It’s Not the Thought That Counts | Pastor Levi Lusko | 1 John 5:6-21 | Fresh Life Church

Don't ever let anyone make you think that doctrine doesn't matter, that what we're believing, that what we're studying, that that it doesn't matter. That Christianity is not a faith where we check our brains at the door. Now, we still have to use faith, of course, but I like one of my favorite books.

I I I read it years back, uh, is the book I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist because no matter what it's going to take faith because I believe in God and I don't believe in God are both statements of faith because no one's ever seen God.

So to believe in him or not to believe in him is itself a declaration of your belief. But at this point, I mean, life existing, God's grace, what he's done, what he's done in my life, what he did in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, what he did giving us this book, right?

With all the manuscripts that we have, and there not being big contradictions on any of those 50 verses where it does trip the alarm bells and tell us, hey, this part of John, they're not actually that's amazing and I it gives me it encourages my faith. It emboldens my faith.

So, what you believe matters. Why? Because it will impact how you live. We're going to be in 1 John chapter 5. And the title of this message is, "It's not the thought that counts." That's something we tell ourselves uh when maybe a a gesture uh goes wrong or falls short of our our intended uh you know, meaning of it.

Maybe we tried to do something for someone or to give a gift to someone and it sort of fell flat or bombed, right? I think about when I bought Jenny a brand new washing machine for her birthday one year, you know, just well, bless my own heart. You know what I'm saying?

Now, in my defense, she asked for it. And I even told her, I said, I'm going to tell that story in this sermon today. She said, just for the record, I loved that gift, right? And I was like, yeah, but I think for most people hearing that, it would be like if I bought you a vacuum cleaner.

She goes, "I would really love a new M." I'm like, "I can't win with you." Right? Cuz I told my sister, "What'd you get?" She goes, "What did you get for Jenny's birthday?" "I got a brand new washing machine." She goes, "You idiot. You can't give a washing machine.

What are you saying? You're my you're my domestic servant. Here's how you may serve me, right? Welcome to this brand new year of your life. Go ahead and let me know when my socks are clean." I mean, it's just it's messed up. She goes, "It's like buying a Pelaton."

I go, "I did that last year. I I can't win." Right? It's Anyhow, uh it's the thought that count. Someone say it's the thought that counts. >> The thought that counts. >> Not in the kingdom. In the kingdom of God, our intention really doesn't matter. It's what we do that matters.

In the reformation, they had this expression to sort of reconcile the balance between faith and works. And it went like this. It's really helpful. It's faith that saves alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. You see, because some people get confused when they hear about fruit in the Bible.

And you can almost read stuff in the Bible that talks to us about what it looks like to walk with Jesus and the fruit that God wants to see and that will happen as we walk with him and make the mistake of thinking that it's the doing of those things that saves you.

But it's not. It's faith that saves alone. But the faith that saves is never alone. It will, if it's saving faith, always lead to a difference. If you've brought Jesus into your life and he's given you new life, it's going to lead to new life. Faith saves alone, but faith that saves is never alone.

So, it's never going to be simply good intentions, right? It's simply it's not just going to be nice thoughts about God. It's always going to lead concretely to things in your life. And aren't you grateful that God from heaven didn't see us in sin headed to hell dying and go, "Well, hey, I'm keeping you in my thoughts, right?

God didn't just have nice thoughts towards us. God so loved the world, he gave." Love always gives. You can give without loving but you can't love without giving. Anything you love, resource and life and energy and time will always flow towards that thing. Whatever in your life you love, resource flows to it.

Time flows to it. Money flows to it. Okay? So God so loved the world, he gave. You could say that Jesus is God's way of proving beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was willing to get skin in the game. Skin in the game, right? He gave the most precious thing he could, his own son.

He didn't just think nice thoughts. He gave the ultimate gift. Jesus paid the ultimate price, dying not just for us, but as though he were us. says he hung on that cross. God treated Jesus as though he personally had committed every sin that I've ever committed that you've ever committed.

Jesus gave you could see it in the life he lived. And that is what John is dealing with and talking about over and over again in the book of first John because of this phantom Jesus heresy that had popped up. Someone say heresy. >> Heresy. >> Now that's not when you see a hair, right?

Like I have this theory that when you go to the airport and fly, those little bins you have to put your belongings in to go in the metal detector, there's always at least one hair in every bin. It's a theory I have. I I've flown a lot of flights.

I've every time I've looked, I found a hair. Now, this week, I'm not joking, someone came up to me in public and they said, "You ruined me." And I said, "Excuse me?" And they I said, "How?" Oh, they said, "I can't fly without finding hairs in the bins."

Cuz I told that story in a book once and they said, they said, "I I wish I could unread that chapter." I said, "I'm sorry, but it's true, isn't it?" She goes, "It's true." She goes, "Every time I look, I find the hair." Well, my secret is I just don't look anymore.

I just put my bag down, I slide it to the side, and I don't look because I if I don't want to ask any questions if I don't want to know the answer, right? But heresy isn't hair I see. It's it's it's it's a lie. It's it's it's it's false teaching in the truth.

And John, who is an apostle, who is one of Jesus's 12, who ended up pastoring a church, a very significant church at a city called Ephesus. It's a it's a church that got its own book of the Bible written to them by the Apostle Paul. He planted the church.

