Stages in Our Christian Pilgrimage

Grab your Bibles and let's go back to 1st John.

As the aged John pinned this letter. To the churches. They call him the Apostle of Love because that's his theme much of the time, if not most of the time, as he wrote his gospel and then wrote this epistle. And these are very interesting verses. They're not verses that easily just outlined themselves, and I think. In my mind, I see an aged man who's not at this point wanting just to lay out 123456 precepts of of a doctrine, but wants to just talk about the goodness and the glories and the wonders of God. And of our salvation, sort of a simplicity in it, and there's a wisdom in the simplicity. But in this section, he seems to outline the stages of our Christian pilgrimage. Let's look at it together 1st John Chapter 2.

And we'll begin in verse verse 12 and go through verse 14. I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for his name's sake. I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know him who has been from the beginning. I'm writing to you, young men, because you've overcome the evil one. And I've written to you, children, because you know the father. I've written to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.

I've written to you, young men, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. So he talks about fathers. He talks about little children. He talks about young men, and I see here probably the three stage development in John's thinking, and that is those early stages when we're first starting out in our Christian faith. Those middle are maybe the stages reflected by the phrase young men.

In the old world, young men would have been even teenagers and on into the earlier ages. And then the older men, the adult men, the fathers he refers to. But I think what we have is beginning by way of introduction is a foundational verse in verse 12 where he says, I'm writing to you, little children. He said that again up in verse 1 of chapter 2. He likes that phrase, little children.

Some might debate. Now he's talking about you're my little children in the faith. The Apostle Paul would talk to the Corinthians about I'm your father in the faith.

And so that's a common phrase, but I think it means more than just that. I think he's pointing out your God's little children. Your God's precious ones.

I don't want you to just run by that. I want you to muse on that for a moment. Your God's precious little children. That's the phrase he uses. It's, of course, a very tender. It's a very compassionate term. But how wonderful for us, even the older men who may be looked at in a patriarchal way and consider yourself or ourselves strong and secure and mature. It's really good to know that I'm somebody's little child. And that somebody is God. I'm his, excuse me, precious little child. I think about how we look at our little ones, whether they're your children or in my case, your grandchildren.

And by their grand, I'm just telling you, they are grand. Thought of three things. First of all, think about how attentive we are to them. From the earliest ages, we want to catch every coo, every yawn, every peep. We listen for that cry. We listen to their breathing. Is it okay? I mean, good night. Our babies are on 24 hour monitors.

They couldn't sneak and do nothing wrong, could they? Stay up all night to check on them. Is everything okay? Oh, is there energy left?

Do you think she might be sick? I mean, think of how attentive we are to them. Think how much more our Heavenly Father is attentive to us. When he calls us, you're my little children. I don't know about you, that blesses me.

That blesses me. But not only attentive, we're also affectionate to them. We hug them, we hold them, we caress them, we stroke them, we kiss them, we rub noses with them, we bump foreheads with them, we tease them, we play, we sing songs. Just, I mean, it's like we can't find enough ways to show our affection to our little ones.

Then a third thought is provision. Not only just the way we give attention and affection, but we want to provide for them. You know, in Mark 14 and in Romans chapter 8, the Bible tells us we can look up to God and we refer to him as Abba Father. It's a word of familial endearment. It's papa or daddy. Yes, he is our Heavenly Father and there's a stateliness and a majesty and an authority to that. But the Bible also says there's a tender affection to God that he wants you also to view him as your papa or your daddy.

In Matthew chapter 7, Jesus said, you know what your Heavenly Father's like? He said, think about you human fathers. If you're human fathers, if your little child asked for a loaf of bread, you wouldn't give him a stone, would you?

And in that dry-aired Palestinian climate, a lot of those rocks would be brown and round, look like a piece of bread. He said, you wouldn't fool your child like that. And if your child asked for a piece of fish, you wouldn't give him a snake.

Now, a snake has scales like fish have scales. A little baby might not know the difference. He said, you wouldn't do something like that.

He says, no, your father is going to do what's best for you and what's right for you. Just like you, fathers, you being evil would only give good gifts to your children. So your father in heaven, how much more?

