1 John 5 - Part 4

1 John 5, 1 through 5, why don't you read that real loud for everybody? This is the victory that has overcome us all, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

For there are three that testify, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood. And these three agree. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God, that he is born concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him alive, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has born concerning his Son. and this is that testimony God has given us eternal life and this life is in his son.

Whoever has the son has life. Whoever does not have the son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. Now, Andrew told us a few weeks ago that he intentionally picked 1 John to be the Sunday school book because of how it would dovetail with his sermons through the book of John.

But I don't think he could have predicted that while he was in the end of John 5, we would be right here and it would so perfectly dovetail. This is God's providence in the work of us. And so when we look at verse 9, I want to refer back to what should be fresh on all of our hearts and minds in John 5 as well. I want to look at how Jesus is saying the same things in John 5 that John says in verse 9.

So in verse 9, John says, even if we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is greater. for this is the testimony that God has given about his son. So turn to John 5. I hope it's fresh in your mind. It's been preached about for the last several weeks for us. so in John 5 if you go to verse 33 well let's go to 30 31 if I testify about myself Jesus is speaking my testimony is not valid he says there is another who testifies about me and I know that his testimony about me is valid you have sent to John and he has testified to the truth and he says even though I do not accept human testimony I say these things so that you may be saved he says John was a lamp that burned and gave light and you were willing for a season to bask in his light so he's saying they believe John the Baptist but then he says in 36 but I have testimony more substantial than that of John for the works that the father has given me to accomplish.

The very works I am doing testify about me that the father has sent me. And the father who sent me has himself testified about me. And if you skip down to 43, I have come in my father's name and you have not received me. But if someone else comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe if you accept glory from one another, yet do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

Jesus's point back there is that these people were willing to accept human testimonies of things, and they weren't listening to the testimony that God was clearly displaying through Jesus's life. Jesus's works that he did in this life were conclusive evidence of his deity, of his being the son of God and son of man. So if you go back to 1 John 9, John is arguing logically with a technique called from the lesser to the greater.

John says, if we accept human testimony, the testimony of God is greater. So his point is this. If you're willing to accept the testimony of men, and so often we are. Why are you not accepting Jesus as the son of God based on the testimony that God himself has given witness of? And he's really not asking the question to the people he's writing to. He's writing to believers.

But his his point to the believers is you have something even greater than the testimony of men. And so he says, this is the testimony God has given about his son. Whoever believes in the son of God has this testimony within him. I want to pause for a moment just to remind everyone that if you have a question or a comment go ahead and raise your hand I tend to keep going I know that about myself And at the same time I hope that I thorough and people have an expectation that I filling in gaps But if you have one, go ahead and pop in.

But in verse 10, there's an interesting phrase. He says, whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within him. and I find it interesting that John is, I think, going between a couple of things that can happen. One is he's saying you have the testimony of man. He says then you have the testimony of God. The testimony of God is greater. So you should believe in Jesus, not just because a celebrity goes on TV and says, hey, I believe in Jesus now and things are different, right?

We have a lot of that going on in our world. We hear of testimonies of the Lord and those are good, but you should believe in him because of how God has testified to who Jesus is. At the same time, it is absolutely true that you believe in God because God has entered your heart. And there is a truth to the experiential and even subjective sense of us knowing God.

And I think that's what John's getting at when he says in verse 10, whoever believes in the Son of God has this testimony within him. If the testimony is within you, that's not the objective testimony of Scripture speaking to you. That's your testimony. And so if you turn to Romans 8, somebody would read Romans 8, 16. Nice and loud for for everyone and for the recording sake, too.

Not everyone at once, of course. Just one of you. The Spirit himself testifies of our spirit that we are God's children. Yeah, isn't that wonderful? Okay, so if you think about what Romans 8 is trying to do, Romans 8 is trying to assure believers who experience the reality of constant indwelling sin that still plagues their life, the battle of the flesh and the spirit that goes on in a true believer's life where they do what they hate to do or they don't do what they know they want to do.

And now Paul is trying to exhort people to trust that they are still going to make it all the way to the end, even though they are doing the very things that condemn us. He's speaking to every believer who has ever struggled with that war that you have between the flesh and the spirit. and he's trying to tell them you're going to make it to the end. And Romans 8 is a great chapter to teach that.

