Compromise. That can be such a difficult
topic sometimes. When do you compromise and when do you stand firm and
not give an inch? Parents fight that battle daily. Do you let your
kids do something when you know it is not in their best interest or do you have
a big fight about it that benefits nobody? Sometimes you have to
compromise.
Anybody in the market for a car knows the
compromise struggle. You want a vehicle that’s really fast but you need
good gas mileage. You want a big truck because they’re handy but your
wife wants a smooth ride and a trunk. So you compromise and get a half
ton truck with a bed cover. Right?
You know where I have to compromise every day
and I hate it? Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I want to eat something
that is healthy and cheap and I don’t want to have to do dishes
afterward. So, what do I do? I have to compromise because that’s
pretty much not possible.
Even in church you have to compromise sometimes,
right? I know that everybody wants to sit up front so they can see me
really well but you all can’t sit up close. I also know that
sometimes somebody drinks all the Dr. Pepper in the Fellowship Hall and I have
to drink something else. Yes, the struggle is real, folks. Or, more
seriously, sometimes somebody wants something or wants to do something and
somebody else doesn’t think we should. What do we do?
Well, it depends, doesn’t it? It depends
on what we are talking about. If the subject is Coke vs. Dr. Pepper then
that’s one thing but if the subject is the Gospel then that’s another. I
once saw a clip of the Oprah Winfrey show where she said something to the
effect that life is like a wagon wheel and God is at the center and every spoke
is a different religion all going to the same place.
Do you know what the Bible says about
heretics? It says you don’t ever listen to them again. I’m sorry to
make Oprah’s ratings plummet like this but I can’t compromise when it comes to
the Gospel. I cannot compromise when it comes to truth.
I say all the time that deep down everybody
wants to know the truth. Some people try real hard to water it down or
adjust it to where it is easier to swallow but nobody wants to blindly go in
the wrong direction. When it comes to truth, there is no
compromise. If an Atheist and a Christian have a debate, where do they
compromise? They don’t! Neither will be happy with any kind of
compromise. Truth is truth and when it comes to the truth of how to get to
Heaven, we at Christ Fellowship will never compromise.
The Bible is clear. Ephesians 2:8
says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith” and while
that passage is in the New Testament that concept of being saved and going to
Heaven by grace and through faith is all through the Bible even in the Old
Testament. Abraham, Moses and David were all saved by grace and through
faith just as we are today.
Yet while God has made that plain in His Word,
so many people try to make it something else.
They try to think of what makes more sense to them or what they would do
if they were God. The Bible even
recognizes this and says a couple of times in Proverbs that there is a way which seems right to
a man, but its end is the way of death.
When the Bible uses that word “death”
it rarely means to die physically. It
nearly always means to die spiritually and for eternity. So, assuming you want to avoid the way that
leads to eternal death and assuming you want to live this life doing more than
just going to work, watching TV and then going to sleep, let’s look at what the
Bible says about life.
Turn to 1 John chapter 5, verses 9-12.
In the Bible in the pew it is on page
864. We will focus mainly on verses
11-12 as we conclude our series on seeing what God is like through the great
little book of 1 John. So far we have
seen that God is light and that means He is all-knowledgeable, all holy and all
happy. That makes God very attractive to
me. I hope others see that as well. We have also seen that God is love and while
I can’t always understand why God does some things, I can know that I know that
He is love and everything He does revolves around His love for us. That makes Him very attractive to me.
Today we will see that God is
life. Turn to 1 John 5:9-12.
“We
accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the
testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this
testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because
they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us
eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever
has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
The first two verses are basically saying that God the Father says that
His Son Jesus is the only way to eternal life and not to believe Him is
basically saying that God is a liar. You
can imagine that God frowns on being called a liar. You can imagine that there are great
consequences in this life and the next for calling God a liar but that is
exactly what people do who fail to believe God’s own testimony about His Son,
Jesus.
Then in verse 11 God says that eternal life is only found “in Jesus.”
I want us to see this
morning that in Jesus, we don’t have to wait
for eternal life, we don’t have to work
for eternal life and we sure don’t have to worry about eternal life.
Let’s read those last two verses again just so we can focus on them this
morning. Verses 11-12.
Now, in one sense, everybody is going to have eternal
life. Don’t stone me just yet. I’m not saying, like the Pope has lately,
that everybody is on track for getting to Heaven. I mean the Bible is clear that you will
either spend eternity in Heaven or in Hell.
In Matthew 25 Jesus is
telling about the last judgment and tells how to some He will say, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into
the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”
But in verse 11
John is talking about eternal life in Heaven and he says that God has given us
eternal life. We don’t have to wait for
it. We already have it from the moment
we ask Jesus into our lives and to be Lord of our lives. It doesn’t say that God is going to give us
eternal life. It says He already has. We don’t have to wait til the concert is over
to get our backstage pass. We get it
when we walk in the door.
On Wednesday nights at 7pm, Brian Amerman is leading
us through a fascinating study of the parables of Jesus. So often Jesus starts those parables by
saying either “the Kingdom of Heaven is
like…” or “the Kingdom of God is
like…” and what He is talking about is our eternal life in Heaven that
starts right here on earth when we are saved.