How much more? And when you think about it, why among humankind are we like this? Why do we give such attention to our children? Why do we give such affection to our children and our grandchildren? Why are we so faithful to provide for them and be the provision for them?

You know why? Because we are made in the image of God. We didn't think this up and God's something radically different. We're like this because our heavenly father is like this. So he's a whole, whole, whole lot better at it than we are. He's greater at it than we are. He's more full of this kind of fatherly care and love and affection and attention.

What a thought this is. John writes, little children, little children. Then he says there in verse 12, still kind of laying the introductory foundation, your sins are forgiven you for his name sake. Now I want to talk about his namesake at the end so I won't go there, but there's only one way God can call you, his little children, and that is if he's forgiven you for his own purposes and for his own glory. Have you been forgiven? Have you turned to Christ casting aside all hope in anything and everything else and saying, I look today, I look only to Christ? I'm not saying have you walked an aisle? I'm not saying have you repeated a prayer?

That may be good and fine. I'm asking you from your heart, has there been a time when you came to see there's nothing else but Christ? I cast away all my hope. I sometimes call this primary and secondary repentance. Primary repentance is when you repent, you turn from every thought, every philosophy, every teaching, every person, everything that you may be thinking can get you into heaven. You turn from all of that and you say, I trust Christ alone. That's primary repentance. If you don't get that one right, the rest of repentance don't matter.

Once you turn from trusting the church or the ordinances or baptism or good works or whatever it is, you turn from that and you come, like I like to say, bankrupt and empty to Christ. And by the way, he takes bankrupt and empty sinners. That's the only kind he saves.

That's the only kind he takes. That's primary repentance. Then after you do that, you begin immediately a whole lifetime of secondary repentance. I don't mean secondary in the sense that it's not important.

It just doesn't matter if you don't get the first one right. If you don't turn to Christ first, then in turning to Christ, you continually become a repenter as the Spirit works in your life through the Word of God to expose to you heart motives, desires, attitudes, thoughts, actions, behaviors that do not align with him. If you're one of those who has turned to Christ and you've become that repenter, and sir or ma'am or young person, if you can go through this life and sin doesn't really kind of come to your mind and really you don't think about it much, you're not his.

If you are, you've gotten way, way far away from him. A mark of being his is a mark of being in the light and a mark of being in the light is all the darkness in our heart becomes more and more apparent. So we have to repent of it as we find it.

If you're one of those whose sins have been forgiven, what a thought, sins forgiven. Now listen, then you're one of those he looks to as his little children. Brothers and sisters, the Bible does not teach universalism. Only those who know Christ are his little children. The rest are still his enemies.

The Bible tells us we were at enmity, God, naturally speaking. Oh, now that our sins are forgiven by his atoning work, we have been made his little children. And keeping with the three stages I see in this text, we're still his little child all the way through the stages of our life. And there's a sense in which when we get older, we kind of rekindle that childlike sweet joy that we had with Jesus when we first started, maybe as a young person. Somehow in the middle, we can kind of get away from that. But as we get older, we kind of get in that, we kind of, mortality sets in.

Arthritis sets in. All the other stuff, and all of a sudden we realize we ain't nothing. And he's everything. Kind of like he was when you first got saved. We kind of come full circle, don't we?

I'm kind of circling around some myself. Three thoughts here. Let's talk about the beginning stage, or maybe the beginning years. I think John, again, is making, he's just in the analogy of the physical growth experience to show us something, not everything.

He's not giving this detailed, thorough exegesis, if you will, of all that's involved in the spiritual pilgrimages of life. But he's given us some good and precious insights here. For example, in verse 13, the last phrase, he says, I've written to you children, this time he doesn't use the phrase little children, because you know the Father.

I think that's interesting. He says, children, you know the Father. Because here's what's interesting, and boy, it was so true in our life. When you first are converted, when you first come to Christ, that's about all you know. You don't know a lot of stuff.