And then just right in the middle, he says, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. There's something inside you that reminds you of the fact that you're God's child. Now, I'm not saying to discount the word and the ordinances that God's given to help increase all those things. But there is a sense that you know. You know, even in your darkest moments, that you're still saved by grace and that you have the love of God in you.

And so the whole point of the book of John is not to hammer people with tests of faith so that they can be afraid that they're not saved. The whole point of it is to continuously remind you over and over. We're building up to this in verse 13, that you are a child of God and that your status as a child of God is not really based on anything that you're doing.

It's based on the finished work of Christ. And that's that's the goal of it. And there's several parts in John where John is exhorting us to our good works. And those good works should demonstrate faith. But we can get too focused on, am I really showing faith all the time? And so you can despair.

Some people in this room probably have had very little doubt about their salvation from the moment they got saved. And I say that as somebody who's like that. I got saved and I've really never had any problem with the fact that I'm saved. It's always been something that just seemed evident to me, I guess. And then there's other people, maybe even in this room, who go up and down.

Where one day you're experiencing the joy of salvation and you can feel it and it feels great. And then the next day something happens, maybe outside of yourself or maybe inside yourself, where you're questioning, am I even really one of God's children? And John writes this letter, I think in particular, so that those types of people who are experiencing the ups and downs of this Christian life can have the assurance that, no, you're still God's child, even though you've done something outside of of his commands or outside of his will that he has specified.

And he wants you to feel that sense inside you. so John continues in verse 10 he says whoever believes in the son of God has this testimony within him and he says whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar so if you don't believe God you're making God out to be a liar you don't have to take him out unless you have to but not for my sake so he's the cutest one in here so he could stay Not many people get to say that they stood and taught in front of Charles Haddon, right? He was usually the teacher in most rooms, right? So this is exciting for me as a Baptist.

Whoever does not believe God, second half of verse 10, has made him out to be a liar, has made God out to be a liar because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given about his son. So this is the concept that we teach in Christianity called no neutrality. Does anybody want to comment on what they think I mean by that how it relates to what John saying You either saved or lost That's right.

But in particular with this verse, how is there no neutrality? He's God or he isn't. And if you don't accept Jesus as God, if you don't acknowledge him as God, according to this verse, you're actively doing what? You're saying he's not God. And what are you saying about God? You're saying God's a liar.

Now, most people, if you went up to them and said, are you calling God a liar? What would they say? They'd say no. They'd say, no, I just don't even believe in your God. Right? I don't acknowledge him.

I don't care about your Sky Daddy. I don't care about your fairy tale book. They say all sorts of things. But what they want to try to say is that they're just indifferent to our God, is what they want to say. That they just don't even care about it. And they're not really even taking a stance.

Well, all religions may have some truth to them. That's something a guy told me last week. You know, there's a little bit of good in everything. And I just pick and choose. But the but what God's saying and what Jesus says is you're either for me or you're against me, is what Jesus said. And what God's saying is that for you to walk around in unbelief, that's not a neutral position.

You're actually actively rejecting God while you're in your unbelief. And by rejecting him, you are testifying that the testimony that God has borne concerning his son, It must not be true, because if it was true, you'd have to believe it. So you're calling God a liar. Now, if God is truth, and if there's no untruth about God, if the book of Titus, I think, tells us God cannot lie, to call God a liar is extremely offensive to God.

There is no way you can even doubt God reasonably. As Christians, we often will have our moments where we're questioning something. Why did God command Israelites to destroy entire nations? And then sometimes it said, including the women and children, even, right? I mean, this stuff's hard for us to read. It's even harder sometimes to try to defend apologetically to nonbelievers why some of these things happen.

And we don't always quite know the answer. We may wrestle with it ourselves. But to ask questions about what God has done and about God and then to investigate the answers through Scripture, that's completely different from sitting there doubting God. And so as an as a believer, we're saying we think God's truthful. He testified to his son and his son's goodness, his son's deity, his son's humanity. and as a result we believe it, those who do not believe it are not simply neutrally walking around kind of unsure of what might be true or what might not be true despite the fact that they'll testify to that.

They're actively calling God a liar. Now when you talk to your non-believing friends, the goal is not to get them to admit that that's what they're doing. Let me take a side note here. When you're witnessing to people, your goal isn't to win an apologetics argument. Your ultimate goal isn't. You ought to win apologetics arguments once in a while.

