FaithLife with Pastor Earl and Friends
1 John 5:11-17. Knowing you are a Christian
And welcome to another broadcast of Faith Life with Pastor Earl and friends. This is a broadcast that will share God's Word, the Holy Scriptures, which were inspired by God, breathed by God, to give us a book that will guide our lives and feed our souls and lead us to eternal life with God in heaven. To reject God and reject His Word is a really deadly thing spiritually to do. So I hope that you're a person that does love God's Word when Jesus was commissioning Peter. He said, "Peter, if you love me, feed my sheep, feed my lambs." And in one of those words for feed would be to shepherd my sheep. And that's what Peter did an exceptional job with, as we see him in the book of Acts, no longer denying Christ, but now for the rest of his life declaring and defending Christ. So if God made such a change in Peter's life, I know he can make the change in your life by repenting of your sin and receiving Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. That will ultimately change your life, not just for now, but for eternity. You may be looking at life now and life has taken a difficult turn. Maybe it's been difficult for you because you have been struggling perhaps with a disease or a chronic pain or a broken relationship or a loss of income, whatever it may be, life can be tough. But I'll tell you this, that God does care about you and the Bible says in Peter, casting all your cares upon him for he cared for you. You say, "Me, yes, you." He does care for you. Well, we're taking you to the book of 1 John and let me review some verses. And what I'll do is basically just read and comment on the verses and to give you an interpretation that I believe the Holy Spirit means for the Word of God, for the Scriptures. There's only one interpretation, but there can be many applications. But we believe that the Bible is God's inspired, God breathed Word to us. There's the written Word is the Bible, the living Word is Jesus. And it tells us in John 1-1, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, the Word was God, Word is Lagos, the divine expression of thought. And in verse 14, it says, "And the Word God became flesh and dwelt among us." And that's Jesus, not just an example, but to be a sacrifice for our sins, which he did for us lovingly and willingly on the cross. So we're in 1 John, chapter 5, and let me just read and comment, and you allow the Holy Spirit to teach you the Word of God because he will. I'll just try to be as fair and accurate with God's Word as I can possibly be with the help of the Holy Spirit. John 5, 11, we're talking about how you can know that you have eternal life, and it is not because of your religion, but your relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There aren't many ways to heaven, there's only one, and that road is not the broad road that leads to destruction. Many there be that follow that, but it's a narrow road, and it's a one-way street that says Jesus. And so if you will receive him today and take that narrow path, it will lead to joy everlasting. You see, this life is just temporal and full of pain, full of heartache, and hurt, but the life hereafter will be righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. God will wipe away all tears from your eyes, all hurt and heartache, and heaven there will be extreme joy for eternity. Just John 5, 11, and this is the record. This is the truth, this comes from God. That God has given to us, not everybody, but to believers, those that have received Christ is given to us eternal life. There are two words for life, there are probably more, but there is the word "bias" or "biological life," and God is not interested in just life extension giving us more years on the earth. I think of the Old Testament and folks like Methusel and others lived 900 years. That was a long biological life, but this is eternal life, and life is zoe, which means eternal vitality and joy everlasting. So it's forever, it's not just temporary and Monday, it will all be over, but it is eternal life. But this life is not in some denomination, not some dogma, not some person that wants to be some kind of megalom messiah or whatever, I know that's a proper word, but he's given to us eternal life. This life is in his son, so you cannot find or have eternal life without receiving Jesus. He that had the son had life, he that had not the son of God had not life, and the wrath of God abides on him. You have John 3, 16, which many of you know, which says for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever hears your part, believeeth on him, but your faith and trust and confidence in him will not perish, will not go to that place called hell, or will have everlasting eternal life. Verse 12, verse John 5, he that had the son had life, had this zoe life, has this vitality. You see in this life, you may not be happy at this time because happiness is based on circumstances, and you may be going through a really rough patch, but do you realize in the middle of all that you can have the joy of the Lord, for the joy of the Lord is your strength, and it comes through your relationship with Jesus as you allow the Holy Spirit, the third person of the journey, to fill and control your life, and the fruit of the spirit is love and joy and peace and other things as well. He that had the son had life, he that had not the son of God, has not life. So if you do not have Jesus in your life, you've not received him, you've not repented of your sins, I would do that today so that you may have eternal life, not just biological, but spiritual life. Verse 13, "These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God." Are you somebody that truly believes as put your faith in Jesus Christ? Not just believing in their existence, give you a natural illustration. You may meet me one time, and I may introduce myself to you, and you go on your way and let's say it's the first time and somebody says, "Do you believe in Earl, or do you believe in Pastor Earl?" And you say, "Well, yes, I've met him, I believe in his existence." So would you put your trust in him, do you put your confidence in him, and you could answer, "Well, no, I've only met him once. I don't know him that well, I don't know if he's a trustworthy person, but when you put your faith in Jesus Christ, you'll put your trust in someone that's trustworthy. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that you may know, and we've learned a lot about that word "no" in 1 John. You may know absolutely. You may know completely, you may know that you have eternal life. No also is the idea of experience, you've experienced Jesus, and now you know experientially that you have this eternal life, eternal zoe way, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. The other night in our men's Bible study that I go to, that I enjoy very much, we talked about the fact of believing on Jesus, not just for your salvation, but every day calling on him for your supply, calling on him for your strength, your success, and Jesus wants to be involved in your life. He wants you to incorporate your life in him. John 15, he wants you to abide in him, continue in him, remain in him, communicate with him, praise him, love him, learn about him, and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God. Verse 14, "And this is the confidence that we have in him," now listen to this, because Jesus we need for more than our salvation, we need him for the struggle of life, and it says this is the