I surely didn't. I mean, I've told you this so many times, but I mean, I was so ignorant of just Christian truth and church life in general. And matter of fact, I'm glad I didn't know a lot about some of the church life, because a lot of it was ridiculous. A lot of what was going on in churches were newborn babies.

And you know, a little baby, it didn't take long. The little baby didn't know much. They don't know anything about thermostats.

They don't know anything about putting on clothes or taking off clothes. They don't know anything. They don't hardly know anything about anything, but they know mom and dad. And little baby Christians don't know a lot, but they know they know God.

He's become real to them. His Spirit lives in their heart. They can't even explain exactly what that means, but they know the Father. They know the Father. They don't know what baptism means. They don't know what the Bible is. I remember, I didn't know the New Testament from the Old Testament. I used to call Nicodemus, Nicodemus.

I thought a leper was a leper. I didn't know anything. And I just preached it with all my heart. But I knew the Father. I knew He had invaded my life. I knew He'd forgiven my sins. I knew He had given me joy. I knew I'd be with Him if I left this earth.

And by the way, I was ready to go then. Little children, I'm writing to you, because you know the Father. Romans 8, 16 says, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God. I love this because to become a Christian and to be a part of God's church, you don't have to have this great knowledge.

You have to know Him. You don't have to have all the details of doctrine. That should come because it is important that the zeal and the joy of our conversion be guided with truth. I've told you before, I had more zeal than I had wisdom. I had more zeal than I had common sense as an early Christian. We do need to teach them, but it's such a sweet and precious and wonderful thing that when we're saved, we know the Father. Remember the story in Acts chapter 19, Paul's going through Ephesus, and he runs across this fella, or these fellas rather, who've been converted, and they're all excited to meet Paul. And Paul said, I've got a question. Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you were saved? And I love the response. They said, we didn't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.

Now, certainly they'd been affected by Him, but they just hadn't been taught. I love that. Did you receive the Holy Spirit?

No, we don't know what if there is, or what's the Holy Spirit? Oh, I just like that. You don't like that, do you?

I like that. In John chapter nine, Jesus comes upon the blind man, and it's a pretty long narrative there, but Jesus ends up taking spittle and put it in the clay and makes a salve, and He applies it to the blind man's eyes and instructs him to go wash in the pool, and the man goes and washes in the pool, and he can see. He gets back to the Jewish religious authorities, and they're jealous of Jesus anyway, and they thought, who's this doing miracles and getting the attention other than us? And so they said, He's not supposed to be healing on the Sabbath.

That's not biblical. So they call the parents of the blind man in, and we said, we've heard this about your son. Did this guy heal him? What's going on? They said, look, he's an adult. Ask him. So they call the young man in and said, look, do you think this Jesus is a prophet?

He said, I don't know what He is. All I know is I once was blind, and now I see. I like that.

I just know it's the real deal. I love baby Christians like that. They make messes, but I love that sweet, joyous love and connection to Christ. They can help us, by the way.

They can help us, by the way. The woman wiping Jesus' feet with her tears and the Pharisees said, don't you know this is a woman of the knowledge? You know she's a wicked and sinful woman? But all Jesus knew was that He loved her and had forgiven her, and she loved Him.

That's all she knew. Matthew, the tax collector, gets saved and starts giving all this money away. He says, I'm writing to you, little children, because you know the Father. You may not know a lot about doctrine and stuff yet, but you know Him.

Then John goes on. He talks about another stage here, and I just call that more the young adult stage, maybe the middle life stage. Somebody said to me not long ago, you said, you're middle age.

I said, how many 120-year-old men you've seen walking around lately? So, middle age isn't quite what we call middle age, but nevertheless, this is the young adult stage, maybe we'll say. In verse 13, in the middle part, he says, I'm writing to you, young men, because you've overcome the evil one. Young men, because you've overcome the evil one. For I think in this stage, the rush and the thrill, some of the joys of our salvation maybe have worn off. We're in that struggle to live by faith. We're in that struggle to learn. Now, listen to me, that we learn by the act of the will, not by the emotions. That's what's wrong with our culture today. Everything is based on emotions.

