Reader: All right.
Reader: Let's begin with verse six.
Reader: This is the one who came by water and blood.
Reader: Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood and it is the spirit who bears witness because the spirit is the truth.
Reader: For there are three that bear witness, the spirit and the water and the blood and the three are in agreements.
Reader: If we, if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater for the witness of God is this, that he has borne witness concerning his son.
Reader: The one who believes in the son of God has the witness in himself, the one who does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed in the witness that God has born concerning his son.
Reader: And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life and this life is in his son.
Reader: He who has the son, has the life.
Reader: He who does not have the son of God does not have the life.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Kanye West says this about his recent conversion to Christianity.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Thank you Jesus for saving me, for replenishing me, for delivering me.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: When I found out about you, I got closer to my children.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: I got closer to my family.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: It's God inside of us.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: It's God inside of family.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Justin Bieber says this about Jesus.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Jesus has changed my life.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Easter is a reminder that my Jesus died on the cross for my sins and then Rose from the dead defeating death.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: I believe this happened and it changes everything, but then we have Tom cruise who says this about Scientology.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: It's something that has helped me incredibly in my life.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: I'm going to Scientologists for over 30 years.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: It's something you know.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Without it, I wouldn't be where I am.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: So it's a beautiful religion.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: I'm incredibly proud.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Scientology has helped me find that inner peace in my life.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: Madonna says this about Kabbalah, a sect of Judaism.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: It's been an incredible growing and learning experience for me and Richard Gere says, Tibetan Buddhism has had an enormous impact on me and Mitt Romney recently said of his Mormon faith.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: My faith is at the heart of who I am.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: And countless others would say the same thing about countless other religions and certainly there's a sub.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: There is this subjective appeal that you know, this is what it means to me.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: This is what it's done for me.
Dr. Ken Mitchell: There's that kind of argument.
Speaker 1: But to the skeptic, there's no difference on that basis of what a particular religion means to an individual, to the skeptic.
Speaker 1: They're all equally valid.
Speaker 1: They're all about the same and no doubt.
Speaker 1: Questions like this create doubts in the minds of people says, yo, this is, this is what's helped me.
Speaker 1: This is what's really made a difference.
Speaker 1: And you know, greats, all kinds of doubts in the minds of people and it can even create doubts in our own minds.
Speaker 1: So how do we know what is truth?
Speaker 1: How can we know what is truth?
Speaker 1: Well, the apostle John was writing to these early first century believers to provide a correction to false teachers who no doubt were undermining, undermining the confidence that Jesus indeed is the son of God and the only savior through his death on the cross.
Speaker 1: That's what the apostles had heard, witness saw, preached, but now that was being undermined in some way by false teachers.
Speaker 1: And John is writing to correct that these central trues, that eternal life is in Christ alone.
Speaker 1: These central truths were being undermined and no doubt they were creating doubts and uncertainty in the believers.
Speaker 1: So John writes to show that we can have certainty about Jesus Christ, about the gospel message, about eternal life he is addressing there and what might be our doubts.
Speaker 1: He is showing that we can know that the gospel is truth, and so I've entitled our passage today.
Speaker 1: How can we know?
Speaker 1: How can we know with certainty?
Speaker 1: The gospel is truth that eternal life is in Christ.
Speaker 1: Watch what John addresses three talks about in our passage.
Speaker 1: No, let's set it up by way of context.
Speaker 1: We're getting close to the conclusion of the book of first John, and as we've made our way through these now almost five chapters, we've seen three themes believe correctly, obey God's commands and love one another throughout most of chapter four and then into chapter five.
Speaker 1: John has really been boy driving home.
Speaker 1: That theme of loving one another, but now he pivots back to the theme of belief to address those doubts as to the trustworthiness of the message of John and the apostles.
Speaker 1: Now it's important to keep in mind as we read this section and and for that matter the entire book of first John.
Speaker 1: It's important to keep in mind that John is writing these words to believers.
Speaker 1: He's not writing to them so as to question whether or not they have really believed.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when you read first John, read it as a letter written to you as a believer.
Speaker 1: Now there's something else about the context.
Speaker 1: What John says here in chapter five of first John cannot fully be understood apart from what he said in his introduction, and I want to just read chapter one verse one to reread that.
Speaker 1: What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld in our hands, handled concerning the word of life.
Speaker 1: What do we see here?
Speaker 1: John is writing as an eye witness to Jesus, a first hand account.
Speaker 1: Historical.
Speaker 1: I witness what was from the beginning, from the beginning.
Speaker 1: They were there with Jesus at the beginning.