You don't have to convince somebody that they're calling God a liar. You just have to kind of know that's what's going on, I think. What's more important is that you keep leading them to the truth. and it's the truth that's going to set them free. It's the truth that's going to help them to see that Jesus is the God that they need. And then once they're born again, they'll believe verses like this that say unbelief is in effect calling God a liar.

But if you just go on the street and ask people, hey, you think God's a liar? Most of them are going to say, well, no, I either don't think about it or I don't agree that that's what I think. Their hearts are darkened. They're futile in their thinking. And so trying to convince nonbelievers of truths that we understand from Scripture, apart from first them accepting Christ as Savior, can work at times.

And then there's times that it's going to be ineffective because of their futile thinking. Mike, you got a comment? That's just why Romans 5 is just yells and screams. For God shows his love for us, and while we're still sinners, Christ died for us. That was our case before. Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah, Romans 5.8, it's while we're still sinners, he died for us. And I remember being a non-believer and think, if you had asked me if I hated God, I'd have said, well, no. If you said, do you hate Jesus Christ? I'd say, well, yeah. But I'd say, and he's not God, is what I would have said.

So it would have been impossible for you to convince me of this, is what I'm trying to say. But you could just keep preaching the truth to me until God decided to open my eyes, which is exactly what happened. Yeah, go ahead, Andrew. I think there's a great implication for the struggling believer, too, as you alluded to earlier, that struggles with their assurance of salvation.

A lot of times it works when that's happening. In my experience, I talk with people that they consider themselves a victim in some degree or at least they consider themselves I committed great sins and that why But if you press them and say you actually calling God a liar it actually a greater sin for you to do that I think it kind of changes the ballgame a little bit For me to question or grant the assurance of my salvation, obviously if you're living in sin, all that, there's a clear place for that. But for the person that just fell into sin, now they're going to have to struggle with assurance that you are essentially calling God a liar. that's a great, like you said, that's a great sin.

So I think it helps to get away from that sin. Amen. That's a good point. We have a tendency to try to be kinder than God to people, and we have a tendency to be more just than God. Right? So we sin, and we think we have to punish ourselves, like the punishment Jesus took wasn't enough for your sin.

Right? So we dwell on it, and we think we have to punish ourselves and do penance. We're all little Catholics or Pharisees in our heart, right? And so we have to watch out for that. Good point, Andrew. Well, moving on, verse 11 starts to get exciting.

And this is that testimony, John says. So what's the testimony that God's given us? The testimony that he's given us about his son, the testimony that's within us. What is it? God has given us eternal life. And this life is in his son.

Now we know we have eternal life. This is the whole idea at the end of 1 John 2. In verse 25, John says, And this is the promise that he himself made to us, eternal life. I've written these things about those who are trying to deceive you, John says in 26. People are trying to deceive you. The whole the whole idea is they're trying to deceive you about what?

About the fact that you have eternal life. They're trying to get you to think that this is not something God has given you. And ultimately, every time somebody tries to get you to think something, it's because they're trying to get you to act in a different way. They may not admit that. They may not even know what their goals are half the time. But people try to get you to think differently.

And the goal is to get you to act differently. And they say, he says, as for you, the anointing you received, you received the Holy Spirit. The anointing you received from him remains in you and you do not need anyone to teach you. But just as his true and genuine anointing teaches you about all things, he says, so remain in him as you have been taught.

God has given us eternal life. Can somebody define eternal life for me? Well, let me ask you this. Is eternal life a description of something quantitative or something qualitative? Qualitative. Yes.

Yes. Oh. Abundant. Full. Now, if you want to argue that time is creation and outside of time is eternal, time is just like the sunlight and the moon and stars. It's a created thing. and God's eternal beyond, before creation, then eternity would be outside of that.

So it's not. So it's just a quality of it. There's no quantity, right? Because you can't measure it. That's a good point. Andrew answered this at the beginning of John, and he's been continuously answering.

What's John trying to tell us in his gospel, right? He wants us to believe in Jesus so that we may have eternal life, so that we can have the abundant life, right? And so I'm going to take you to John 17 right now. I want you to think about... A lot of times we'll say, well, eternal life means we get to live forever. and that assumes the concept of what live means.

