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1 John 2-3 with Dr. John Perkins
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The Christian Community Development Association began with a group of Christians who shared a common commitment to live out the love of Christ in marginalized communities, not from a distance, but in proximity, and as neighbors. Dr. John M. Perkins has been called the Moses of the movement, living out Christian Community Development before there was an association or a philosophy.
Dr. Perkins passed away on March 13, 2026, at the age of 95. Throughout his life, he encouraged and inspired countless people to live a life of reconciliation, justice, and restoration.
In this episode, we will share audio from a Bible Study that Dr. Perkins led in 2009 about 1 John 2-3. During this session, he encouraged us to receive the grace of God, to love others, and to count it all joy during trials. We hope that you are encouraged and inspired by his call to love God and love our neighbors.
Learn more about the John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation at jvmpf.org and read a tribute to Dr. Perkins on the CCDA blog ccda.org/a-tribute-to-dr-john-m-perkins.
Learn more about CCDA and how you can get involved at ccda.org. Connect with CCDA on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Follow CCDA on YouTube.
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Transcript
Introduction to CCDA and Dr. John M. Perkins
00:00:09
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Welcome to the CCDA Podcast. The Christian Community Development Association began when a group of Christians gathered together to consider how to better love their neighbors in marginalized spaces.
00:00:21
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Dr. John M.
Legacy of Dr. Perkins: Reconciliation and Justice
00:00:22
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Perkins has been called the Moses of the movement, living out Christian community development before there was an association or a philosophy. Dr. Perkins passed away on March 13, 2026 at the age of 95. Throughout his life, he encouraged and inspired countless people to live a life of reconciliation, justice, and restoration.
Bible Study on 1 John 2-3 with Dr. Perkins
00:00:42
Speaker
In this episode, we will share audio from a Bible study that Dr. Perkins led in 2009 about 1 John chapters 2 and 3. During this session, he encouraged us to receive the grace of God, to love others, and to count it all joy during trials.
00:00:58
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We hope that you were encouraged and inspired by his call to love God and love our neighbors. Okay, if you have your Bibles, open them to first john to 1 John 2-3 this morning. Let's pray.
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Father, thank you so much for your goodness and your grace. I thank you for what you are doing in our world. Lord, I thank you for the other missions and ministries that are carrying forth your word in the world.
00:01:30
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Now, I pray now, Lord, that you would open our understanding, open our mind as we study your word this morning. We ask all this in Jesus' precious name and for his sake.
00:01:43
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Amen. Let's go back and do a just a little bit of review from yesterday in this a book here that we are dealing with here.
Discussion on New Birth and Incarnation
00:01:54
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The Epistles of John is like a companion letters from the gospel. It's really about the incarnation of God in human form.
00:02:10
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And it's about then God really incarnate himself in us through the new birth. And that we, the church, being the continuation of the of Christ here on earth.
00:02:28
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And we are living out and carrying on the work that he came to do 2,000 years ago. And that's the whole idea of the new birth.
00:02:39
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The new birth here is that Jesus was the eternal son of God. He was a part of the eternal family of God. And that that God has revealed himself. And yesterday we said, John made it clear. We've touched him. We've seen him.
00:02:54
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He was here. he was God. Now, what he's saying, and when we come to know this God as Savior, he gives us the power to become a part of the family of God, a fact that we are born into the family of God. That was the big dialogue that Jesus had with Nicodemus, which was an absolutely important idea, a conversation.
Conversation with Nicodemus: Love and Sacrifice
00:03:22
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And the idea of that conversation, it came out of God's deep love for the world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He talks about his son now coming into the world in order to do away with sin. That's what the incarnation is about.
00:03:41
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This is about the extreme of God incarnating himself as Jesus of Nazareth so that he could die on the cross. for our sin, and sin is the big problem.
00:03:54
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Sin is the human dilemma. And that Jesus came into this world to be a human being, that he would be the second Adam, that so that he could then die for sin, so he could take, when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, God had a major problem, because God had created us to have intimate fellowship with this humanity.
