The One Who Believes in Jesus Wins!

Steve Scoggins / 1 John 5:3-4 / Jan 15, 2012

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Introduction

Warren Wiersbe has said that reading 1 John is like walking up a spiral staircase: we continually pass over the same material with a little added on each time. (I have held off preaching through I John in my ministry until now because it is so repetitive.) Because many of the themes in this chapter have already been covered, I am going to do a quick summary of the chapter, I want to deal with two difficult passages, then share three encouraging truths from Chapter Five.

The first difficult passage is 5:16-17: “the sin that leads to death.”

What in the world does John mean by this? He cannot mean that a saved person can sin in such a way as to experience spiritual death in hell. We are given eternal life, and eternal life cannot be taken away or it’s not eternal!

The Bible does speak of rare times when God judges disobedient Christians and causes their physical deaths. Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead by God within hours of each other when they willingly tried to deceive the church and lied to the Holy Spirit. In 1 Cor. 11, Paul states that God had made some members of the church sick and others had already died because they were selfish and divided when they came to the Lord’s Supper. Though there are many examples in the New Testament of Christians who blew it, these are the only two times in the New Testament when believers were said to have sinned unto death. The rarity of this event  ought to make us extremely reluctant to conclude some Christian we know committed the sin unto death.

To illustrate the Biblical truths in my sermons, I usually try to find real-life stories. However, for this point I refused to look for anything other than these two New Testament examples because I do not feel we are qualified to know whether a Christian has died due to natural reasons or because he or she committed the sin unto death. Years ago, I was shocked to hear a pastor preach a sermon on this topic the Sunday after his son had died of cancer while still in his 20’s. His son had rebelled against God for a while but during his fight with cancer had gotten right with God. However, in order to get people to come down the aisle in the fear of God, this preacher stood in the pulpit and declared that his son died from the sin unto death. All I could think about was how callous the preacher was and how his sermon must have hurt his wife and daughter, who were freshly grieving the loss of this boy.

The second difficult passage is 5:6-9: “God testifies about Jesus through the ‘spirit, water, and blood.’”

Many commentators struggle with what John is referring to here. I wish John had been clearer. Rather than offering several opinions, let me share with you what Warren Wiersbe thinks John meant, in the interests of time.

When John says Jesus came by water and God testified through the water, John is referring to God’s testimony that Jesus is His beloved Son during Jesus’ baptism, the official launching point of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Throughout that ministry, God testified that Jesus was His Son by the many miracles Jesus performed. The ministry begun at His baptism was God’s testimony that Jesus was God’s Son.

When John says God bore witness to Jesus through the blood, John is saying God was shouting at the top of His voice during the crucifixion that Jesus was His Son. No one ever died the way Jesus died. He forgave His killers. He ministered to others in His pain. As Jesus bore our sin, God bore witness that something more was going on than the death of a man: He caused the sky to turn black for three solid hours. When Jesus gave up His spirit and died, God shook the ground with an earthquake and tore the huge curtain in the holy of holies in two, opening the way for us to go directly into His presence. Throughout Jesus’ six hours of agony on the cross, God was shouting, “This is My Son!”

When John says the Spirit bore witness as well as the water and the blood, he is referring to the greatest proof from God that Jesus is the Son of God: through the Spirit, Jesus was raised from the dead (Romans 1:4)

God has given us a strong witness that Jesus is nothing less than the Son of God. We ought to believe what God has said with all of our hearts.

Now, here are three encouraging truths from this chapter.

I.                  You can know God will answer certain prayers with a “yes” (5:14-15).

Robert Law said, “Prayer is a mighty instrument not for getting man’s will done in heaven but for getting God’s will done on earth.”

This passage teaches that if I pray to God for anything that is His will, I will get it. This means the focus of my prayers should be on what God wants rather than on what I want.  You can see this in the Lord’s Prayer we pray every Sunday. The first request in the prayer is, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

One of the great purposes of prayer is to change us in the presence of God so we will want His will in our lives. Jesus set the pattern for that in Gethsemane when He prayed, “Lord, let this cup pass from Me.… Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.”

Since praying for things in God’s will guarantees our prayers will be answered, we should spend a great deal of time seeking God’s will in the matters we are praying over. Two great parts of Scripture guide us to pray prayers in God’s will.

