There's a change in the text since Dr. Horton is unable to be here, and I didn't want to try to preach his sermon, so if you'd please turn with me to 1 John 5, 1 John 5, particularly verses 5 through 12, but we'll read 1 John 5, 1 through 12, and the title of the sermon is Christian, what do you believe? But this is the word of God coming to us, 1 John 5, verses 1 through 12. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God, by loving God and carrying out his commands. This is love for God, to obey his commands, and his commands are not burdensome for everyone born of god overcomes the world this is the victory that has overcome the world even our faith who is it that overcomes the world only he who believes that jesus is the son of god this is the one who came by water and blood jesus christ he did not come by water only but by water and blood and it is the spirit who testifies because the spirit is the truth for there are three that testify the spirit the water and the blood and the three are in agreement we accept man's testimony but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God which we has which he has given about his son anyone who believes in the son of God has this testimony in his heart anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar because he has not believed the testimony that God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony. God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. Sends the reading of God's Word. Let's turn to him in prayer and ask for him to open our hearts and minds as we study his Word today. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for the opportunity to learn from your word. We thank you for providing us with a testimony to the work that you have done and are doing because of your love for us. We thank you for sending Jesus Christ, your only son, into the world to bridge the chasm between your holiness and our sin. Apart from him, we could not even speak to you, but because of him, we can call you Father. We thank you also for the Holy Spirit and we ask that the Spirit would illuminate our hearts and minds as we study your word today. We ask that you would be with your servant, that he would faithfully proclaim your word and we pray that we would think your thoughts after you and walk in the way that you have prepared for us after hearing your word. We pray these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen. when asked christian what do you believe most of us here would start off by saying we believe in god the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and then we would proceed to go on through the rest of either the nicene creed or the uh the nicene creed or the apostles creed or the nicene creed and we would make our profession of faith about who god is and then it proceeds to talk about who jesus christ is and then it talks about who this holy spirit is and then it talks about the church and we stand in the same stream as those who came before us for generations making the same profession of faith about who god is who jesus is and who the holy spirit is we don't stand in a different stream we stand in the exact same stream and we knowing what you believe and why you believe it is essential for faith and life and john wants to make this abundantly clear in the text in the book of first john he wants to make sure that we know what we believe and why we believe it and that we're confessing the truth about who Jesus Christ is. And it's very important that we know these things. So important that John's language is pretty stark. If we turn back just a little in 1 John 4, verses 2 through 4, we read these words. 1 John 4, 2 through 4 says, This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God. Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and even now is already in the world. And John wants to make it clear that we understand that Jesus is God. And he also wants to make it clear that Jesus was also fully human. If you'll turn back two more chapters, 1 John 2, 21 through 23, 1 John 2, 21 through 23, John wrote, I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the Antichrist. He denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father, and whoever acknowledged the Son has the Father also. And in this, John is making clear throughout what a proper confession of faith regarding Jesus Christ is. We need to confess that he is fully human and that he is fully divine. And then we read even in 1 John, in the first century, already these things were being attacked. And John said that the spirit of the Antichrist is already there. In the first century, people were already attacking those things. And we can see them evident in our day today. Some of them are very subtle, and some of them are very blatant, but we often have one of these two pillars about who Jesus Christ is being attacked today. We have a real aggressive form of atheism. It's actually trying to proselytize people into atheism. It's not just denying God, but trying to go out now and convince people that there is no God. Every year in some television program, we get a show about someone finding the bones of Jesus or the tomb of jesus or heraldos looking for the real jesus or somebody's trying to do that one way or another they're always trying to do these things and it's been the same there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to attacking the authority of the word of god satan did that in the garden and then all of the rest of scripture is an unfolding of what we call redemptive history of god reconciling a people to himself of the good shepherd going out and getting the sheep against all the attacks that are trying