To Experience the Victory of Faith
Notes
Transcript
The Results of God’s Love
The Results of God’s Love
I always enjoy reading again, and studying again, the book of 1 John that we have been getting a little more into our hearts during these last couple of months. Today is the eighth and last sermon I have for you in this series from 1 John, The Results of God’s Love.
Just a recap of those ideas, at least in the message titles hopefully will remind us a little about what we have look at:
First, “Our Greatest Needs Met in God’s Son”, then “To Know Him.”
Then I had my “gerunds” of becoming more like Gods’ Children:
Loving like God’s Children; Believing like God’s Children; Behaving Like God’s Children; and Living Like God’s Children
Last week I taught about the Prayers that God Answers, and today, l will teach a little about what it takes to Experience the Victory of Faith.
We begin, as we have since the third sermon in this series, with the affirmation of God’s love and who we are as The Results of God’s Love:
1 See what sort of love the Father has given to us: that we should be called children of God, and we are! Because of this the world does not know us: because it did not know him.
With faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, the one who purchased our forgiveness on the Cross we are given the right to be called the children of God because that is what we are. All of this is the result of God’s love poured out to us on the Cross and the new birth we are given into the family of God.
We are invited into a deeper fellowship with God as his children.
And as the Children of God we can Experience the Victory of Faith to carry us through to the end.
>>>John wants us to know,
A Child of God Is a Conqueror
A Child of God Is a Conqueror
Now, being on the winning side doesn’t happen if you are not actually on the winning side.
>>>That means our life is a life that loves God and keeps His commandments.
3 For this is the love of God: that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4 because everyone who is fathered by God conquers the world.
And this is the victory which has conquered the world: our faith.
How do you tell who is a Child of God?
Check out their behavior. Can you see God honored with joyful obedience? The scripture says that if we love God, we do what he has commanded.
And if we do what God has commanded, the Bible says we overcome, or conquer, the world. That’s because “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” We can’t be defeated by the world, if our love for God is greater. When we are living in the ways of God, Satan can’t beat us.
Some find the battle is tough, and give up. The way of faith for many is a way that is not impossible, but is often untried.
Of course, if joyful obedience is absent, a person’s testimony of salvation may be suspect. Did the New Birth take hold? Is there a life changed to live for God no matter what it takes? Who is running the show?
The promise is that as obedient re-born children of God we are conquerors, or overcomers, over the world.
We need not fear the things of the world, nor the influences of the world, nor the death to God that the world is wrapped up in.
No, in Christ Jesus, as a reborn Child of the Most High God, we begin to Experience the Victory of Faith. That’s what overcomes the world. A faith that by itself is a victorious faith, a never-give-up faith, a “Jesus has already won the war for us” faith.
We don’t have to live as a prisoner of war. Even if we are in some earth-bound prison of despair or loneliness or fear or disease or physical or psychological or even sexual abuse, in our present of in our past, we don’t have to live in that prison anymore.
We can live out the Victory that Conquers our World: the Victory of Faith that unlocks the prison doors and sets us free in Christ.
This is because the victory is the victory won as Jesus conquered the world, death, and the devil.
>>>Let’s look at some of the keys to these prison doors:
Victorious Faith is Certain of Jesus
Victorious Faith is Certain of Jesus
>>>So we will begin with faith in who Jesus is:
5 Now who is the one who conquers the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.
Believing is actually evidence of the new birth, not just a consequence of it.
Jesus cannot be Christ unless Jesus is Son
Victorious Faith Believes God About Jesus
Victorious Faith Believes God About Jesus
There
7 For there are three that testify, 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement.
9 If we receive the testimony of people, the testimony of God is greater, because this is the testimony of God that he has testified concerning his Son.
These are testimonies of the humanity of Jesus. His identity with us.
With Christ Inside, We Experience the Victory
With Christ Inside, We Experience the Victory
10 (The one who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. The one who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has testified concerning his Son.)
Faith Knows Life Is In the Son
Faith Knows Life Is In the Son
11 And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.
The War is Won, Yet the Battles Go On
The War is Won, Yet the Battles Go On
19 We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
Know Where You Live
Know Where You Live
I don’t mean your physical address. This is not about where you lay your head to sleep. This is about where your soul rests because of God.
John’s language is a little circular here, But that’s OK. We have seen that many times in this letter from the John the Apostle, which was written after several decades of experiencing God’s promises, the Spirit’s power and the Son’s saving grace. Sometimes he gets so wrapped up in his Experience of the Victory of Faith that his thoughts don’t seem to be as linear as we are used to.
Now here, as he is at the end of this letter, John speaks of abiding in Christ and what that means to him — without using the exact word for “abide” that he quoted from Jesus in the Gospel of John. And most all of us know how complicated it can be, sometimes, to explain what we are feeling inside when we think of what God has done.
So let’s read in this 20th verse about knowing where you live, in terms of your situation in Christ, and I will take it a phrase at a time.
20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, in order that we may know the one who is true, and we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one is the true God and eternal life.
In summary, John first says, “And we know.” This kind of knowing is the experience of knowing completely.
And we know. The things that we know, not in our heads but in our hearts.
Then, “The Son of God has come.” This is the same thought he opened the letter with, where John said. “what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have touched — the word of life — which was with the Father and was revealed to us”.
And we know the Son of God has come...
Then, “and has given us understanding” — a deeper kind of thinking, kind of an “aha!” moment of saying, “now I get it!”
What is the understanding? “That we may know the one who is true,” meaning that Jesus, whom John knows so well, is the true representation of the Father God, who is the true Messiah.
“And we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.” You see what I mean about John reflecting on what Jesus said about abiding, which John quoted in the Gospel:
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.
Jesus’ teaching to his disciples was “abide in me and I in you.”
John’s experience of Jesus has been “we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.”
20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, in order that we may know the one who is true, and we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This one is the true God and eternal life.
“This is the one true God” is John trying to express what he now understands as a unity of Father and Son, and the Spirit that abides in him. The one true God of the Shema, the basic statement of faith about God in
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Our God is One, yet that unity wraps up the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a single reality of God. This is the God that John now understands was pointed to in Deuteronomy. This is the one that we love with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might. And knowing God more completely allows us to love God more completely as well. Nearer the end of his life than the beginning, this is the knowledge of God that has proved true.
Then finally John finishes with the personal point of it all for every one of us:
20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
“He is the true God and eternal life.”
If we know where we live, spiritually, and if where we live is in “him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ,” then we are already living in our eternal life. Christ Jesus came so that we might have eternal life by believing in His Name. Only Jesus can offer you eternal life. Only Jesus can promise that you can abide with God, the Three-in-one forever. Only Jesus.
Is that where you faith rests? Only Jesus? That is our only life and the Victory of Faith.