00:04:20
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And that was his purpose. Almost God's purpose is almost defeated because God, since he's eternal, since he's unchangeable, that he can't look at sin.
00:04:31
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And so God had a problem.
Jesus as the Second Adam: Defeating Sin
00:04:33
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And that problem be this now, how can he get rid of sin and have fellowship with you and me? How could God still be just and justify you and me is the big biblical question.
00:04:47
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And so to a certain degree, as we play with justice all the time, justice was God's deep motivation for redemption. It was how could God be true and just and then have this fellowship with you and me?
00:05:00
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And so God himself then had to take on a body and to come to this world. And God now have got to grow up and he got to defeat sin.
00:05:11
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And he got to defeat sin based upon his word. And so when even when he was in the world, when all the temptation came to him and all the temptation that comes to humanity came to Jesus in that great temptation, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life.
Redemption and Eternal Life through Confession
00:05:32
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Satan hit him with everything that he had. And Jesus used the word of God to overcome all of those temptations. And so because he was the word of God and he lived it out. And then the big deal then, he went to the cross.
00:05:48
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The angels had said at his birth, they shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sin. And there on that cross, God took care of sin.
00:06:01
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He died on that cross, the just for the unjust. When we come to know Jesus Christ as Savior, Christ takes away and takes care of the sin of Adam, the original sin. He takes care of that sin.
00:06:15
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Then we are born to His family, and we are now both human, but we also have the Spirit of God living in us as His people. And that blood now is available for our daily sin.
00:06:29
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to keep us in relationship. If we knew the extreme that God has went to, if we truly understood salvation, we could live this eternal life much better.
00:06:43
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The whole idea, as I said yesterday morning, that salvation means that he saves us from the past. That's Adam. He saved them from Egypt, the past. He broke the bondage there.
00:06:54
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He took them into the wilderness and he saved them in the wilderness. And then through Joshua, he took them into the land. You and I have been saved from our past sin.
00:07:06
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We are being saved now. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is that flow.
00:07:19
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That makes me whiter than snow. No other found I know nothing but the blood. In order to live out this eternal life, we got to be able to live this life of confession all the time.
00:07:31
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Live it out. And the way we get rid of sin is by confessing it. There's no other way. And to get God forgiven. We can't fix it out. Sometimes sin is like stromal eggs. You can't put it back together.
00:07:44
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It gets worse as we mess with it. The solution to sin is to confess that sin. That's why they put Jesus to death. They put Jesus to death because he said to this person that is it easier to say to this person, take up your bed and walk, or to say to him, your sins are forgiven.
00:08:05
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The most powerful act of God in the world is when God forgive our sins. If you're talking about the miracle of miracles, it's when God forgives our sins. The other miracle that would be a little bit almost equal comparative to the great miracle would be when he raised people from the dead. Because that's exactly what happens when you come into the kingdom of God.
00:08:32
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What happens when you come to the family of God? God, ri sin has destroyed you. And if you are dead and you'll trespass it in your sin. But when you come to know and fall in love with this wonderful Savior and discover that his deep love for you,
00:08:48
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and that he forgive you your sin. would say, that is the greatest miracle of all. When people come into the kingdom, of course, if I would put a towel around my head and some kind of robe on and would come out here every day and have somebody come on this stage, and I put my hand on them little boogily, and they get they get healed. I mean, y'all would flock in here from a thousand.
00:09:11
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You would come from all over the world to see me do my voodoo. But the greatest miracle, the greatest miracle of all, it when it was almost yesterday morning.
00:09:23
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It was almost yesterday morning when people became conscious of the fact that there is sin in lives. And we came here and kneeled at an altar. And I know among all of those people, some of them were saying, God, restore me.
00:09:39
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Forgive me for my i sin. Restore me back into this relationship to you. That is the miracle of miracles. This is the sign and wonder that Jesus said would follow the church.
00:09:51
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This sign and wonder that God would be forever bringing people into the kingdom of God, bringing them from death to life.
Purpose of Christian Life: Ministry and Reconciliation
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And he would be forever then restoring that eternal relationship with us.