to come against it and whether it's the gospel according to jesus or in search of the real jesus or even a fictional book like the da vinci code which some people had their faith rocked a little bit or thrown off base because of a fictional book because they didn't really understand what they believe and why they believed it well no matter what those things are they're all just spitballs against a battleship when we look at the testimony of what scripture is saying and kids if you think about it if you were to go down to the harbor you were to go down to coronado island and take your straw and make some spitballs and stand there and try to hit one of those battleships first of all you'd have to have some pretty impressive lungs to get it out that far but if you did there's no way that you could sink that battleship as a matter of fact they probably wouldn't even know that you that you had done it with today's technology maybe they did and there's a spitball incoming but nobody on board would be at all worried about that and that's the kind of attack that we're talking about here none of these things make any difference compared to the testimony that we have and the confidence that we can have in the word of god and the testimony about jesus christ and john writes so that we may know john writes so that we may know confidently and assuredly who jesus christ is and that our faith is in him alone it's not in our works we don't add to or take away from anything that jesus christ did our faith is a gift, and our faith is in Jesus Christ and his completed work. And so what I'd like to do today is to look at three things, and I'd like to look at them in the arena, if you will, of a courtroom drama. And we're all familiar with courtroom dramas, either from the literature we read or movies that we may have seen or television shows. So first, I want to consider the testimony. What is the claim that's being made? What are the truth claims that are being made here? Secondly, the credibility of the witnesses. Is this testimony and is this evidence reliable? And then third, what is the verdict? What does that mean for everybody in this room? So we'll look at three things. The testimony, what is being claimed? Secondly, the credibility of that testimony, is it reliable? And then finally, the verdict, what does that mean for everybody in this room? And we're all familiar with these legal ideas, interestingly, and maybe intuitively, because we're drawn to them because we know that we also will stand before a judge one day that we're written into a much larger story that's going to end in a climactic scene with the judge fortunately as believers we know the outcome ahead of time we know that because we are in Christ Jesus that we're not going to be condemned but we stand justified in Jesus Christ alone but that others don't have that same don't have that same assurance they actually have eternal damnation coming to them but we all know that intuitively we all know that there's something larger than our own life and that we're written into something and that there is some meaning and purpose to our life even when we try to deny it we know that it's there and Paul makes that clear to us in Romans as well and that we all stand in the exact same story we stand in the same drama we stand in the same drama as adam and moses and abraham and david and joseph we stand many scenes later in this unfolding redemptive drama of god bringing his people to himself but we're standing in the exact same story the same story that started with adam and in the garden and went all the way through the old testament and all the way through the new testament what we call redemptive history of god redeeming his people of god bringing his people to himself we stand in that same story so let's first look at the testimony what is the claim as we have just read scripture is bearing witness to the fact that jesus christ has come in the flesh that he's human that he's the son of god that he's divine and that we can have salvation only in him that there's no other way of salvation jesus didn't provide just a way of salvation jesus provides salvation for those who are in him and there's a distinction there but we read some odd things if we look at verse six of our text first john 5 6 it talks about coming through or coming by the water and the blood depending on your version it'll either say through or by and what does that mean what does it mean to say that jesus came through or by the water and the blood well it actually talks about or it means kind of an experience it doesn't talk about just one thing but it'd be like if we said that somebody came through labor fine or that somebody made it through chemotherapy or if we said somebody made it through seminary it's talking about actually going through this whole experience it's talking about going through something so when it says he came through the water and it seems he came through the blood it's actually forming bookends to jesus's ministry the water is the beginning of his earthly ministry in his baptism and the blood is the end of it with his death and resurrection so when we say he came through the water and the blood we're saying that he came through and accomplished completely perfectly everything that he was commissioned to do so first let's look at the water what does it mean to say that he came through the water well as i mentioned it's talking about Jesus's baptism the very beginning of his earthly ministry and to say that he came through it means that he completed it everything that he was commissioned to do which was not just to provide a way for our salvation but to actually save us he