He pastored there for several years, actually longer than he pastored anywhere else. After Paul went moved on, his son in the faith, Timothy took the helm for a season, was the pastor there. Eventually, John became the pastor there. And while he was the leader of that church, Mary, Jesus's mom, would be just attending that church.

Just think about that. Sitting down in church and hearing a sermon and she's nodding along. I mean, this is crazy, right? And and yet with despite all the great teaching and leadership this church had, we know by the time Jesus wrote a letter to them in the book of Revelation, he would say this, "You've left your first love."

Shocking. It's important for us to remember how easily it could happen to any one of us. And one of the things that can cause that to happen is believing lies, believing false teaching. And it had happened in Ephesus that there were these other people teaching. And one of the lies they were talking about was this notion that Jesus didn't really come in bodily form that he didn't really put skin on and that he was just a phantom or an apparition and that he didn't leave footprints in this in the ground when he walked.

And and John is in this book correcting some of that by going get out of here. Jesus touched grass, right? You could touch him. You could eat with him. We we handled him. It's it really does matter. He wasn't just God having nice thoughts towards us. It was Jesus being willing to go to the cross and die for us.

And if you are his follower, it's going to show up in your life, too. It's going to make a difference in how you live. And now we pick it up. We're going to start 1 John chapter 5. We're going to end the book today picking it up in verse six.

But we need to back up to a verse we covered last week because he asked a question that leads to the teaching that's going to follow. So let's set it up and then we'll continue. Who is he who overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the son of God?

So that's the question he's raised. We told you last week that the word overcome is a version of the word Nike, right? like the Nikes that are in this room, no doubt, on someone's on someone's feet, which was a word that just meant victory, to overcome, to to be victorious.

And it became a false god in the the Greek system of worship. In the Roman system of worship, there was literally a temple to the god Nike, which is still happening probably to this day. some shoe drop, you know, somewhere someone's like on the sneakers app like I'm still worshiping at the temple to the god Nike, right?

He's like this the most important thing to me in the don't you see these people walking around don't must not crease my Nike. It's like dude you're sick. Okay, FYI. Um but but this word it the actual word just means victory. And and in Ephesus there would have been a temple to the God Nike.

So he's like you want to talk about victory, you know what a true victorious look life looks like? It's believing in the name of Jesus. How do you how do you v be victorious? How do you Nike the world? Believe in Jesus that God sent. Believe that he is the son of God.

He continues, "This is he, Jesus, who came by water and blood." Not only by water, but by water and blood. Jesus Christ did. And it is the spirit who bears witness because the spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness in heaven. Then he says, and you'll notice it's it's struck out in heaven, the father, the word, and the holy spirit.

And these three are one. And there are three that bear witness on earth. And that's all struck out. Then he continues, the spirit, the water, and the blood. These three agree as one. Now, got to draw your attention to an interesting little detail that in verse 7 and verse 8, the whole part of the text that that we had them put the strike through actually probably shouldn't be in the Bible.

Now, some of you are like, "What? You're this is what I was afraid of. This is crazy. My friend told me the Bible's full of errors. It can't be trusted. Someone's like running for the emergency exit." Just chill out for a second here. what this text actually in in in the in the the best we can understand of what the manuscripts actually contain based on what John would have written to the church at Ephesus, it would have read this way.

For there are three that bear witness, the spirit, the water, and the blood. These three agree as one. The part in the middle, it's believed was either commentary on those verses or something that perhaps John would have said when he elaborated on what he had written. This of course would be material and content he would repeat and repeat and repeat and be teaching constantly.

So, it's possible that either at some point along the way he had made that statement or someone had asked him what it meant and he gave him that statement as a follow-up and it was written down into the margin. And at some point when compiling it, a decision was made by someone copying the manuscripts and it was included in the Bible that eventually became the King James Bible and the New King James Bible. uh some of the more modern translations that have gone back and rigor rigor rigorously worked through the different manuscripts that exist have made the decision to not include it at all.

Uh but what you'll notice and it's as is the case in my Bible it's there but the footnote says hey uh just just so you know while you're reading me this probably isn't the Bible so don't build any major doctrine off of this if it's only here and nowhere else.

It's basically a flashing yellow. Hey, proceed with caution. Now, if we got to the middle of verse 7 and it was like, hey, just so you know, Jesus isn't God. We'd be like, wait a minute, you right. But no, what what it's saying is true. And there's nothing uh erroneous about what he's saying.

And and anything you would read in that verse could be pointed to from a hundred different places in scripture, right? But this verse itself probably didn't contain it. Now you go, Levi, doesn't that doesn't that make you freaked out a little bit? Actually, no. It tells me the system worked.

It tripped all the appropriate flags for there to be a caution on us. That the chain is pulled and everything is right there in the footnote for us to go, hey, just just so you know, this probably isn't Bible. The whole thing's Bible, but not here. And this is not the only time this happens.

There are 49 other situations in the Bible where that takes place. And you go, I don't know. That's kind of a lot. Can Can we believe this? Is it all a lie? Is this all like trickery? Like what what the heck? Do you realize that's less than onetenth of 1% when you talk about all of the verses in this book?

And the fact of the matter is not one major doctrinal error is actually affected by any of the so-called discrepancies that exist in all of these various copies. And that what we're dealing with is copies of copies of copies that were scattered to all different parts of the world as they were written and distributed and kept.

And when we find a copy of a manuscript of first John that was found in this place and a copy of of a manuscript of first John in a different place, this is the only diverging issue that we're talking about here, which is a columner footprint, which was probably someone just writing literally commentary details and at some point it got shuffled into the text.