00:10:07
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As we confess our sin, He is faithful. He is just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, that's just sort of the introduction for what I'm going to teach here this morning. But I think that you needed this introduction. And we see it's how do we live?
00:10:27
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How do we live in this crooked and perversive world? The world is against us. The world lies in the hands of the evil one, and he has made us salt and light in this world.
00:10:40
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And so we're wrestling not against flesh and blood, but we're wrestling against principalities and power as we live out this eternal life. Now, we should be courageous. We should be courageous because death has been taken care Paul lived in that that pressure all the time. He lived with the joy of going home to be with God, but he lived with the needs of the people around him.
00:11:03
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We have made this Christian life too sloppy, And we have did that, and we have taken it for some kind of superficial joy and think all the church's job is is to make us superficially happy. And the church becomes the entertainment center instead of the church becoming a teaching center.
00:11:24
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The whole idea of our gathering together is for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry. And then we should worship God out of the fact he's done so much for us. We understand his deep love. This is our teaching. Let's look at chapter 3.
00:11:39
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Chapter 3. I'm going to go chapter 3 and I'm going to back up to to do our teaching this morning in chapter 3. This is a passage here, and it just sort of thrills me when I read it.
00:11:51
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Verse 1, chapter 3. Think how much the Father loves us. He loves us so much that he loves me called his children.
00:12:04
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as we truly are. But since the world, since the world's people do not know Christ, they don't know us either. Now, what he's fixing to do here in this passage, he is making this church family, the church family, he's fixing to create a universal family.
00:12:29
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He's fixing to create a universal family that goes across racial, culture, and economic barriers. And sin is going to affect us in the family just like it affects anything else.
00:12:41
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And so he's creating a family. You see, there is no basis in Scripture for the people of God to live ratio and hold hatred and animosity against another believer.
00:12:59
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The whole idea of this reconciliation at the cross was to make us a new family, a family of God. He's now fixing to create a universal family.
00:13:10
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And we got to now live like that universal family. and there and And if you overplay, this is saying, if you overplay the family in terms of the individual family, you're going to end with apartheid, racism, bigotry, and genocide.
00:13:34
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The whole idea here is that God is making a universal family that can live together in love because his love provided all of this for us. He's going to make love as a sign that the world can see as they look at these people that he's making.
00:13:54
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I'm just trying to explain to you 2 Corinthians 5 that we once knew Jesus as a racial guy, as a Jew.
00:14:06
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But now that we're in Christ, we know him no more. Therefore, if any person be in Christ, they are a new creature. They've been born again. The old things have passed away, and behold, all things become new. We are now in the family of God, and we judge no one anymore by our race and ethnicity.
00:14:26
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We judge them now because we are now in this new universal family of God. And now the world is going to know we are Christian because we are living that kind of relationship with each other. These other people are killing each other, doing genocide. These other folks are hating each other. The other folks are conquering each other. The strong is destroying the weak and we are colonizing them and controlling them.
00:14:52
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But we are the liberators. We bring them good news. We bring them good news that God has incarnated himself in human affairs and he lives his life out through his local church.
00:15:04
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and through his people, and that these people belong to That's the idea. I know we have reduced Christianity down to racism and bigotry. We can have ah an apartheid church, and we can defend that in a way we want to defend it.
00:15:18
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We can call it homogenous, family-friendly, and all of that stuff. All of that is another form, another form of not and understanding that we've been bundled.
00:15:31
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Listen to what he says.
Universal Family in Christianity
00:15:34
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The Father has bestowed upon us that we can be called the children of God, that we can be called the sons and daughters of God.
00:15:47
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that that just John can't find rare words to express what has happened to us. Now, how do we keep that relationship? here That's what this epistle is about.
00:16:02
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This epistle is about how we keep that relationship. And the secret to this epistle here is the confessing of my sin, confessing of my sin, and then to living this out in the world. In chapter 2, if we go back now, that was a verse I wanted you to know, the extreme of this love, the extreme of this love that God has shown toward us. Now we go back to chapter 2.
00:16:24
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two here and pick up our lesson here. You go back to verse 7. Let's read this here in verse 7. My dear friend, I'm not writing to give you a new commandment. Now, he's freaking to give us this whole idea of how we have to live.