And to some extent, when people say it, they're saying nothing different than you'll live forever in hell too. Those who go to hell are going to exist forever. So now you have to define, what does it mean to have eternal life? What does life actually entail? and I think John tries to help us in verse 3 of chapter 17 John says now this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent so eternal life being quantitatively as Mike was kind of pointing out it's an extension of time, there is a sense of that but Jesus is saying you have eternal life now John is saying you have eternal life now you know Jesus as soon as you know Jesus by the Holy Spirit indwelling you and speaking to your heart about who you are as one of God's children you have eternal life and eternal life is a quality of knowing God it's being in the kingdom of God I believe in verse 10 of that same chapter John, Jesus says, all I have is yours.

He says, and all you have is mine. And in them I have been glorified. There's a sense that now that you're a joint heir with Christ, you have everything that's his. So there's think of it this way. There's nothing that the father gives Jesus that's not also yours. That's what it means to be a joint heir with Christ.

And in verse, you know, John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy. And Jesus says what? But I have come for what reason? Yeah, life and life abundantly, right? And life abundantly is not necessarily a reference to all of the joys that we'll have here with good things that do come to us often, but it has to do with simply knowing Christ.

The worst day of your life, knowing Jesus, having eternal life, is better than the best day that anyone would have who doesn't know God. so there's one way to God verse 12 whoever has the son has life whoever does not have the son of God does not have life I feel like everything John's saying he's said before in this letter and it's been said from this lectern during this teaching this is John repeating for his beloved children that's what he thinks of the other believers that he's writing to. It's him repeating to them at this point, out of a great concern for their souls, whoever has Jesus, you have life already. These men have come to deceive you, and they have tried to strike fear in your hearts that you don't really know God.

And John sees them as pitiable at this point. He wishes they would not have this fear that he He knows that they're experiencing as a result of the deceivers who've come. So he reminds them. Whoever has the son has life and whoever does not have the son of God does not have life. And once again, we have the no neutrality principle of Christianity. we we've been taught by our world and by our culture that there's people who are christian then there's the atheists and the people that are just really anti-christian and then there's the middle group that's sort of you know they're it's almost like they're the independents in the christian political realm right they kind of like a little bit of this and they like a little bit of that.

And what God does is God sees everyone as his beloved children or they're under the wrath of God. That's how he divides people. And so there's no neutrality. There's no sense that, oh, these guys are close. I know we get this sense when we evangelize. And I feel it, too.

You talk to someone a lot about the Lord, and you start to think, oh, they're getting close. And in human terms, it feels that way. They went from hating God to wanting to come to church. And then we've seen a few times that some of those people end up saved. But in reality, people are either in or they're out at any given moment. Now, we can be hopeful about these things.

What's that? That doesn't mean they're getting saved. Right. Yeah. But to answer your point, I think that's the greatest, the mercy of God as we reach out to people. It looks like they're closer.

If you continue to persevere we don give up Sure But there is Do you see any idea that there was any movement Yeah But they either in or out And God is able to open the eyes of somebody instantly who is absolutely oppositional to him in the moment, as he is to a pew sitter for 40 years, who you think, ooh, they're getting closer. We see things as man sees them. One thing to recognize is that the person who appears to be getting close Maybe they are, and God's giving you some hope, but that person still doesn't have life.

And we need to recognize that so we can help them out. We have to make that distinction. But I agree, it's hopeful to me when I'm evangelizing people and somebody wants to have the next discussion. I get that. I love that feeling. But they still do not have the Son of God and they don't have life.

So let's get to verse 13, unless there's any questions or comments up to that point. All right. Verse 13, John says several things. He starts by saying, I have written these things. John's writing a letter to believers, and I have to think that John, John knows that he's writing scripture also. I don't I don't think that John just thought, oh, I'm just writing a letter this time and we'll see how God uses it.

So I think there's a sense when he says I've written that what he's doing, he's giving us the revelation of God in written form. And we all recognize that even though we have the internal witness of the spirit in our heart testifying to us that we are children of God, you have that that sense that, you know, you know, God, there's a sense of that. You ask me how I know he lives.

He lives within my heart. I get that. But John is also saying that because the internal witness of God is not infallible, you can mistakenly think you're one of God's children and you can mistakenly start to think you're not. Right. So now there's lots of people that are not believers that think they're God's children because something in them just tells them, yeah, I think I am.