What's what's crazy to me as an author is that we have this book intact from all over the place as God gave it to us from 2000 just about years ago because by 70 AD nearly all of what the material is in the New Testament was found and you can pick up a piece of of of papyrus or a piece of vellum or a piece of you know the book of John or the book of Matthew or the book of Romans no matter where it was found and it's the exact same thing everywhere only onetenth of 1% of this book is affected How amazing is it that God God got his message across to us as he wanted to as holy men wrote as the Holy Spirit and there's nothing to hide.

It's right there for you to sink your teeth into. It's right there in the in the footprint for you in the footnote for you to look at and to look into it and to investigate. I mean, there is more evidence historically speaking for the historicity of the New Testament than there is from just about anything in all of antiquity.

And that should encourage and embolden your faith and not discourage it in the slightest. So for the three that bear witness, the spirit, the water, and the blood, these three agree is one. In verse 9, if we receive the witness of men, which you got to admit, we do.

We listen to what other people say all the time. Where you going to go to lunch? I don't know. Place I found on Yelp. Oh, should we go here? No, no, no, no. I read the reviews on Google Maps that said it's super sus and the food is bad and totally mid.

Okay, we're not going to go there. Why? because we listened to the testimony and witnessing of men. Are you going to buy that thing on Amazon? Are you kidding me? It only had one star. And the person who I don't know said it's not good. Oh, okay. So, you make decisions all the time based on what people say about it.

John's point is why would you not listen to God? You care more about what people say than what God says. Because notice in verse 9, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God, which he has testified of his son. He who believes in the son of God has the witness in himself.

He who does not believe God has made him a liar because he has not believed the testimony God gave of his son. And this is the testimony. What is the testimony we should listen to? God has given us eternal life. And this life is found where? In the sun. >> You want life?

The son's got it. And that's the only place. It's the only store in town. You can't go across the street to a different store. You want to know the big deal? This is the big deal. Jesus gives us life eternal. And it's the only place where it's being offered. >> He who has the son has life.

He who does not have the son of God, guess what? Does not have life. There are not lots of different ways to get to heaven. There are not many roads that lead to God and everyone's just blindly touching an elephant and describing the part of it that they're touching.

And we all just got to feel good and be sincere and try and recycle and and and all the v various things that you can do to make this world a happier, better place. According to this book, we either have the son and have life or we do not have the son of God and thus we do not have life because God is life.

God is love. God is light and God has disclosed himself to us choosing to put on skin in the person of Jesus Christ. That's what John is saying. He's not asking do you like that? >> He's not asking do you agree with that. He's not asking do you think that we should live in a universe where anybody can get to God however they decide they think it should be right that he he's not asking any of that.

He's saying like it or not, accept it or not, this is what God has said about how things are. And these things John says, I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the son of God.

You might want to highlight or underline that verse. Someone said that one verse is the entire book of first John in a nutshell. So as you rethink about and reinterpret the whole book of first John to yourself aresh it's it can be understood through the pinhole that you see the light shining through of verse 13.

I wrote everything I wrote to you so that those who believe in the name of God may know that they have eternal life and continue to believe in the name of the son of God. Now this is the confidence. Someone say confidence. that we have in him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

He doesn't hear prayers prayed out of sync with his will. Someone said that prayer can be boiled down to this. Dad, you promised. Every kid knows how to say those words, right? That's why we parents got to be so careful what promises we make to our kids, right?

Because they they remember, right? They remember. Do you promise? You said that's why we have to talk to them like attorneys, you know, with fine print. You said you promised. I said we would try, right? It's like you have to always leave a contingency. You know what I'm saying?

Like be really careful. So, so prayer properly done is, "Dad, you promised." And if we pray according to his will, we know that he hears us. He did indeed promise and loves to do what he said he was going to do. And if we know that he hears us because we prayed according to his will and said, "Dad, you promised, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of him because we were used by the Holy Spirit to accomplish God's eternal purposes.

And if we know he hears us, whatever we ask, we know we have petitions." Verse 16. If anyone sees his brother sinning, a sin which does not lead to death, he will ask and he will give him life for those who commit sin, not leading to death. There is sin leading to death.

I do not say that he should pray about that. All unrighteousness is sin and there is sin not leading to death. We know that whoever is born of God does not sin, but he who has been born of God keeps himself. And the wicked one does not touch him.

Before I move on, let me just address the elephant in the room. There are probably some questions you've accumulated as I've been reading the text. I will leave you in suspense for a little while and then I will eventually address it. We know that we are of God and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.

And we know that the son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him who is alleia. That's the Greek word for true as opposed to a knockoff. Genuine as opposed to a ripoff. Authentic as opposed to a fimile, a copy of a copy.

We don't want no knockoff Jesus, no counterfeit Jesus. We want the true living authoritative son of God as he is not as we wish he was. And we are in him who is true in his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. And then he signs off with this.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen. And with that, we have reached the end of our reading of the book of First John. Eight weeks later, we made it. Come on, somebody. NT Wright, who is a theologian in writing about the way First John moves him as he reads it, he tells the story about the first time he went snorkeling.

Anybody here remember the first time you went snorkeling? Right. It it's incredible. on our honeymoon. I mean, I grew up in in Colorado and New Mexico, so you know, not not had a lot of opportunities, really any opportunities to snorkel till our honeymoon. And my dad, he said, "I will make you a deal.