00:16:40
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We have to live out a life of love. We have to live out a life of love. we have to live out this life of love in the family. Now, you know, sometimes we're talking about the idea that you can, you strive to love the world.
00:16:59
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You strive to tell them how much God loved them. But we, in the family of God, demonstrate that love by the way we walk.
00:17:10
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And people, as we see our brother and sister destitute of daily food, this in the family of God. Now, this is in the family of God. And you don't give them those things that are needed for the body. It says, I'll dwell the love of God in you.
00:17:23
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And so in the church, in the family of God, the people had no knees. There were people out there lost, will always have knees. And it's our responsibility, our joy, he's equipped us to go out there and to embrace those people, to show them that love, not only in words, but in deeds and in truth. We're trying to show the world how much we love each other.
00:17:46
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But he's taking that this should be natural within the family of God. This should be natural. and fact Look at what, let's watch this here. Let's go read it. Read it. This ain't just coming out of head.
00:17:57
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He said, dear friend, I'm not writing to you to give a new commandment. He's talking about love. He's want us to say that love has always been God's way of demonstrating his love.
00:18:09
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The redemption of the nation of Israel was to be an eternal model to show God's love for that nation to make it a incubator so which he himself could be incarnated into the world.
00:18:26
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And so that was to be model. And he demonstrates that love for them time and time in the wilderness as they ought to have been destroyed. but he demonstrates this love, this love.
00:18:38
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And so we, the church, becomes his replacement and he have demonstrated his love by his death on the cross. Now he's demonstrating his love as we live for him. Let's to the family. So this is John talking to a family.
00:18:54
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The family is a, the church is modeled after the family. This was probably one of the house churches that he had started. And these churches were meeting in the home. And if you read all three of these epistles here, you will see it that way. It has to do with personal thing, personal idea in there. This is not the the the big ah things about theology.
00:19:19
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This is the more or less about how families deal with each other. And so he's telling him here about the new commandment. He wants them to know that this is the one that Christ told him. And he says here, now he's talking to us now who are the Christian.
00:19:34
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It is the same one that you were first given, and it is a message you've heard. That's love. But it really is a new commandment. In a sense now, you can do it.
00:19:47
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You can do it. Not how you can do it. You can do it now because you have the power of the Holy Spirit and you have the forgiveness of sin. And whenever some problem comes, you come to each other and you confess that.
00:20:01
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And God is faithful and he's just to forgive us for our sin. Now, this is in the family. This is in the family of God. Look what he says here, this new commandment. You can know it's true of meaning just as Christ does.
00:20:14
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You can see the darkness fading away and the true light is already shining. Look what he says now. If we claim to be in the light and hate someone,
00:20:26
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You are still in the darkness. You get the idea? Hate is just the other side of love. And our whole idea of the church here, we've been redeemed by God's love.
00:20:38
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It's this great love. And our trademark to the world is the way we love each other within the body. And then how do we reach out to this humanity out there who God's love and he saved us to be his missionaries?
00:20:55
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He saved us so that we could reach out to the world as he reached out to the world. We are his ambassadors. He has no other hands down here earth than your hand and my hand.
00:21:09
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And we have to be reaching out to the lost. The idea here is that he's taking it for granted that we're supposed to be caring for each other within the body.
00:21:20
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There ought to be no needs among us. We ought to be able now to, and that's what gets me about all this prosperity theology. It is to me focused.
00:21:31
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It is to me focused. God has done what is necessary and provided what is necessary for me. By his death on the cross, he has provided, and he has now for me the forgiveness of things that I can have.
00:21:46
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Now can walk in the light of God and his Holy Spirit power as he guides me and leads me to do his work on earth. He equipped us to be his workers here on earth.
00:21:57
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That was the idea of redemption. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that faith is not of yourself. It is a gift of God, not of our own works, lest anyone should boast.
00:22:08
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But then he says, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God had before ordained that we should walk in them. And this good works here is reaching out to the world.