Speaker 1: What we have heard, they heard all that.
Speaker 1: Jesus said, what we have seen with our eyes, they saw everything that was recorded in the gospel, the miracles, the teaching, the resurrections, the healings, all of these, they saw it.
Speaker 1: We be held in our hands, handled specifically in the context of the resurrection body.
Speaker 1: They handled it, they touched it, they saw him and so he is writing here.
Speaker 1: That's an eye witness firsthand account.
Speaker 1: So with this background, let's look at our passage now beginning in verse six first John chapter five and these first four verses verses six through nine John talks about the testimony of God and what he's going to do in this is show the testimony that God has given that demonstrates or shows the truthfulness of the gospel message.
Speaker 1: The word witness either in noun or verb form occurs 10 times in this passage verses six through 12 the word means to speak as a witness or to testify.
Speaker 1: I like to translate it more along the lines of testimony or testify because it conveys the idea of providing evidence for a case in a court of law.
Speaker 1: And that's what an individual, you know, that's what an individual does on the witness stand.
Speaker 1: They're testifying to what they have seen and heard and what they know is true.
Speaker 1: They testified to the facts in a case.
Speaker 1: So John says that God has provided witnesses that testify to the truthfulness of the gospel.
Speaker 1: So let's call the first witness.
Speaker 1: We have the historical testimony.
Speaker 1: Verse six this is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: You say, well, that's kind of, well, I don't see anything about witness here or testimony.
Speaker 1: You will.
Speaker 1: It will come.
Speaker 1: We've got to get there first.
Speaker 1: John is looking here when he says, this is the one who came by water and blood.
Speaker 1: He's looking here at the historical ministry of Jesus.
Speaker 1: When he says the one who came, he's he, he's, he's looking.
Speaker 1: He's not looking at simply the incarnation.
Speaker 1: When Jesus came from heaven to earth or he's not simply looking at his birth.
Speaker 1: It's a reference to just the totality of his ministry.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: His life and ministry included water and blood.
Speaker 1: Again, this is not a reference to his birth water.
Speaker 1: This is the one who came by water.
Speaker 1: What does, what does he mean?
Speaker 1: Water is a reference to his baptism, the baptism of Jesus, which historically Mark the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry and to which there were many witnesses among them, John, but also the water in was symbolic of the cleansing of sin, which was the message that Jesus would proclaim and being baptized, he was identifying with John's message of, of cleansing from sin.
Speaker 1: He was identifying with that and that would become his message as well.
Speaker 1: But he came by water and blood.
Speaker 1: Blood is a reference to his atoning death on the cross, shedding his blood for the sins of the world.
Speaker 1: And so he came with water blood.
Speaker 1: He came with a message of cleansing from sin, symbolize in the water and the provision for the cleansing from sin, which was to shed his blood to die on the cross.
Speaker 1: And this is what his ministry was all about.
Speaker 1: And the point is, John was an eye witness to all of this.
Speaker 1: The baptism of Jesus and the death of Jesus water and blood.
Speaker 1: Get this now testify that he is the savior and that's profoundly important to understand that they testify that he is the savior.
Speaker 1: This is what he was about when he came water and blood.
Speaker 1: He didn't come just as a prophet or a teacher in general.
Speaker 1: He came with water and blood.
Speaker 1: He came as the savior.
Speaker 1: His whole ministry was about cleansing and forgiveness of sin.
Speaker 1: And then John continues and says not with water only and this seems to be in response in some way to what the false teachers were saying, some kind of teaching that was minimizing the significance of his death.
Speaker 1: Okay fine.
Speaker 1: He's a good teacher.
Speaker 1: You can follow him as teaching and so on, but but, but this death thing about dying and bearing the wrath of God, they seem to be minimizing the aspect of his death.
Speaker 1: And so John says, not with water only, but with water and with blood.
Speaker 1: John emphasizes that it is both.
Speaker 1: You can't minimize or do away with the blood with his death.
Speaker 1: Minnie tried to do the same thing today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, follow Jesus as an inspirational leader.
Speaker 2: What teacher?
Speaker 1: An example or model in some way, but not if not a savior for all mankind and the only way to God.
Speaker 1: But John says as an eye witness, he came with a message of cleansing and he died to provide that cleansing.
Speaker 1: The next witness is that[inaudible] testimony of the spirit.
Speaker 1: Now it gets a little confusing here unless you're using the new American standard because in most other versions, what is verse seven here in a silly confusion, but in verse verse seven in the NAS is what I'm using is probably part in your Virgin still part of her set, but it'll get straightened out as we go through it.