I will pay for your honeymoon if you let me pick where you go." Now, being broke and without any options, I said yes to the deal, right? And he surprised us with airplane tickets and a hotel in Maui. And I was so excited to go snorkeling. So I rented Jenny and I gear and within 3 minutes of being in the water, she decided snorkeling was not for her.

And so she left the water. And so I would snorkel and then come back and tell her about what I saw. But I'll never forget I it was it was like I I I stepped into an alien world. It was a bright sunny day. So everything was just you know what I'm talking about if you've been.

It's just it was electric. It was so bright all the colors. And that's what what Tom Wright talks about. He said, he said, "I I all of a sudden was just seeing blue and yellow and green and this shape and this size and I was here." And he said this, the scholar in him wanted to rush back to the boat to pull out a notebook and to write it all down because he knew that he would quickly forget and be unable to ever articulate how amazing the experience of what he was seeing under the sea.

And he said he had to resist the impulse to to miss the moment trying to record it. This is a word for a generation who, you know, goes to every concert just with their phone out the whole time. Like sometimes I, you know, you see people just filming all the things and you're like, ju stop it.

You know, you see people like at Disneyland filming Peter Pan the whole ride. I'm like, you don't need a video of that. Just watch your child. You're sick in the head. Just watch your child. Look at the watch your child, right? Watch. Can you imagine ever sitting down?

Oh, man. I love that that Peter Pan Ryan. What a great I'm so glad I got that. This is this is a great video. What what Tom was saying is he was saying he I I had to resist the impulse to try and overly be able to get it all.

Instead, I just had to to to sink into the moment and and and and immerse myself in what I was seeing and not miss out on the beauty of it all. Then he says, and I quote, "There are so many points coming and going in the book of First John in this seemingly infinite spiral of John's discourse that it is by now hard to keep track of where we've even got to.

The themes are repeating and double repeating. John is producing variations on what he's already said and then variations on the variations. Why not just sit back and enjoy what is now the familiar music? That indeed may be part of the point of the way he's writing. He is trying to teach his readers to make the connections for themselves to see and to enjoy seeing the way in which each part of the picture leads more or less directly to every other part.

These, comparing it to snorkeling, are the brilliantly colored creatures that now swim before our eyes. What a beautiful way to describe the overwhelming thing it is to read the book of First John. Even in what we just read, we're like, red fish, blue fish, white fish. Like, it's just so much going on.

Like, I need to get that. I need to follow that. And and you you see it all happening. And I think John would rather have you just see the panorama and experience the painting or the composition and then be able to think back on it and think back on it than try and use your rational brain to try and grab everything as it goes by and completely.

Right. We we compared him at the beginning of the series to Bank C. It's this art exhibit that's shocking and you see it and takes your breath away and makes you feel one thing, but then you as you begin to see the layers to it and the the subtleties and the meaning of it, there's more going on than meets the eye.

It's much less like when you read a book Paul wrote where you're like, here is the introduction and here is the main body and here's the point restated and then here's the goodbye with the farewell. Like there's there's a rhythm to how Paul writes and there's a place for that.

But John, who does want us to know something, also really wants us to feel something and experience it more like a painting. It's similar to what happened when he wrote his gospel, the Gospel of John, where Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there was real systematic kind of, you know, outlining beginning to end, right? where John's just all over the place and he's artfully starting with the water into wine and and the way he he accumulates his material and out of all the things Jesus did he picks these seven I am statements and these seven miracles and and that sort of tendency of John to portray Jesus artistically will reach its zenith or its crescendo when he writes the book of revelation and he approaches the coming of Jesus back to this world in judgment and then in setting all things right in the most masterful artistic way possible.

John is sort of spiraling through these themes. And what are they? Well, we've spent weeks and weeks and weeks collecting them, but let's just revisit them briefly. If you have come to know Jesus, it is going to change four different things. Four different things. It's not just going to be the thought that counts.

It's going to lead to these things in your life. Number one, what you believe. So he has once again come back to you. No, no, you have to believe that Jesus is who he said he is, not who you wish he was. So to deny his incarnation or to deny the crucifixion or deny any aspect of it is to deny all of him.

So what you believe, then the way you live, then how you love, and then the confidence that you have. Each of these things which he has explored and then revisited and then explored and revisited and looked at from different angles and all these different perspectives are all essentially about assurance.

The assurance of your salvation because the false teachers who were putting the hairs in the TSA bins of doctrine, they were spreading lies about Jesus. They were making up different things. They were doub making people in the church doubt that they were really saved because they were saying, "We've now tapped into secret knowledge."

And they left the church at Ephesus and they were off on their own. And when they would bump into people who used to go to church with them, they were spreading lies to them and making them doubt their salvation because they didn't have the real secret knowledge these other false teachers had.

And so John wrote this book. His big mission statement was so that they could actually know they had really been saved. He said, 'I wrote the Gospel of John so you could believe. I wrote the book of First John and then second and third John as well, so that you could know you did.

Do you see the difference? I wrote this one so you would believe. I wrote this one so that you would know what it looks like when you have. So that you and I could have assurance. And those four things, what we believe, how we live, the way we love, and the confidence that we then can have as we're following him, are the things downstream in our lives that we're going to see that we hadn't just checked a box Christian, right?

As though it's something you could be born as opposed to what the Bible says, it's something you are born again into. Right? >> So when someone says when I ask someone, you know, tell me how how you got saved, they go, I was born a Christian. No, you weren't.