Now, if our eternity has already started then what
does that mean for us? Well, as children
of the King of kings, we are treated differently and we should act differently. Did you know that God looks at us with favor
and treats us differently than non-believers?
Isaiah 66:2 says, “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble
and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.” Repeat.
Humble and contrite. Is that you?
As children of the King you
might be tempted to not be humble or contrite but you need to remember that
none of us deserve eternal life and none of us did anything to get it. Remember?
By grace and through faith and nothing makes God less attractive than for
His kids to act conceited. It was John
Riskin who said, "I believe the
first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility,
doubt of his own power, or hesitation in speaking his opinion. But really great
men have a ... feeling that the greatness is not in them but through them; that
they could not do or be anything else than God made them."
When we are humble and contrite toward God and others,
He treats us differently. Therefore, we
ought to also act differently. We are
children of the King. When Satan comes
up behind you and whispers in your ear, “Hey,
you deserve it. Let’s go do that thing
we do.” Excuse me, Satan, but you
don’t know who you’re talking to. I am a
child of the one true King and while I used to do that, I don’t anymore because
my Father has given me the gift of power to overcome that and I’m offended you
would even ask. Now, in the name of
Jesus, be gone!
Repeat after
me:
I’m a child of the King and I
don’t do that anymore! Say it again. We don’t have to continue in that
addiction. We don’t have to continue in
lust or anger or greed or any other sin because we know that God has given us
the gift of eternal life and He has given us the gift of power to overcome the
world and the prince of this world.
That makes God attractive when His children are humble
and contrite before God and others but they also live like they have been given
eternal life right here and right now. We
don’t have to wait for it.
That leads right in to the next point. We don’t have to work for our eternal life.
It has been given to us as a gift.
I have a $1-dollar bill here. If you want it, come and get it. Now, first of all, when did this dollar
become yours? It became yours when you
received it; when you took it and it is yours from now on. Next, this dollar is a gift. You did not work for it. You had to get up and come get it but nothing
else. You did no work to earn this
dollar.
That is what
is meant in verse 11 where John says
that God has given us eternal life. The
same guy said in one of the most famous verses in the Bible that God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.
That verse makes God very attractive because it is the essence of what
God is like. Because God is love He has
given us eternal life through Jesus and we should use John 3:16 when we witness to people.
Use Romans
3:23 to tell the bad news that we are all sinners. Then continue with Romans 6:23 that says that what we deserve for that sin – the wages
of that sin – is eternal death but then give them the good news that the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord. Finish it off
with John 3:16 and then drop the mic.
You don’t have to argue with them.
Truth is enough. If they say no
that is on them but you have done what you have been called to do as a child of
the King who doesn’t have to wait for his eternal life and you don’t have to
work for it.
We know that
eternal life is a gift and because we don’t have to work for it, we also don’t have to worry about it. Isn’t that a
wonderful truth? One of Satan’s favorite
lies he tells to believers is that they are not a believer. If he can’t have your soul, then he goes to
work making you believe that you are not a child of the King and so you don’t
need to act like it.
But I want
to know where in the Bible it says that after God has given us this gift of
eternal life that He then takes it back.
Where is that found? It’s not! In fact, all through the Bible it says we
don’t have to worry about that gift because it is an eternal gift that starts
the moment you receive it.
John 10:27 says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give
them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out
of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no
one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.” Romans
8:38 says, "For
I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither
the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I know it can be controversial to say that once we are saved that we are
always saved but I have to say that because the Bible says it. I know that the argument is always, “So if I am saved does that mean I can live
any way I want to?” and my response is well, technically, yes. The truth is though that once you are saved
you will not want to live that old way because you have the Holy Spirit living
inside of you and when you do sin it will bother you. It will destroy your peace.
Do you know how else we don’t have to worry about eternal life? We don’t have to worry about somebody else’s
eternal life either. I don’t mean we
don’t have to witness. What I mean by
that is trying to judge whether somebody else is or isn’t a Christian. That is a sin. When you see somebody that claims to be a
Christian but is sinning it is not your call to say they are not Christians.
Matthew
7:1 is one of the most mis-quoted verses of the Bible. It says,
"Do not judge, or you too will be judged.”
It is talking about judging somebody else’s eternity. When it comes to sin, we can and should judge
that something is a sin and we should call it sin. 1
Peter 4:17 says, “For it is time for
judgment to begin with God's household.”
But for
believers Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus.” We
don’t have to worry about our salvation.
We don’t have to worry about our eternal life. If we are truly believers; if we have
sincerely believed that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6)
and we have asked Him to be Lord of our lives; we have repented or turned away
from our sins and asked forgiveness of those sins then we don’t have to worry
about anything.
1 John 5
tells us that we don’t have to wait for our gift of eternal life. It begins the moment we receive Jesus and we
should act like it. We don’t have to
work for it. It is a gift that we don’t
deserve. Nor do we have to worry about
it. If we didn’t do anything to earn it,
there is nothing we can do to lose it.
The joy of this knowledge should make God attractive to non-believers
when they see the changes it has made in our lives.
What is God
like? He is light. He is love and He is life. Now act like it.
Invitation
Questions
tonight at 6 – bring your Bible
Next week we
will see how to become the person Satan wants you to be. From 1 Samuel.
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