Lord's Day: August 10, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Love Scripture: 1 John 4:11–13; 1 Corinthians 1:30–31; 1 John 4:8–9; 3:2; Romans 8:16–18; 5:1–5; Hebrews 12:5–11; Ephesians 2:3–13; Romans 9:23; 2 Peter 1:3–4; Romans 8:28–30; John 17:17; Jeremiah 23:28–29; Matthew 28:19

11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 1 John 4:11–13

I. The excellencies of God’s love correspond to the order of our salvation (ordo salutis)

• The order of salvation is a result of, the consequence of, God’s love being poured out richly on all of us who have been chosen by God, to be loved by Him—it is all God’s gracious gift to us! Because God is love (1 John 4:8)

II. Reformative: After regenerating us, God’s love continues to mold us, rebuke, chasten, discipline us, to conform us to the image of His Son

III. The path of God’s Reformative love refines, sanctifies, prunes and perfects us

• God’s Reformative love sanctifies us and “is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12) through suffering—but not as those who are without God and without hope in the world (Eph. 2:12)
• God’s adoptive love for us as our heavenly Father disciplines and reforms us (Heb. 12:5-11)

IV. God’s Law & Gospel of Love

• A Redemptive, Restorative, justifying love, and a Regenerative and ongoing, Reformative, sanctifying love that disciplines us unto holiness, to make us more like His precious, unique Son, “so that we may share His holiness” (Heb. 12:10)

V. God’s law and gospel both sanctify us in special ways, because they are both God’s holy Word

• God’s holy love transforms us by His holy law, His holy gospel, His Holy Spirit

Join us on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: August 3, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Love Scripture: 1 John 4:11–12; John 19:30; 1 John 4:7–9; Titus 3:4–7; 2 Corinthians 5:17; John 1:18; 4:24; 14:9; 13:34–35; Exodus 33:18–20

11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:11–12

I. Regenerative: God’s love regenerates us, recreates us, causes us to adjust our course and walk in newness of life as renewed creations

• God’s love gives us repentance and faith, new spiritual life, gives us a new moral nature, a new disposition, by realigning our deepest convictions, thoughts, words, and actions to His Word and will

II. No one has seen God at any time

• Even though “no one has beheld God at any time,” yet He also demonstrates His abiding love through us and perfects His love in us, because He chose us to be the objects of His love and affections, and His love is regenerative and sanctifies us with a holy love for others, especially for our precious brothers and sisters in Christ
• Although Moses spoke to God “face to face,” anthropomorphism (Exodus 33:18-20)

Join us on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: July 27, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Love Scripture: 1 John 4:9–10; Romans 5:8–10; Ephesians 1:7–8; 1 John 2:1–2; 1 Corinthians 15:3; Isaiah 53:4–10; 1 John 3:1; 1 Peter 2:9–10; Revelation 1:5–6; 5:10; Romans 8:30

9By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:7–10

• Great gospel memory passage

I. This “Other Love Chapter” explains what love truly is, and what it looks like

• What then is love? God’s love is gospel; our love is law (obedience)
• The Excellencies of God's love:
  • (a) Redemptive, Restorative (Justifying: Forensic [synthetic])
  • (b) Regenerative, Reformative (Sanctifying: Renovative, Transformative [analytic])

II. Redemptive: God’s love forgives all our sins

• How is our Redemption accomplished? One “Word”—Christ

III. God’s gospel of love is a gospel of propitiation

• The atonement is central to Christianity; propitiation is the heart of the gospel

• Propitiation is “the means of appeasing wrath and gaining the good will of an offended person; especially with respect to sacrifices for appeasing angered deities.”[1]

• You cannot be saved without a gospel of propitiation, you must believe the true gospel
• Against Eastern Orthodoxy
• 1 Corinthians 15:3
• God, Man, Salvation, His Word—a failure to grasp these primary doctrines can lead to a false gospel
• Isaiah 53:4–10
• You cannot understand God’s love unless you understand God’s wrath
• You cannot have God’s love unless God’s wrath has been satisfied through His Son whom He sent, to be the propitiation for our sins.