Nobody's born a Christian. We were born children of wrath. The Bible says we were at enity with God. There has to have come a point when you gave your life to Jesus. The Bible says unless we have the son, we don't have life. And you you can catch sin through your family history.

You can get a heart attack through your family history. You can't get sal salvation vicariously. The tickets to heaven admit one. One. So your mom having a ticket doesn't save you. Your your granddaddy being a deacon, a second Baptist, wherever doesn't save you. Being a pastor doesn't save you.

Only you having personally bent your knee to the lordship of Jesus Christ and allowed him to invade your heart with his grace saves you. And if you have, here's what you're going to see in your life. You're going to see the the the what you believe lines up with who Jesus said he was.

You're going to see that love produced. You're going to see it affects your the life you live. It's going to change your relationship to sin. You're going to want to keep God's commands because you're going to have the revelation that they're not burdensome, that he wants what's best for you all along.

And John has been visiting and revisiting and revisiting like us snorkeling. All of these different colors, all of these bright things are all meant to have us walk away with that that we may know that we have received eternal life through God's son, Jesus. Jenny and I picked huckleberries on Friday.

Um whenever we go hiking, if we find huckleberries, I know we're going to be there for a while. I can pick a little bit. Jenny, she's addicted to them. She just she can't stop. She's just she we have to literally like pull her away from the bushes. We must go now.

The sun is setting, sweetheart. You know, we have to we have to go. She has no she she forgets about all responsibilities, all sense of time and space. She just must pick hooker, right? Must literally someone a stranger walked by us and and saw my wife like I was picking, the kids were picking, Jenny was just in it, just in the zone.

She's like, "Yeah, mom's mom's in mom's in the zone." And and this random woman was like, "Well, there's a grizzly bear in all of us." Like that was that was her her response seeing my wife. I was like indeed. As we walked away, I took a photo of our hands and and I thought, "Wow, you could tell we were picking without us telling you we were picking. >> Show me your hands and I'll tell you whether you were in the huckleberries."

You see what I'm saying? That's what John's saying in this book. Show me your hands. Oh, you you believe in Jesus. Show me your hands. Show me the confidence you have in in the Holy Spirit igniting that aba father inside of you that that you are crying out father and letting him love you.

That's going to lead you a confidence. Show me the way you love. Because if you say you love the god who is love and he's come into your life but you're harsh, arrogant, mean, cruel, rude, it doesn't it doesn't figure that walking with Jesus is not going to deal with incorrect.

And I'm not saying it's those things that's going to save you cuz it's the faith that saves alone. But the faith that saves is never alone. Show me your hand. Show me how you're living. Show me how you're loving. Show me what you're believing. I'll tell you whether you're truly following Jesus.

It's going to impact your life to let Jesus be the Lord of your life. That's what the book of First John is all about. So, what I want to do with the time that remains, and we will try and pull at some of those loose threads of some of those confusing verses that we read a moment ago, and I will say to you, they are a few of them at face value confusing.

And that's partially because John likes the shock. John's the Banksy. John wants to get your your your heart up into your throat a little bit. He likes to be like, "Hey, uh, anyone sins, you can ask God and he'll forgive ask God. He'll forgive you. Hey, by the way, you never you're not going to sin anymore walking with Jesus."

Like, wait a minute. that he's dealing with it from both sides. He remember even in the verse we read that we won't cover at great length where he says once you follow Jesus you're not going to remain in sin. He's saying you have a new nature. So not that you're in Jesus not able to sin but now for the first time in your life you're actually able not to sin.

You've been open up to a new way. So it's going to change your relationship. You're not going to be habitually practicing given over to sin. You're a child of God. Now, he's trying to show by by showing both sides of this thing, help you understand what's in the middle.

All right. But what I did was from these verses, I took what's going in my doggy bag because I want to I want to live differently because of our touching grass time. And so, here's some takeaway truths from First John for us to live on some of these leftovers.

Number one, what you believe determines how you behave. We can't get around that. If we want to figure out why we're living the way we're living, we have to attack it at the problem of what we're believing. The lies we're believing will lead to sin that we're living.

Okay? So, that's why John's taking it so seriously when there are people like Serenthus. Serinthus was at one point a member of the church and he had defected and he was one of the ones spinning lies what's known as the Serenian heresy and his unique form of heresy went like this.

Jesus wasn't Christ all the time. Crazy, I know. Which is one of the reasons why every time John talks about Jesus, he goes out of his way to say Jesus Christ. Right now, let me just clear something else for you. Christ wasn't Jesus's last name. I know some people are confused about that, right?

Jesus is his name. Christ is his title. It's not like there was Mary Christ and Joseph Christ and they had a baby and it was Jesus Christ, right? No, no, no. Uh Christ was a position. Christ was a title, right? So, if you called me pastor, Levi, that's kind of like Jesus Christ, right?

Levi, pastor would actually be a better way to describe it. But Jesus, his name, Christ, his messianic position. Serinthus taught that Jesus wasn't the Christ all the time, but the Christ spirit came upon him at his baptism, but that God would never let the Christ be crucified. So, the Christ spirit abandoned him at his arrest.

And only Jesus was crucified, but not the Christ. And there's there's a whole lot of problems and it all unravels because scripture says Jesus who was always God from when the beginning he is the Messiah was the Messiah. He was God before he came. He was God as he came.