Speaker 1: We'll catch up and, and it is the spirit who, Oh, here we have that word.
Speaker 1: Bears witness.
Speaker 1: Okay, so John is calling now on the spirit as a witness and it's a spirit who bears witness because the spirit is truth.
Speaker 1: All right, John just referenced in the previous verse, Jesus baptism.
Speaker 1: What happened at the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, John and the other disciples.
Speaker 1: Some of them were there and saw the spirit, the sand upon Jesus and something that was like the form of a dove.
Speaker 1: And they, they also heard they were there.
Speaker 1: They saw and they heard the voice of the father.
Speaker 1: This is my beloved son.
Speaker 1: And that event of seeing the spirit of God descend upon him, bears witness, even today that Jesus was God's anointed.
Speaker 1: He put his spirit upon him.
Speaker 1: It bears witness that, that God put his spirit upon Jesus.
Speaker 1: And so it bears witness to the truthfulness of Jesus and the gospel.
Speaker 1: And then John says, so in reality there are three witnesses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the three who testify.
Speaker 1: Okay, now he's going back and referring to the water and blood as witnesses.
Speaker 1: Also, he didn't introduce them that way, but now he's referring to them in the context of witnesses.
Speaker 1: Now it gets even more confusing here about verses and everything because this what I'm reading as verse eight in the NAS may be verse seven and your versions of you using the ESV or any of the other newer translations.
Speaker 1: But to make it even more confusing, those who might be using the King James or the new King James will find additional verses here that are not in any other versions, any other versions.
Speaker 1: And these additional verses, somehow they made their way into the King James version.
Speaker 1: They were, these verses were found in just a very few manuscripts from about the 15th century.
Speaker 1: They were in no early manuscripts at all.
Speaker 1: And there were, I mean, it's an interesting story to read about a Rasmussen and the Greek texts and everything and how the King James translators used Erasmus texts and how it got in there and stuff.
Speaker 1: But regardless, um, there are not those extra verses in the King James.
Speaker 1: What I'm trying to say is they were not in any of the early manuscripts.
Speaker 1: And so that's not why.
Speaker 1: That's why they're not in any of the other translations other than uh, the King James version.
Speaker 1: So you're using the King James here this morning.
Speaker 1: Um, just try to understand that and follow along the best you can.
Speaker 1: But we are at whatever verse it is in your Bible for there are three that bear witness the spirit in the water and the blood.
Speaker 1: That's where we are.
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 1: So find that spot in your Bible and we'll continue.
Speaker 1: The point of this verse seems to be the old Testament principle that upon the testimony of two or three witnesses, a matter is confirmed.
Speaker 1: And so John is applying that principle here and says, okay, we've got three witnesses, we've got the spirit and his confirming role at the baptism.
Speaker 1: We have the water, the historical event, proclaiming the message of the need for the cleansing of sin.
Speaker 1: And we have the blood, the historical event of Jesus' death, whereby his blood is the cleansing for our sin.
Speaker 1: And he says, and John says, and these three witnesses are in agreement, they testify to the same thing.
Speaker 1: And what is that?
Speaker 1: What is their testimony?
Speaker 1: Not simply to the historical reality of Jesus.
Speaker 1: They testify to the purpose of the historical Jesus because this really is the issue.
Speaker 1: Who is Jesus and the spirit and the water and the blood testify together that Jesus is indeed the savior.
Speaker 1: That's the historical testimony here that is significant.
Speaker 1: He is the savior, the coming of the spirit in a visible form, the water of Jesus' baptism signifying the message of cleansing from sin and the blood shed in his death on the cross all point to the singular truth.
Speaker 2: Jesus is the savior.
Speaker 2: He came to be the savior and then John adds another
Speaker 1: testimony here, the testimony of God in verse nine if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater for the witness of God.
Speaker 1: Is this that he has borne witness concerning his son?
Speaker 1: What John is saying is this.
Speaker 2: Yeah,
Speaker 1: God has given testimony concerning his son as to who he really is.
Speaker 1: God has given testimony.
Speaker 1: This testimony that God has given is through the spirit and the water and the blood.
Speaker 1: Now, John says this, if we receive the witness of men seeing that we all receive the witness of men, of other people, we accept human testimony all the time and he's just just stating it as as what we commonly do.
Speaker 1: We put our safety and lives on human testimony all the time.
Speaker 1: For example, we accept the testimony of the automaker that these breaks are reliable and when I'm going 50 miles an hour and I need to stop my car up, put my brakes and it'll stop my car, we accept that testimony.