accomplished everything that he was supposed to do it's a really packed phrase to say that he came through the water it'd be like using the phrase 9 11 today or d-day or a civil war it doesn't just mean one little thing it carries lots of baggage with it and so when we think about jesus coming through the water let's think about all those things that that can mean we can picture the scene first of all at his physical baptism where john the baptist sees jesus coming towards him and he sees him from a distance and he says behold the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world and jesus walks towards him and he goes into the jordan river with him and john baptizes him and then a voice from heaven resounds and says this is my beloved son in whom i'm well pleased and then the holy spirit descends like a dove and we have a picture of the whole trinity right there bearing witness and testifying to the person and work of jesus christ to his humanity and to his divinity and everything that that water is going to signify in his work of redeeming his people of coming to seek and save the lost of providing not just a way of salvation, but salvation itself. And so reflect on what Jesus did throughout his earthly ministry that began with that baptism was he actually brought the kingdom of God. He inaugurated or started the kingdom of God as we understand it. And we can see throughout the Gospels that he does things that we're going to experience fully when we're with him at the end of time. He started with his miracles, the blind saw, the deaf heard, and the lame walked. He cast out demons, because demons are incompatible with the kingdom of God. He commanded the elements, because he was supreme and sovereign over everything. He also raised people from the dead, but most importantly, he forgave sins. And all these things Jesus did in his earthly ministry, showing us what ultimately everything is going to be like for us in glory. But it started there. It started on the banks of the Jordan, and then for three plus years, Jesus went about and did these things, bringing in the kingdom of God. And so then we read that he also came through the blood. The water brought about the beginning of his earthly ministry with his baptism, and then all the things that he did to usher in the kingdom to earn salvation for us, to provide salvation for us. And then the blood ends it. It's death. It's real blood. It's physical, real blood. And the Apostle Paul makes this really clear in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Jesus didn't really die and he didn't really rise again, then our faith is worthless. There's no point for any of us to be here on a Sunday morning if Jesus didn't really rise from the dead. I would be the first one to head out to the beach if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. There's no point. But because it is real and because he really did die and he really did rise again, everything is different. Our lives are transformed. We are transferred from death to life in Jesus Christ because of that. And John wants to make it clear that anyone who says he didn't really die, that it wasn't real blood, is a liar. They're making God out to be a liar. It's a false claim. It's a spitball against a battleship of the resurrected Christ. And John wants to make that abundantly clear. If Jesus just symbolically rose from the dead, which many people in our society claim today, then we only have a symbolic salvation. But because he really rose from the dead, we have a real and lasting and eternal salvation. And we actually have a high priest interceding for us at the right hand of God. So the assertion that Jesus Christ came in the flesh and died is not a mere academic trifle. It makes a literal life or death difference for all of us and all of humanity. The three witnesses that are unified in their testimony concerning Christ are the holy spirit the water that is his whole life and work and his blood the completion of his work these three witnesses attest to the same truth of jesus christ and they're therefore wholly reliable and some of you may have heard the argument about whether jesus is a lord a liar or a lunatic and that's a real helpful way i think for us to think about what john is claiming here that we try to find ways to incorporate Jesus sometimes into what we do or the way that we understand God rather than the way he's revealed himself and there are really only three positions that we can have regarding who Christ said he is and who all of redemptive history says Jesus Christ is the first is that is that he is Lord he is exactly who he said he is he is the only way the only truth and the only life the only way of salvation or we some people would argue that he was a liar that he knew he wasn't those things but that he claimed them to be true in which case jesus is a liar which is obviously blasphemous or he's a lunatic meaning that jesus thought these things were true about him he thought he was a messiah but he really wasn't but he went around saying that anyway and we can actually go to mental health institutions today and find people that we say have messiah complexes because they actually think that they're the messiah and what john wants to make clear is that there isn't a comfy middle with jesus that jesus either is lord or he was a liar or he was a lunatic and obviously the last two of those are blasphemous and we know that jesus christ is indeed lord and that he really did rise again and that he did complete for us through the bookends of his whole earthly life and obedience to God our salvation in full and in our text we have the testimony of the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ being attested to by at least three witnesses and when our text reads that the three are one that we can understand them simply as that they agree in their testimony it'd be like taking three cords and putting them together and making one solid rope that it forms one solid testimony they're all saying the exact same thing jesus life death and resurrection testified to the exact same things that the holy spirit said about god and that god the father said about god the son having considered then the testimony of the three witnesses to which we could also add numerous others john himself claims to have seen the risen savior the 11 disciples the women at the tomb and more than 500 other people who claim to have seen the risen savior they all affirm the same testimony about jesus christ let us now move on to the second aspect of our courtroom drama the credibility of the witnesses are the witnesses who are claiming these things are they reliable is that evidence trustworthy? Well, first and foremost, we could look at the testimony of man. Ultimately, we want to look at the testimony of what God says about it, but we don't have time today to get into it. But there's tons of evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul, in his argument in 1 Corinthians, talks about how important that is. And also, Paul encourages people to go and ask the 500 plus people who saw Jesus raised from the dead Paul was saying don't take my word for it I'm not asking you for a blind leap of faith go and ask look at these 500 witnesses obviously we don't have access to those same 500 witnesses but we have ample evidence throughout scripture and elsewhere of the resurrection of Jesus Christ Josephus even in the first century wrote about it. The Roman soldiers, for instance, they left and abandoned their post, which was a capital offense. We need to ask, why would these Roman soldiers leave their post? What provoked them to leave? Certainly it wasn't a couple women coming to put some perfume on someone. What caused them to leave their post? And consider also that the disciples were never charged with taking away the body of Christ. That was a capital offense. They were actually charged with sedition. They weren't charged with stealing a corpse. And all these things, if we were to go through and look at all the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it just continues to mount up. But what John is saying here is that when we look at the testimony of man, the testimony of God is greater. We could look at all the mounds of evidence for the resurrection, but God's testimony is greater than that. And he says, since we accept the testimony of man, how much greater is the testimony of God? And we accept the testimony of man every day, don't we? Whether we go to a doctor or a dentist or a mechanic, or for me, call the Microsoft Office helpline numerous times a day. Whatever it is, I'm trusting that somebody knows more than I do about these things. I can't have all that knowledge or all that experience or what have you. So we all have special skill sets and abilities and things and we trust people to be able to give us accurate information about that we even trust our friends when they tell us a story about something they went away and did something for the weekend and they come back and we trust that their testimony about what they did that weekend is reliable and what john is saying is we trust those things every day how much more the testimony of god the father and god the holy spirit bearing witness to god the son it's not just a difference in degree but it's a cosmic gap between the credibility difference between what we say and what god says think of it the creator of the universe the perfect holy righteous just true and eternal god is stamping his approval on the claims of the testimony that Jesus is human, Jesus is divine, and that salvation is only through him. It is inconceivable that the testimony of this credible witness would not stand. And then we also have the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Everything that we say about God the Father can obviously be said about God the Holy Spirit because they are one. And John tells us in verse 6 that the Spirit is truth and note that he doesn't just say the spirit is telling the truth but that the holy spirit is true he can't lie it's impossible for the holy spirit to bear false witness to even be wrong he is true and so the claims that are being made are that this the testimony of these witnesses is unimpeachable it can't get any higher we have all the testimony of man and god's is much higher and much greater than that therefore John's point is that we should accept God's testimony precisely because it is God's testimony about his son God has testified concerning his son in the past through the spirit through the water and the blood and his testimony is still valid today something to think about in terms of this holy spirit I remember my first semester at seminary one night sitting in an evening class having one of those dark nights of the soul which we all have and our professor was talking about the Holy Spirit and it was kind of the first time that I didn't just see the little individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but our professor for me held up what was an image on a box top when you get your jigsaw puzzle and you try to put it together it's easier to look at the box top and figure it out at least it is for me and instead of looking at all these little pieces he was holding up this image and when we think about the Holy Spirit think that the same Holy Spirit that was hovering over the deep during