He is God now after he came. So so he has always been who he is today. He has no beginning. He has no end. He has no changing. There's no variation or shadow of turning. So, it's a preposterous notion to deny that Jesus the Christ hung on that cross dripping and bleeding.

Which is one of the reasons John goes out of his way to go uh he came through water and blood. You catch that water and blood, not by water only. Cuz Sarinthus said only at the baptism going through this magical ritual and oh, and you better believe Sarinthus was selling his own baptism water.

You know, oh this new ritual I got to take you through. Uh he said no, he came through water. He came through blood. John was there. And when that blood and water came out of Jesus's heart, he saw it. He was there when Jesus was was baptized and God the Father audibly said, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleasing."

Guess what? God the Father was just as well pleased as Jesus Christ hung on the cross. So what we believe matters because listen, if we don't believe Jesus took on a body, well downstream, it doesn't really matter what we do with our body, does it? And in the church then and in the church now were people justifying and rationalizing and explaining sin.

It doesn't matter how I live because I have thoughts of goodness towards the man upstairs. I can love God and do whatever I want is ultimately the reason for this theological excursion into never neverland where pixie dust and happy feeling can make you no there's no place like home.

Get out of here. This is who Jesus is. And I think deep down we know if he is who he says he is, we then need to do what he says we ought to do. And that's why people like to make up their own pet theologies. It's so that they can ultimately do whatever they want, screw whoever they want, drink whatever they want.

You know that it's to justify sinful behavior. And so John says, "No, no. What we believe matters. Doctrine matters. Who Jesus is matters. and us then being under his authority and not getting to choose our own way in this world. So, who is Jesus is ultimately the most important question in your entire lives you will ever ask. >> Who is Jesus?

CS Lewis said there's only three possibilities. Write them down. He's a liar, he's a lunatic, or he's Lord. But don't be telling me he's basically Mr. Rogers wearing a beard. All right? Some of you don't laugh because you don't know who that is. And I pity you because Mr.

Rogers is awesome. The idea that Jesus is just a good person should not be squared with Jesus's actual words. Who said, "I'm the resurrection and the life." Good people don't do that. Good people don't show up at funerals and say, "Don't worry about your brother who just died.

I'm he's good because of me." If you did that at my daughter's funeral, punch you in the teeth. Right? Jesus was not a good person. He was a god person. >> So he's either a liar, a lunatic. The only option that remains is he is Lord. So I love it.

CS Lewis said, he said, "A man who merely was a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level of a man who claims to be a poached egg or the devil himself or here's the last option, Lord and God."

And I say that's what Jesus is. Jesus is our Lord. He's our God. And what you believe about Jesus is the most important thing about you. >> Um, number two, takeaway truth. If you really love him, you will love like him. Not perfectly and not all at once, but that we're on hopefully a journey growing to love more like Jesus.

Now, you go, I read all of First John chapter 5 that you read us. I didn't hear anything about love. Oh, really? How about the whole thing about prayer? The moment he says, "Now you can have confidence." What does he say? You'll immediately start to pray. And what happens next?

He says, "You're immediately going to start to pray for a brother who's struggling with sin." Do you notice? It's not a prayer for themselves. He says, "When you have confidence ignited in you, you're going to want to start to pray so that other people could have the same confidence you have."

Here's a probing and penetrating question to ask yourself later this week, maybe as you spend some time journaling and maybe rereading some of First John. If God decided today at 4 p.m. to answer every prayer you've prayed this week, so last six days, every prayer you prayed all week long at 3 p.m. today, boom, they were all retroactively answered.

Would life change for anybody except you? Who have you been praying for? Now, I had the benefit of knowing I was going to say that, and so I've been praying for other people like crazy so I would feel less guilty and convicted by that. Oh, I've been praying for the persecuted church.

I've been praying for people in countries I can't pronounce. Right? Because I was thinking like that. Why don't we think like that often? Maybe because we like being miserable. And that's how we feel when we only think about ourselves and we only pray for a better job and we only pray for six-pack abs even though we eat McDonald's every day.

Right? You see what I'm saying? The the point is when we begin to realize the power of prayer, we leverage it for others and we we actually tap into a greater sense of position of of blessing and joy. And that's why he says this is the confidence we can know as his kids.

Dad, you promised. But we're not pulling down all those hopefully miracles just for us. We're saying, "God, use me. Dad, use me. We need other kids at the table. We need other brothers and sisters being comforted. We need other Oh, come on. Get them. God. Dad, you got the resources.

Help. Help with it." And and you're a part of him accomplishing his eternal will and fulfilling his promises in all the earth. What a joy is it for a father to see their son or daughter thinking like they're thinking and they go, "Oh yeah, that's a problem over there and over here.

God, use me for this. Use me over here." And we all of a sudden are loving like him. We love to play this game in our family. Who's got dad's feet? Who's got mom's feet? Lennox grew a birth mark. And we're like, "Oh my gosh, it's exactly where mom's got a birth mark on her on her jaw.

It's and we love that." Like, "Oh, you're like dad. I'm just like mom. You're just and and I wonder if if we can see in our prayer lives, in our love lives, like, ah, God's going, they're just like me. I noticed that Jesus, look what they're doing. They're just like me.

I see that genetic trait. And again, we don't get adopted because we eventually became so much like our father, but because we have been adopted into his family, we want to do what he does. Maturity is using the eternal spiritual power you've been given, not just for you.

