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The Bible Breakdown
1 John 05: Believing in Jesus Changes Everything
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The More We Dig. The More We Find.
Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today. 1 John 5, and today's title is Believing in Jesus Changes Everything. Believing in Jesus Changes Everything and man. That is the truth and we've been seeing that over the course of 1 John, and he is going to end this letter to these churches in just a powerful, powerful way. So, if you have your Bibles, want to open up with me to 1 John, chapter 5. And while you're doing that, make sure, if you're new around here, as always you like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you're leaving us a five-star review on the podcast and make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion. And I want to take a pause for just a moment and kind of remind everybody why we do the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook.
Speaker 1:When we first started this podcast and YouTube channel, I started getting so many questions from people who were asking about how I was going about interpreting the Bible or asking particular questions about the Bible, and that was fun. I still love doing that. But then what I also loved is people were sharing with me insights they had about the Bible, things that they had learned as they had been looking into it themselves, and there was this wonderful back and forth that on one end people were asking questions, on another end, people were discovering things about the Bible they never knew. And what I started to think is how wonderful would it be if we could get all these conversations happening at the same time. Thus the beginning of the Bible Breakdown Discussion. So what I would love for you to do is to go to Facebook type in the Bible Breakdown Discussion and pull up that Facebook group. What we do is we do a journal entry or a devotional entry every single day, and our hope is that we would engage with God's word together Because, as we say always, the more we dig, the more we find. And we would love to hear from you what are some questions you have about God's word? What are things that you have studied and that you have found about God's word? How are you encountering God's word? And you'd be surprised how many things that you probably know about God's word because of things you've experienced and things you've learned that none of us know that's including me. So I would love to learn from you and also to learn with you. So make sure you're going there and you're getting involved in the discussion together. Okay, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, as we've been talking about 1 John 5, remember the overall theme of 1 John is sharing the fellowship of joy. Sharing the fellowship of joy, and remember this was Jesus' earthly best friend. He was the only one to show up at the crucifixion when John was there. And Jesus looks at John and he says, hey, will you take care of mom? For me? I mean, this guy was close to Jesus, and so he has been now walking with the Holy Spirit for years and he has been part of the new beginning of the church and all these great things are happening. And now he is writing to these local churches and wanting to first of all speak against some of the false gospel that they've been hearing, but then also encourage them to what authentic Christianity looks like and what it means to be a child of God. And so he's going to finish this and, as always, we're going to stop along the way and kind of point some things out. Let's just enjoy the power of God's word together. Okay, you ready?
Speaker 1:1 John 5, verse 1 says this, and the overall theme of this part is faith in the Son of God. Here we go, verse 1, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children too. We know we love God's children if we love God and obey his commands. Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. Now pause.
Speaker 1:There are some people who would say I don't know what you're talking about, pastor. Those commandments are hard. Well, yeah, they're hard because they cause us to fight against our sinful inclination, the fallenness that we have. But what God's Word is saying is is that when we fall in love with Jesus and as we begin to, out of our love for God, obey what God's Word says, it no longer becomes a have to. It becomes a get to. Like I get to follow God's word because I realize there's life there. And so if you don't have a relationship with God, you go to God's word and you look at this and all you see are restrictions. But then when you go to God's word as a child of God, you go man. God loved me so much that he gave me a guidebook, not only to help me know him, but to walk in freedom, sign me up. So it's got to do with our perspective on how we see God's work.
Speaker 1:Verse four. For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. So in other words, we're not powerful enough on our own. It's through God's help that we're able to walk in victory. Verse five and we who can win this battle against Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Verse 6,.
Speaker 1:And Jesus Christ was revealed as God's Son by his baptism in water and by the shedding of his blood on the cross. Not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, who is truth, confirms it with his testimony. So we have these three witnesses the Spirit, the water and the blood. All three agree, in other words Jesus. In Matthew, chapter four, it says when he came up out of the water, the heavenly father spoke from heaven and said this is my beloved son. Then, when he died on the cross, it was sufficient for the salvation of all, and only God could do that. So that was the second. And then Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes he said this in John, chapter 16, when he comes, he will testify about me. So John is saying we know that he's God's son because God, the Father, said so. We know he is God the son because he died on the cross and washed away our sin. Only God could do that, and we know, because that's what the Holy Spirit is teaching us through our relationship with him. So he's like we know.
Speaker 1:Verse nine since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God, and God has testified about his son. All who believe in the son of God know that, their hearts, in their hearts, that this testimony is true. Those who don't believe this are actually calling God a liar, because they don't believe what God had testified about his son. And this is what God has testified. He has given us eternal life and this life is in his son. Whoever has the Son has life, and whoever does not have God's Son does not have life. In other words, the only way our sins can be washed away so that we can have eternal life with God, is through receiving Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Speaker 1:Verse 13,. Let's finish it up. I have written this to you, to who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life. We are confident that he hears us when we ask for anything that pleases Him, and since we know he hears us, we make our requests and we also know that he will give us what we have asked for. If you see a fellow believer sinning in any way that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give that person life. But there is a sin that leads to death, and I'm not saying you should pray for those who commit it. All wicked actions are sin, but not every sin leads to death. We know that God's children do not make a practice of sinning, for God's Son holds them securely and evil cannot touch them.