creation the same Holy Spirit that accompanied King David throughout everything we read about him in the Old Testament the same Holy Spirit that we just talked about that ascended upon Jesus during his baptism that same Holy Spirit that was with Jesus in the garden and on the cross and that same Holy Spirit that we read about in Acts at Pentecost is the very same Holy Spirit brothers and sisters that is with us today and that is powerful and that is amazing and that should be tremendously comforting to think about it's that same Spirit that regenerates us he gives us a new heart he takes away our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh it's that same holy spirit that illuminates us and causes us to understand we asked for that today when we went to study his word we asked that same holy spirit that hovered over the deep in creation and that was descended on christ at baptism to illumine our hearts and minds to his word that same holy spirit sanctifies us and preserves us so that as we read in the assurance of pardon that nothing can separate us from the love of God it's that same Holy Spirit brothers and sisters is it even conceivable that this spirit is going to bear false witness or fail to accomplish the work that he set out to do it is not not at all and that leads us to our final point the verdict so what does this mean to everybody in the room. The verdict is whoever believes the testimony of God is in Jesus Christ and has eternal life in him and whoever does not believe does not have eternal life. They are spiritually dead and they make God out to be a liar. We are not the judge and jury in this. My analogy breaks down when we look at a courtroom drama in the sense of when we get to a verdict I'm not saying or suggesting that we sit here and decide whether these things are true or not i'm saying we need to align ourselves with the verdict that has been declared in scripture do you find yourself aligning yourself with the testimony of the patriarchs and the prophets and the apostles and jesus's life and the holy spirit and god are you aligning yourself with all of that or are you making him out to be a liar and that sounds really stark today that sounds really harsh in our world but that's exactly what john the point that john is trying to make and it's the point that makes all the difference in terms of our eternal life and our eternal security and the result is that the christian has this testimony john says in his heart this phrase suggests that john is referring to the inner testimony of the spirit in the heart of the believer the external witness that's received as a gift from god becomes our internal certitude in other words that spirit that illuminates us the spirit that regenerates us the spirit that preserves us is given to us and that internally becomes our external certitude of everything that he was pointing to in terms of the life death resurrection the completed work the bookends of everything that jesus christ did for us the key of course to all of this is faith but this has always been the key to god's victory hasn't it 21 times in the book of hebrews chapter 11 it says by faith it's never by works it's never by desire it's never by god plus us it's always by the gift of faith that is given freely if we went and read through hebrews sometimes 11 called the chapter of faith or the hall of fame of faith we would read by faith abel by faith enoch by faith noah by faith abraham by faith isaac by faith joseph by faith moses and on and on it goes 21 times telling us that that same redemptive history that same story that we were talking about from beginning to end of God redeeming his people calling his people to himself it's always been the same way and it's always been by faith and faith is not simply saying that what God says is true but true faith acts on what God says because it is true our good works brothers and sisters don't earn us salvation they are evidence that we are saved. They're evidence that we do have faith. And John gets to this when he talks about overcomers. In 1 John 5.5, he talks about being overcomers. Your translation might say victors. The idea of overcoming or victory is a favorite of John's. He mentions it several times here in 1 John. He mentions it in the Gospel of John. And he mentions it seven times in the book of revelation and every time it's described as a name for or a blessing that's given to believers not something that believers do it's not a special class of believers but it's a name we are overcomers for some of you who probably may have grown up in a church like i did there was actually a separation of believers into 10 kind of two classes of kingdom citizens there were those believers who kind of lived a pathetic life always struggling around And then there were those believers who were overcomers. And the struggle was to try to get from this side to this side. And I tried for years and years, and it is exhausting, and it doesn't happen, and it's not what Scripture teaches. When Scripture teaches that we are overcomers, it's not by our doing, but that is a blessing. It is a gift. It is very similar to what Jesus Christ did when he gave the Beatitudes. It was the king standing there, raising his hands, proclaiming a blessing, giving people something. Not telling them to do something, to earn something, but giving them an inheritance. Blessed are you, you will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Not you will earn the kingdom of heaven. And so the king is standing there and he's giving blessings. And so in here in John, it's the same thing. He's not saying continue to strive and maybe you'll overcome. Or if you do enough