Joy is spelled Jesus J others O yourself Y. So I'm not saying don't pray for you. I'm just saying don't think that's the end of prayer. That's just where we get started. Number three, I wrote this down as a takeaway truth from reading First John. Sin is not to be trifled with.

I mean, goodness gracious, we start with Cain is murdering people. Do we want to be like him? No. And it started with a little sin of jealousy and envy and it led to a massive out of control thing in this life. Sin is not to be trifled with.

And then we get to first John 5 and he's like, "Oh, hey, I don't know how to break it to you guys. There is sin leading to death." And you're like, "It's scary." And it should be. Now, why why does he say all that about prayer leading sin leading to death, sin not leading to death here?

Here's why. He wants you to understand how crazy unlimited prayer is. Now, that's a weird way to do that, but that's ultimately, if you look back at it, what he was trying to accomplish because he says, "Oh my gosh, you have confidence before him. You can ask him anything you want."

Like my kids, I mean, if they need me, if Culver needs me bad enough right now, she could interrupt me right now. She wouldn't abuse that. But she could. You can do that to your father at any time for anything. And then he says, "It's so unlimited. It's such cart blanch.

You could pray for anything." And then he goes, "Except if someone was sinning, a sudden led to death as a way of saying the one category that your prayer wouldn't work." But the point of it isn't to have wasted hour trying to figure out what the sin leading to death is.

Even though I will try and tell you in a moment, it's actually for him to be able to just show you it. That's the only thing you couldn't pray for and your prayer wouldn't work. Other than that, anything go nuts. And how crazy to be given such power and to use it so sparingly.

I sure wish we were going into a prayer series so we could delve deeper into that. All right. What does it mean that he says you can't pray for someone sinning a sin leading to death because it actually wouldn't work and that's the only area your your prayer wouldn't work.

Well, first let's stop and theologically address this. Every death is ultimately connected back to sin. The wages of sin is >> God warned Adam and Eve the day you eat it you shall surely die. >> So all death stems back to sin. So the connection is already there.

Then for a Christian specifically around communion and I don't know why but the Bible says you can die if you take communion and your heart's not good. You're like I'm going to need to see a verse for that. Oh, I came prepared for you. 1 Corinthians chapter 11.

Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the blood body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself. And so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner actually eats and drinks judgment to himself.

And this is in every manuscript, by the way. Some like, I hope this is one of those ones. No. Eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason, he's telling the church of Corinth, "Many are weak among you and sick and many sleep."

That's a code for dead. Only Christians are called sleeping when they die. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not have to be judged. You should never take communion without first pausing and confessing any sin unrepented of in your heart. Because to eat and drink these elements, you could get sick or die or just be weak as a result.

Because you're being trivial or flippant about something so serious and not being introspective and relationally seeking harmony with your father who's already forgiven you, but wants to restore you relationally to him. It's just a chance before we say cheers to go, whoa, is there anything in my heart that I'm regarding sin and to get right.

So specifically for a Christian, there is sin that can lead to death. And God can choose to take you home in sin because of whatever sin goes on in your life. There are people who were Christians, but God just chose to take them home and say, "Hey, that's enough."

As a as a as a measure, you've you've this this far and no further. There's also a spiritual sin, and it's the only one in all all of the Bible that can't be forgiven. The unpardonable sin, it's been called. And John throughout the book has referred to it as the spirit of Antichrist.

And that is to look to anything other than Jesus to be saved. To not accept the only salvation that God has chosen to give. And to die believing in anything or anyone other than Jesus for salvation, God can't forgive. Every other sin men commit can be forgiven, but not that one.

That one is a sin that can't be forgiven. It's a sin that leads to death. So to pray that someone dies who didn't believe in Jesus would just be good. God's like, "I can't do that." Well, I can do anything else. So use prayer for anything else. Now you go, "Well, how do I know?"

You can't. Do you see what he's trying to tease out in you? So pray like crazy because you never know what's actually going on. The thief on the cross who died next to Jesus got saved the second before he died. All the way to the end, it looked like he was sitting on death until he wasn't.

So I think what John's trying to coax out is not fear and uncertainty but prayer and a greater sense of the use of prayer because of the conf. Do you see how masterful he is? What what a boss John is because he took us down this whole journey.

He's like openheimer and all of a sudden like oh my gosh and here he is. Okay. So uh he's like Christopher Nolan for sure of the New Testament. All right. Number four. I'm taking away from this series. There's power in the blood of Jesus. Are you grateful for the power in the blood of Jesus?

Because because you know, you you read about, oh, I love this the enemy is trying to do and the world's under the sway of the wicked one and he's going to do this over this and and and John isn't writing this book to make us feel fearful, but to feel assurance, to feel confidence.

We just have to check ourselves to see, do we have justifiable reason? Is there huckleberry juice on my fingers? because I might have not actually if you walk away from this book going none of those things are actually in my life. The answer to you today is get saved, be born again, be right with God to the church toying with sin, not living a loving life, not living like Jesus.

If the spirit's convicting you, get right with him today, then come to the altar, take the the cup, take the bread, and and and walk with your beloved. If there's any area of your life, you're not loving what the beloved loves. And if you go, I'm I'm afraid though, is the enemy going to come at me?

Is he gonna get me? Is he going to get me to renounce Jesus Christ? And he knew that his church was going to be thinking some of those things. That's why he told them in verse 18, no, no, no, no, no. One of the trademarks of the person born of God is they're going to keep himself.