00:22:23
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This good work here is letting our light so shine before the world that they might see our good works and glorify the Father's name. The world is in darkness.
00:22:33
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And God want us The shine is lights in the midst of this crooked. And you see this in the Bible here Let's go here back what he says here.
00:22:44
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He said here, if we claim, if we claim to be in the light and hate someone, we are still in the darkness, still in the dark.
00:22:55
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But if we love others, we are in the light. You get that? This is pretty simple. If we love others, we are in the light, and we don't cause problems for them. Isn't that something?
00:23:09
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We don't cause problems for them. But if we hate someone, if we hate others, we are living and walking in the dark. We don't know where we are going.
00:23:21
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Because the darkness has blind eyes. Now he gets into talking to us in the family. And I'm going run through this. This important. This is very important because it's in the family.
00:23:34
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And as I read this here, you know, my greatest struggle as a pastor has not really been the world out there.
00:23:48
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My greatest struggle, my personal struggle, have been in my own personal family. My big struggles have been in the family of God. Our people not understanding. That's where my biggest struggle have been in the world. God has sort of fortified me, I think, that night in the Brandon Jail back in 1970 when I was tortured and beaten.
00:24:15
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in that Brendan jail. And when those white law enforcement officers tortured me in that jail, I saw the ugliness of racism and bigotry and hatred.
00:24:28
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And it was that night I saw it. And from that night, I said, I wouldn't wish this kind of bigotry upon anyone. And what I would like to do with the rest of my life, I would like to preach a gospel that can burn through white racism, black racism, Mexican racism, other racism, and bring people to God so they can live like
Overcoming Racism and Bigotry
00:24:49
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we ought to live in this world.
00:24:51
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I know what that feels like, and I don't wish that kind of bigotry on anybody else. in our world. That's what he says here. He said it now. He gets into the family.
00:25:03
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He says, children, I'm riding you. because your sins have been forgiven. That's idea. Now, what are you' trying to do now? He's teaching us. He's teaching us how to walk in the world, and he wants us to have a sense of gratitude, gratitude that our sins have been forgiven. Oh, that you have passed from darkness into light.
00:25:24
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The Christian life should be a life of gratitude that God in his love took it on on himself to come down and to redeem us. and then provide his blood that is ever alive.
00:25:38
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That when we do sin we have this advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he'll forgive us by And so we have this relationship. That's what he's trying to get these children here to see. Look what he says here. Your sins have been forgiven in the name of Jesus. He says to the parents, listen what he said to the parents. Parents, I'm writing you because you have known the one who was there from the beginning.
00:26:04
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Young people, I'm writing you because you have defeated the evil one. When you come to know Jesus Christ, greater is he that is in you than he is in the world.
00:26:16
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but Don't give all your attention to the devil. You know, i listen to people all the time. They talk like the devil is bigger than Jesus. You know, I listen to that the time. yeah You know, we overcome the world. And because he overcome the world, we in him, not in our flesh, but we in him can overcome the world.
00:26:36
Speaker
We can live because he got the solution for us. That is all a part of the redemption, redemptive plans. And that we can walk in this world. Look what he says here. Overcome the evil one. Children, I'm writing you because you have known the Father.
00:26:51
Speaker
Parents, I'm writing you because you have known the one who was there from the beginning. Young people, he's going over and over. That's what he's doing. He wants you to understand it. That's what he's doing. He's repeating it because it's so very important that he wants you to understand this and act upon it. Young people, I'm writing you because you are strong.
00:27:12
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God's message is firm in your heart. You know, the young folks, they're the one that's got the energy. The old folks, we're the one that should have the wisdom. And that wisdom then that we share that wisdom and help to guide this new generation. That's what I'm so excited about.
00:27:28
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I'm so excited about as I look out and see the age of the people. But I'm also excited as I look out and see these bald heads and these gray heads.
00:27:39
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And I'm also, as I meet people in here, they are coming in groups. And some of the old folks are showing me the groups that they helped to get here. Some them who paid the fare for the young folks to get here.
00:27:53
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They got the resources. They got the wisdom. They got the knowledge. They understand importance of this whole movement of CCDA. Being a movement is finally trying to burn through this racial and social garbage.