IV. Restorative: God’s love not only restores to us the benefits that we lost in the Fall, but surpasses them with more blessings and benefits

Join us on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] Rick Brannan, ed., Lexham Research Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, Lexham Research Lexicons (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).

Lord's Day: July 20, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Love Scripture: 1 John 4:7–10; Matthew 16:18; Esther 4:14; 1 John 4:2; Titus 1:16; Galatians 5:19–24; Acts 20:28; Romans 4:4–5; 1 Corinthians 13:4–8; 1 Kings 18:21

7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:7–10

• Christians should study influential men like John MacArthur, just as Christians should study church history, because it allows us to see the good and bad consequences of their theology and lives on a larger scale, with greater insight and clarity
• God will continue to use His means, His people, to call and raise faithful men up for such a time as this

I. Transition from 1 John 4:6 to verse 7

• The Spirit of God works in them the fruit of the Spirit, in contrast to the works of the flesh, which are antichrist, and which believers now actively mortify in their own flesh

II. Love Is of God, for God Is Love

• The main subject of this passage, and much of this chapter is love, agape in all its various inflections and forms
• You may have heard of the famous “Love Chapter”—1 Corinthians 13
• 1 John 4 is the "Other Love Chapter"—29 mentions of love versus 21 in 1 Corinthians 13

III. What love is not…

• Love is not an emotion, not a feeling, not fickle or unstable, something that changes constantly and goes back and forth, it does not give up at the first sign of hardship or trouble

IV. The “Other Love Chapter” expounds what love truly is and what it looks like

• While there are strong law warnings in this passage about how we ought to love, there are even stronger gospel promises and encouragements about what God’s love has done for us and is working in us!

Join us on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: July 13, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Discernment Scripture: 1 John 4:2–6; John 15:19; Titus 1:10–16; 1 Corinthians 14:36–40

5They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world hears them. 6We are from God. The one who knows God hears us; the one who is not from God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. 1 John 4:5–6

• Main Idea: Those who belong to God and are from Him, who confess His Son and have the spirit of truth, have overcome those who are not from God, who do not belong to Him and reject Him, who are of the antichrist and of the world, and have the spirit of error

I. They are of the world. We are not.

• There are worldly antichrists who are followers, and there are worldly antichrists who are active deceivers and influencers, whom the world loves to hear

II. We cannot simply take people at their word

• The most dangerous antichrists are the ones with the best disguise, pious sounding language and appearances
  • Especially when they claim to believe the same things…
  • Especially when they claim that God talks to them…
• They have neglected—and in many cases rejected—the means and ways that God gives to us whereby we can know Him truly and reject Antichrist, to know truth and reject error

II. What are His means and ways?

• God uses His Word, but He also calls men to teach us the Word so that we can understand it rightly, and grow in our discernment of good and evil, truth and error, to avoid pitfalls, extremes, imbalances, lies of Antichrist and deceptions of the devil
• The spirit of truth is the mindset that agrees with God’s word and with those whom He has called to teach it to us, like the apostles
• The spirit of error is the mindset that rejects God’s word and His teachers, and instead follows the world and its antichrist deceivers

Join us on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: July 6, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Assurance Scripture: 1 John 4:2–5; Romans 1:25; 1 John 5:19; John 12:31; Ephesians 2:2; Mark 3:28–30; James 4:4; 2 Corinthians 4:2–4; Romans 8:37; John 15:17–21; Matthew 16:15–19; John 8:32; Matthew 18:18; 28:18–20; Hebrews 2:14–17; 1 John 2:19–20

4You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:4

• Those who are not from God deny Him instead, and “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” (Rom. 1:25) — Either/Or

I. Conquerors & Overcomers

• 1 John 4:4 2—Law or Gospel?
  • The apostle showers God’s people, “my little children,” with gospel indicatives
• What does the world mean in this passage?
  • Unregenerate society as a whole, which is influenced by the spirit of the antichrist that “is already in the world” (1 John 4:3) and lies under the power of the evil one (1 John 5:19)
• Who is “he who is in the world”?
  • Satan

II. Haven’t the Antichrist and the antichrists overcome the world?

• John 16:33
• 2 Corinthians 4:2–4
• There is no cosmic, dualistic struggle between God and the devil, Christ and Antichrist