Verse 18, he who has been born of God keeps himself. How do they do that? I can't do it. I'm gonna mess up. the wicked one doesn't touch him. That is a lot more powerful in the Greek than it comes across in our Bible. What it actually means and Eugene Peterson translated it well when he said this verse is actually saying the God begotten are the God protected.

You're afraid. No, no, no, no, no. One of the characteristics of the person truly born of God is they're taken care of by God. Jesus says effectively to the devil what MC Hammer said in the late 90s can't touch this the God begotten become the God protected now there are two words for touch in the Greek I'm told one is like if I put my hand on your shoulder that's to touch you I did I touch you yeah put my hand on your shoulder right lovingly just touch the el that's I touched you but what do we say when someone assaulted someone abused their spouse or child would say he laid his hands on them.

Now, it's true that if I touch you, I laid my hand on you, but that's not touching you. To lay hands on someone in an aggressive way, in a way to destroy you, in a way to take life is what this word means. It's he's saying, "Beloved, don't worry.

Those who are born of God, the devil can't lay his hands on you >> because God establishes a boundary over. Don't you remember when the devil wanted to mess with Job? He had to ask God's permission first. >> Do you remember what the the Lord Jesus said to Peter?

He said the the devil has been asking for you. He wants to sift you as wheat. Do you realize what that means? The devil can't lay his hand on you unless the father says so. Unless the God allows it. What he's saying to the church and what he's saying to us is nothing can happen to you outside of God's will.

You are invincible. You are immortal in the will of God. And when God sees fit to bring you home, well then the first thing you're going to see is him. And from that moment on, it is eternal life and paradise in his presence. You're never to be destroyed.

And I can't prove it, but I sense in the spirit that John as he wrote this knew that persecution was coming for the church at Ephesus. Because in the text we just read, he uses six times a word that in the English is translated martyr. Martis is the word.

It's the word for testimony or witness. He kept saying witness. Witness, but every time in the Greek it's martyr, martyr, marty. I think he knew what was coming for the church then, which is always happening for the church of Jesus Christ as the enemy seeks to destroy it today, is is martyrs.

He wants to tear down the witnesses. It's a dangerous thing to be a witness. It's why there's a witness protection program. What we just read amounts to God's witness protection program. We don't have to be afraid to be a bold witness for Jesus because he protects his children and the devil can't touch us. >> JB Phillips puts it this way.

He is in the charge, the child of God, of God's own son and the evil one must keep his distance. So nothing gets to you without going through him. Praise God for the power and protection and safety of the blood of Jesus Christ. 
((music playing))
 And lastly, and we close here, you have to fight to keep the main thing the main thing.

It takes work. It's a fight. It's not easy to keep the main thing the main thing. And that's why John ends the the book where he does, what's the last verse? Little kids, keep yourselves from idols, which is kind of a wait, the whole book, the problem's been false teaching.

What about idolatry? What? Hold on. He's like, "Well, the moment you work on the false teaching, get that sorted out, guess what the devil's going to do? He's going to do this thing over here. We had a flood in our home this week. Our hot water heater burst.

Our entire ground floor of our home soaked in like a a half a foot of water. And what was so funny about it, not a lot, but was in January we got a letter from the county saying, "Hey, our records indicate your home was built in a flood plane."

And this year they're they're and we don't know for sure if a flood happens. I mean, it would take like a hundred-year flood, but I mean, how many more hundredyear things can happen in the last 5 years, right? And if a flood happens, you know, you might want to add flood.

They literally, it was so ominous. You might want to add flood insurance, right? So, we did. But every time it's rain, every time the snow was melting, all year long, I've had my eye on the horizon like, "Is today the day? Is a flood coming? Is a flood coming?"

And a flood did come. But the problem wasn't the river out there. It was something on the inside. it was our own little hot water heater that betrayed us. And I think that's kind of what John's doing here. This whole book's about this present problem they're dealing with.

But he also wants them to know once they get strength in this area, the enemy is just going to shift his attack to something else that's going to try and get our hearts off of Jesus. And so whether it's Serenus and his Gnostic gang or it's the Aremis cult on the hill with the the the thing over here and if not then it's going to be the ego thing and it's going to be the libido thing.

That means until heaven, there's always going to be some agent of the devil trying to get our eyes off the prize. And we got to fight to keep the main thing the main thing. Which is why in verse 13, he said, "I wrote this so you could actually know you believed in him and that you would continue to believe in him."

So church, let's continue to believe in Jesus. Let's not go very much time without touching grass, grounding ourselves in truth, and keeping our eyes on him. And so, Father, we ask for your help to do just that. Thank you that he who begun the great work in us will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus.

We speak the blood of Jesus over our lives, over our homes, over our church, over our family, over our bodies. We know nothing can come against us if you didn't approve it. And if it is did come to us, it means you have a plan to use it for our good.

So we declare that we are under the protection of Jesus Christ, the son of God. We thank you Jesus that as we exalt you, nothing can separate you. Not height, not depth, not angels, not demons, not any created thing can separate us from your love. But we realize that some today may not be in that love.

So if you are not under the safety and protection of the blood of Jesus, I invite you to give your heart to him. I'm going to pray a prayer. Make this your prayer. Give your heart to God today. Don't sin the sin that leads to death. Come to life in Christ.

Say this. Say, "Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner. I can't fix myself, but I believe you can. Please come into my heart. Make it your home. I give myself to you in Jesus name. 
((music playing))