Jesus says, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name? They called him Lord. And he says, I'm going to cast him into hell because I never knew him. And then believers on a regular basis will experience doubt in their heart that they're truly a child of God because of the cloudiness of their own mind. Maybe their own sin, maybe deceivers come along and deceive them about something. so John says I've written these things and I'm going to skip a few phrases he says I've written these things so that you may know you have eternal life and I want to remind you that the Bible exists for you so that you have an objective way to read the truth about God you can doubt your experience you can have false memories anybody here ever had a discussion with your spouse where you were sure you said one thing and she was sure you said something else but you were sure you said one thing and I said discussion right That a nice euphemism for what probably occurred We always have bad memories We always have feelings that come and go You have an objective standard that you can always go to to read about your father to read about yourself to read about his love for you So John says I written these things so that you may know you have eternal life.

So I can feel like I have eternal life when I'm doing really good one week and I preach the gospel and then I was even kind to my wife on the same day and I disciplined my kids well and then they seemed to respond well and then I came to church. You can feel good. And then in a moment, you can feel really bad too. That's one of the reasons why I think we come to church every week.

It's one of the reasons I think we should do communion every week, because these are the gifts that God's given us so that we can be constantly reminded of objective truth to help us to deal with our passing feelings. Will somebody pass out these papers for me? Maybe split them up, spread them around there. I've made a list of words. On the left side of the page that you're going to receive are nine heresies that have attacked the Christian church. and these are things that if you believe this heresy you are considered outside of the church and on the right side of the page are a number of phrases that are important phrases to Christianity because of what they mean and I don't know what you think of it when you look at it I made the list and I had to look half of them up myself so my guess is that if I asked you how many of these you could stand up and define right now and explain to others it'd be a low number and I'd ask for a show of hands on each one or something but for the sake of time we'll skip that the point is these are very important truths that we need to understand And these are phrases that describe him.

So let me ask for a show of hands on this one. Do you believe Jesus is the son of God who took on flesh to live a perfect life and died for your sins? And he rose three days later. Raise your hand if you believe that. OK, well, then you pretty much just said you deny all the heresies. OK, so for a moment, the hope was this would get real dramatic somehow.

I don't know how, I didn't really think it through that well, but the idea was is that the concept of all of these heresies that off the top of your head you couldn even define or know what it said that it could almost strike fear in you Like well what if I a heretic I don even know what these things mean But John point in the letter is that you don have to have all the secret knowledge that the deceivers were trying to teach people they had to have. Remember, John's letter was largely written against these Gnostic or early Gnostic heresies that taught you needed secret knowledge of God. You needed the special stuff.

You needed to know what extra calvinisticum is, which doesn't even have anything to do with Calvin. It's like the neatest little Latin phrase. All these things are really important on the right side. They're really neat ideas. You look them up, you'll find these are really rich doctrines, and what you'll find is you believe most of them already. you know but God has made it so that he's written these things to you who believe in the name of the son of God so that you may know you have eternal life you don't need the secret knowledge you don't need a seminary degree you don't need to be able to stand up and define communicatio idiomatum quorum deo deus abscondicus extra calviniscum you don't have to even be able to pronounce those things you need to believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for you there's a story that Alistair Begg tells so forgive me if I'm retelling it to you but for those who haven't heard it it's I find it impactful he talks about the thief on the cross and the thief on the cross says Jesus would you you know let me into your kingdom and Jesus says today you will be with me in paradise.

And then Alistair Begg, in an extra-biblical explanation of things, says he imagines the thief going to heaven later that day. And he gets into heaven, and the other guys are looking at him like, well, what are you doing here? And he's like, well, this is, you know, I'm here, but what do I need to do? And they're like, well, do you understand imputation? and he's like never never heard that word you know and then the baptist like well you've been baptized fully immersed and he's like no never did that and they just kind of keep asking him these questions you know like like what about propitiation no don't know what that is and they finally look at him after quizzing him you know on words like i gave you and they say well what do why are you here?

And he just responds. He says, the man who was on the middle cross said I could come. That's all it is. Jesus wants you to have assurance that he's invited you to come. And you don't have to have all the special knowledge in the world. You certainly won't be and can't be perfect in order to do it.

You just keep trusting that he invited you. And that's why John wrote the letter. And that's why God inspired him to. so let me pray we're a little bit late now father in heaven i pray that you would use your word to bless the people to open our hearts to receive everything that you have given us in christ in whose name i pray amen