Speaker 1: We accept that testimony and when you go into Publix or Winn Dixie or Longhorns or Panera or McDonald's, that the food is going to be safe to eat.
Speaker 2: We accept that
Speaker 1: we receive and accept human testimony all the time and John says, the testimony of God is greater if we commonly accept the testimony of other people.
Speaker 1: We most certainly then should accept the testimony of God and God's testimony concerns his son, namely the spirit, the water and the blood that testify that he is the savior.
Speaker 1: So that is the testimony of God.
Speaker 1: Now it is a mat.
Speaker 1: It is a matter of whether a person accepts or rejects that testimony and that's what he discusses in verses 10 through 12 accepting the testimony of God.
Speaker 1: Read verse 10 the one who believes in the son of God has the witness in John means here that when we believe Jesus is the son of God and the savior, that means we have accepted God's testimony about his son.
Speaker 1: We have embraced that testimony.
Speaker 1: We make it our own.
Speaker 1: It's no longer just an external testimony.
Speaker 1: Now it's an internal testimony because we have accepted it, but to reject the testimony of God, the one who does not believe God and the testimony he's given concerning his son has made him a liar because he has not believed in the witness that God has born concerning his son.
Speaker 1: John says to not accept what God himself has testified about.
Speaker 1: His son is to say that what God has said about his son is untrue.
Speaker 1: God is lying to reject the testimony that Jesus is the son of God and the savior is to reject God and make him a liar.
Speaker 1: Now in verses 11 and 12 John will expand upon the significance of that testimony, a testimony of eternal life and the witness is this.
Speaker 1: He begins in verse 11 and the witness is this, but witness the witness that God has given concerning his son through the spirit and the water and the blood that testifies that Jesus is the savior.
Speaker 1: This is what that witness.
Speaker 1: This is what that testimony really means.
Speaker 1: If Jesus really is the savior, it means that God has given us eternal life and this life is in his son.
Speaker 1: This is what is at stake in accepting or rejecting the witness of God.
Speaker 1: If Jesus is the savior, then he is the one in whom there is eternal life.
Speaker 1: God has given us the gift of eternal life.
Speaker 1: It comes to us through the work of his son.
Speaker 1: Eternal life is in Jesus and the implication is eternal life is in Jesus alone and this is made clear in verse 12 he who has the son has the life or it can be translated.
Speaker 1: He who has the son has life.
Speaker 1: Whoever has the son, whoever believes in the son as the son of God and the savior has life.
Speaker 1: He is given the gift of eternal life and just to make clear how exclusive this is, John adds he who does not have the son, does not have life.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 1: John again is very dogmatic here, very black and white.
Speaker 1: No gray.
Speaker 1: If you have the sun, if you believe in him that he's the son of God and the savior, then you have eternal life.
Speaker 1: But just as clearly if you do not have the son, if you do not believe in Jesus as the son of God and the savior, then with equal force he says you do not have eternal life.
Speaker 1: One of my commentators that I read, I Howard Marshall, he says he's, this is what his comment on this.
Speaker 1: Those who deny that Jesus is the son of God have cut themselves off from the life of God.
Speaker 1: No matter how much they may protest that they possess it for the life that God gives is available only through his son.
Speaker 1: He alone is the way, the truth and the life and no one can come to the father except except through him.
Speaker 1: But let's not miss the promise here.
Speaker 1: And the promise is if you have the sun, you have eternal life.
Speaker 1: Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: All right, let me try to bring this all together.
Speaker 1: The question with which we began, how can we know?
Speaker 1: How can we know?
Speaker 1: How can we know with any measure of certainty that the message that the message of Christianity really is true?
Speaker 1: What about all those other religions that claim to be true and and impact their followers?
Speaker 1: Well, there's no question that the teachings of various kinds can impact people.
Speaker 1: I mean the writings of Adolf Hitler captured a nation and to some extent changed the world, but that didn't make it right or true and the my life is now different tests cannot be the ultimate test of truth.
Speaker 1: What John has done in this passage and in the book of first John is to provide a witness that testifies to the truthfulness of what he says to the truthfulness of Jesus and the gospel.
Speaker 1: Now, the book of first, John is not a book on apologetics as we might like, you know, 50 arguments to prove Christianity by the apostle John.
Speaker 1: You know, it's, it's not that, but in dealing with the historical circumstances and false teachers that he was facing, John counters their teaching by showing the truthfulness of the gospel.
Speaker 1: He began the book chapter one verse one emphasizing that what he writes, he writes as an historical, I witness what he saw, heard, and touched.
Speaker 1: He was there and now he writes some 56 50 to 60 years later, he calls on three witnesses to testify.