Have you noticed that? Objective truth almost doesn't matter. Here's the mantra of the religion you're seeing on your TV in the streets every night. If I feel, it's real. Yeah, but I feel so it's real. I feel I've been oppressed. I feel I'm a victim.

I feel like this, whatever it is. If I feel it, it's real. Christianity is right, the opposite. It's real and what you feel don't matter.

But here's the cool thing about Christianity. If you'll do what's right, your emotions will catch up and you'll get excited about what really matters. You'll start feeling good about what's true.

We don't start with feel, we start with truth. Well, that's that middle stage of Christianity. You've been saved a while and you're beginning to learn.

God's beginning to show you. So what happens if I lose my joy? You serve Jesus till you get your joy back.

It doesn't do anything for him anymore. Okay, we'll put in strobe lights and smoke machines. Silly nonsense. I wonder what the circus church does when a pandemic hits. All I got to do is give you all the word of God and you're happy. It's hard to put on a three ring circus when you're under the kind of restrictions we've been under.

I shouldn't get on that all the time, should I? But my point is, my point is as we mature, we begin to learn it's not all about thrill and feelings and emotions, and it's certainly not about entertainment. We learn to honor our Lord and try to serve our Lord when we feel like it and when we don't. We're not perfect at it, but that's kind of the stage that is.

And by the way, we've come through that difficult stage. Those teenage years, you know, in the physical realm are tough as teenagers are just trying to learn to be adults. Now they've pushed adolescents on up to about 35.

Have y'all noticed that? If we could take the young white females off the streets right now, 90% of our troubles would go away. I mean, think about it. I mean, I'm watching TV and I'm seeing these little girls out there screaming at police officers and stuff.

Here's what I want to say. Where are their fathers? Well, some of them are 27 years old, brother Jeff.

You let one of my 27 year old daughters do that and see what happens. And I'm serious. And even these young boys out here rioting and burning and doing all this, where's their dads? If we just live the way the Bible teaches, it's all fixed.

Now we can still protest and make our voices known if something evil happens like happened in Minnesota. That's right. But all this other stuff is wicked. There's a spirit of lawlessness and a spirit of being irreconcilable and both of those are condemned in the Bible. Well, back to that teenage stuff. The Bible says foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but a child can get saved and they start gaining some victory over that foolishness. I mean, when you're in those teenage years, you're learning to make right decisions apart from instant gratification and apart from self gain. The hormones are stuck in overdrive.

Your nose is too big for your face. Your feet grow too fast beyond your legs and everything's trying to catch up and then your sex drive gets stuck in high. It's a tough period of time. But in that period of time and on into the young adult years, you know what you learn? You learn how to overcome the evil one.

That's what he says here. You're faced with tough stuff and difficult stuff and you're learning just how is this going to work out? God helps you learn how to overcome it and do.

I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. Verse 14, the last part. I've written to you young men because you are strong. See, even in that middle life stage, you learn to handle it. You learn to overcome.

You learn to be a repenter. You learn to accept God's forgiveness. And the word of God abides in you, key phrase, and you've overcome or have overcome the evil one.

These are trying years, but think about our precious Lord Jesus. First of all, he empathizes with our weakness. You know, the Bible says Jesus was tempted at all points like we are, but without sin. You say, well, Jesus doesn't know what it's like, what I go through.

No, he knows more so because at some point you always give in to temptation. So you didn't get the full force of it. If you stand on the beach and the big wave comes, it pushes you some. You didn't get the full force because you gave in at some point. But a big old boulder there on the beach just stands there and it gets the full brunt of the wave. It knows what the full force feels like. Well, that was Jesus.

He's the boulder. When he was here, he felt the full flow, the full weight, the full duration of temptation, but he never sinned. And so when you're going through your trial and when you're struggling and when it's hard and you fail the Lord again and you fail the Lord again and you're broken by it and you're humbled by it and you say, Lord, if you just understood, the Lord said, I do understand and I love you and you're still saved and you're still forgiven and you're still mine, he empathizes with us in our weakness. But also he equips us to overcome what he says in verse 14, the word abides in you and you've overcome the evil. And we learned that we've got to get the word in us.