Speaker 1:Pause for a moment. What in the world does that mean? Well, verse 16 and 17 are talking about how there are some sins that when you see somebody walking in this darkness man, you want to point it out. Hey, man, that's going to destroy you. You need to do something about that right now, right away. There's others that you can tell that it's a sin, but it's not going to lead to their immediate destruction. And so he's saying there's some times when you should go pray for them and let the Holy Spirit convict them. And then there's other ones that are going to lead to, like if you see someone about to go rob a bank, you know, like if someone lies, someone goes and robs a bank. Those are both wrong, those are both sin. Those both can lead to bondage. One of them is going to lead you to bondage and jail. And so he's saying one of them, man, go pray for them, hey, you know what. And then, as the Holy Spirit opens it up to you, you maybe go confront them, but if you see someone about to do something that's going to hurt them both in eternity and now, you go talk to them right now.
Speaker 1:And then the second thing is he says we know that we are God's children because we do not make a practice of sinning, for God holds them securely and the evil one cannot touch them. In other words, one of the ways that you can tell what a tree is is by the fruit on the tree. If I go up to an apple tree, I know it's an apple tree because of the apples, right? And so one of the ways you can know if someone is a Christian is how they feel about sin. And what I mean by that is is none of us are perfect, right?
Speaker 1:You know what something blew my mind one time. Someone said the most holy person you know, is struggling with something, you know, that set me free. I thought that everybody was perfect, but me, and I realized, yeah, we're all working on getting to a place where we're not sinning in our life. We're all working on it, right, and we're not. None of us are there yet, and so what he's saying is, though, is, for those who belong to God, they no longer can sin freely. When they sin, there's now conviction that comes with it. It's the Holy Spirit who is pulling them back toward him, and so they cannot make a practice of sinning, because there's pain now involved, because it's the Holy Spirit who said no, no, no, no, don't walk toward that brokenness, walk toward freedom. And so you can tell if someone truly knows God by how they feel about the sin they commit Now. They may feel bad and go on and do it anyway, but they're not going to enjoy it, because God's working on them in the process, and the evil one cannot have them. He cannot keep them, because they now belong to God.
Speaker 1:All right, let's finish this up, verse 19. We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one, and we know that the Son of God has come and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his son, jesus Christ. He is the only true God and he is eternal life. Dear children, keep away from anything that might take the place of God in your hearts. Wow, that's the way he finishes this letter to the church and he's saying Above all else, make sure you keep God first, wow. Well, what can we do with this chapter? And then, overall, the book of 1 John.
Speaker 1:Well, there's so many takeaways from these New Testament books, but one of them I would really recommend you to think about is that question at the end. He's not saying a question, he's more making a statement Keep away from anything that might take the place of God in our hearts. And the reason why he is saying that is because, as we have seen throughout 1 John, he is saying a relationship with God is so powerful and it's so awesome and it's everything our heart longs for. If you think about it, what are the things that our heart naturally longs for? It longs for security, it longs for significance and it longs to be loved by somebody, to feel safe and secure and loved and significant, and all these things. Those things are only found in a sincere relationship with God. It doesn't matter how high you climb on the ladder of success, it doesn't matter how much money you have, it doesn't matter how many kids you have, how good your kids are, how good your marriage is, all these different things, all of that will pale in comparison to your relationship with God. And so that's what John is saying. Is he's saying, since the greatest thing we could ever have is a healthy relationship with God, make sure that nothing takes the place. So here's my question Is there anything in your life that is taking the place of God in your life?
Speaker 1:Now, that doesn't mean we can't have anything else in our life other than God. Many of those things are gifts God has given us. The question is is what's number one? If anything becomes number one in our life, if we're not careful, we will eventually idolize it and then eventually demonize it. You've got to make sure that God is number one, because he's the only one that can live up to it. He's the only one that's never going to turn his back on us. He's never going to hurt us. He's never going to walk away from us. He's always going to be on time. He's always going to do more than we can imagine. He's the only one who can offer us eternal life. Nothing else can do that.
Speaker 1:And so I would imagine if there's something that you used to love but now you hate, is it possible that at one time you put it up as the most important priority in your life, only to find out that it wasn't perfect enough? Well, what we need to do is lower our expectations of man and raise our expectations of God, because if we do, we'll find the answer that we're looking for, and that is that true joy is in a fellowship relationship with God. Because, if we do, we'll find the answer that we're looking for, and that is that true joy is in the fellowship relationship with God. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you, god, that you're with us and you're for us in every way.
Speaker 1:Lord, as we finish up 1 John, I pray that the message of 1 John will continue to stay deep within our hearts, that your hope for us is to share in the fellowship of joy that, lord, we can have that relationship with you that's not just for us, but then through us you can help others find that relationship with you as well. I love you and I'm thankful for that relationship we can have with you. In Jesus' name, we pray Amen. And what God's word says in 1 John 1, verse 4, it says we are writing these to you so that you may fully share our joy. That's what God wants for us is to fully share his joy in everyday life. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow. For Ezekiel, chapter 1.