Speaker 1: The first is water.
Speaker 1: You know, that might seem kind of strange to us.
Speaker 1: We probably wouldn't start it there or even a thought of water as a witness.
Speaker 1: But John says, Jesus came by water.
Speaker 1: This refers to the baptism at the beginning of his ministry and the baptism is symbolic of cleansing.
Speaker 1: So he came with a message of cleansing from sin.
Speaker 1: He was all about dealing with our sin.
Speaker 1: The second witness is blood and it clearly refers to the sacrificial blood that provides for the cleansing from sin.
Speaker 1: Once again, he was all about dealing with our sin.
Speaker 1: The third witnesses, the spirit.
Speaker 1: It serves as a witness to Jesus and that John saw the spirit descend upon Jesus at his baptism, signifying the anointing of Jesus as God's Messiah, and these three witnesses, witnesses together constitute what John calls the witness of God that testifies that Jesus is the savior for the one who believes in Jesus, the son of God and savior, that they see this witness, they embrace it.
Speaker 1: It's clear, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: They accept it, they have it within them, but for the unbeliever, by rejecting the witness God has given it is in essence to call God a liar.
Speaker 1: I think about that.
Speaker 1: That's how clear John sees the testimony of God.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say as we might be inclined to say today, well, he just sees things differently.
Speaker 1: She's just coming at this from a different perspective.
Speaker 1: No, it's so black and white to John.
Speaker 1: He simply says to reject the testimony of God, mr Kogod a wire and the testimony that Jesus is the savior means that there is eternal life only in him life is in the sun.
Speaker 1: If you have the sun, you have life.
Speaker 1: If you don't have the sun, you don't have life.
Speaker 1: Once again, John leaves no room for vacillation.
Speaker 1: We either have life in the sun or no eternal life.
Speaker 1: So where does this leave us?
Speaker 1: It leaves us with the written testimony of an eye witness that to him provides conclusive and convincing evidence that Jesus was not just a man, not just a prophet, not just a teacher, but indeed Jesus wasn't is the savior.
Speaker 1: Now, this may not satisfy all our objections or answer all of our questions about the truthfulness of the gospel, but it is a sufficient and credible witness to the truthfulness of the gospel and it really comes down to verse nine if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater for the witness of God is this, that he is borne witness concerning his son.
Speaker 1: We have no problem accepting the witness of other people on so many other things.
Speaker 1: We simply need to accept the witness of God concerning his son.
Speaker 1: It's a matter of submitting our minds to the testimony of God and when we do, we can then have the assurance of eternal life.
Speaker 1: He who has the son has life assurance of eternal life, comes from believing the testimony and the promise of God.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it is mistakenly said that our assurance of eternal life is based on the change in our life or our performance as a Christian that is sadly mistaken.
Speaker 1: That gives assurance to really only the proud and the arrogant who think that they are so pleasing to God that they can be assured of eternal life in reality, to base our assurance on our performance leads to a perpetual lack of assurance.
Speaker 1: If we are honest with our failings, we're honest with our heart.
Speaker 1: There's nothing good in us, but our assurance is not based on how well we perform.
Speaker 1: That does not give us a Uranus of eternal life.
Speaker 1: He who has the son has life.
Speaker 1: Our assurance is based on God's promise, not on our performance.
Speaker 1: He who has the son has life, so how can we know?
Speaker 1: We can know that Jesus is the son of God and savior by believing in the testimony given to us by an historical eyewitness and we can know we have eternal life by believing in Jesus as the son of God and savior, we can know with certainty.
Speaker 1: He who has the son has life.
Speaker 1: Let's pray.
Speaker 1: Father, we thank you again your word that you have given to us.
Speaker 1: We thank you for the sufficient and credible testimony that you have given for our faith so that we might believe on the one in whom there is life.
Speaker 1: Lord, you know the hearts of all people that are gathered here today.
Speaker 1: You know the heart of everyone.
Speaker 1: You know those who have you know those who have the sun.
Speaker 1: Let's just say it that way.
Speaker 1: Wait Lord and have life, but you know those who do not yet have the son.
Speaker 1: They've not come to that point of faith and belief.
Speaker 1: Lord, we pray that today might be that day the spirit of God would work to show them that testimony that you have given to us, that Jesus is indeed the savior.
Speaker 1: They might see him for who he is.
Speaker 1: They might put their faith and trust in him and then having the son that they might know that they have eternal life.
Speaker 1: Accomplish your will among us today.
Speaker 1: In Jesus name.
Speaker 1: Amen.