Last week, I pointed out the barrier of Inattention to God's Word. But of course, there are other means of grace besides the word of God preached and read. A means of grace, something that God has given us to use that helps us know Him and live for Him. This week, we will look at inattention to baptism.

Today, we will continue our sermon series in 1 Samuel at chapter 16. Here, David is brought forward as the King that the Lord chooses for Israel. David is, as God's Christ (anointed King) an Old Testament type of Jesus the Christ. That means that David is a model of King Jesus. Today, we will look at how God provides David to His people, choosing Him above others.

Today, we come to our 18th message in our Mountains of Bether Series. As believers, we are the bride of Christ. We yearn to have a relationship with Him and the Father that is one of sweet harmony. We grow by the grace of God, that is, by the Lord working in our lives through Jesus by His Spirit. We are not to be passive in receiving God's grace. We are to diligently use the means. The Lord has given us means of grace that we are to use diligently to receive His grace (or divine help) that transforms us in our walk with Him. The primary means He has given us are the Word, sacraments, and prayer. The Word is one of the most important of these. It is by the word that He speaks to us. So today, I want to explore the barrier between us and the Lord of inattention to His Word.

We have just come to a new section as we work our way through First Samuel. For each section we have sung a Psalm that relates to that section: The first section, 1 Sam 1-7, about Samuel, we sang Psalm 113. The second section, 1 Sam 8-15, about Saul, we sang Psalm 21. The third section, we now begin, 1 Sam 16, about David, we will sing Psalm 89. Psalm 89 is a very long Psalm, so we will be looking at it in an overview fashion. It describes the glory of King Jesus and His godly reign that goes on forever and brings perfect peace, but it shows that there will be hard struggles before that peace comes.

Today in our Mountains of Bether Sermon Series, the hinderance in our relationship with God that we are looking at is doubt. Doubt, of course, can be such that it keeps a person from ever coming to Christ—But in this series, we are looking at barriers between us and the Lord that we have after we have been converted. We will do that today.

We have not had our Samuel Sermon series for a couple of weeks. We are presently at chapter 15. I did a sermon about the stumbling block in this chapter that offends many people today—where God calls His people to exterminate the Amalekites. If that is a problem for you, I encourage you to listen to that sermon from April 6. I did that so that I wouldn't burden the sermon I am preaching today with explaining all of that—which I think is an important thing to do in our particular day. The heart of this chapter is about God's passion for His people and Saul's disappointing refusal to engage with Him as a passionate God. In looking at this, it is my desire that you all will see and understand God's passion for His people and that you will all joyfully connect with Him in His loving zeal for us!

This afternoon, we will continue our Mountains of Bether sermon series where we are looking at things that come between us and the Lord. This week, the barrier we are looking at is one of those mountains that we often don't notice—in other words, we are blind to it. It is what I am calling the mountain of false peace. I hope that you do cry out to Him when your relationship is dried up. That is a mark of a true believer.

A word about holy days not instituted by the Lord and God's mercy. Last year, I preached on 1 Corinthians 15:22, and this year we are looking at the whole of 1 Corinthians 15 to consider how our faith is fed with Christ's Resurrection.

In our afternoon sermon series, we are looking at things that come between us and our Lord.We have looked at quite a few of the mountains that He overcomes—and today it is one mountain which has two opposite barriers that we will find to be essentially the same thing: Worry and Overconfidence—one mountain with two aspects. We might call this Mount Self-trust—which produces both worry and overconfidence.

Today in our Samuel Sermon, I am doing something a little different. The passage we are looking at today, 1 Sam 15, has a stumbling block in it—something that makes people offended with God. It reveals His severity in calling for the annihilation of an entire nation. So I am going to read the part that makes people offended, and then I am going to do a topical sermon about how to deal with God's severity.

The Mountain of Bether we will consider today is Envy. For those who have not been with us for this series, the Mountains of Bether are barriers that stand between us and God that Christ overcomes.

The church of Jesus Christ, which is His Kingdom, is made up of two kinds of members: sons (converted like Jonathan) and servants (professing but unregenerate members like Saul).

Today we will continue our sermon series about the things that separate us from God from which Jesus delivers us. According to the scriptures, we are His betrothed bride. One mountain that is especially displeasing to Him is our indifference to one another. Jesus' bride is unique because although she is one bride, one church, she is made up of many members, and Jesus wants us to love one another. We are all brothers.

The Lord has such a personally engaging way of working in our lives as His elect people— One of the tools He employs (and the one we will look at today) is opportunities to trust Him when things are desperate—He sets them up for us and brings them to us. We take the opportunity by stepping out in faith, and when we do, we see Him work and learn of Him and come to love and trust Him more.

This afternoon in our Mountains of Bether Sermon series where we look at things that separate us from God we are looking at 'Lack of Devotion.' This is a Mountain that Jesus our Saviour transforms into a Mountain of Devotion. When I speak of devotion today, I am speak in particular of the devotion to please Him.