00:28:08
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in the world and sin that ah don't have any redemptive elements in it. Hate is not good. And i'm fra I'm in my nation, I'm afraid now that we are forever looking for somebody to hate.
00:28:22
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It seemed like to me that we are trying our best to hate the immigrants. And I tried to say, don't do that. Why do we want to do that? God tells us to care for the strangers. They are people. They are human beings created in image of God. And it's our work. It's our work to shine the light of God through their lives. I don't care what you say. That's the church's work.
00:28:45
Speaker
What I'm trying to do is to get the church together so that we can shine in this world. God don't want us hating. God wants us to be a light of love. The gospel is about the demonstration of God's love to humanity.
00:29:05
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That's why the cross is so important. The cross is so important to the Christian. Don't let people take the cross away from me Don't let them take the cross away from it. Because the cross is a statement of the depths of God's love for humanity.
00:29:21
Speaker
That's what it's about. That's what about. And so we are representing this. And let me go on here and finish this here, if I can, this morning, okay? And so he he tells us here.
00:29:34
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Then verse, let's go up to verse 15. 15. Don't love the world system. This world system is not going to quite do what we can do as God's people.
00:29:50
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Don't depend on this world system to do what God wants to do through us as God's people. We, the church, really ought to offer somewhat of ah an alternative to the world system.
00:30:06
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We ought to be showing people that there is a better life. That's what the idea of the kingdom of God had meant. The kingdom of God, we was not to make the kingdom of God because God himself is going to come and establish the kingdom. What we're supposed to do is reflect the kingdom of God.
00:30:24
Speaker
We'll like to live like the kingdom is coming and the way we live show people that a bigger kingdom is coming. That's the whole idea of the kingdom. And that's what Jesus said. The kingdom of God is here. The kingdom of God is here because he was there and because he was reflecting God's love.
00:30:41
Speaker
In the villages that he went to, he's reflect reflecting God's love. We, the church then, is supposed to be reflecting God's love in our neighborhoods. and in our community in which we which we live. Let me continue here. He says, don't love the world.
00:30:59
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If you love the world, you cannot love the Father. Now, he talks about where sin come from.
Sin, Pride, and God's Purpose
00:31:05
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Now, he's gonna define sin for you here. And this is a great definition of sin, people. Look what he's gonna define here.
00:31:12
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ah of foolish pride come from this world, and so does our selfish desire. Let me tell you what sin is. Sin is pride and selfish desire.
00:31:24
Speaker
Sin is when we are putting anything over against God. against the will of God. And usually it comes out of our own pride. You know, every time since I've been a minister for 50 years, every time I go to a ah church event or a dispute with an organization, you know what I lay my hands on as the first thing that is causing all of that is pride.
00:31:55
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And pride is so evasive. You can't get your hands on it. The original sin was a sin of pride. And the sin the original of sin is the sin of my own selfish desire.
00:32:10
Speaker
If that's a statement about Lucifer's and about the devil and the Bible, it says that he wanted to exalt himself above God. And pride is that weakness within people.
00:32:24
Speaker
And it's in all of us. Oh, Lord, we need to pray this, get out of us. Because the Bible says God resisted the proud. He gives his grace to the hummer.
00:32:36
Speaker
Therefore, hummer yourself, therefore, under the mighty power of God, that he might exalt us in due time. I tell you, people, that we have got to do the best we can to walk in humility.
00:32:50
Speaker
i Sometimes I think I have so many problems because I think it's a little bit of it in me. and i thank god i and And I think tribulation sort of you works that out of you so that your light can really shine in the world. And so you sometimes you ought to be thankful that God brings this tribulation upon you. Count it all joy.
00:33:14
Speaker
Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when trials come upon you. because God is trying to work out of you something that is more important. He's trying to prepare you to be the kind of person He wants you to be in this in this world.
00:33:31
Speaker
Let me go here. me call yeah Then He goes on to, we go now to, look what He says, the world the world and its selfish desires any causes will disappear.