     1.     Stand on God’s promises in our prayers.

A great example of this for our day and time is our privilege of claiming Phil. 4:19: “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

Wiersbe makes a great point here in reminding us that God promises to meet our needs, not our “greeds.” I can have confidence when I go to God about real needs in my life. As we move through these tough economic times, we can have confidence because we know prayers based on God’s promises are always answered with a yes.

However, let me caution you in this matter. Some people have misinterpreted verses and have been disappointed when their prayers have not been answered. For example, many Christians teach today that it is always God’s will for Christians to be healed. They point to verses such as Is. 53:5: “By his wounds we are healed.” I have heard Bible teachers say that, just as we can claim forgiveness because Jesus died for our forgiveness, we can also claim healing because Jesus died for our healing. Though I believe healing was won for us by Jesus’ death, I also believe not everything Jesus won for us on the cross is meant for this life. I will one day have a perfect body and live in a perfect place because Jesus won me those blessings. But I will not these blessings in this lifetime. Paul asked God to heal him of his thorn in the flesh and was given grace to endure instead. Paul prayed and saw great healings for others but could only tell his best friend Timothy to take a little wine for his stomach ailment.

God keeps His promises. But let us make sure we are standing on a real promise of God and not a promise made by some preacher who has taken a verse out of context.

2.     Step out and do God’s supernatural will in our prayers.

Bill Bright helped change my life through 1 John 5:14-15. He taught Christians to combine God’s commands with this promise. In Ephesians 5:18, God commands every Christian to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Since that is obviously God’s will for my life, I can go with confidence into the presence of God in prayer and claim the filling of the Holy Spirit.

D. L. Moody held Bible conferences every summer for college students; these were the “Passion Conferences” of his day. He was the speaker during the hour before lunch one day and his topic was on receiving the power of the Holy Spirit, which he said God wants every Christian to be filled with in a mighty way. His time ran out, so he told the students, “Go on to lunch, and at 2 PM I will meet with anyone who wants to in our prayer garden. We will claim for ourselves the filling of the Holy Spirit. There is no reason why Pentecost can’t be repeated today.” A large crowd gathered in the prayer garden, and Moody asked if any would like to give a testimony. Almost all present shared how they had not been able to wait until 2 PM to claim the filling of the Holy Spirit and that they had already been filled. The prayer meeting became a thanksgiving meeting instead.

Bright also explained that much of what God commands is beyond what we can do on our own. We are taught to love others, even our enemies, yet most of us know people we can’t seem to love on our own. He taught Christians to take the command to love and combine it with these promises: since we know it is God’s will for us to love that hard-to-love person, we can claim that ability to love from God in prayer.

Bright shared the response of one young woman to his message, “How To Love by Faith”:

Early the next morning, a young woman with sparkling eyes and face aglow said to me, “My life was changed last night. For many years I have hated my parents. I haven’t seen them since I was seventeen, and now I am twenty-two. I left home as a result of a quarrel five years ago and haven’t written or talked to them since, though they have tried repeatedly to encourage me to return home. I determined that I would never see them again. I hated them.

“Before becoming a Christian a few months ago,” she continued, “I had become a drug addict, a dope pusher and a prostitute. Last night you told me how to love my parents, and I could hardly wait to get out of that meeting and call them. Can you believe it? I now really love them with God’s kind of love and can hardly wait to see them.”

II.        If you believe Jesus is the Son of God and God’s Messiah, you must be born again (5:1, 4)!

God must do a miracle in our hearts in order for us to really believe Jesus is His Son and the Messiah.

Some people accuse some Christians of making the Gospel too easy when Christians say the entire demand of the Gospel is found in a verse such as John 3:16. These critics say you must do more than simply believe in Jesus because believing in Jesus alone is not demanding enough. Charles Ryrie commented on this “easy believism”: “Wait a minute! Do you realize what an incredible thing it is when someone comes to really believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died and rose again?” Given our secular culture, I believe it is even an even more incredible thing! If someone really believes in Jesus, God must have brought him or her to that point.