III. Haven’t the Antichrist and the antichrists overcome the church?

• Matthew 16:15–19
• What is the church? taen ekklesian, the called-out ones chosen by God
• Roman Catholic Church-State claims to the papacy, Peter as the 1st pope

IV. Amazing promise: No one and no thing—not Death, not the Devil, not any other power, nor anything else can ever prevail against us—God’s church, nor separate us from His greater love (Romans 8)

• 1689 LBCF 26.3: “The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error,1 [though] some have degenerated so much that they have ceased to be churches of Christ and have [instead] become 'synagogues of Satan'.2 Nevertheless, Christ has always had, and always will have to the end of time a kingdom in this world, made up of those who believe in him and profess his name.3” (1) 1Co 1:11; 5:1; 6:6; 11:17-19; 3Jo 1:9-10; Rev 2:1-3:22 (2) Rev 2:5, 1:20; 1Ti 3:14-15; Rev 18:2 (3) Mat 16:18; 24:14; 28:20; Mar 4:30-32; Psa 72:16-18; 102:28; Isa 9:6-7; Rev 12:17; 20:7-9
• The churches and people who fall away and become apostate do not belong to Christ, Christ did not “lose” them

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

Lord's Day: June 29, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Discernment Scripture: 1 John 4:1–4; Luke 11:23; 9:49–50; Acts 20:26–32; Hebrews 5:14; 2 Corinthians 11:13–15; Matthew 15:13–14; Revelation 3:17; 1 John 2:22–23, 18; Matthew 7:15

2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 1 John 4:2–3

• To confess Christ is to deny Antichrist
• Law of Excluded Middle: Luke 11:23 and Luke 9:49–50

I. There are many false ways of relating to God, and “many false prophets have gone out into the world”

• Acts 20:26–32
• Those who are in error are often completely unaware of their own biases and imbalances—self-deception
• They often assume that their errors/traditions are biblical, instead of carefully investigating them, instead of discerning all things, instead of testing every spirit
• Gresham Machen’s Christianity & Liberalism—Either/Or, Excluded Middle

II. Confession

• What does it mean to confess Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh?

III. Repentance

• Repentance is a form of discernment, a rejection of lies and acceptance of truth

IV. What is “the spirit of the Antichrist” (v. 3)?

• Zeitgeist, spirit of the age, mindset that is of the Antichrist,[1] allegiance

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com

[1] Gordon H. Clark, First John: A Commentary, Trinity Paper, No. 2, 2nd ed. (The Trinity Foundation, 1992), p. 126 .

Lord's Day: June 22, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Discernment Scripture: 1 John 4:1–3; Acts 20:30; Hebrews 4:9–13; 5:9–14; John 7:24; 2 Peter 1:3–4; 1 John 2:18–25; Matthew 7:13–14

1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.... 1 John 4:1–2

• Discernment in a sense illustrates law and gospel: It is both a command (law), a daily necessity and duty that we all must practice constantly, as well as a good, gracious gift from God (gospel)

I. Discernment is definitional to the Christian—to be a Christian is to discern

• Discernment is the mirror that allows us to see who we really are

II. How then do we grow in our discernment? In our ability to test every spirit?

• Discernment and sound judgment are closely related in Scripture, go hand in hand, frequently overlap
• You cannot judge righteously unless you first discern properly
• Grasping God’s Word, understanding it, requires discernment

III. Beware—A lack of active, consistent, constant, daily discernment points to and leads to a lack of understanding

• It leads to forgetting things that we previously learned, even to a lack of desire to understand, “dullness of hearing” (Heb 5:11)
• Discernment is cumulative

IV. One of the main reasons we must have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” is because the devil and his antichrist spirit are master counterfeiters‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

• One of the necessary qualities of biblical discernment—in addition to knowledge of Scripture and of sound doctrine—is logic

V. There are many, many erroneous ways of relating to God, many false claims to the true God

• Matthew 7:13–14

We meet on Sundays for worship at 10:00am:

• ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church
  4712 Montana Ave
  El Paso, Texas 79903

Contact us at:

• web: ThornCrownCovenant.Church
  call/text: (915) 843-8088
  email: ThornCrownCovenantBChurch@gmail.com

Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com