We've got to hear God's truth. That includes reading it, studying it, memorizing it, meditating on it, hearing it preached. And we learn how to walk in the word of God. In Psalm 119, 9 and 11, how can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to thy word, I have hidden thy word within my heart that I might not sin against you.

A lot of that's going on in this middle stage, learning those things. But it's not just having the word in us, it's faithful fellowship in a solid local church, being accountable to brothers and sisters in Christ. Now here's a real key in overcoming the evil one. That's knowing that he erases our failure. He erases our failure. You see, there's two things, I think two chief ploys of the enemy to overcome you, to defeat you. Number one, just the destruction of sin.

Number two, the discouragement of guilt. But Christ frees you from both of those. He can keep you from being in the stronghold of sin. And when we do fail, he says, you do not stand in the gutter and in the dungeon of guilt.

I have paid your penalty. And so the despair of guilt can't hold you down either. I'll tell you what, that's good news. He gives me strength to fight. If I fail, he lifts me out of the dungeon of guilt.

Only Jesus, folks, only Jesus can do that. Those are the kind of things we are learning in the middle. Now, by the way, you never quit learning that. But I think there's those stages, and I think that's why John says, to the young men you've overcome, since it's twice you've overcome the evil one, because those are the years you learn how to fight those battles. Well, the latter years, he says this in verse 13a and verse 14a, you fathers, he says, I'm writing to you, fathers, because you've known him who was from the beginning. And again, I think there's something to that. I think he's saying beginning, because when you get in those senior days, in your last decade or two with Jesus, I think there's a rekindling of the sweetness and the simplicity and the love for Christ that you had when you were first saved.

I believe that's true. I believe there's a sense in where you come full circle and love him more at the latter days, like you did in the very first days, knowing that deep, rich joy and peace of his nearness and his fellowship. You know, our latter years don't have to be just kind of, but... I heard the story of a fellow speaking to a retired man. He said, you've been retired for a while. What do you do with yourselves? He said, well, I just sit and think, and sit and think, and sometimes I just sit. I've seen people do that, hadn't you? Well, that's not all bad. I'm not saying that's necessarily sin, but there's more than just that.

Oh, I mean, I'm kind of on the opposite end. I've been looking forward to some days when I just sit and don't think. Thinking's my problem.

I think too much. Two little boys were together one time, and one little boy looked at the other little boy and said, boy, aren't you glad we don't wear glasses? And the one little boy said to the other one, said, well, I'd like to have some glasses, if I could get some glasses like my grandma's glasses. He said, what do you mean glasses, like your grandma's glasses? He said, I don't know, she just can see things.

Most people can't see. She can see when I'm unhappy, and she knows how to hug me and make me happy. She can see when I need a hug, and she'll give me the hug. She can see when I need her homemade chocolate chip cookies, and she'll make those homemade...

If I could get some glasses like my grandmother, I'd like to have some. What I'm saying is, there's some very special things God's appointed for us in our latter days. Let's make sure they're God-centered and for the glory of God. God still wants to use us in our latter years. Galileo made his greatest discovery at age 73. Hudson Taylor did some of his greatest mission work, opening up inroads for the gospel in Indochina at age 69.

Caleb defeated the stronghold of the Giants at age 85. Abraham Lincoln once, one time, was advised to put a certain man into his cabinet, and Lincoln wouldn't put the man on his cabinet. And they said, President Lincoln, why won't you put this man on the cabinet? He said, because I don't like his face. He said, every older man's responsible for his face. In other words, he hadn't lived right, and it's showing up on him.

There's something there. And I would say this. I would say, folks, if you'll grow old without bitterness, if you'll grow old with joy, if you'll grow old with sweet forgiveness, and if you'll grow old... Now listen to me, rediscovering the wonder of Jesus and His love, you'll grow old with the sweet countenance. You'll grow old with the sweet countenance.

And boy, I want that for me, and I want that for you. I found this some time ago. I don't know where I found it, but you and I have heard of folks like this.