I am not talking about people who, when asked, “Do you believe in Jesus?”, repeat syllables they heard as a child. They know the right answers, but they really have never settled in their hearts that those answers are true. A college student who supposedly lost his faith in college probably never really believed in the first place. He just recited what he was told.

If you are here today and you really believe in Jesus, God has done something in your heart to bring you to that place. That in itself is evidence you have been born again.

We find an interesting phrase to express why people accepted the Gospel in the accounts in Acts. Over and over we are told, “The Lord opened their hearts.” See Acts 16:14 for an example. We only “get it” when God helps us get it.

In John 3:3, Jesus told Nicodemus no one will even see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. If you really believe in Jesus, you can be assured today that you are really a born- again Christian, and that you have eternal life.

“I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13). If you really believe in Jesus, take time today to get down on your knees and thank God for opening your heart so that you could believe.

III.               The one who believes Jesus is the Son of God wins — in this life and the next (5:4-5)

For years, when I read verse 4 I pictured becoming a person of such great faith that I could conquer the world for Christ! Then I heard a sermon from Ron Dunn that added verse 5 to the truths of verse 4. What is this “faith” that overcomes the world? Is it the ability to believe God for miracles or the faith to slay demons in a single breath? No. The faith that overcomes the world is simply the faith that believes Jesus is the Son of God.

Ron was one of the greatest Bible teachers I have ever sat under, yet I knew he faced many hidden struggles. One was clinical depression, which was passed down to his son. His bi-polar son went off his meds on Thanksgiving Day 1975, and committed suicide in his 20’s. Ron also had several physical ailments that made his life hard and which eventually killed him in his mid 60’s. He was a believer who had wrestled with God like Jacob and walked with a limp. In this particular sermon, he defined the victory of faith this way: “If after the world has thrown everything it can at you to break you down and destroy your faith, if after all the world can do has been done and you still believe in Jesus, you win! That is the faith that is the victory over the world.”

Some of you are probably more heroic than you have pictured yourself. You have never led a bold mission thrust, you may not have been the most verbal witness at your work place; but if, blow after blow, you are still here, you are still in church and believe, you are a victor!

Bob Wieland was a star baseball player for the University of Wisconsin in 1969. He was in discussion with the Philadelphia Phillies to sign a pro contract when he received his draft letter. Within weeks he was in Viet Nam, serving as a medic. While rushing to care for a wounded soldier, he tripped a booby trap and both of his legs were blown off. His condition was so bad that his fellow soldiers zipped him up in a body bag, thinking he was dead. At the hospital he was discovered to be alive and treatment began.

Most people would be devastated not only by the loss of their legs, but the loss of their dreams of playing professional baseball. What made Bob Wieland’s reaction different was that as a sophomore in college he had placed his faith in Jesus. Instead of becoming bitter, he was grateful to be alive and certain God still had a good plan for his life. This is the letter he wrote his parents from the hospital when he finally became conscious days after his injuries: “Dear Mom and Dad, I’m in the hospital. Everything is going to be OK. The people here are taking care of me. Love Bob. P.S. I think I lost my legs.”

To show you this unconquerable faith, here is a quote from Bob Wieland: “In the Bible, the gospel of John, chapter 10 and verse 10 says the Lord Jesus Christ has come to give us life and he gave it to us abundantly, and it doesn’t say unless you’re in a wheelchair. He gave me an abundant life. I grasped that scripture if you would and put it in my heart and tried to live it to its maximum every day.”

Bob went back to college and got a PE degree. He met his future wife in college and has had a long, loving marriage. He became a champion weightlifter, four times setting the record for bench press in his weight category. At one time he was the strength and conditioning coach for the Green Bay Packers.

Bob took everything the world could throw at him and still believed in Jesus. Bob is a winner!

Conclusion:

Some of you may be sitting here saying, “I wish I could believe in Jesus like that!” You can’t on your own. But you can ask God to open your heart. You can be like the father who, when asking Jesus to help his son, said, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”

Some of you need to make a stand before the world in a profession of faith and say, “Make no doubt about it, I believe in Jesus!” Paul said we are to confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord as well as believe in our hearts.

I am having us close with a chorus I have loved to sing for years, “Open my eyes, Lord, I want to see Jesus.”