confidence, you can be sure of this, that we have in him, if you're in Christ, that if we ask anything, here's our prayer life, here's our petitions, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Now in a different study, we learned about what's called the Lord's Prayer, the Disciples Prayer, and one of the bullet points, as it were, of the Lord's Prayer is we pray Lord, I want your kingdom to come, I want you to reign in my life, and I want your will to be done, so if you're a person that is daily seeking to live in the will of God, then if you're in his will, you'll be asking things that are according to his will, and so make sure that you are in the will of God, that you're not rebelling against God, that you're walking in the sphere of his love. Verse 15, if we know that he hear us, because as we walk and seek to do the will of God, as we learn in the Disciples Prayer, the Lord's Prayer, we know that if that is our desire to walk in the will of God, we know that God is hearing us, because we're not some rebellious, wandering off wild, spirited sheep, we are someone that wants to walk close to the shepherd, and if we know that he hear us whatsoever, we ask, we know absolutely that we have the petition that we desire of him. In my life, this you may do this yourself. Every single day of my life, I take cheap notebooks, spiraling notebooks, and I make columns every single day, one column says praise, and I praise God for everything that he's done for me that day, whether it's the food I eat, or someone that's been kind to me, or a gift that God gave me, whatever, I praise him, I praise him for the food I eat, the air I breathe, the home I live in, the comfort that he gives to me, I praise him for those things. People that have been a part of my life spiritually and emotionally, I praise him for those things, and then in the second column, I have one for prayer, and I just write down all of my needs, and I have literally stacks of these notebooks that I have just done over the years, and if I ever was to look back at them, sometimes I'll look at a time when I was going through what I appear, what I felt was a hopeless situation, and I prayed about it, and then I knew as I write down the answer to that prayer and how God answered it that God has been so faithful to bring me through the valley of the shadow of death, and I need not fear any evil for he is with me. We're going to get into some difficult verses now in verse 16. It says, "If any man see his brother, sin a sin which is not unto death." God does not want us looking at each other in a way to criticize one another, to judge one another, to be putting someone under some kind of legalism, but he does want us as the body of Christ, as brothers and sisters in the Lord, to look out for each other. And let's say that we're just envision this, that we're sheep, and we're following the shepherd, and one of the sheep decides that it's just going to go off on a side tangent and to a dangerous place, a difficult place, a place where demons dwell. Well, it's your responsibility if you love that sheep, not to go condemning them, but to go to try to bring them back to following the shepherd. And so if we do that in a spirit of love, we can, what James says, "Save a soul from death and hide a multitude of sins." You can keep somebody from a lot of hurt and heartache. If you help them, stay on the path. If any man see his brother, sin is sin, which is not unto death. You see, the Bible tells us a little further, there is sin unto death. But you just see somebody in there, they're not making the mark. The word for sin is the idea of missing the mark, like an archer would be missing the mark, and so you would go to your friend who's missing the mark and say, "No, get your eye on the mark and let's live for Jesus." So if you see your brother or sin is sin, which is not unto death, he shall ask and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. So you're just helping them to stay on the right path. You pray for them and you pray with them. And you ask the Lord, "Lord, please just preserve this brother or sister's life." You pray with them. I've done this. I've had friends in Christ that maybe have been taking a wrong path and I go to them in love and I pray with them and I pray for them and I tell God to please forgive their sin and to keep them on the right path. But then there's another phrase that's very difficult maybe for some. It says, "There is a sin unto death." Well that word A is really not part of the original grammatical sentence. There is sin unto death. That means that if you're a believer and to know good but don't do good, the Bible says to him it is sin. He that know it to do good but doesn't do it to him it is sin. So you're a Christian but you're living in rebellion, you're living in sin, you're living contrary to the Word of God, then basically you can lose not your salvation. You can lose that protective hedge over your life and it's possible to sin unto death that actually you go home early because you are so rebellious. Now this does not mean that anybody that dies with cancer or died young and all it was because of their sin, it's not that way. But there is the possibility that God does this with our sin anyway here it is. First of all he'll convict us of our sin. The Holy Spirit will say, "You know that's not right and it's our job to correct ourselves." Secondly if we continue in that sin he can chasten us. He corrects us just like a parent would correct their children not in abuse but there's punishment that happens, chastening happens. But the third one is we don't listen to the chastening of God, we don't listen to the conviction of God. God can and maybe sometimes he does this he calls someone home because they desire to live in rebellion, they desire to live in habitual willful sin and God is doing that as a measure of protection, protecting them from self-destruction and protecting perhaps other people in their life who they're damaging. There is sin unto death but it says, "I do not say that he shall pray for it." As you look at your other brothers and sisters don't gloat or glory over their sin, try to lead them back as James says to lead a person from the error of their way. Number 17, all unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not unto death or there is sin not unto death. So just realize how detrimental, realize how destructive sin can be, particularly in the life of a believer. In our next teaching, because I don't want to rush through the last four verses, we will share this and then we'll be complete in our study of 1 John. Then we will go to 2 John, there's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John and we will study those books as well. Well, if you've not become a Christian yet or you're not sure of your salvation, pray with me this prayer right now, say Lord, I repent of my sin. For my sin is destroying my life, the life of others, and it's offensive to you. And I receive you as my Lord and Savior in Jesus name, amen, and if you've done that, shoot me an email at karrisman, c-h-a-r-i-s-m-a-n-1-2-3-4 at gmail.com or text only at 386-795-8494. And this is Pastor Earl saying that I love you if you'd like to contribute to keeping this kind of teaching on the airwaves and in the internet and my next desires to take it to the YouTube. But right now we're just doing these podcasts and if you'd like to support and bless and help, then shoot me an email or text me at the 386-795-8494. So God bless you, I love you, have a blessed day. [MUSIC PLAYING]