But just listen to this little story. This guy's name was Wendell. He was a pastor, Wendell P. Loveless. And he described a lady who was 64 years old, and she'd been a shut-in for 16 years. She was confined to her bed, and she was in constant pain. She was unable to move a limb, but she was one of the most thankful people you will ever meet. She rejoiced that God had left her with a great blessing, the use of the thumb on her right hand.

The other hand was clenched and stiff and utterly useless. But they designed a two-pronged fork and fastened it to a stick, and she learned how to put her glasses on and remove them, took great effort, but she got it done. And then she learned how to feed herself and sip on her tea.

And she did all this using only one thumb. She also learned to turn the pages in her large Bible when it was placed within her reach. A visitor once heard her joyfully say, I have so much to be thankful for. When asked for the source of this happiness, she said, Now all my sins are forgiven. I can just lay back and daily drink in the great love of Jesus my Savior. Asked if at times her restricted way of life made her fretful and despondent, she replied, I'm perfectly content to lie here as long as it pleases the Lord to let me stay in this world and I'm also ready to leave whenever He calls me. Returning back to the sweet joy of being near Jesus.

Now I want to end with just a thought here and we're done. He says there in verse 12 and what I'm considering the introductory verse to this section, I'm writing to you little children, because your sins have been forgiven for His name's sake. He saved us and He keeps us saved for His name's sake.

The word name there means His character, or you could even say His attributes. You know, one thing about God is God's not just because God ought to be just. God's just because God's God. God's not holy because there's some objective holiness and God just did better than everybody else in the universe at being holy. No, God gives holiness its definition. Holiness is holiness because God's holy. Justice is justice because God is just.

Righteousness is righteousness because God is righteous. It all begins in Him. So for His name's sake, He saved you. Two thoughts came into my mind meditating on this. He saved you to satisfy His attributes and He saved you to magnify His attributes.

Now think about that. He saved you to satisfy His attributes and to magnify His attributes. God is love. Now, God didn't just learn to be loving and got to be the best lover there is. No, love is what it is because it comes out of who God is.

It's just natural to Him. You and I have to learn it. He deposited something of it in us in common grace, but it's very warped and unfinished. Then we get the agape factor when we get saved and we begin to learn how to live out true love and we don't get done, but we do better as we mature in Christ. But God Himself is the God of true love. And there was no way for that love to be satisfied unless He had loathsome, offensive, wretched transgressors and sinners to extend that love to who could give Him nothing back in return.

Only that would manifest and satisfy that kind of love. Jesus Christ, His Son comes to the earth. He goes to a cruel Roman cross. He's nailed there innocent and sheds His blood while the wrath of His Father is poured out upon Him. And there the justice of God is magnified and satisfied.

It just ain't all about you, it's really all about Him. Now He does love you personally and you're special, but it's for His namesake. And because there is an everlasting covenant with God's elect, marvel of marvels, we can't wrap our little puny brains around it, but somehow in eternity past, God chose those who would be His own. But all of those He chose to be His own would be born in sin, would be irreparably stained with the defilement of depravity.

And everything in their being would be offensive to God, and if He just lets them off scot-free, then He would be sinning against His own attributes, His own justice, His own righteousness. So His Son goes to the cross in the place of those children, those little children that He chose, in their place He dies. And God's justice is then satisfied.

And God's righteousness is satisfied, and therefore the children can be saved. And so we're His little children who now have our sins forgiven, we belong to Him for eternity, all for His namesake, His namesake. And the wondrous thing of it all is if you lose yourself in Him, and think about it, it's all about Him, and it's all for His glory, I'm just glad I get in on it, then you become happier, more secure, more joyous, than when you were upside down thinking it was really all about you, and you were just such a precious soul, Jesus wanted to die for you. Know you were a worm, and He chose to die for you, to magnify His own love and justice and righteousness. And in doing so, He turned a worm into a joint heir of His Son, Jesus Christ. Glory, glory, glory, glory. I hope for all of you other old people in here, that you're entering in on the sweetness and the joy of knowing Jesus and forgiveness, kind of like you did when you first got Him, when you first found Him, He first found you.