00:33:45
Speaker
Sin is our pride and our own selfish desire. The original sin, Eve desired the apple.
00:33:57
Speaker
She looked at it. It would be something to be desired and it would make her wise. Pride. It's dangerous. I feel like it's dangerous for me. All of y'all giving me all this praise.
00:34:10
Speaker
That ain't necessarily good. that That ain't necessarily good. ain't necessarily good. i wish that y'all, some of y'all would whisper to me and tell me about some of my deficiencies. You you don't have to do it so much because Vera may do that enough.
00:34:32
Speaker
she's She thinks she was ordained to do that. I won't forget one time, and you know, Gordie and I, we get together, and we love each other so much. We be talking, planning, and scheming, and thinking about everything, and we going on.
00:34:47
Speaker
And Ann said to Vera Mae, do you have any trouble with our grandpa preaching pride and all of that, like I do with Gordie?
00:34:59
Speaker
okay And Bill may say, oh, you don't know. That's John's blind spot. He don't see that.
00:35:10
Speaker
oh I want you not want you to know the pride is a very evasive thing. We got to watch our hearts. We got to watch our hearts.
00:35:21
Speaker
When all people speak well of you, Jesus says, watch it, watch it, watch it. Watch it. Watch it. Good friends of mine, some of my greatest friends, they're the ones who help me.
00:35:33
Speaker
They're the ones who tell me. They're the ones who embrace me and say to me, John, we want you to live it out. Don't mess it up. Don't mess it up. Don't mess it up. Don't mess it up. Be careful. Be careful. Be careful how you behave in the world. And that's what we need to do. Let me finish this for for today. Thank God. here What he says here is,
00:35:55
Speaker
he He moves from this. Look, he says, ah but the world and its selfish desires will disappear. But if we obey God, will live. The idea here is that we are live forever, but the idea here is that the fruit and the results of our life will be forever. So he's trying to get us now to protect that. You know, Paul always talked about not losing his reward. You you remember that? He was always talking about not losing his reward.
00:36:27
Speaker
you see So pride can mess up that which we have already been doing. And one little act of pride can mess it all up. One little act of selfish desire.
00:36:39
Speaker
One little act of seeing a woman out there and start jazzing, pulling you away from your faithfulness to your own wife.
00:36:50
Speaker
One little selfish desire. can mess up all that you've done in the world. I watch so many wonderful pastors do so many wonderful things in the world and let one little incident pull them away and they lose all of that moral capital.
00:37:11
Speaker
that they have accumulated. And God wants us to use that moral capital for his good. have to love God with all our heart, and with all of our soul, and with all our mind, and with all that we have.
Conclusion: Love, Humility, and Fellowship
00:37:25
Speaker
And sin and our selfish desires will destroy all of that. Okay, we're going to wrap it up with what it's all about.
00:37:36
Speaker
It's about us loving each other. It's about us walking in love. He's going to close this book so very beautiful. He's going to say, keep yourself from ours.
00:37:49
Speaker
And what is ours? Ours is anything you put in the way of God. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for this morning. I thank you for your people.
00:38:02
Speaker
Lord, and I just pray that you'd help us to walk, as Paul called it, circumspectly, walking very carefully in the world, walking and not allowing our pride and our selfish desire to get in our way.
00:38:19
Speaker
And when we feel it and see it, let's go to the cross. Let's go to that fountain that is filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's vein.
00:38:30
Speaker
And we then can confess our sin and He washes all our sins away. And then we can have this joy, this joy and this fellowship with each other and our fellowship with you.
00:38:44
Speaker
Because sin breaks our fellowship with you. It breaks our fellowship with each other. And then with the walk in the light, as He's in the light, so we can have this fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, keep on cleansing us from all sin.
00:39:03
Speaker
Thank you for this morning. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast. If you would like to learn more about Dr. Perkins and his legacy, check out the John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation.
00:39:18
Speaker
If you want to learn more about CCDA and how you can get involved, click the link in the show notes of this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is produced by me, Sarah Callan, in association with Christina Fore.
00:39:33
Speaker
We will be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's Shalom. We'll see you then.