work, you're going to be an overcomer. He says that you are an overcomer. He gives us that. It's a name. It's a blessing that we receive because we are in Jesus Christ. And that should be a great comfort to us as well. Everyone, it says, who has the Son has eternal life and everyone who does not have the Son does not have eternal life. It is difficult to think of a clearer statement regarding the exclusive claims of the gospel unless we think also of John 3.16. And so when we think of this, think of your overcoming then as an inheritance. It's something that's given to you, not out of any merit of your own, but it's the free gift of God. And that's the gospel, that's the good news, the faith that is a gift of God and the life that we are in Jesus Christ is a gift of God. And he transfers us from a kingdom of darkness to a kingdom of light and he transfers us from death to life all of our sin is put on jesus christ when we talk about his life that we talked about in terms of the bookends that he endured all of the wrath of god that should have been ours because of our sin that separated us from a holy god he endured and he lived a life of perfect obedience and then that life of perfect obedience is given to us we say it's imputed to us it is a gift as well and that brother sister and brothers and sisters is our only hope of salvation after that we live a life of grateful and obedience as our confessions teach guilt grace and gratitude we have the guilt of sin and we have the grace the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord and then we live lives of grateful obedience because we are new creatures. We couldn't do those things before. We were dead in our trespasses and sins. We couldn't be good. But he took out that heart of stone and he gave us a heart of flesh. And where once we were dead, we were now made alive and able and willing to follow God the Father. And that is great news. In the ongoing drama that we talked about, we will stand before in the judge one day however because we are in christ we may call him father he won't be a judge to us but he will be a father those who are in christ jesus will hear words similar to what jesus heard in the jordan when he was being baptized he heard this is my beloved son in whom i'm well pleased we will hear well done my good and faithful servant enter and it's not going to be because of our works clearly it's because we're in him and that's what john is teaching us conversely those who deny either the humanity or the deity of jesus christ are going to hear the ominous and haunting words depart from me i never knew you so in conclusion let's turn to jesus christ about whom the content of the testimony was delivered The credibility of the witnesses has been considered and the verdict, the eternal promise of God the Father to us, has been examined. We can have incredible confidence when asked, Christian, what do you believe? Because of our certainty of Jesus Christ's ministry from beginning to end. The testimony about Jesus, the credibility of God, and the witness and the surety of God's verdict regarding those who believe. Imagine the spitballs of the lies denying the claims that we are making about Jesus Christ against the battleship of the testimony of God the Father, the work of God the Son, and the witnessing and the sealing work of the Holy Spirit. It's just simply no contests. So I'd like to turn and close to the words of Jesus. Just hours before he was led away to be crucified, he actually prayed a prayer, often called the high priestly prayer, in which he prayed for us specifically. He prayed for us, those here in this room who are his. This comes from John 17, verses 20 through 26. Jesus, Jesus' words here in his prayer. He says, I do not ask for these only, meaning those who are there with him, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. that's us that they may be one just as you father are in me and i in you that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that you have given me i have given to them that they may be one even as we are one i in them and you and me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them even as you loved me father i desired that they also whom you have given me may be with me where i am to see my glory that you have given me because you have loved me before the foundation of the world oh righteous father even though the world does not know you i know you and these know that you have sent me i made known to them your name and i will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. Brothers and sisters, it is inconceivable that this prayer of Christ will not go answered or will go unanswered. All of God's promises to us are yes and amen in Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending your Son and your spirit to reconcile us to you thank you for sending your son to endure your wrath on the cross and then giving us his righteousness as our own that we may have eternal life and fellowship with you we pray that if there are any here who do not know you that you would draw them to yourself and that they would be reconciled to you and finally we pray the words that the author of hebrews wrote since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witness let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us and let us run with endurance the race which is set before us looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and sits at your right hand thank you for the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ and assurance that we have that all of your promises have been and are being fulfilled we thank you in the name of jesus christ your son and our lord amen